Reframing the meaning of words, in a way that your product's usages becomes the metric - eg so "economy" = "Claude" - makes this some sort of 'Claude promo pack'.
There's a reason that due process is a thing, it's more commonly upheld than it's not, no matter what rhetoric you've been spun by a fear-mongering media.
If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.
Also, included in those "plea bargains" are cautions, for children.
edit; I'm getting flagged but I should definitely mention that I'm intimately familiar with how the law can be for the underclass, I was an underclass and I have a laundry list of a criminal record from when I was a child.
People plead guilty because they can't afford the $10K in lawyer costs, and if you can't afford a lawyer and get appointed a state one, not only are you far more likely to lose your case, but if you lose you still have to pay that lawyer at the end plus the extra court costs and fees on top.
Often people are given "If you plea, you will pay a few thousand dollars and get to go home. If you don't plea, there is a 50% chance you go to jail, have a black mark on your record, and have to pay $10K in court fees and fines." And when people aren't even sure how they will pay a few thousand dollars, the risk of having to pay $10K+ plus serve jail time that will cost them their job and limit future employment opportunities is a HUGE risk.
You are the breadwinner for your household. A detective decides that you are the most likely person to have committed a nearby burglary. You have an alibi, but they charge you anyway. You cannot afford to pay bail; your options are to remain in jail until the case makes its way through the courts, or to accept a plea bargain that lets you out on probation. Your underfunded and overworked public defender advises you to take the deal, since a trial would be ruinous even if you do prevail. What do you do?
The issue with plea bargains is not that guilty people are given leniency for remorse; it is that they are used to coerce innocent people into confessing to a crime they did not commit.
In 98% of cases they bring for prosecution - they know the job, they know what works, and if they don't think they can follow through, they often just drop the case entirely, so it doesn't count.
Yes because we all know workers are the best judges of said work they do.
How often do you work on bug tickets and realize that the "simple one liner change" is actually more complicated? Okay now instead of it being a simple computer bug, you are dealing with real human lives and have the potential to destroy them quite easily.
Maybe the system isn't working as intended, maybe courts should be redesigned to be more accommodating to the needs of everyone and not just those with $100k in checking accounts.
Anyone who says "all of x is justified" or "all of y is unjustified" is usually wrong.
I thought we were smart enough to realise that on HackerNews.
Parent of mine claimed that the law as practiced is unjust, I said, largely that's not true and that there's a pretty strong propaganda campaign against the legal system (due to aligned incentives of stoking up rage for clicks).
I didn't claim that unfairness didn't exist, merely that it's not the default.
I have now been told that because plea bargains exist for those who show remorse, that the law never follows due process.
The DOJ, DHS, ICE, and judicial processes are losing credibility quickly. If ever they deserved the benefit of the doubt, I would say that time has passed, at least at national level.
> If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.
On the contrary, I think that's one of the problems that makes plea bargains so egregious: in order to take a plea bargain, you have to plead guilty, which prevents you from further defending yourself if you didn't actually do what you were accused of. That creates the scenario where an innocent person who is not confident in the system's ability to defend them may find themselves having to plead guilty in order to stave off a much worse penalty.
The same thing applies to parole boards: maintaining innocence typically prevents you from being granted parole.
You're conflating "plea bargains exist" with "innocent people are systematically coerced into false confessions."
The vast majority of plea bargains involve people who are, in fact, guilty and are receiving a reduced sentence for saving the court's time and showing contrition. That's not a perverse incentive, it's a reasonable tradeoff that benefits both the defendant and society.
Yes, edge cases exist where innocent people feel pressure to plead. But the existence of edge cases doesn't prove the system is fundamentally unjust, it proves the system is imperfect, which no one disputes.
Regarding parole: maintaining innocence after you've been convicted and exhausted your appeals isn't "defending yourself"; at that point, you've had your defence. The parole board's job is to assess rehabilitation, and refusing to acknowledge your crime is evidence you haven't been rehabilitated. If you genuinely didn't do it, your remedy is post-conviction relief, not parole.
The burden is on those claiming systemic injustice to show that false guilty pleas are the norm rather than the exception. "98% plea bargain rate" doesn't demonstrate that.
I realize that "duress" probably has a specific legal definition, but colloquially speaking all plea bargains are made under duress. If I (a private citizen) kidnapped you, locked you in a cage and told you that I would continue to hold you captive if you didn't agree to my terms, no one would mistake that for a free or fair negotiation.
