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Comment by eastbayjake | Hacker News Reader

The Egyptian legal system is not known for its fairness... the World Justice Project ranks it 125 of 128 surveyed countries, in last place out of 8 countries in the Middle East[1]

Similarly (and tragically) the Syrian government is not known for its compassion towards its distressed citizens.

[1] https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/country/Eg...

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>World Justice Project ranks it 125 of 128 surveyed countries

Man considering the scale here that's horrific.

But I guess that would explain a process here where they seem to punish someone... 'just because', and with no value coming from the process at all.

It's just injustice for no reason at all.... I can understand corruption to some extent. They get something, but punish this guy for no value, I don't get it.

I can think of two incentives for punishing this guy for no value: First, it will appear that they have “done something about it”, say, to their superiors. Second, some people also feel good if they can put someone down or enforce a loss on someone; It’s a stunted heuristic for them “winning”.

So there is very clear value in it. If the harm is disregarded.

Of course, many third world nations have little regard for their multitude of poor citizens. But I think it's important to high light the way that in situations like this, these nations are forced to accept that the "laws of the sea" trump their own laws and then wind-up unable/unwilling to intervene when a ship, a load of goods or a person winds-up in international legal limbo - the true, horrific poster-child for this was the disastrous Beirut explosion. Enough explosives to level half the city sat in legal limbo for years ... until they did that, yeah. And as we see here, there are many terrible but more mundane examples.

We detached this generic tangent from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26907026.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Egypt is about to be dried out. Ethopia is building a dam on the Blue Nile and will have the ability to fully control how much water reaches Egypt.

It seems that the lack of compassion that Egypt has for its neighbors will be repaid in kind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Da...

Most people may think I’m being pessimistic and jaded. But I think these rankings are hilarious (in a bad sense). Just like the corruption rankings that come out.

The US gets a green square and a high rank, smaller countries are corrupt and unfair. I could fill up paragraphs about how corrupt and dysfunctional our (US) legal and political systems are. Meanwhile I spent a long time in Central Africa (a red square country) and know to compare.

I don’t get the purpose of these rankings.

You think Central Africa is less corrupt and more just than the USA? Jeez, that takes the cake hey.

I’m from Africa, have left now, and this is pure nonsense.

The USA doesn’t have to be literally perfect for it to be a good place.

Same. I help put deals together with some experience in SE Asia. The ability to enforce contract and property rights in the US, with ready access to the courts and relatively clear rules, sets the US apart in terms of business efficiency and predictability. In my assessment, it's a large part of what's made the US so prosperous. In contrast, dealing with corrupt officials in smaller countries in SE Asia is just wild.

Right the US has rule of law for businesses. What about poor people? Not so much. See: civil asset forfeiture, being jailed for petty fines you can’t afford to pay, insane fees used by low-tax jurisdictions to fund their courts.

It’s certainly not perfect, I agree with your specific points. But it’s not even at all comparable with the third world.

It’s vastly better to a degree that left me totally mindfucked for years after I moved to the first world.

> But it’s not even at all comparable with the third world.

I trust your observations of where you came from but I believe this is over-generalizing to places you may not have personal experience with.

It is much better if you're not the target of the system, which in the US means that you're white and/or middle class or better.

Yes, the U.S. has gone to great length to ensure the smooth operation of business. In fact you might say this is essentially the primary purpose of U.S. legal system. As an example, one researcher looked at all the Supreme Court cases involving the 14th amendment between 1870 and 1940. The 14th amendment as you'll recall is an amendment focused on the individual equal protections people have under the law. I cannot recall the figures exactly, but of some 100+ cases ~70% pertained to business and around a dozen were focused on violations of individual's rights.

Property rights are an especially important tool when it comes to the operation of a materially wealthy society. But their imposition does not somehow guarantee that a society is more just or fair and less corrupt than any other.

Edit: I looked up the figures in my notes. The paper involved all Supreme Court cases involving the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court struck down 232 state laws, 179 of the decisions were in favor of corporations, 55 were in favor of the growing railroads and 9 were in favor of individual black petitioners.

The paper isn't online and I don't have access to it anymore to check but I believe it is this paper.

"Protecting Corporations Instead of the Poor" by Alec Karakatsanis in Harvard Law Review 275.

Have you considered that cases involving individuals are easier for lesser courts to decide? Black and white cases don’t make it to the supreme court.

Correct, the US has an excellent legal system for the maintenance of property and commerce, but from the human point of view it is a disaster. After all, just considering the maintenance of racial disparities at the judicial level over several decades will tell that this is not a functioning system.

Can you consider it such a "disaster" when so many from all around the world are desperate to move here? I realize that's kind of a cliche' right-wing talking point, but it still seems some relatively is merited.

People want to move because they need the jobs! As I said, the US has a great justice system for commercial enterprises. But from the human point of view it is a disaster.

I don't know, man. It seems to me that having a job is actually a pretty big factor from the human point of view.

You’re right. The US has predictable rules and outcomes and very civilization-friendly laws. It also has the power to enforce law & order within its own borders.

