The best illustration I've seen of this for anyone who hasn't visited Asia and seen the effects of censorship is this video. One guy asks random people on the street on June 4 if they know what day it is. It is the anniversary of the Tienanmen square massacre. And nearly everyone refuses to answer. They know it was a tragedy and they also know they aren't allowed to talk about it.
That said, I'm surprised there isn't a greater culture of vengeance killings over issues like this.
For further reading on this I can highly recommend Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur...
I thought that thing is exclusive to China. Or at least like that, since I have a few people who got hit by vehicles but only injured, drivers don't even tries to finish off.
Secondly, think about incentives. Maybe I am hopelessly naive, but I believe that the majority of human beings have something built into them that stops them from hurting others. For the majority of humanity, you don't need laws against murder, internal morality and social pressure is sufficient. However, this is a small subset of humanity that would make RATIONAL rather than MORAL choices about murder if forced to make a choice about it. This is the reason that murder has such high penalties, for those people.
tldr; China needs to raise the expected penalty for engaging in this sort of behavior to the point that it is not rational. This isn't necessary for the great majority of Chinese (any more than it is anywhere else in the world) but it is necessary for some.
ADDENDUM: admittedly my comment above is emotional. Obviously not every accident ends in the driver running over the victim several times. But from the article and from some of the comments, I got an impression that these cases are not THAT unusual, and it's not just a case of a Western newspaper publishing a sensationalist Sinophobic article.
The few cases mentioned where something happened to the driver were probably the exceptions where the victim also had money.
In the Slate Plus special feature section, the author of the article shared statistics on how frequently traffic accidents result in death in China, compared with the United States. In 2013 in the US there were 32,719 deaths, compared to over two million injuries in traffic accidents. That means that, in the United States, there are 70 injuries per every traffic death. According to China's Xinhua News Agency, the ratio of traffic injuries to deaths in China is four to one.
Interpreting help as a sign of guilt is very strong and has become a strong reason people look the other way instead of helping someone in a bad position, sadly.
Our morals aren't nearly as absolute as we like to think. 20% of the entire population of Rwanda were hacked to death with farm implements by ordinary people. 25% of the Cambodian population were butchered, starved or worked to death by a poorly-organised militia.
Any of us have the capacity to kill if we have a sufficiently compelling justification. Ask any mother if she would kill to save her children. The difference between murder and self defence is mere context - the Nazis believed that they were defending themselves from a Jewish conspiracy, the Interahamwe believed they were liberating themselves from Tutsi oppression.
Consider the fact that the rate of domestic homicide in the US is drastically higher in households that own a gun. A great number of Americans have killed their partner simply because the means to do so easily was readily available. Evil or insanity is not a prerequisite for murder, only means, motive and opportunity.
Like I said, modern society has instilled feelings of guilt and negative consequences with our comparatively well-developed ethical and justice systems, generally leading to situations where the risk of getting caught murdering someone outweighs the benefits of killing them (go to jail, hell, etc). But flip the risk analysis (eg, what this article is about), et voilà, no problem.
I am an enormous believer in good manners [1].
[1] Which I am much better at in meatspace. Damn you, anonymous internet.
Putting aside the statement's low plausibility of truth, it is certainly the worst thing I've read in quite some time.
Even now, the value of life in western China is considered very low. They have half a billion people living on $2 to $3 per day. I don't think there's a single example of such a poor country that has had a first world style (eg Sweden, Canada or Germany) consideration for the bottom 50%.
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/28/china-arrests-terro...
In the US, there is no incentive for psychopaths to kill people like this. In China there is.
Also remember that the incidence of this in a country the size of China doesn't allow you to make comparison to the US. Our population is much smaller.
Lastly, the per-capita murder rate in the US is higher (we rank 110, they rank 192) [1]. Even if you account for under-reporting in China, we have a more violent society.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... sort by rate
This article is about the casual murder of toddlers and preschoolers with little serious consequence by strangers. I don't think we're accounting for under-reporting enough here.
And it's not just toddlers and preschoolers. It's all pedestrians, even old people.
