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Comment by petesergeant | Hacker News Reader

UK and Australia are also very rule-loving and have their own problems, but not the same disease you’re describing here.

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It's interesting, as an Aussie, the decline in rule following is honestly a bit upsetting.

Part COVID, part mass migration, but the general decline in social trust is something that I really feel.

I guess I see breaking rules as fundamentally a lack of empathy.

As another Australian I'm glad to see it. I remember as a kid watching a neighbour's dog of many years being dragged away to the slaughter by a council worker as the old women pleaded for it to be spared, just because it wasn't the right breed. The rules don't leave any room for empathy. There's a saying, "the problem isn't that Australia was founded by prisoners, it's that it was founded by prison guards".

See, I would call getting a breed of dog that has been identified as dangerous, as incredibly selfish. Genuinely an insane degree of self centred reasoning. My special dog is fine, because it's my dog, and I know better than everyone else (but also can't convince anyone that you are in fact right, in order to change the rules).

It's all the behaviour that we have identified as better overall if everyone follows it, and deciding that it doesn't apply to you, because you don't feel like it.

Run a red light, because you are in a hurry. Drive a truck without a licence, because you think you will be fine. Throw a party every night, because your having a great time and there is not enough resources to limit how shit you can be to your neighbours.

Also "don't worry he doesn't bite" after they allow their dog to jump at you.

I think Clive James said that, or something similar. I think his version was something like "the tragedy isn't that so many Australians are descended from convicts, but that so many are descended from the guards."

The guards are in charge there as everywhere else.

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