[90s_dev]

Generally none, the DA must choose to pursue perjury charges, which basically never happens. In reality, nearly everyone commits perjury. Thomas More would not approve. Both versions (1966 and 1988) of A Man For All Seasons are highly worth watching several times and practically memorizing. "Would you benefit England by populating her with liars?" [edit] in retrospect, there is one inescapable consequence of lying under oath: your word now means nothing to honest people.

[ryandrake]

I bet if a poor person struggling to hold down three jobs to survive were found to be lying under oath, the DA would throw the book at them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> if a poor person struggling to hold down three jobs to survive were found to be lying under oath, the DA would throw the book at them

Have you been to a traffic court?

[FireBeyond]

Yeah. I was pulled over and told I had an "invalid" license. "My license isn't suspended!" "No, it's not, it's just invalid." Not expired. Not counterfeit. Just invalid. "What does that mean?" "You'll have ask the DOL. And here's a ticket. And you can't drive from here."

Go home, go to the DOL's website. Green text, "VALID". Weird. "Pay any monies owing on your license." Let's try that. "There are no monies owed."

Huh.

Print these out, take them to the DOL. It was a technicality where a process had suspended my license over a fine, but then unsuspended it the same day because they'd received a check.

She waives the $25 fee that should have been attached. And stamps the screenshots of this I'd taken, and prints out the status changes on my account.

Take it to court to challenge the ticket. Prosecutor doesn't want to dismiss. "They'd have generated and sent you a letter when they did that, so you had to have known."

Eventually dismissed, but only after three or four back-and-forths.

[JumpCrisscross]

That’s hilarious. But also irrelevant. The point is people in traffic court are constantly lying. Like, zero-effort four-IQ lies.

[Mountain_Skies]

Federal prosecutors have insanely high "winning" percentages but the closer you get to the local level, the more that drops. I suspect that local prosecutors, in addition to often having a poor understanding of the law, often try to up their win percentage by pushing cases like yours because they know most people will find it easier to just pay whatever token amount it takes to make it go away.

[Jcampuzano2]

To be honest companies practically incentivize having no moral compass and lying to succeed. Every major company's executives incorporate lying judiciously to their employees and their users alike and encourage their reports to lie to theirs and so on. Adhering to complete honesty is a one way ticket to HR.

Sit on any all-hands call for a major company and it is practically guaranteed large chunks of the presentation will be executive gaslighting of its own employees with info that is objectively false or a misrepresentation. You will also never get a real answer to actual hard questions (especially if it is on the topic of something that may negatively affect workers) which is essentially lying by omission.

It doesn't help that we have now proven that you can lie all the way to the seat of being president of the united states.

That said - whether we like it or not, we are now a culture built on lying.

[mil22]

This matches my own personal experience of corporate America, and is one of the primary reasons I left.

And it’s not just the lying that’s the problem - it’s the lack of critical thinking, the gullibility, the willingness to suspend disbelief and give benefit of the doubt and credit where it’s not due, amongst those being lied to, be they employees, or voters.

The way out is to see through it, to question it, and to stop acquiescing to it. If we all do that, the liars will never ascend to the positions of power we have allowed them to have over us today.

[90s_dev]

> we are now a culture built on lying.

Are now? I mentioned Thomas More to show that this exact same thing happened 500 years ago. The whole point of the movie A Man For All Seasons is to show that this is always how it has been throughout human history, and that only a few people stand out as putting the truth higher than their own interests, such as Thomas More and Joan of Arc, which deeply impress even non-religious people like Robert Bolt and Mark Twain.

[Jcampuzano2]

Maybe 'are now' was the wrong choice of words because this is correct. It has always been this way.

Truth for thee but not for me are the rich and powerful's greatest desire.

[saagarjha]

Sure, but doing it in a court of law is illegal.

[Jcampuzano2]

Illegal but practically never actually consequential.

[usefulcat]

I've not seen the one from 1988; I'll have to check that out. I've long enjoyed the one from '66.

I also heartily recommend both seasons of Wolf Hall. About Cromwell rather than More, but still fascinating.

[90s_dev]

The 1988 one stars Charlton Heston as Thomas More and was a made for TV movie based on the original 1965 play by Robert Bolt. Very, very good. Different from the 1966 movie. But both good in different ways. Neither is better.

[dfedbeef]

Oh no, my word means nothing to honest people.

Boards private jet to Monaco

[jkestner]

Yet these superrich people crave respect so much that they endlessly poast on social networks, or buy a social network.

[poincaredisk]

>these superrich people crave respect so much

Don't we all? This is one of the very basic human needs. Since they don't need to worry about food and shelter, they focus on social status and entertainment.

[dfedbeef]

I think you're supposed to learn to respect yourself so your self worth isn't based on how other people view you.

[DannyBee]

This is mostly true - but it will be used against you in future civil proceedings as well.

IE this person is now useless as a witness pretty much forever.

[labster]

There are so few honest Americans that it hardly matters to serve such a small demographic.