Human rights in the US are worse than you think | Hacker News Reader

Human rights in the US are worse than you think

vox.com

14 pointsFuturebot5 comments

> For extrajudicial killing, the US comes in a notorious third place, after Mexico and Brazil, particularly because of lethal force used by police against African Americans and other people of color.

Obviously, the US is not the 3rd worst country in the world for extrajudicial killings. What the author chooses to omit is that the report only includes data for 20 countries in this measurement.

https://data.humanrightsmeasurement.org/en/metric/extrajud-k...

Beyond that, the data used by the study is literally just a poll of non-academic human rights advocates.

https://humanrightsmeasurement.org/methodology/measuring-civ...

Personally, I'm angry as hell about a lot of things the US does civil rights wise, but the methodology and the article here are both garbage and I would be embarrassed to use either as support of an argument.

You can never have this discussion honestly because egos come out and attack it. So many people have their identity so deeply tied to their place of birth it's impossible to extricate them and talk about any failings. I live in rural America now and the beliefs so strongly held, vs what the world out there is really like, are confusing and frustrating.

But how’s the politics? I grew up in a small town. There were untouchables constantly getting in trouble with no repercussions, and innocent youth getting criminal records for a one and only infraction. But I get ya. I long for the solitude of country life again, but am deeply grateful for the exposure to city and international opportunities. Sounds like you are, too. I would condemn the ignorance, but that makes me no better than the small town school of thought. I hope life is good enough to them to give exposure to things, people, concepts, ideas, and cultures outside their sphere of comfort. That’s the best I can do.

Yeah its deeply hypocritical in many ways. I just don't understand how it's so hard for so many to just be good to each other, to take care of each other. There is too much angry, tribal nonsense and way too much opposition to humane and decent things like robust social systems and equal rights. There is a strange "nobody should get anything I don't think they deserve" mentality that supercedes the "nobody should suffer needlessly" mentality I think matters more.

> ... I simply cannot understand

If my parents had supported me indefinitely it would have extended my dependence and delayed my adulthood indefinitely. This is a moral hazard of too much welfare. You can agree that this hazard exists and still disagree about its relative danger and threshold. Your rural neighbors aren't moral monsters, they just have different risk assessments.

I think a lot of that is due to a more independent rural childhood from an earlier age. It creates a greater appreciation for antifragility. A kid released into the wild at age 6 has a different estimate of their own capacity than one supervised until 12. They project that estimate onto everyone else.

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