very good doctors that don't have excellent people skills, very good doctors that are jerks because they think they are so good
There's a reason why "bedside manner" has been considered an important skill since Hippocrates. Until we have a Star Trek medical tricorder that can tell us ABSOLUTELY everything that's going on inside a patient's body, then you're going to have to rely on patient reports for much of your diagnostic information.If your people skills are so bad that you can't hear your patients, or you engender so little trust that they don't tell you what you need to hear, then you aren't getting the whole picture, and that by definition makes you a bad doctor.
There's a reason why Gregory House works with four other doctors.
Beyond that, arrogance in a physician is LETHAL. Arrogance makes you secure in your first conclusion. Arrogance makes you resistant to disproving your own hyptheses. Arrogance means you don't consider new information, or information that contradicts your first assumptions. I wouldn't be surprised to find out physician arrogance was a leading cause of malpractice suits.
OK, now I feel bad for you. Look, you're confusing the concepts of mean and range.
Consider the set {10,10,10,10,10,10,10}
The mean (average) is 10. That doesn't mean half the set members are less than ten. It simply means that the range (largest member minus smallest member) is small, or in this case zero.
Remember, Shakespeare preceded Moliere, and no paper is complete without noting the similarities, but crediting Shakespeare with Moliere's work is a tired old trope...
On average, teenagers in America get their drivers license at sixteen. The minimum legal age to get your license in America is sixteen. Therefore, since sixteen is the average, half of them must have received their license before it was legal to do so.
Markets work because pressure eventually comes to bear. Wages, and therefore standards of living, rise because labor becomes scarce. For markets to be work as intended, the rules must be applied fairly. To allow India and China access to American markets, but not America to Indian and Chinese markets, distorts the outcome of the game. It not only keeps Indian workers comparatively poor, but it sucks the blood right out of the American labor market in the proverbial "race to the bottom."
A couple of token managers don't count. India and China do not open their employment markets, nor any of their markets, in the manner in which they argue we should.
As far as I'm concerned, if you can look to the sky and speak with your heart that "All men should be free," then you're an American and we should make you a citizen.
What we have now is institutionalized exploitation, and it's a stain on our national character.
I conclude that you pulled that figure out of your ass.
Most people start college at 17 or 18. Eighteen plus four equals twenty-two, at least it does in my corner of the universe. I know I graduated college at twenty-two. Twenty-two or twenty-three plus seven years lands you in the neighborhood of thirty, again, for most values of thirty.
Does the math work differently when it comes out of your ass? Perhaps you don't realize it's not customary to take seven years to finish an undergrad degree?
As a basic matter of fairness, if Indian and Chinese citizens are going to be free to work in the United States, then US citizens should be free to work in India and China.
The problem is they're not. Some out-of-work disgruntled geek published an article looking into this a while back. The Indian consulate just laughed at him when he inquired about being allowed to work in India, while the Chinese representatives haughtily told him that Chinese jobs were for Chinese citizens.
They can't have it both ways. The Indians and the Chinese cannot argue that their citizens should be allowed to compete world-wide, but that jobs inside their own borders are only open to native citizens.
It's not just faulty logic. It's raging hypocrisy.
No, for the billionth time, we don't mind competing on quality. No, for the billionth time, we're not racist. No, for the billionth time, we don't mind the competition. On the contrary, my heart goes out to the H1-Bs I work with because I know they don't have any good choices.
In the most brutal stark terms, H1-Bs are hired specifically because they don't enjoy the same political and legal protection that native workers do. They get paid less, worked like indentured servants, and disposed of like kleenex. I've actually heard one manager scream at the H1-B team he employed "If you're awake, you're working for me!"
This is why you don't see the IT market flooded with French, Canadian or Australian workers, but rather see the market flooded with people from countries struggling with poverty and political horrors.
These poor people are exploited here precisely because the conditions in their home country are so horrific. My heart goes out to the women H1-Bs I've worked with, because I've seen the haunted look in their eye when they speak of home. I once cornered another H1-B over a hideously unethical stunt he pulled to shift the blame away from his own screwup to another, more junior engineer. He robbed my righteous thunder when he got a desperate look in his eyes and pleaded with me, "Look, if he gets fired he can just get another job. If I get fired, they'd make me go back..."
