[xmprt]

One of the saddest things about modern capitalism is that people stealing from businesses is criminalized and heavily punished but businesses stealing from people (eg. wage theft, illegal contracts, medicare/PPP fraud, and outright stealing like this case) is treated as a civil violation and almost impossible to prosecute.

The only cases of white collar crime I've seen get prosecuted is securities fraud and that's rich people stealing from other rich people.

[A_D_E_P_T]

Federal and most state civil courts are pay-to-win, too. They have absolutely nothing to do with justice. The only time "the little guy" wins anything is when the lawyers stand to make a windfall in contingency fees.

(...See, e.g., authors vs. Anthropic. The most prolific author might make somewhere in the low six figures, the average author is gonna make ~$10k, and the lawyers representing the class asked for $300M!)

[frmersdog]

The legal system is captured by legal professionals. The average American is bound by a system that they can't engage directly with. The middlemen who most people must hire to navigate through it generally will not help unless there's a substantial payday in it for them. And in civil matters, defendants have no right to representation.

(Also, the judge is colleagues with counsel, opposing or otherwise; none of them think much of you, which a trip to /r/LawyerTalk will confirm.)

All of this is a choice. Essentially the same choice that we have to have medical insurers instead of a single-payer system; a broken housing market controlled by large corporate interests, instead of one where prices are moderated by a stock of residences built by the government and sold at-cost or lower, as in Singapore or pre-Thatcher Great Britain; broken and spread-thin policing instead of the kind of sophisticated social support system that you would expect the richest country on the planet to be able to afford (and avoids sending the same armed ex-jock to domestic disturbances, mental health crises, car accidents, public school security, etc.). My suspicion is that the fight against change in any of these cases is so fierce because breaking one cartel threatens the others.

[Ajedi32]

You correctly identify the problem as an over-complicated legal bureaucracy in your first paragraph, and propose more government as the solution in your third?

The solution here should be to simplify the legal system so legal adjudication is more accessible to non-lawyers, not add more layers of government bureaucracy on top of the existing ones.

[frmersdog]

?

The bureaucracy is not the body of law or the judiciary, which were the only government-related targets of my criticism. I agree that the legal system needs to be more accessible to non-lawyers. At the heart of that grievance is the professionalization (read: privatization) of the legal field, which turned a tool for finding justice, despite disputes into a career pursued for prestige and wealth. The problem is that the law and the people who adjudicate it have been captured by private enterprise. The bureaucracy is, like... the court clerks. Who I don't have a problem with, they're quite helpful.

In fact, they'd be integral to this "simplification of the legal system", since what that's essentially asking for is not to make adjudication more accessible, but to move disputes out of adjudication into a procedural venue (where the rules are simple, everyone knows them, and you either follow them and win, or don't and get the hammer).

Across all of the examples - legal recourse, healthcare, housing - what you're looking at is the end of the ambiguity of paradigms driven by private companies with opaque policies and conflicts of interest, and the arrival of an institutional monolith which can be changed by voting in elections. They don't even have to have a monopoly, they just have to be there as an option. I suppose policing is the exception, and while the vision there is unbundling instead of bundling, you're still looking at wresting control for social services out of the hands of the professionals who have captured it.

[A_D_E_P_T]

If you ask me, the solution to this matter in particular should be: (1) That all sides to civil litigation use court-appointed attorneys who are assigned at random and are sworn to not waste the court's time with delaying tactics, (2) That all persons should be granted the right to representation in civil court, an (3) That default judgments should not exist in the absence of the above; all matters should be adjudicated fairly.

[Ajedi32]

In my opinion that would do little to solve the core problem, which is that adjuration is extremely expensive. It would just pass that high cost on to taxpayers and probably simultaneously 10x the demand because you just made it "free".

[bananamogul]

"The only cases of white collar crime I've seen get prosecuted is securities fraud and that's rich people stealing from other rich people."

There are thousands of YouTube videos of people being arrested or being in court on charges of embezzling from their employers, committing fraud, presenting bogus checks at banks, etc.

Hacking is white collar crime. So is mortgage fraud. So is tax evasion and bribery. There are tons of prosecutions of these crimes every year.

[N_Lens]

All of your examples show the same pattern - the smaller party (in terms of capital) stealing from the larger party.

The law protects capital and binds humans.

[aranelsurion]

All your examples are also in the category of "individual vs. organization" though.

[hedora]

It's extremely rare for a rich / famous person to get prosecuted for securities fraud.

For instance, Martha Stewart (the only example that comes to mind) was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice, not for any actual crime that was being investigated.

It's not like she was the mastermind of the 2008 securities fraud meltdown, but she was the only person to go to jail for it.

[charcircuit]

There is an active criminal investigation into this from the Keizer police. Your implication that this is only being treated as a civil matter is false.

[throwaway85825]

Did the criminal investigation start before or after the social media campaign. I suspect after.

[charcircuit]

It happened before part 1 from Reckless Ben was released. So it was before this latest wave of attention.

[throwaway85825]

The public events depicted in part 1 also happened before the publishing date. Particularly the banner stunt that got local media attention is what I suspect prompted the criminal investigation.

[HDThoreaun]

My understanding is that Ben was making a fuss and got local media to report on the story before he released any videos.

[bfkwlfkjf]

> The only cases of white collar crime I've seen get prosecuted is securities fraud and that's rich people stealing from other rich people.

I was trying to popularize the phrase "the only thing which is illegal in America is defrauding investors" but I have no social media presence. Feel free to take it.

Regardless I agree with you on capitalism, but my take on securities fraud is less cynical. In late stage capitalism it makes _perfect sense_ that the only crime is to steal from investors - that's capitalism protecting itself.

[fragmede]

> I have no social media presence.

You know HN is just social media for nerds, right?

[bfkwlfkjf]

No, it's not. It's just social. No media. I mean I realize there's links, don't I don't follow them, so to me it's just social without the media.

Besides, the actual point which is that I have no profile, still stands.

[circuit10]

I interpret the “media” part as in “medium”, meaning it’s a medium/method over which you can be social, not “media” as in “multimedia”

[fragmede]

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=bfkwlfkjf is plenty to build a profile of you on.

[layer8]

Text is a medium.