Unfortunately the court system is such that it would collapse under the load if everyone actually exercised their right to a trial which heavily incentivizes plea deals
Partially. The prosecutors and DAs are motivated by conviction rates. The delays in the court system are a bludgeon to encourage that end. Just like identity theft in itself, no-one is motivated to fix the system but the ones being fucked by it, who are the least able to do so.
That is a different problem. In this case it should be clear that the prosecutors have messed up and won't admit it, maybe to save their carriers. They are going after someone innocent because it is the easy target while the real criminal is at large.
Yet despite that many residents in the wealthiest nations report increasing levels of unhappiness with the state of things. While there are other factors that play into this, it doesn't seem that wealth generation itself is a direct vehicle to the things people value / make them happy
Yea people report that. And then you let them go to Ghana for a week and you'll see their perspective shift real fast. That people have no historical perspective isn't an argument against capitalism, it's an argument for education. And the thing with education is that it's done by the state. So really it's the state that is failing capitalism, not the other way around.
We should because the time between being acused and when a case is actually tried is undeniably a factor in why plea deals are taken. When the alternative to taking a plea deal is potentially spending months in jail until one's case goes to trail is accepting a plea deal which comes with a definite and possibly shorter sentence than the waiting period for a trial itself it isn't surprising that people would simply accept the plea deal
I feel like you're conflating race/ethnicity with species when the two are completely separate concepts. There's a great amount of diversity between dog breeds, including wolves, but little disagreement that they are the same species. Variation between members of a certain species is expected
Isn't the general separation between species that they no longer can cleanly interbreed (generate fertile offsprings)? I'm no biology expert though, but I always thought this is how to separate things.
Humans of all kinds can breed and make new humans easily. Same for dogs... easily can breed with each other and increase diversity. So in both cases same species. But humans and chimpanzees? Probably not (albeit there are rumours? :) ), so different species.
Yes, but the difference also has to do with geography/preference. Brown and Polar bears can and do produce viable offspring, but because they're generally geographically separated we consider them separate species. Same for birds; many could mate but they choose not to (different mating calls, etc), and for that reason combined with different looks we classify them as separate species. Neanderthal, who are accepted as being a different species of human, interbred with humans before going extinct.
It's my opinion that if aliens visited earth 30k years ago and used our definition of the word, they would classify us as different species. To be clear I'm not advocating that we should refer to humans as different species, just that because we're capable of such advanced thought we should abide by different rules than we hold other animals to.
Can an insect feel pain? What about a mushroom, or a plant? What things are conscious enough to feel pain? I'm genuinely asking because I because it seems arbitrary as to where the line gets drawn. Before the 1980s it was the medical consensus that babies weren't capable of feeling pain even though this is now widely recognized as untrue.
I don't think the line is quite so arbitrary! Virtually all animals (with a few exceptions!) have a central nervous system, which is required to "feel" pain, to my understanding.
The good news is that we can adapt our thinking and behavior in light of new evidence.
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