For the billionth time, if we need this talent, then let's do the right thing by these people and offer them citizenship. If we're not prepared to do the right thing, then we shouldn't be using them as scabs to break the back of American labor.
The temporary H1-B visa was supposed to be good for seven years. The average age at which H1-Bs come to this country is fresh out of college, so 22-23 years old plus seven years is about thirty.
All this says is that the H1-B visa program is working as advertised.
I find it pretty absurd that a company should be "stuck" with the contract rates it offers.
My God, You're Brilliant! I'm such an idiot! Why didn't I see this earlier?! I'm calling the bank right now to tell them that I don't have to be "stuck" with our previous contract. It's old news. Next month, my mortgage payment is going to be what's most beneficial to my bottom line, which after all is the the engine of the American economy! And why stop there? AT&T's gonna get a similar wakeup call from me, and the cable company too! And hey, those lazy bastards at the electric company -- why really, anyone I write a check to!
All of our previous agreements are water under the bridge, and they are going to do their patriotic duty and accept whatever I choose to give them!
Thank you for your astonishing genius. With this new principle at work, I expect my retirement account to be fully funded by next week.
Hi, big strong alpha Silverback male, father of large family, here. Have work gloves, will lift heavy things.
Sorry to put it this way -- cruel to be kind and all that -- but if you're sacrificing family for your career, you're a damn fool. If you're living to work -- and your job doesn't involve healing the sick, feeding the hungry, saving children, etc. -- then you have missed the point.
Your job title will not cry with you in the night. It won't watch the sun with you in the morning. The company car won't care that your parents just died. Your subordinates won't look up to you, and the responsibility you have for them won't grow your soul.
Apart from that, I'm shocked at the callousness of the some of the posters here. Sometimes, it's just a matter of basic humanity. I'm a big strong guy. I don't mind pulling a double-shift if someone's wife just went into labor. I'm not made of spun sugar. Some poor woman has a miscarriage, I don't mind covering for her until she can get her head back together, and yeah, that might take a while. Some single Mom's kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, I don't mind watching her keeping her network in one piece while she runs to the emergency room. I'm not a helpless little girl -- I can carry a little bit more of a load for a good cause.
Listening to some of the thin reedy voices of the Ayn Rand acolytes on this board, I can tell they're just not ready to be husbands and fathers. I pity them for their loneliness, and I know if they don't dig deeper and find their hearts and testosterone, they'll never be ready.
Don't you get it? She's not the problem -- she's your canary. She's the one showing exactly how far you can push it. Don't get mad because she negotiates herself a better deal -- follow her example and get more for yourself.
...and I'll show you a man no one wants to work for. Multiply the offer by a factor of ten and you'll have the absolutely perfect people banging down your door. If you're having trouble finding someone in this economy, then either your offer is ridiculously low or your reputation precedes you.
Gee, Frank told me he can't find anyone to sell him a BMW for $500 with a credit score of 310. Clearly, the government needs to intervene to force those lazy Germans to sell the product of their labor to Frank...
Even when I was so incredibly young and fiercely stupid that I was living in Houston and voting Republican, I still had enough of an ear to smile at the voice behind that poem.
For you poor bastards who came of age during the time of Bush, here's a brother who suffered under the time of Nixon, by way of a Reagan victim.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip, Skip out for beer during commercials, Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox In four parts without commercial interruptions. The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary. The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia. The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run, or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance. NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 or report from 29 districts. The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers in the instant replay. There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process. There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and women will not care if Dick finally gets down with Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people will be in the street looking for a brighter day. The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news and no pictures of hairy armed women liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose. The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb, Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth. The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people. You will not have to worry about a dove in your bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl. The revolution will not go better with Coke. The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath. The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised, will not be televised. The revolution will be no re-run brothers; The revolution will be live.
Actually, it's easy. Spend a childhood of Sundays listening to endless variations on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "It's Friday... but Sunday's Coming" (a classic old Crucifixion/Easter dichotomy) and you could belt out a pretty mean spur-of-the-moment sermon too.