In China Mainland, if you drive and hit someone to death, a compensation no more than 15,000 USD will be paid for victim's family. However, if the victim was badly hit the medical expenses could easily reach 15,000 USD and probably beyond 50,000 USD or more. And in that situation, China's terrible medical/car crash insurance can only help a little.
1. It is basic human instinct to not hurt people. 2. Training can overcome this instinct. 3. Therefore these murderers must have trained themselves. 4. Therefore there are a lot of people in China who must have trained themselves to kill. 5. This all reflects badly on all of China when citizens visit other countries.
Can someone explain why it is reasonable to assume that mental training (2), as opposed to perverse incentives and corruption as the article mentions, is the only way to overcome (1), and why, even assuming (4) to be true, (5) is also true?
Interpreting this as somehow about Chinese culture etc. seems to be over the top IMO. Sure that law is bad, but other than that, there is no news here.
The solution is rather simple though: make killing more expensive then injury. Best solution would be to reduce the cost of injury, and chuck the rest up to socialism. But it looks like communism China doesn't know socialism ?
I rem reading about how people value time so much in the Scandinavian countries because they see so little of the Sun and how in tropical countries the concept of punctuality is close to non existent.
think about the people would work more than you would because they have feed their family. We may think it's insane hours/task of high risk but they do. It's not like their genes are programmed to make the work crazy but they have to for survival.
I don't mean to support the acts mentioned in the article, but this is what would happen if a person is pushed to the extreme and the person has means to come out of it. Mostly money, power, influence.
How can this be stopped ? I don't have answer but happy to discuss.
This can be seen everywhere, if we open our eyes and look. similar thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jgy0b/e...
This just seems like a logical progression of cars in the US to cars in China.
Personal attacks are not allowed on HN, regardless of how wrong you think someone is.
citation needed
I don't think this is "human instinct". Looks more like a moral construct.
"In a squad of 10 men, on average fewer than three ever fired their weapons in combat. Day in, day out — it did not matter how long they had been soldiers, how many months of combat they had seen, or even that the enemy was about to overrun their position. This was what the highly regarded Brigadier General Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall, better known as S.L.A. Marshall, or ‘Slam,’ concluded in a series of military journal articles and in his book, Men Against Fire, about America’s World War II soldiers. "
http://www.historynet.com/men-against-fire-how-many-soldiers...
And: "This was a problem for the US military and its allies during World War II. New training implements were developed and hit rates improved. The changes were small, but effective."
Below quote from http://www.warchronicle.com/us/combat_historians_wwii/marsha.... Emphasis not in original This calculation assumes, however, that of all the questions Marshall might ask the soldiers of a rifle company during his interviews, he would unfailingly want to know who had fired his weapon and who had not. Such a question, posed interview after interview, would have signalled that Marshall was on a particular line of inquiry, and that regardless of the other information Marshall might discover, he was devoted to investigating this facet of combat performance. John Westover, usually in attendance during Marshall's sessions with the troops, does not recall Marshall's ever asking this question. Nor does Westover recall Marshall ever talking about ratios of weapons usage in their many private conversations. Marshall's own personal correspondence leaves no hint that he was ever collecting statistics. His surviving field notebooks show no signs of statistical compilations that would have been necessary to deduce a ratio as precise as Marshall reported later in Men Against Fire. The "systematic collection of data" that made Marshall's ratio of fire so authoritative appears to have been an invention.
Same thing with the Wikipedia article you link that uses the word "instinct" without justifying it (do we see that in ALL cultures, in babies?)
What about the previous quarter million years of modern humans killing other humans?
Yes.
If someone breaks into your home, in most states self defense would be a slam-dunk defense against a murder charge. Even if acquited of murder, the burglar's family can sue you for wrongful death - the evidentiary bar for wrongful death is much lower than for murder.
It's entirely possible to be acquited of murder, but convicted in civil court and ordered to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to a burglar's family.
Not to mention the fact that in a criminal trial, if the guy is dead he doesn't testify against you.
"Dead men don't sue" is a thing.
What a cultural mess.
Sad perverse incentives.
