Sorry, that's pretty culturally-ignorant thinking right there.

Japanese people are not "meek" or "inhibited" any more so than Americans are. There are different cultural rules about self-expression but there are most certainly loud, aggressive, and flamboyant people here. They just express themselves in different ways than your typically loud, aggressive, and flamboyant American would.

You might think socioeconomic factors were a reason for the lack of crime, but you'd be wrong there too. Japan has a higher poverty rate and lower median income than the U.S.

The low crime rates here can much better be attributed to cultural factors. Every Japanese person is raised with the belief that it is shameful cause problems to the people around them, whether that be family, schoolmates, or co-workers. Getting arrested is about the most shameful thing you could do here. Just being suspected of a crime will likely get you fired from your job, before you are even tried.

And let's not forget the role the justice system here plays. If you get arrested you are almost 100% going to get convicted because the odds are massively stacked against you in the court system. You are basically guilty until proven innocent. Read this for more info about it.

And people here know this. They also know that Japanese prison is hellish. You won't be raped or assaulted there like in the U.S. but you will know exactly what is like to have all of your freedom stripped completely away.

You add to all of this the low unemployment rate of Japan, the high regulation of all weapons (including knives), a robust social system for helping the unemployed (although unfortunately lately a lot of people seem to be falling through the cracks), a nationalized health insurance plan (I pay a $1 co-pay to take my daughter to the doctor and all prescribed medicines are free), a strong social stigma against drug use, and the ability as an island nation to strictly police the borders to prevent the influx of illegal goods (i.e. drugs/guns) and you get the low crime rates in Japan.

tl;dr

There is little incentive to commit crime in Japan because the both social and legal repercussions are extremely severe, and there is little need to resort to crime to survive (plentiful jobs and robust social security). Likewise the opportunity to commit crime is lessened because of the strict regulation of weapons, drugs, and borders.

EDIT: I will say that on more than one occasion I've thought that a career criminal in the U.S. who suddenly found himself in Japan would feel like a kid in a candy store. Because of the lack of crime, people here don't take precautions against it--some people leave doors and windows unlocked when leaving the house, you'll see laptops or iPads left in cars in plain view, and people carry ridiculous amounts of cash on them (I'm talking like on the order of $1000 or more in some cases). On the one hand it can be reassuring but on the other hand I seriously worry about these people when they travel overseas.

Ill post SNLs yt channels video if i have to (last resort) although its usually blocked in other countries.

@Jinx -- Whether in "meatspace" or on the internet, I think the difference is engaging with others vs being in the echo chamber.

A lot of "engaging" with others is going to be negative. Picket line meets picket line has about as much chance of being productive as reading the comments on a controversial YouTube video.

But even if the majority of the "engagement" is that, there are going to be some patient people who connect in a positive enough way to actually enlighten and persuade. Like the former-WBC lady's new husband.

And while that positive engagement seems to have the best shot at redeeming those that can be redeemed, it also might be the best way to show the true colors of those beyond redemption. The skinhead leader guy got maced by counter-protesters twice. That gives him a semi-legitimate provocation to respond in kind or with escalating violence (bloody knuckles, broken bones, whatever). But if he isn't provided with any such provocation and still resorts to violence, people can truly see his "idealogy" for what it is.

Hence Rosa Parks responding to the bus driver in Montgomery:
Driver - "If you don't stand up, I'm going to have to call the police and have you arrested."
Parks - "You may do that."


If I was there in Charlottesville in the heat of the moment, face to face with that kind of hate and bigotry, I'd have been one of the people chanting "fuck off nazis". I'd have cheered when somebody on "my side" maced chief-skinhead in the face, if I hadn't done it myself. ...But I recognize that we could sure use more people that react like Rosa Parks did, and less like I would have.

The amazing and exotic birds is one of the fondest memories from my visit to OZ in 2001. We were at the Ballina Beach Resort for the Byron Bay Bluesfest and the buggers would just fly onto your shoulder. Loved it! [Plus I'm a "day" person down under]

I tend to view the stigmatisation of a word to this degree as counter-productive since it shifts the focus away from the real problem - i.e. chronic inequality of income between black and white communities through poor public services that feeds a lack of opportunity for income mobility. Time spent discussing the degree to which users of the word should be shunned, whether it's said by a comedian, other black people, actual racists, is time not being spent discussing those material issues.