> The vast majority of plea bargains involve people who are, in fact, guilty and are receiving a reduced sentence for saving the court's time and showing contrition. That's not a perverse incentive, it's a reasonable tradeoff that benefits both the defendant and society.
What proof do you have of this? Estimates I’ve read range from 2-25% of people who accept plea bargains are innocent.
And what recent age of innocent people is it acceptable to send to jail via coercive plea bargains to ensure no guilty people go free?
> If you take a plea deal because you were convinced you'd be prosecuted otherwise, well, that also sucks
You are completely sidestepping the thrust of the grandparent commenter’s comment, which is that the cost of defending yourself from prosecution is prohibitively expensive and punitive in the sense that the outcome is worse than negotiating a plea deal.
> if you took one under duress, then that would be why the higher courts exist, to invalidate your guilty plea when taken under duress.
In this hypothetical the accused doesn’t have the money to pay for a lawyer; they aren’t going to be beating the case on an appeal.
You're defending zealously enough, and introducing so many variables yourself, that you have burden of proof too. Show some numbers for "vast majority" and "edge case".
No, I don't have burden of proof for defending the status quo. That's not how this works.
The legal system processes millions of cases annually. The claim being made here is that it's unjust more often than just... that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
I'm not the one who needs to prove the system works. You need to prove it's fundamentally broken. "Plea bargains could coerce innocent people" isn't evidence, it's a handful of cases in millions and heavy speculation about prevalence. I've taken a caution myself when I thought I might prevail at trial, not because I was coerced into a false confession, but because the pragmatic choice was obvious. That's the system working, not breaking.
The Innocence Project has exonerated about 375 people via DNA evidence since 1989. Tragic? Absolutely. Evidence of systemic failure? Do your own fucking maths. That's 375 cases over 35 years in a system processing roughly 20 million criminal cases annually. Even if we're generous and assume there are 10x more wrongful convictions that haven't been discovered, we're still talking about a fraction of a percent.
Show me data demonstrating that false guilty pleas represent anything more than edge cases, or accept that the system, whilst imperfect, generally functions.
The burden is squarely on those claiming otherwise.
> No, I don't have burden of proof for defending the status quo. That's not how this works.
Are you trying to win a formal debate or have a productive discussion?
Status quo is a starting point but still needs evidence.
> The legal system processes millions of cases annually. The claim being made here is that it's unjust more often than just... that's an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
Define "unjust".
If someone says it's unfairly biased most of the time, I don't think that's an extraordinary claim.
If someone says it's getting the wrong answer most of the time, yeah that's extraordinary claim, but nobody made that claim.
I'm having a productive discussion by not letting vague claims slide.
"Unfairly biased most of the time" and "unjust more often than just" are the same claim when discussing legal outcomes. If the system is systematically biased, it produces unjust outcomes. Don't play word games.
And yes, people absolutely have made that claim. The assertion that 98% plea bargain rates represent coercion rather than efficient processing is precisely claiming the system gets it wrong most of the time. The hypothetical about innocent breadwinners forced to plead guilty isn't describing an edge case, it's being presented as how plea bargains function.
If you want to argue the system has some biases that need addressing, fine. That's not what's being argued here. The argument is that plea bargains are inherently coercive and that maintaining innocence should exempt you from parole requirements. That's claiming the system is fundamentally broken, not merely imperfect.
Pick one: is the system broken or just imperfect? Because I'm arguing it's the latter and you lot keep trying to prove the former whilst pretending you're not.
> "Unfairly biased most of the time" and "unjust more often than just" are the same claim when discussing legal outcomes. If the system is systematically biased, it produces unjust outcomes. Don't play word games.
Then that's not an extraordinary claim.
I'm doing my best to avoid word games here.
If someone is claiming that the system is biased always, but not claiming that most outcomes are wrong, that is a reasonable claim.
Calling plea bargains inherently coercive is a reasonable claim. Yes they're broken in some ways.
> The assertion that 98% plea bargain rates represent coercion rather than efficient processing is precisely claiming the system gets it wrong most of the time.
No no no no no no no no. That's not what those words mean.
> Pick one: is the system broken or just imperfect?
Some imperfection will always be there.
But there are important imperfections that could be reasonably fixed, therefore I would say the system is broken. By my definition of broken; yours might be different.
I don't know what "fundamentally broken" means exactly so I won't comment on that term.