By contrast, especially in Central Africa, the borders on the map are largely aspirational on the part of the governments. Even the word “Democratic” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a bad joke. The dominant local power in most of that landmass is more likely to be a warlord/crime boss than the government.

> The dominant local power in most of that landmass is more likely to be a warlord/crime boss than the government.

I would argue this is a false statement. There are pockets of instability there, especially near Goma and Virunga or very rural areas. The last few years especially have been unstable. But if you look at the country as a whole (which is the size of all Western Europe) over the last 15 years, the size of the territory not controlled by the internationally recognized legitimate government has been very small.

We can argue about definiton of words like legitimate, control, and “very small”.

But a better test is this: would you go for a drive there with your family? Would you invest billions in a multi-decade mining project there - if you had to depend on the government’s version of law & order only?

You are making the assumption that "investing billions of dollars" is synonymous with all other forms of justice. During the Junta in Chile for example, you were very safe to invest. You were probably even safe to go for a drive. But the system was grotesque on the whole. I think the point people are trying to make is that

1) It varies far too much from country to country to generalize in this way.

2) Justice is patchy and even across many areas of law depending on where you are.

Well yes, this is the problem. The US legal system is great if you're dealing with massive amounts of money in the hopes of making more money.

Other aspects are much worse.

Also, most legal systems are generally good for this purpose, you just have to use your money judiciously in bribes instead of lawyer's fees.

Not once, but multiple times I've had police simply steal cash from me in the states. Not civil forfeiture, but the cash in a wallet disappears on it's way to where it's held temporarily, no crimes involved. And from rich areas like Boulder, CO.

I have not seen the lack of low level corruption in the states compared to other countries. Like in other countries they simply confine their corruption to those powerless to do anything about it.

This exactly. In the US it is common for police to steal from citizens if they feel they can get away with it, I know many people who have had it happen to them personally, both with cash and possessions.

Did this happen at a traffic stop? Did you give them your wallet when they asked for your license? I don’t think I’ve ever given a cop my wallet. I take the ID out and hand that to them. If they asked me for the wallet, I would feel powerless to say no, I just have never been asked. I’m not defending the police here, this behavior is disgusting, just trying to understand the circumstances in which this occurred.

Also, I’m low-key wondering if I should start handing the cop my wallet. They never give me a warning, maybe if they got some money out of the interaction they’d start...

It hasn't happened at a traffic stop. Cameras like dashcams seem to have an effect on police behavior.

What are you doing in your life that you've had your wallet confiscated by the police multiple times?

Not judging, just curious.

One example, at a large party during college, my wife's coat was stolen. The thieves took her credit cards, left the rest of the wallet, and dumped the coat on an unrelated house's front lawn. Unbenownst to the thieves, this house was owned by a professor who she was close with. He had searched the coat and found the cash in another pocket. When he was unable to reach her via cellphone, he took the coat to the police, ultimately concerned about my wife's physical safety who then confiscated the coat, the cash, and the wallet. He then came directly to our house from the police (for the second time, he tried our house before we arrived back home and before he went to the police), and after being extremely relieved that she wasn't dead in a ditch or something, informed us of both the coat's location (with the police, and the specific station and officer he talked with) and the contents he had discovered including the cash that my wife had not stored in her wallet but instead an inner pocket. When we went to the police they informed us that both the intake form for the property detailing what had been dropped off had gone missing, and that no cash was present nor had been turned in.

Strange. The only time I've had law enforcement take my money was in Mexico.

I believe that the goal is to put pressure on those countries and make investors afraid of placing money there. Of course that a single ranking can't make this, but having multiple indexes + media narrative in this sense can create great leverage for unfair trade deals.

If for example you consider lobbying=corruption (in many countries it is), then the US should indeed be many rankings below.

Looking at the WJP Rule of Law Index linked above, it's considering factors like constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, and fundamental rights.

As someone involved in law in the US, the US is really good at these types of things. People, including Americans who have lived here their entire lives, are consistently amazed when they learn the power of the court and how functional it all has managed to be.

Seems like your rankings are mostly based on anecdotal experiences?

It seems like you're equating "there is corruption in the US" with "the US has more corruption than most other countries".

I share your concern for corruption in the US, but I submit that you have lost your sense of proportion. The US is not -- by any stretch of the imagination -- anything less than "mostly not corrupt".

Not to mention the fact that for any poor, poorly-ranked nation, it's likely that USA actions there include dropping bombs, assassinating socialist-leaning democratically-elected leadership, stationing troops and/or spooks, encouraging theft of natural resources, funding criminal terrorist anti-state groups, etc.

Choosing how to measure these parameters and what relative weight to give each of them is inherently very political.

US has been given a surprisingly high score while France and Italy are way below China!

There seems to be quite a lot of bias in this kind of scoring.

That's because, as a consequence of our own transparency, on every thread on a political topic, the resident anarchist trolls are free to give us a history lesson of everything wrong the US has ever done. There are many countries where such types of posters would get arrested on some real or made-up charge for being hyper critical of the state. Most Americans who feel that we're some hyper-corrupt, irreparable place(systemically dysfunctional, if you will) have no idea how far other governments go to cover up their dirty deeds. Our rule of law is still the envy of people who come from places that rule by law.

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