The base case of racism, i.e. the perpetuation of the view that black people are somehow genetically inferior or deserve to be subjugated in rights still certainly exists. What I suspect is more prevalent nowadays is discrimination founded in economic inequalities - the view that because black people are more likely to be poor, making the reflexive assumption they are more likely to resort to crime, and therefore are more dangerous and should be implicitly subject to harsher penalties. Which comes back to my main point, the best way to fix that is to actually narrow those economic inequalities.

We really do see an entirely different world.

What I see originally happening here is a dispute/conflict between two citizens. The driver and the cyclist. There was a collision that damaged the car and maybe the cyclist. The cyclist is a minor, and the only account we get on video is the driver fairly insistent they were the ones that got hit when the cyclist ran a traffic sign. Blame on that doesn't matter to the video though because the police aren't meant to address blame and never attempt to.

Do we agree on the above preamble view of what happened at least? I think we do, so I'll pick up with that assumed.

The cyclist does not want to cooperate with the required exchange of information for insurance and liability purposes. So presumably the driver got the police get involved. This is exactly what I think we all should want. Rather than expecting the parties involved resort to their own use of force, we want to defer that to trained police officers. This is preferable for either party to simply being victimised with no recourse for injury to the cyclist if the driver's at fault or damages to the car if the cyclist is.

I again would hope we are still on the same page at this point, lets call it point B?

If I understand right, we now diverge in that I believe when office says come here to the cyclist, the cyclist is in the wrong for instead dodging around the officer and trying to take off on their bike. When the officer immediately stops them from that physically and tells them they are being detained, the cyclist is again wrong for actively resisting for the entire remainder of the video.

You seem to think the officers would be angry to see their child in the video, and we agree on that. We disagree on whom they would be angry with though. I'm pretty sure the officers would angry with their kid for consistently resisting the officers and would likely be telling their kid they are lucky the officers were as gentle as they were because they absolutely didn't need to be.

I don't know who to credit the analogy to, but this feels to me like an instance of the police being the wolf hounds protecting the us sheeple. Their use of violence and force looks scary to us and we just wish those mean, nasty and violent wolfhounds would be replaced with more mild mannered sheep. It's not until an actual wolf comes along that all of sudden we wonder were those hounds are because we went to get as close under their shadows as we can.

The reason it comes to mind is because having 3-4 officers spending hours begging, pleading and otherwise trying to non-violently persuade a cursing, kicking, resistant teenager to take accept pretty basic instructions is not what I want. I get the impression you would prefer that, but I do not. I want the officers sitting at nearby coffee shop bored and eating donuts instead. When they come to deal with this incident, I want them back to those donuts as quickly as possible. The reason being, when a wolf somewhere starts up a domestic dispute, or starts beating up someone in the street, or breaking into somebodies home I want the police unhindered and ready to their 'real' jobs.

Richard Pleper of HBO once said in an article for Vanity Fair "Our model is building addicts". Which I always thought was a questionable goal since when addicts don't get what they want legitimately they'll resort to stabbing you in the kidneys and taking it anyhow.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/tech/2014/10/richard-plepler-hbo-building-addicts

$50 does seem very cheap for a place by a ski resort. But turning someone away like that in a snowstorm, you have to be pretty heartless.

One time I went to Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu and my wife and I kept saying this line to each other throughout the entire vacation.

Nope nope nope nope.

Fuck that noise.

Even if she was fighting (which she apparently wasn't), the cop is easily twice her size, and (hopefully) a trained police officer. He should be able to restrain her without resorting to this kind of tactic.

Hell, even if he feels the situation is that out of hand that he is unable to restrain her, use pepper spray. At least that won't leave any lasting damage.

I have been in both situations. I have had a 5'0" 75lbs woman come at me with a baseball bat. I was worried with that one, but I took it away from her so I didn't have to resort to what this pussy did.

My problem is not that he plastered her, it's that was his first choice. I mean shit man, she did an "Elaine from Seinfeld" push then smacked him on the shoulder and he decided to drop her? He wanted her down and out. Put her in her place. Macho bullshit.

Right, so you're basically advocating shutting down the federal government to get your way. Sorry, elections have consequences. The GOP lost control of both houses in Obama's first two years. They could have had positive influence on Obamacare, but they decided to claim instead it was a socialist takeover of health care, intended to kill grandma. That's the Republicans' fault for getting their butts handed to them in the election. That wasn't because they backed down.