Fair enough, let me step back because I'm getting angry.
You're right that "biased in process" and "wrong outcomes" aren't the same thing. A system can have unfair disparities (wealth based, racial, whatever) without necessarily convicting innocent people at scale. That's a reasonable distinction.
But that's not what sparked this thread. Go back to the top: the original claim was "when is the law just in its application?" implying never or nearly never. My position is that it's just more often than not. That's the disagreement.
If you're saying the system has procedural problems that create unfair pressure but generally reaches correct guilty/not guilty determinations, then we probably don't disagree much. That's a claim about needing reforms, not about fundamental systemic failure.
The issue is when people use "98% plea bargains" or "inherently coercive" to argue the system is fundamentally broken. If that's not what you're arguing, then we're likely closer to agreement than it seemed.
> But that's not what sparked this thread. Go back to the top: the original claim was "when is the law just in its application?" implying never or nearly never. My position is that it's just more often than not. That's the disagreement.
> If you're saying the system has procedural problems that create unfair pressure but generally reaches correct guilty/not guilty determinations, then we probably don't disagree much. That's a claim about needing reforms, not about fundamental systemic failure.
An unjust system can still get the right answer most of the time.
And I think it's very likely our system applies so much pressure to take a plea bargain that it is unjust. That it is making mistakes at scale that we could avoid with reasonable effort.
I would say it's fixably broken, but it probably is broken.
And I don't think anyone on this comment page was arguing that a majority of convictions are innocent people.
Dylan, you're a masterclass in saying nothing whilst appearing to argue.
You invented that "7%" stuff in a sibling thread from thin air. You claimed nobody was arguing about innocent convictions whilst spending a dozen comments defending why plea coercion is a massive problem. You say the system gets the right answer most of the time but insist it's still unjust. You won't define "broken" but you're certain the system is it.
Every time I pin you down, you redefine terms. "Unjust" doesn't mean wrong outcomes, it means procedural pressure. "Broken" doesn't mean failing, it means needs improvement. "Coercive" doesn't mean producing false confessions, it just means... pressure exists, somehow.
This is a thread about MLK describing actual injustice: arresting peaceful protesters under correctly applied laws. You've watered "unjust" down to "I don't like some aspects of plea bargaining" and expect that to carry the same moral weight.
Here's what you won't say directly but keep implying: that plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. Because if they don't, then your entire argument collapses to "the system works but could be nicer," which isn't a disagreement worth having.
My position: the law is applied justly more often than unjustly. You either disagree with that or you don't. No more semantic gymnastics. Which is it?
Yes. I said I did. Because when I openly talk about a hypothetical number, people have to focus on whether my logic is correct or incorrect. Because that part of the post was about what implies what.
> You claimed nobody was arguing about innocent convictions
No. I said nobody argued MOST convictions were innocent.
Because you keep talking about MOST convictions to make your arguments.
> "Unjust" doesn't mean wrong outcomes
Doesn't mean a specific number of wrong outcomes.
This is the key miscommunication that has caused the entire argument.
A system can be unjust in 100% of cases, but only give the wrong answer in a smaller percent of cases.
> "Coercive" doesn't mean producing false confessions, it just means... pressure exists, somehow.
coerce: To use force, threat, fraud, or intimidation in an attempt to compel one to act against their will.
Edit: To make a clearer statement, whether it's coercion is about whether there is an unreasonable amount of pressure being applied. This has no connection to whether the confession is true or false.
> Here's what you won't say directly but keep implying: that plea bargains routinely produce false confessions.
Yes.
> My position: the law is applied justly more often than unjustly. You either disagree with that or you don't. No more semantic gymnastics. Which. is. it?
Ugh, this is annoying when we're disagreeing about what "just" means.
The way you're using it, the law is just more often than not.
But "more often" is an absolute garbage threshold. We need way way way better than that.
You're arguing that a system can apply the law unjustly even when it reaches correct outcomes. I think that's only meaningful if the "unjust application" materially affects people's lives in ways that matter beyond process.
So: plea bargains. You say they apply unreasonable pressure. But what makes the pressure unreasonable? A prosecutor offering a reduced sentence for pleading guilty isn't force, threat, fraud, or intimidation. It's a straightforward trade: save the court's time and resources, get a lighter sentence. That's pressure, but it's not inherently unreasonable.
You could argue it becomes unreasonable when the alternative is so severe that even innocent people feel compelled to plead. But that's an empirical claim. How often does that happen? You've now said you think plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. That's testable. Where's the evidence?
