In the last 5 to 10 years everything seems to suck: product’s and services quality plummeted, everything from homes to cars to food became really expensive, technology stopped to help us to be something designed to f@ck with us and our money, nobody seems to be able to hold a job anymore, everyone is broke. Life seems worse in general.
Why? Did COVID made this happen? How?
The US has this bizarre setup where we “regulate” companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is). The problem is that even when this “works”, i.e., the court punishes the company, they get a fine. So it becomes a financial decision: if we can get away with this, does that outweigh the risk that we might not? Sometimes it ends up profiting the company regardless.
Related to this is that prosecutors have total discretion in the realm of plea deals. If you do a crime here, it becomes a negotiation with the prosecutor. What can you offer them to get off the hook? Sometimes it makes sense to do a crime, because the advantages you gain become leverage to negotiate your way out of punishment.
I agree with you. The justice system should not be “let’s make a deal.”
I’m afraid that I don’t understand what sort of alternative system you have in mind.
Basically do what Europe does. Government regulators actively monitor companies and stop them from misbehaving, rather than waiting for them to misbehave and then sue them. If they don’t follow regulations they get disbanded. It’s not perfect but it’s better than what we have here.
I believe that already happens here in certain fields like nuclear energy and slaughterhouses