Yeah, I think I took that totally wrong and missed the satire. I'm so used to people in Dallas saying stuff like that and meaning every word of it, I totally missed it.
Sorry, Inda. I'll try to clean the crap outta my ears.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . ..
Amazing. You just asserted that presumption of innocence is a reality, and in the same breath insinuated all people who go to trial are guilty. If Einstein was right, and genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, then your mental acuity is astonishing indeed.
The whole point of plea bargaining is to reduce the number of cases that go to trial. Plea bargaining works because you can't predict the jury's decision with certainty. If you look at the possible outcomes of plea-bargaining, it guarantees innocent men will end up in prison.
Suppose you're innocent. Suppose you're innocent, but unlucky, and the circumstances make you look guilty. Suppose you're an unpopular minority. Suppose you pray to the wrong god. Suppose you're just ugly. Suppose you just look like "that type." Suppose you don't come from around here. Suppose you've never caught a break in your life. Suppose there are any one of a million reasons why twelve random people off the street could drop you in a hole without any good reason and not lose any sleep over it.
Suppose you have children. Suppose you have family who depend on you. Suppose The Authorities come to you and tell you, "Boy, you don't push us on this, and we'll let you out in a couple of years. But if you make us go all the way, we'll make sure you don't ever see the light of day again, and when we put you in jail, we'll make sure Bubba is waiting for you with a dress."
Take a random sample of a thousand innocent men, and sure, some of those men will have the moral courage and fortitude to tell you to go to Hell and take me to trial. Some of those men will lack that courage, and take your bargain out of fear. Most of those men will run a quick and dirty risk/reward calculation in their head, and realize that the best option is to take the deal -- because that's how you arranged it.
Plea bargaining is a foul and filthy practice that guarantees a miscarriage of Justice in a certain percentage of cases. That's why not every Western nation allows it.
But your arguments have nothing to do with the facts -- they have to do with your fears. It's terrifying to live in a world where innocent men can routinely go to prison. It's terrifying to live in a world where going to prison means a good chance of rape and brutality. It's terrifying to live in a world where the authorities actually use that threat of rape against you without conscience. It's terrifying to live in a world where any random mouth-breathing high-school-droput with a badge can destroy your life with trumped-up evidence. It's terrifying to live in a world where you can hear cops threaten to club children, where you hear cops threaten to plant fake drug evidence against teenagers, where you see cops shoot prone and begging men in the back...
It's terrifying to live in a world where simply browsing YouTube can give you video evidence of all of this.
So, your cognitive dissonance blasts away at full force, and you tell yourself innocent people don't go to jail because anyone who goes to jail is not innocent. You pillow your head on that circular logic, and while you dream you live in a pretty and just world you make it that much harder for the rest of us to fix the problems...
...but I was using the verb "counting" in the same sense as "flying." If you're not doing it successfully, you're not "flying" any more, you're "falling".:-)
But yes, you're absolutely correct. Reminds me of a quote I heard from a casino boss, something along the lines of "Some people come with their paycheck. We send free food to those people. Some people come with real money. Those people we comp rooms for. Some people come with real money and a SYSTEM. We send limos and women for those guys..."
It also stems from the fact that we don't lock up innocent people in the western world.
Thanks. I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Let me try this in a dialect you might understand.
Son, not only do we lock up innocent people here in the US but, Hell, in Texas we've condemned men to die when their defense attorney didn't even show up in one case, or showed up too drunk to stand straight in another. Up there in Yankeeland, they just caught a judge getting commissions from the prison for sending kids to jail.
Pound for pound, we lock up more people than the Russkies and the Chicoms COMBINED ever did. What, you think they're all guilty? You think Americans are just that much more sinful than all them godless heathens combined?
