Guavanaut posted:

Counterpoint: There's a lot of cases in employment or benefits where doing something is not only legal but the right thing to do, but people don't because they've been conditioned to not make a fuss or worry they'll 'get in trouble' and that's a very useful mindset for the ruling class.

Cerv posted:

Why?

If the vast majority of people in the country will never have any need to understand a particular set of laws, like VAT say, what’s so wrong if the small number who do have to then get a qualified professional to help?

Cerv posted:

Why?

If the vast majority of people in the country will never have any need to understand a particular set of laws, like VAT say, what’s so wrong if the small number who do have to then get a qualified professional to help?

Borrovan posted:

'course, since the state has proven over the last decade that it absolutely cannot be trusted to look after working class people regardless of whether they play by the rules or not, working class people gouging every penny they can from the state probably is the right thing to do

Miftan posted:

Because it opens up bullshit middlemen scammers.

Miftan posted:

And to be honest very few laws need to be so complex that regular people will need hours and hours of studying to understand them. You should be able to understand a law when you read it, maybe cross reference once or twice tops.

Miftan posted:

Because it opens up bullshit middlemen scammers. And to be honest very few laws need to be so complex that regular people will need hours and hours of studying to understand them. You should be able to understand a law when you read it, maybe cross reference once or twice tops.

Rustybear posted:

HMRC posted:

HMRC can help those who are genuinely unable to make a full payment of tax owed on time. We can agree payments by instalments and will carefully consider an individual’s ability to pay on a case-by-case basis. There is no maximum limit on how long someone can be given to pay what they owe, and this will be based on our assessment of income and expenditure.

A dedicated HMRC team is focused on working with those who are not able to pay the charge on disguised remuneration loans by the payment deadline and supporting them to agree a manageable payment plan.

So 'paying it back this month with interest or your kneecaps are ours' seems a bit much?

Cerv posted:

Why?

If the vast majority of people in the country will never have any need to understand a particular set of laws, like VAT say, what’s so wrong if the small number who do have to then get a qualified professional to help?

endlessmonotony posted:

So the latest Brexit plan is for the Tories to demand EU pays for the war against Ireland they're going to start to make sure the will of the British people is being obeyed, and that the Liberal Democrats are going to push through the hardest Brexit possible so they can blame Corbyn for what happened and explain afterwards how they had to cause Brexit in order to make it clear post-Brexit how much they opposed Brexit. And that they're planning to avoid the economical impact by making anyone unemployed or disabled homeless, then packing the homeless in shipping containers, then sinking the shipping containers in the Irish Sea in order to create a land bridge to transport all the wood they're clearcutting from Ireland so they can build ships for the British Empire.

Have I got this about right?

RockyB posted:

I'm from the government and I'm here to help (you pay all this tax we've decided you now owe us.)

I have zero confidence in HMRC operating in good faith and genuinely attempting to help people, in much the same way as I think the DWP is systemically dysfunctional. Especially given they have outright flannelled MPs and refused to set up suicide prevention hotlines. Take https://www.hmrcloancharge.info/lcag-press-release-3-july-2019/ as an example, although obviously the source is anti loan charge.

Yes, there are undoubtedly smug wankers out there who 'deserve' to get hit by this. There's also a whole lot of preventable damage being done by yet another callous government department who are going after the 'end-user' rather than the actual people who are pushing this stuff in the first place. Always going for the (relatively) little guy, rather than 'proper' fully funded off-shore tax evasion by the big boys.

OwlFancier posted:

It's pretty anarchist to suggest that a society requiring laws that the people living in it can't really understand, suggests that the society is extremely unequal.

If you take the view that everyone should be participatory in a society it's not really weird to say that this is at odds with the idea that there should be sections of society that need laws that other parts of it can't understand.

goddamnedtwisto posted:

There is literally no reason whatsoever for a shipping container to be involved at any point in that process. Fine, build prefab homes to TEU dimensions to make delivery easier. but you either have to modify the shipping container so much that it'd be cheaper to just start from scratch or you have something completely uninhabitable that will have costlier maintenance and a shorter shelf life than post-war Orlit homes.

Once again some design student somewhere has A Big loving Idea and people have to suffer because it sounds much cooler than designs with literal centuries of refinement behind them.

OwlFancier posted:

It's pretty anarchist to suggest that a society requiring laws that the people living in it can't really understand, suggests that the society is extremely unequal.

If you take the view that everyone should be participatory in a society it's not really weird to say that this is at odds with the idea that there should be sections of society that need laws that other parts of it can't understand.

OwlFancier posted:

It's pretty anarchist to suggest that a society requiring laws that the people living in it can't really understand, suggests that the society is extremely unequal.

If you take the view that everyone should be participatory in a society it's not really weird to say that this is at odds with the idea that there should be sections of society that need laws that other parts of it can't understand.

Jedit posted:

It's got nothing to do with inequality, and everything to do with fascism.

Aramoro posted:

It's wrong to say the laws cannot be understood by any part of society, it's just most people don't have the time or inclination or honestly the need to understand them.

The bible ain't written in Latin anymore.

