Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

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US bankruptcy laws are not punitive enough. After bankruptcy, he should not have been allowed to gamble, anywhere. The US needs something like China's "high level consumption restriction", which can be imposed on people in financial trouble.[1] Companies, too, in which case it applies to executives as individuals.

Prohibited:

- Travel: No air travel; limited high-speed rail. Can still take the slow green trains, but only in the lower-class coaches.

- Lodging & leisure: No stays in star-rated hotels, nightclubs, golf courses, or other luxury venues. Yes, no golf. No gambling visits to Macau, either. Within China, gambling is already prohibited.

- Property & business: No purchase of real estate; no leasing high-end offices/hotels; no luxury vehicle purchases.

- Education & insurance: No enrollment of children in high-cost private schools.

China can make this work because everything runs on the official government ID card, and the database of who's on consumption restriction is tied to that.

[1] https://www.chinajusticeobserver.com/a/restriction-on-high-l...

with respect, fuck no. Bankruptcy should be less consequential. A lender or creditor should rely on their own measure of creditworthiness to determine who to lend to, not rely on a borrower’s fear of the state. The punitive nature of bankruptcy served a purpose decades ago but nowadays it is not needed. A lot of creditors nowadays don’t even bother pursuing debts, instead focusing on better checks upfront, hence so much debt being sold for pennies on the dollar. Making bankruptcy catastrophic would give creditors the wrong incentives.

It is not a crime to be unable to pay your debts, therefore your rights cannot be infringed for ending up in such a state. Debts, especially those to private entities, are a civil matter.

Restricting air travel would be an attack on an American's freedom of movement, a right enshrined in our Constitution.

Restriction on doing business with whomever is willing to do business with them would be an attack on an American's freedom of association, which is likewise enshrined in the very first ammendment of our Bill of Rights.

Any US politician who offered up such an outrageous attack on the Constitution would deserve nothing short of death for their utter betrayal of the trust placed in them by the American people.

Possession of CSAM was not a crime until it gave the state a reason to go through every datum you own. When the incentives are right, laws can become anything.

In Europe, we suddenly had laws against "hate speech," which I personally think goes against the Swedish constitution's protection of free speech, but here we are.

> Possession of CSAM was not a crime until it gave the state a reason to go through every datum you own.

CSAM was not much of a problem for a looooong time and let's be real, the arts and clergy always had a huge issue with pedophilia, hell Polanski still is walking around freely. Only with it becoming widespread and people actually taking care about children getting raped left and right, laws around it became tightened.

I admit that there have been excesses like in Germany that even bans fictional texts or prosecuting minors sending nudes to each other, but in general, it is a good thing to combat organised sexual abuse of children.

> In Europe, we suddenly had laws against "hate speech," which I personally think goes against the Swedish constitution's protection of free speech, but here we are.

I'm German, if you need proof why certain kinds of speech should not be acceptable, just look into what happened between 1933-1945. Your country was lucky enough to not get invaded by us, but virtually every country that was invaded by us or later on occupied by the Soviets now has some sort of restriction on acceptable speech as a direct lesson.

> Possession of CSAM was not a crime until it gave the state a reason to go through every datum you own.

Conveniently, right after communist propaganda ceased to be a threat.

It is a crime if the debts are to the state

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/09/how-common-is...

That's more complicated. Basically, the courts have found that inability to pay is not a crime, but unwillingness to is. Depending on the court, and the debtor, judges end up with a lot of leeway as to how to interpret non-payment. It's a fucked enough situation that I hedged in the original comment. In an ideal world, where everyone had access to high-quality legal representation, it would be relatively straight forward to represent the difference to the courts. Unfortunately, we don't live in that world, and the very same pressures that make it impossible to pay your speeding ticket more often that not also deprive you of worthwhile legal representation.

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