Slashdot Mirror
very good doctors that don't have excellent people skills, very good doctors that are jerks because they think they are so good
There's a reason why "bedside manner" has been considered an important skill since Hippocrates. Until we have a Star Trek medical tricorder that can tell us ABSOLUTELY everything that's going on inside a patient's body, then you're going to have to rely on patient reports for much of your diagnostic information.If your people skills are so bad that you can't hear your patients, or you engender so little trust that they don't tell you what you need to hear, then you aren't getting the whole picture, and that by definition makes you a bad doctor.
There's a reason why Gregory House works with four other doctors.
Beyond that, arrogance in a physician is LETHAL. Arrogance makes you secure in your first conclusion. Arrogance makes you resistant to disproving your own hyptheses. Arrogance means you don't consider new information, or information that contradicts your first assumptions. I wouldn't be surprised to find out physician arrogance was a leading cause of malpractice suits.
OK, now I feel bad for you. Look, you're confusing the concepts of mean and range.
Consider the set {10,10,10,10,10,10,10}
The mean (average) is 10. That doesn't mean half the set members are less than ten. It simply means that the range (largest member minus smallest member) is small, or in this case zero.
Here's a great middle school tutorial on mean, median, mode and range: http://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm
Remember, Shakespeare preceded Moliere, and no paper is complete without noting the similarities, but crediting Shakespeare with Moliere's work is a tired old trope...
On average, teenagers in America get their drivers license at sixteen. The minimum legal age to get your license in America is sixteen. Therefore, since sixteen is the average, half of them must have received their license before it was legal to do so.
How's that Moliere paper coming?
Markets work because pressure eventually comes to bear. Wages, and therefore standards of living, rise because labor becomes scarce. For markets to be work as intended, the rules must be applied fairly. To allow India and China access to American markets, but not America to Indian and Chinese markets, distorts the outcome of the game. It not only keeps Indian workers comparatively poor, but it sucks the blood right out of the American labor market in the proverbial "race to the bottom."
If it's sauce for the goose...
A couple of token managers don't count. India and China do not open their employment markets, nor any of their markets, in the manner in which they argue we should.
As far as I'm concerned, if you can look to the sky and speak with your heart that "All men should be free," then you're an American and we should make you a citizen.
What we have now is institutionalized exploitation, and it's a stain on our national character.
I conclude that you pulled that figure out of your ass.
Most people start college at 17 or 18. Eighteen plus four equals twenty-two, at least it does in my corner of the universe. I know I graduated college at twenty-two. Twenty-two or twenty-three plus seven years lands you in the neighborhood of thirty, again, for most values of thirty.
Does the math work differently when it comes out of your ass? Perhaps you don't realize it's not customary to take seven years to finish an undergrad degree?
As a basic matter of fairness, if Indian and Chinese citizens are going to be free to work in the United States, then US citizens should be free to work in India and China.
The problem is they're not. Some out-of-work disgruntled geek published an article looking into this a while back. The Indian consulate just laughed at him when he inquired about being allowed to work in India, while the Chinese representatives haughtily told him that Chinese jobs were for Chinese citizens.
They can't have it both ways. The Indians and the Chinese cannot argue that their citizens should be allowed to compete world-wide, but that jobs inside their own borders are only open to native citizens.
It's not just faulty logic. It's raging hypocrisy.
No, for the billionth time, we don't mind competing on quality. No, for the billionth time, we're not racist. No, for the billionth time, we don't mind the competition. On the contrary, my heart goes out to the H1-Bs I work with because I know they don't have any good choices.
In the most brutal stark terms, H1-Bs are hired specifically because they don't enjoy the same political and legal protection that native workers do. They get paid less, worked like indentured servants, and disposed of like kleenex. I've actually heard one manager scream at the H1-B team he employed "If you're awake, you're working for me!"
This is why you don't see the IT market flooded with French, Canadian or Australian workers, but rather see the market flooded with people from countries struggling with poverty and political horrors.
These poor people are exploited here precisely because the conditions in their home country are so horrific. My heart goes out to the women H1-Bs I've worked with, because I've seen the haunted look in their eye when they speak of home. I once cornered another H1-B over a hideously unethical stunt he pulled to shift the blame away from his own screwup to another, more junior engineer. He robbed my righteous thunder when he got a desperate look in his eyes and pleaded with me, "Look, if he gets fired he can just get another job. If I get fired, they'd make me go back..."
