18 September

Here’s the problem in the US in one graph. It refuses to do basic public regulation and policing (all sides of politics), because the entire culture of the US was founded upon deep distrust of public anything. Of the ‘establishment’. It sees it as ‘authoritarian’, largely because the US was founded by religious Puritans determined to not allow the State to ever restrict them again. As a result it ends up having to throw vast numbers of people in jail, when the WIld West culture doesn’t function. It is dramtically UNDER-policed, as a nation, too obsessed with the ‘freedom’ of individuals to do whatever they like. It mistakes regulation for authoritarian rule, that’s its deep cultural DNA. (Link to source: https://direct.mit.edu/ajle/article/doi/10.1162/ajle_a_00030/112647/THE-INJUSTICE-OF-UNDER-POLICING-IN-AMERICA1)