On thresholds: you're right that "more often than not" sounds low for a justice system. But the question is compared to what? Every alternative has error rates. Jury trials have wrongful convictions. Bench trials have wrongful convictions. The question isn't whether the system is perfect, it's whether it's better than the realistic alternatives and whether the error rate is acceptable.
What error rate would you accept? Because without that, "we need way way way better" is just saying "it should be perfect," which isn't achievable.
The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. That's not a claim about error rates being too high, it's a claim that injustice is the norm. Do you actually believe that, or are you arguing something more limited about plea bargaining specifically?
> So: plea bargains. You say they apply unreasonable pressure. But what makes the pressure unreasonable? A prosecutor offering a reduced sentence for pleading guilty isn't force, threat, fraud, or intimidation. It's a straightforward trade: save the court's time and resources, get a lighter sentence. That's pressure, but it's not inherently unreasonable.
The biggest issue these days seems to be that people can't afford a proper trial. So instead of a relatively fair exchange of simplifying out the risk of trial for a certain outcome, reducing hassle for everyone, there's a five figure monetary weight tipping the balance. The prosecutor isn't causing this but the design of the system is.
> How often does that happen? You've now said you think plea bargains routinely produce false confessions. That's testable. Where's the evidence?
I don't know where the evidence is. Remember my first comment was saying you should bring in evidence for your strong claims. I don't have strong claims right now, I have worries.
> What error rate would you accept? Because without that, "we need way way way better" is just saying "it should be perfect," which isn't achievable.
We need a lot more information before I can say what an acceptable error rate.
But there's some obvious factors pushing us away from that, so we're very likely not where we should be.
> The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. That's not a claim about error rates being too high, it's a claim that injustice is the norm. Do you actually believe that, or are you arguing something more limited about plea bargaining specifically?
If the vast majority of people feel unsafe going to trial, then the law is not being applied in a just way. And I think that is a very common feeling. The amount it pushes error rates is smaller, because a lot of those people are guilty. But often they're not guilty of the full accusation, and sometimes they're not guilty of anything.
So I think a lot of people are going through an unfair process, and some of them are getting incorrect sentences.
I think a general sentiment that the law is unjust, or that people are not getting due process, is a reasonable opinion to have about that process.
If you have a specific comment you want to refer to by "the law is rarely applied justly", I can look at that specific one, because I'm not sure who you are referring to. verisimi's crack was a pretty vague implication, and jakelazaroff was arguing that people don't get proper due process. Neither of those statements is making an extreme claim about error rates.
You're right that cost is a real barrier, and it's a legitimate concern. If people can't afford proper representation, then the "choice" to take a plea isn't fully voluntary. That's a structural problem worth addressing.
Where we differ is on scale and characterisation. You say "the vast majority of people feel unsafe going to trial." That's a strong empirical claim that needs evidence. Feeling unsafe and actually being coerced are different things, and both matter, but they're not the same.
The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. You've now moderated that to "the process is unfair for people who can't afford defence, and this produces some incorrect sentences." That's a much more limited claim, and one I'd largely agree with. Structural inequality in access to justice is a real problem.
But that's not the same as "the system is fundamentally unjust" or "plea bargains routinely coerce false confessions." Those are the claims that sparked this entire thread, and you've now acknowledged you don't have evidence for them.
So: agreed that cost barriers create real injustice. Disagreed that this means the system is unjust more often than just, which was the original claim.
I put an "if" on vast majority. I put confidence on "very common".
> The original claim upthread was that the law is rarely applied justly. You've now moderated that
> Disagreed that this means the system is unjust more often than just, which was the original claim.
Well again, if you tell me which specific comment you mean then I'll address that specific comment.
> But that's not the same as "the system is fundamentally unjust" or "plea bargains routinely coerce false confessions." Those are the claims that sparked this entire thread, and you've now acknowledged you don't have evidence for them.
You are the only person that has used the word 'fundamentally'. And yes the plea bargain thing needs evidence but should not be rejected for lack of citations.
You demanded I provide numbers for "vast majority" and "edge cases" in your first reply. I provided data: 375 exonerations over 35 years in a system processing 20 million cases annually. You then spent two dozen comments redefining terms and refusing to commit to any position.
Now you claim your speculation "should not be rejected for lack of citations" whilst having opened by demanding exactly that from me. That's not intellectual honesty, that's having it both ways.