For the billionth time, if we need this talent, then let's do the right thing by these people and offer them citizenship. If we're not prepared to do the right thing, then we shouldn't be using them as scabs to break the back of American labor.
The temporary H1-B visa was supposed to be good for seven years. The average age at which H1-Bs come to this country is fresh out of college, so 22-23 years old plus seven years is about thirty.
All this says is that the H1-B visa program is working as advertised.
I find it pretty absurd that a company should be "stuck" with the contract rates it offers.
My God, You're Brilliant! I'm such an idiot! Why didn't I see this earlier?! I'm calling the bank right now to tell them that I don't have to be "stuck" with our previous contract. It's old news. Next month, my mortgage payment is going to be what's most beneficial to my bottom line, which after all is the the engine of the American economy! And why stop there? AT&T's gonna get a similar wakeup call from me, and the cable company too! And hey, those lazy bastards at the electric company -- why really, anyone I write a check to!
All of our previous agreements are water under the bridge, and they are going to do their patriotic duty and accept whatever I choose to give them!
Thank you for your astonishing genius. With this new principle at work, I expect my retirement account to be fully funded by next week.
Hi, big strong alpha Silverback male, father of large family, here. Have work gloves, will lift heavy things.
Sorry to put it this way -- cruel to be kind and all that -- but if you're sacrificing family for your career, you're a damn fool. If you're living to work -- and your job doesn't involve healing the sick, feeding the hungry, saving children, etc. --
then you have missed the point.
Your job title will not cry with you in the night. It won't watch the sun with you in the morning. The company car won't care that your parents just died. Your subordinates won't look up to you, and the responsibility you have for them won't grow your soul.
Apart from that, I'm shocked at the callousness of the some of the posters here. Sometimes, it's just a matter of basic humanity. I'm a big strong guy. I don't mind pulling a double-shift if someone's wife just went into labor. I'm not made of spun sugar. Some poor woman has a miscarriage, I don't mind covering for her until she can get her head back together, and yeah, that might take a while. Some single Mom's kid falls out of a tree and breaks his arm, I don't mind watching her keeping her network in one piece while she runs to the emergency room. I'm not a helpless little girl -- I can carry a little bit more of a load for a good cause.
Listening to some of the thin reedy voices of the Ayn Rand acolytes on this board, I can tell they're just not ready to be husbands and fathers. I pity them for their loneliness, and I know if they don't dig deeper and find their hearts and testosterone, they'll never be ready.
Don't you get it? She's not the problem -- she's your canary. She's the one showing exactly how far you can push it. Don't get mad because she negotiates herself a better deal -- follow her example and get more for yourself.
http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/BMW
BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavarian Motor Works; German auto manufacturer)
...and I'll show you a man no one wants to work for. Multiply the offer by a factor of ten and you'll have the absolutely perfect people banging down your door. If you're having trouble finding someone in this economy, then either your offer is ridiculously low or your reputation precedes you.
Gee, Frank told me he can't find anyone to sell him a BMW for $500 with a credit score of 310. Clearly, the government needs to intervene to force those lazy Germans to sell the product of their labor to Frank...
Don't worry! Our MCSA will solve all your problems!
Gee, what a nice little website you got here. Be a real shame if anything happened to it, ya know...
Looks like Google fell behind on it's "Civic Association" dues. Meanwhile, Microsoft has been paid up for quite some time.
...but the Revolution will not be televised. It probably, however, will show up on YouTube on your iPhone. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqWMmwH4p6w
Even when I was so incredibly young and fiercely stupid that I was living in Houston and voting Republican, I still had enough of an ear to smile at the voice behind that poem.
For you poor bastards who came of age during the time of Bush, here's a brother who suffered under the time of Nixon, by way of a Reagan victim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In four parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.
There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.
Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.
There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be right back after a message
about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
I finally get fan mail and it's from an AC. :-)
Actually, it's easy. Spend a childhood of Sundays listening to endless variations on "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and "It's Friday ... but Sunday's Coming" (a classic old Crucifixion/Easter dichotomy) and you could belt out a pretty mean spur-of-the-moment sermon too.