Rustybear posted:

Right but society has progressed to the point where large areas of knowledge are not easily accessible to the layperson.

For example, I think there should be laws surrounding stem cell testing and I'd be surprised if they can be written in a way that is both effective and also accessible to someone with no education in biology.

OwlFancier posted:

I'd suggest that fascism is a subset of inequality

But even if you take the position that there are specifically laws that only need to exist to regulate certain sections of society, like say, big businesses, that's still a problem because the question could also be phrased as "so why do we allow them to exist in the first place?"

If big businesses work in such a different way to the level that we as people operate on, that they need their own laws that make no sense to everyone else, then aren't they necessarily alienated from us and we them? Are we really part of the same society at that point?

OwlFancier posted:

I'd suggest that fascism is a subset of inequality

But even if you take the position that there are specifically laws that only need to exist to regulate certain sections of society, like say, big businesses, that's still a problem because the question could also be phrased as "so why do we allow them to exist in the first place?"

If big businesses work in such a different way to the level that we as people operate on, that they need their own laws that make no sense to everyone else, then aren't they necessarily alienated from us and we them? Are we really part of the same society at that point?

Rustybear posted:

Replace 'big business' with 'the practice of medicine' and repeat the question.

Guavanaut posted:

That's a good question, because laws relating to medicine may require specific terminology, but if they're so opaque that the average patient can't understand them, then who are they protecting?

Rustybear posted:

Replace 'big business' with 'the practice of medicine' and repeat the question.

Aramoro posted:

Do you feel car drivers and non-car drivers live in a different society? There is a big section of law that only covers one of them, some of the time.

Laws very rarely apply to groups of people, they apply to actions.

Rustybear posted:

Genuinely don't understand the argument here; is it that in an equal society we would all understand every aspect of every field of knowledge because uh...

Or is it a primitivist thing that the division of knowledge/specialisation automatically creates hierarchies or summat.

Getting strong empty the cities vibes here.

Rustybear posted:

The patient and the doctor? Would it be better if we didn't have these laws or...?

Guavanaut posted:

How do they protect the patient if the patient cannot understand them? An assumption that the doctor will obey them because they exist, or an assumption that a tertiary body will exist who understands both the meanings of the laws as a patient should understand them and the meanings of the laws as a doctor should understand them and has the ability to act as a go-between but somehow not the ability to parse the laws into a form understandable by the patient?

Guavanaut posted:

How do they protect the patient if the patient cannot understand them? An assumption that the doctor will obey them because they exist, or an assumption that a tertiary body will exist who understands both the meanings of the laws as a patient should understand them and the meanings of the laws as a doctor should understand them and has the ability to act as a go-between but somehow not the ability to parse the laws into a form understandable by the patient?

Rustybear posted:

You have a specialist who helps the patient seek redress if they believe they have been wronged.

Like society is a thing, we're here to help each other out! It shouldn't have to be structured in such a way so as to make it up to the individual to know everything all the time - very bleak view imo.

Aramoro posted:

I'm trying to parse what your point could possibly be? Don't have laws that patients cannot understand if they're not doctors? What is the patient is also a doctor? Are you just pitching all your laws at the lowest common denominator dipshit?

OwlFancier posted:

You could interpret it as perhaps the reason doctors don't go around murdering people isn't because the law protects the patients by giving them accountability but possibly more due to other factors, such as most doctors not wanting to kill people.

Aramoro posted:

??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman

???

OwlFancier posted:

You could interpret it as perhaps the reason doctors don't go around murdering people isn't because the law protects the patients by giving them accountability but possibly more due to other factors, such as most doctors not wanting to kill people.

Aramoro posted:

??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman

???

Aramoro posted:

I keep forgetting that this fucboi simply cannot understand the word "most" no matter how may times it's explained, despite it being one of the simplest bit of words we have.

Aramoro posted:

I'm trying to parse what your point could possibly be? Don't have laws that patients cannot understand if they're not doctors? What is the patient is also a doctor? Are you just pitching all your laws at the lowest common denominator dipshit?

Aramoro posted:

I keep forgetting that this thread simply cannot understand the Fixed Term Parliaments Act no matter how may times it's explained, despite it being one of the simplest bit of legislation we have. That's something to consider when thinking 'Laws should be understandable', understandable by who.

OwlFancier posted:

I'm not sure a guy famously murdering a lot of people is a very good argument either a: for the efficacy of law in preventing murder or b: against the idea that most doctors aren't murderers?

Aramoro posted:

I'm trying to parse what your point could possibly be? Don't have laws that patients cannot understand if they're not doctors? What is the patient is also a doctor? Are you just pitching all your laws at the lowest common denominator dipshit?

StealthArcher posted:

A Buttery Pastry posted:

They're a bad solution to a bad solution. The basic motivation is generally (presented as) creating affordable housing for people who don't need that much space - but their design basically forces small units that are incredibly inefficient use of land. So not only do you build something that's thrice* the price, you also need more space compared to building just a regular boring rear end prefab building.

*At least that was the case for the last project I saw where container vs. prefab was part of the discussion.