Obamacare wasn't shoved down your throat. You had a vote like everyone else. Boo hoo, your side lost. Do you see me saying everything the Republicans and GWB did was shoved down my throat, even though I didn't like a lot of it? Nope.

Your sister has Crohn's. I never said she didn't. My wife had diabetes for most of her life and recently went through years of dialysis before having a simultaneously kidney and pancreas transplant, which she's still dealing with the anti-rejection meds.

Your sister's medical condition doesn't make your BS story true about what Obamacare did to her premiums. I laid out EXACTLY how Obamacare would work in her situation, and you introduced nothing that proves what I said wrong. Instead, you thought you'd claim the righteous indignation ground and assumed that my immediate family didn't have very serious medical conditions to deal with as well, and then resorted to name calling.

Just remember, your friendly neighborhood HeroPsycho told you Clinton will crush Trump in the electoral college. You can try and ignore reality all you want, but the inevitable is coming, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

Hmm. I agree that Trump is an incompetent egotistical blowhard, who drums up support by drastically overstating America's problems. America doesn't *need* drastic change.

...BUT, American government, particularly at the national level in Washington really is a complete trainwreck that *does* need drastic change. Both of our disgusting parties hold plenty of blame for that.

I think that the short-term damage that a Trump presidency would cause would be mitigated pretty well by the separation of powers, one of the few elements of our government that does function pretty well. And I feel like it is possible that a long-term benefit could be that Republican voters would get a hard-to-ignore lesson that the "ideals" that are spouted by their party leadership don't work. George W Bush was the best thing to happen for the Democrat party in a long time; Trump could finish the party off and let something better replace it.

Hillary is definitely more competent. In the short term, the country would definitely be better off with her at the helm than Trump. But, I don't see any long-term benefits to electing her.

Republicans would have a prime and familiar scapegoat. The legislative branch ground to a standstill with Obama in office, I think it will/would be worse with Hillary. That might actually be a good thing; it could limit the damage that they can do -- and the consequences of a shitty legislative branch are worse than a shitty president, I think.

And the Democrat party, which had a golden fucking opportunity to lead by example and actually do some exciting GOOD things with government to win voters over, instead did every dirty and questionable thing they could to guarantee that Hillary "I am the establishment" Clinton got their nomination.


Neither side deserves to win, and in fact both sides deserve to lose. I'll be voting 3rd party; not that it will accomplish anything.

Democrats, you could have had my vote if you had selected literally anybody other than Hillary. Hell, I'd probably even have voted for Hillary over Trump if she had beat Bernie fair and square without resorting to all the shady stuff (she probably would have won even without that shit).

Republicans, almost the same goes for you -- I'd pretty happily have voted for anybody other than Trump running against Hillary. Well, maybe not creepy-as-fuck Ted Cruz or some other batshit crazy option like Sarah Palin; but pretty much any of the others.

Too late now though.

There are systems other than democracy which have the kind of cheques and a balances you are referring to.

Just that not all of them place that power indiscriminately in the hands of the demos. e.g. a Meritocratic system expects its voters to earn their votes by demonstrating competence in a given field (those qualified in healthcare can vote to choose administrators of health etc.)

Democracy as we know it is a deeply unsophisticated way of attending to the problems you describe. There are alternatives that may well prove better, were we to actually try them.

It's pretty clear actual unlimited democracy doesn't work as no country in the modern world uses it. So it appears it's only the recourse to peaceful regime change that's important here, not necessarily the means by which it is achieved.

But even then, that blow off valve is usually defined in pretty narrow parameters and the political landscape carefully maintained by societies elites. Were it not, the aforementioned repeal of the death penalty and such would likely have doomed the ruling regime to be replaced by something more representative of the demos's backwards attitudes.

Hell I could even conceive of ways to just apply enough of that same veneer of democratic accountability to Sophocracy, technocracy and Noocracy, without resorting to a full blown meritocracy or oligarchy. One need only define the parameters that limit the demos in a way which demands leadership candidates have requisite qualities/qualifications.

It really could be very similar to what we have now, but with the parameters shifted to define a different sort of viable candidate.

It's already a hybrid of elite and demos, just redefine the elite and let the demos keep the blow off valve within the new parameters.

And then one day in the future perhaps, leaders will not always have to be emotionally flawed humans?