Yeah, I think I took that totally wrong and missed the satire. I'm so used to people in Dallas saying stuff like that and meaning every word of it, I totally missed it.
Sorry, Inda. I'll try to clean the crap outta my ears.
...give us our due. We shoot plenty of people, too, and we shoot straighter than them Commies ever did.
...against plea-bargaining.
In the U.S., less than five percent of cases go to trial. That means that less than five percent of people ever test the presumption of innocence. Why? Maybe because they're guilty . . .
Amazing. You just asserted that presumption of innocence is a reality, and in the same breath insinuated all people who go to trial are guilty. If Einstein was right, and genius is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, then your mental acuity is astonishing indeed.
The whole point of plea bargaining is to reduce the number of cases that go to trial. Plea bargaining works because you can't predict the jury's decision with certainty. If you look at the possible outcomes of plea-bargaining, it guarantees innocent men will end up in prison.
Suppose you're innocent. Suppose you're innocent, but unlucky, and the circumstances make you look guilty. Suppose you're an unpopular minority. Suppose you pray to the wrong god. Suppose you're just ugly. Suppose you just look like "that type." Suppose you don't come from around here. Suppose you've never caught a break in your life. Suppose there are any one of a million reasons why twelve random people off the street could drop you in a hole without any good reason and not lose any sleep over it.
Suppose you have children. Suppose you have family who depend on you. Suppose The Authorities come to you and tell you, "Boy, you don't push us on this, and we'll let you out in a couple of years. But if you make us go all the way, we'll make sure you don't ever see the light of day again, and when we put you in jail, we'll make sure Bubba is waiting for you with a dress."
Take a random sample of a thousand innocent men, and sure, some of those men will have the moral courage and fortitude to tell you to go to Hell and take me to trial. Some of those men will lack that courage, and take your bargain out of fear. Most of those men will run a quick and dirty risk/reward calculation in their head, and realize that the best option is to take the deal -- because that's how you arranged it.
Plea bargaining is a foul and filthy practice that guarantees a miscarriage of Justice in a certain percentage of cases. That's why not every Western nation allows it.
But your arguments have nothing to do with the facts -- they have to do with your fears. It's terrifying to live in a world where innocent men can routinely go to prison. It's terrifying to live in a world where going to prison means a good chance of rape and brutality. It's terrifying to live in a world where the authorities actually use that threat of rape against you without conscience. It's terrifying to live in a world where any random mouth-breathing high-school-droput with a badge can destroy your life with trumped-up evidence. It's terrifying to live in a world where you can hear cops threaten to club children, where you hear cops threaten to plant fake drug evidence against teenagers, where you see cops shoot prone and begging men in the back...
It's terrifying to live in a world where simply browsing YouTube can give you video evidence of all of this.
So, your cognitive dissonance blasts away at full force, and you tell yourself innocent people don't go to jail because anyone who goes to jail is not innocent. You pillow your head on that circular logic, and while you dream you live in a pretty and just world you make it that much harder for the rest of us to fix the problems...
...but I was using the verb "counting" in the same sense as "flying." If you're not doing it successfully, you're not "flying" any more, you're "falling". :-)
But yes, you're absolutely correct. Reminds me of a quote I heard from a casino boss, something along the lines of "Some people come with their paycheck. We send free food to those people. Some people come with real money. Those people we comp rooms for. Some people come with real money and a SYSTEM. We send limos and women for those guys..."
It also stems from the fact that we don't lock up innocent people in the western world.
Thanks. I just sprayed coffee all over my keyboard. Let me try this in a dialect you might understand.
Son, not only do we lock up innocent people here in the US but, Hell, in Texas we've condemned men to die when their defense attorney didn't even show up in one case, or showed up too drunk to stand straight in another. Up there in Yankeeland, they just caught a judge getting commissions from the prison for sending kids to jail.
Pound for pound, we lock up more people than the Russkies and the Chicoms COMBINED ever did. What, you think they're all guilty? You think Americans are just that much more sinful than all them godless heathens combined?