On "fundamentally": you've argued the system is unjust in 100% of cases, that plea bargains are inherently coercive, and that false confessions happen routinely. Whether you used that specific word is irrelevant. Those are claims of fundamental dysfunction.
You ask which comment I mean. Here's the thread: verisimi asked "when is the law just in its application?" implying rarely or never. I said more often than not. You've argued with that for two dozen comments whilst refusing to state your own position. When pressed, you admitted you "don't have strong claims, just worries." That's fine, but it's not a basis for a dozen-comment argument.
The pattern here is clear: you make strong implications without committing to them, demand evidence from others whilst providing none yourself, redefine terms when pinned down, and retreat to semantic quibbles when substantive points fail. That's not productive discussion.
I engaged seriously when you made your cost barrier point. That was substantive. But you've chosen to return to arguing about whether you said "if" and who used which word.
I'm done. You've had multiple opportunities to state a clear position. You haven't. Readers can judge for themselves whether that's because you don't have one or because you're unwilling to defend it.
The innocence project data only applies to a very specific kind of case with a very long sentence. It's a start but it's not much.
And I have never redefined a term. Don't confuse disagreement with dishonesty.
I don't know why you're so offended at me using "if" occasionally. You keep trying to force me to use specific numbers even after I say I don't have specific numbers. That's not good faith on your part.
> demand evidence from others whilst providing none yourself
Dude. I made one demand for evidence. At the very start. In a comment where I made no claims.
I have made no demands for evidence since then, just one reminder that's where we started when you bugged me about evidence.
Even if that would make my later comments hypocritical, my original comment wasn't.
I need evidence and so do you.
> Now you claim your speculation "should not be rejected for lack of citations" whilst having opened by demanding exactly that from me. That's not intellectual honesty, that's having it both ways.
What do you think is dishonest?
I never rejected your argument for lack of evidence.
I don't want either argument rejected until we get more evidence.
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And yeah I'm pretty done too. Your comments are full of false narratives about what I'm saying.
Also I stated a very clear position at the start, then you threw a big pile of half-related things at me. It's not my fault you think I don't have a "clear position", because every time I try to focus and state one, you start talking about something else.
>In the eyes of the law, if you have been found guilty "you are guilty".
Yes but this is just another way to describe the problem, invoking it as a justification becomes tautological.
The patent office has a similar issue where they tend to consider prior work to be just what they see in other patents so the first person to patent is declared to be the first person to express the idea. To turn that view from the default position takes a lot of resources.
Laws should be unambiguous, but they shouldn't achieve this simply by defining the resolution of the ambiguity to be different from reality.
You've misunderstood the point I was making. I'm not claiming legal findings are objectively true in some metaphysical sense, I'm saying that for a legal system to function, there must be finality to proceedings.
The alternative is what, exactly? Perpetual relitigation? Every convicted person maintains their innocence indefinitely and the system just... accepts that as equally valid to the jury's verdict?
We have mechanisms for when the system gets it wrong: appeals, post-conviction relief, habeas corpus. These exist precisely because we recognise legal findings aren't infallible. But the burden is on the convicted to demonstrate error... and rightly so, because the alternative is paralysis.
Your patent office analogy inadvertently supports my point: yes, there are edge cases where prior art is missed. But the solution isn't to abolish patent finality, it's to have robust review mechanisms, which we do.
The claim upthread is that the system is unjust more often than just. That's a far stronger claim than "the system sometimes gets it wrong."
If you go to trial you are saying you are not guilty of the offence.
If you are not guilty the ideally you are acquitted.
if you are guilty, you’re hoping to get away with it.
I struggle to see how hoping to get away with it, is showing remorse. If anything I certainly think it says that it shows little or no remorse, since you believe that other people should receive no justice for crimes that you committed against them.
I'm not saying it doesn't logically follow, I'm saying it shouldn't legally follow. Exercising your legal rights should never have negative legal consequences.
Consider pleading the fifth. You can't be compelled to incriminate yourself. That doesn't just mean they can't coerce a confession out of you. It also means that the law does not infer guilt from a refusal to testify, even though logically a person who refuses to testify is more likely to be guilty than one who testifies freely in their own defense. If you couldn't be compelled to testify, but at the same time your refusal could be considered evidence of guilt, then you don't really have the right not to testify.
