Isn’t wimpiness based on real knowledge better than confidence based on bullshit?
Can you elaborate on this idea?
This link didn’t work and I am really interested as I though Russia recently past the US in the number (like in the last 3 months). Is this link recent?
Also the # of people incarcerated is EXACTLY what is meant by lack of personal responsibility, we are leaving our personal issues to be decided by the state. This includes all the lawsuits like slip and fall)
A “comedy of manners” set in upper-class Victorian England – or even early 20th-Century America (see Mr. and Mrs. Bridge – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100200/) – shows a society that has a certain elegance when viewed from the outside, but not a society I would want to live in. I prefer things the way they are now. Manners are less artificial, standards of ettiquete are much looser, public displays of emotion more acceptable. It’s not quite the let-it-all-hang-out society Ernest Callenbach described in Ecotopia (and that was the aspect of his ideal society that I liked best), but we have moved a long way in that direction, considering our starting point. In fact, I bitterly resent, not all, but some standards of polite behavior that still prevail, such as limits on what words one can use on television or in certain kinds of company. Some people complain of the “abrasiveness” of Americans born after, say, 1970, but it all seems normal and natural to me. If we want to work on the character of the younger generation, let’s work on their ethics, not their manners.
I just tried that link (which dates from 2003) and it worked fine. If you’re interested in the incarceration issue, check out this thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304071
Say what?
:dubious: I beg your pardon. A slip-and-fall lawsuit could be viewed as a plaintiff’s way of avoiding responsibility for his or her own clumsiness – or it could be viewed as a way of forcing the defendant to take responsibility for his or her negligence in allowing an unsafe condition to exist on his or her premises. We have judges and juries to make that call, and that’s how it should be.
I did a quick read of it, it does seem to indicate that there is question to the claim that the US has the highest %'age of the pop incarcerated.
A simple example, you might find extreme:
There is a constitutional right to own a firearm, you may disagree with it or think it was needed then but no longer so today , but it is still there and has not been repealed. If someone broke into your home in the Founding Father’s days it would be not only acceptable but your responsibility to use any force you could to repel the thief, even if it meant the thief died. Today by using the same force you could be charged with a crime.
The difference is the level of personal responsibility we are allowed to have. The state believes it is better that we call 911 when someone breaks in and is intending us harm.
We have removed the responsibility of protecting our own property and given it to the state, where we must pay for a larger police force to protect us and for that matter go after us when we dare to be responsible for our own safety.
I will agree to disagree with you. I was being questioned for jury duty on a slip and fall case. I told the attorneys that there was very little chance I would find for the plaintiff. They asked what would it take. I told them that the defendant would have to run freon lines under the sidewalk to produce a black ice condition in the middle of a heatwave in summer and direct the old lady over that stretch of sidewalk.
I am still pissed that they dismissed me.
:dubious: So why does that constitute a “loss”? It is better to call 911. Fewer people get killed that way, and the cops are better at handling this kind of situation than you are.
[QUOTE=kanicbird]
I was being questioned for jury duty on a slip and fall case. I told the attorneys that there was very little chance I would find for the plaintiff. They asked what would it take. I told them that the defendant would have to run freon lines under the sidewalk to produce a black ice condition in the middle of a heatwave in summer and direct the old lady over that stretch of sidewalk./QUOTE]
But that’s not the common-law standard for negligence – not now, and not in the Founding Fathers’ day, either.
Just going a bit further, the theif when caught will be put in jail, and the property owner will aslo so we have a much higher incarceration rate then the countries that expect the property owner to take personal responsibility to protect their own property.
Also since we don’t have public floggings and the like, we have no choice then very long sentances.
So? That’s still more civilized, and yields better overall results, than defending your property with a shotgun.
Well that is your opinion (except for the fewer people who get killed). Remember there is no constitutional right to police protection, which means the state itself is not taking responsibility for it’s actions (providing police protection), though it is the very method it requires you to use.
I don’t agree that a police force 5 minutes away (including call in time) is better at handling a situation where a thief is in your house then a armed homeowner who is there at the time of the breakin.
Well neither was freon, but that’s besides the point. And I don’t believe for a second that there was EVER a slip and fall case in the Foundig Fathers days, snow and ice was considered an act of God.
I realise there is a different standard for negligents but things have gotten way out of hand to where sueing has been compaired to playing the lottery.
I agree with most of what you said, but, sir, you are painting with the broadest brush I have ever seen.
One thing about “permanent” jobs in the 50s. You have to remember that the 50s were a pretty unusual decade, not a good baseline by which we can measure our progress or decline. We had just come out of years and years of the great depression, followed by years and years of devastating global war. Europe was flattened, Asia was flattened, Russia was flattened except for military production. But the US was virtually intact, suddenly jobs were everywhere. Factory workers were suddenly being offered middle-class salaries instead of proletarian slave-wages like they had in the past. The idea that one man working a factory job for 40 hours a week could support a whole family, own a private car, own a private house with a yard, have a wife who only worked in the home, and kids who attended school full time until they were 18 suddenly became the social norm.
This was a sort of economic perfect storm, that can’t be duplicated today because in 2005 we have to compete against dirty foreigners who don’t even speak english for jobs that by rights should belong to god-fearing Americans. Other countries have recovered from the wars, or freed themselves from disasterous totalitarian schemes, or otherwise managed to transition from the hand-to-mouth poverty the majority of the world has experienced for the last several thousand years since the start of the bronze age.
If Americans in the 50s seemed more adult, it was because they had faced grinding poverty and experienced horrible war, and had escaped both. The stereotypical smug 50s dad was smug because he’d starved as a kid in the 30s, fought Hitler and Tojo in the 40s, and now was middle-class–MIDDLE CLASS–working in a factory that used to pay shit wages. Unimaginable luxury was now available, compared to the depravations of the 30s and 40s. I’d be smug too.
I should have mentioned, that was a movie quote. It’s from A Fish Called Wanda.