Same sort of thing here. If exercising your right to a trial increases your penalty then in what sense do you actually have that right? To put it in starker terms, imagine if people who previously spoke critically of the President were given a harsher penalty than those who spoke positively. That's a clear free speech violation. If exercising your free speech rights can't increase your penalty, exercising your right to a trial shouldn't either.
I understand the constitutional point you're making, but I think we're conflating two things: exercising your right to trial, and showing remorse for what you did.
The right to trial isn't being penalised. You get a fair trial either way. What's being rewarded is accepting responsibility and saving the court's time. That's not the same as punishing you for exercising a right.
I'll grant that when the sentencing gap is extreme, the distinction becomes academic. If you're facing 20 years at trial versus 2 for pleading, then functionally you're being coerced regardless of the theoretical justification.
But in principle, rewarding people who show remorse is part of justice. Someone who accepts what they did and shows contrition is different from someone who forces the state to prove its case. Both have the right to trial, but treating them differently at sentencing isn't inherently unjust.
The question is whether the gap has become so large that it's effectively coercive. That's an empirical question about how plea bargains operate in practice, not a constitutional one about whether they can exist at all, which, if I understood it right, is your position.
I'd argue that any gap is coercive, just as I'd object to giving criminals even one minute of additional prison time for being critical of the President.
Someone who forces the state to prove its case is merely exercising their legal right to do so. Giving them a harsher sentence for this is effectively punishing them for exercising their legal rights. You can word this as rewarding people who don't force the state to prove its case i.e. people who don't exercise that particular legal right, but it's the same thing.
> If you plead guilty to an offence you shouldn't serve the same amount of time as someone who shows no remorse.
Showing remorse is good, yes, but holding that over someone's head as a way to force them to plead guilty is disgusting.
Also pleading guilty does not imply showing remorse.
If we can't disentangle plea and remorse, then factoring remorse into the sentence does more harm than good. It would be better to ignore it entirely and pretend everyone said they're deeply sorry.
The point is we don't really know who is innocent or not, because the incentives are so fucked. If you're poor and need to get on with your life, you take the guilty plee almost every time. Trial takes fucking forever, and it's very expensive.
What this means is the you can be charged with almost anything, and the odds are very high you will plea guilty, regardless of your innocence. There's basically no incentive for the police or prosecutors to show any restraint, they have a "get out of jail free" card in the form of plea bargains.
Let me make up a number. 7%. I think that number of plea bargains would be a huge problem if in 7% of cases the person is in fact innocent. Would you disagree?
And even generally assuming guilt, a number that high gets worrying. Maybe we're only prosecuting the strongest of strong cases or something, but some of the other factors that could be reducing the rate of trials are really bad for justice.
> most have rose tinted glasses of better economic times from the past, and want to recreate the past instead of learning from it and using it to make the future better for future residents and businesses
So the voters are wrong? You know what's "better" for them, right? Whether they want it or not, right?
> we need to figure out how to get young people engaged locally
Because they are more in line with what you think?
PS
I'm being downvoted - but what is the point of local administrators, except to follow the voters demands? Sure, if you are a local politician, make your case, but local administrators ought to be doing whatever-it-is that people voted for. That's the whole point of voting, as I understand it.
The point is NOT to make people keep voting until they get it right, according to the administratots. That's the wrong way around! The administrators should be enacting whatever the voters want.
I don't believe in a 'loneliness epidemic'. Where is it? What do these words mean to individuals?
I do think there is a 'false expectation' ie delusion. Ie, after years of forced hyper-socialisation (school, work) and cultural ideas of friendship (Friends), architecture that stacks and packs people, the expectation that people hold of themselves and their relationships bears little relation to their natural, untrained selves. I could even argue that the loneliness expectation is the reverse - there is no meaningful quiet space for individuals. The very idea of being introspective is a problem to be addressed.
What I think we have is 'broken socialisation'. Nothing about human socialisation is natural.
They have been talking about climate change for years (ozone layer - get rid of your old fridge). And the media really does highlight weather events in other countries. I think the idea is one corporations can get behind - change, like war, is good for business.
I think chances are vastly better now with EVs, you probably could reuse the crowdfunded opensource washing machine. Combustion engines are simply way, way too complex. Although I presume the real showstopper is control electronics and regulatory approval for ICEs and EVs alike.
It's as if this can be known in advance. And that the most acceptable reason/justification is provided (terrorists, child abuse prevention) knowing the likely result at the end of the cascade (security cameras, restrictions, de-anonymised internet).
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