Of course he can never go there again as he's officially a fugitive.
What we call car accidents are considered an unavoidable part of life to be resolved by civil courts and insurance payouts.
I'd say say the US has a cultural mess regarding cars too.
And that's without even mentioning the fact that 1) the people in the article actually fled the scene, 2) many of them got out of the car and ran over the person again, 3) in the US you will in fact face penalties if you are deemed to be negligent in some way (you were speeding, didn't have a license, etc.)
And yes, in the US, if you are negligent, you will be facing criminal and civil penalties, in a legal system where guanxi is much less likely to aid you.
There the bigger the vehicle the bigger the deference by smaller vehicles by tradition and necessity, it's completely opposite. In addition, you would know that sidewalk and street are one and the same in most places.
And the occurrence of backing up to purposely e sure terminal injury is not uncommon in the least. It's in the news, it's quite ordinary.
An acquaintance of mine was speeding and killed someone. He went to jail for a couple of years. No alcohol or drugs were involved and he didn't leave the scene. He was going something like 80 in a 55mph zone.
Quote from this article: '“We do not know of a single case of a cyclist fatality in which the driver was prosecuted, except for D.U.I. or hit-and-run,” Leah Shahum, the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, told me.'
Big ones off the top of my head: - Amelie de Moullac: police found driver at fault, DA refused to prosecute - Charles Vinson: driver ran a red light. Vinson also technically ran a red, but had the walk signal. Vinson was found at fault; driver not even 50% fault.
These are pretty SF-specific examples, but I don't think it's an SF-specific phenomenon.
In other countries, say canada, insurance minimum can be 1M .
If you intentionally drive over a pedestrian multiple times to try to kill them, you're going to prison potentially for decades. One scenario is purely an accident, the other is intentionally trying to make sure you murder the pedestrian.
The template is as follows:
Something bad happens in some other country. The America hater immediately responds with something that the US does that is usually nothing at all to do with the point of the story.
Yes, we understand your retarded tactics. Try again.
It is messed up. Completely messed up. Downvote if you disagree.
But please do 'fess up to the fact that you downvoting because you think it is OK to transform an accident into homicide.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-laz-rear-license-plate...
I'm sorry for missing the critical part here - the actual article, but such cultural traits can definitely surprise people from other countries (like it did me with this one).
More info: http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-...
Edit: From the last comment found this article - which goes a bit against Malcolm Gladwell's findings - interesting read indeed - http://askakorean.blogspot.kr/2013/07/culturalism-gladwell-a...
I work in Taiwan and disagreeing with the boss, while unpopular everywhere, is certainly less tolerated here than my experience in the west (east coast US). So Gladwell's story is compelling and built on a known difference in cultures. Yet, as usual, he is missing some facts to make his case.
The real question is, how is the airline performing now after the culture change brought in by the "western professor" as noted in the above comment by malkia? Are they still operating with his suggestions and have they been operating more smoothly? How do employees there feel about the change?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster
It led to widespread reform encouraging aircrew to speak up if something is wrong.
It's a cute mental trick if you ask me.
> In China the compensation for killing a victim in a traffic accident is relatively small—amounts typically range from $30,000 to $50,000—and once payment is made, the matter is over. By contrast, paying for lifetime care for a disabled survivor can run into the millions. The Chinese press recently described how one disabled man received about $400,000 for the first 23 years of his care
It's not some Chinese specific culture problem, it's economics.
That someone could run over a toddler and then reverse back and forth over them just so they only have to pay $50,000 instead of $400,000 — well, it's absolutely sickening.
Time and again I'm reminded that most people are really only "good" because it benefits them personally in some way. But the ease with which so many people simply rationalize away all the horrors that mankind commits — I suppose that's part of the human genome.
This really depresses me.
Let's play the devil's advocate and understand the motive behind it-
The average annual wage of a Chinese citizen is $7,500 USD, whereas the average annual wage of an American is $45,000.
Which means that $400,000 is worth 400,000 x 45,000 / 7,500 = $2,400,000 . And that's only over 23 years so far. You have to keep paying until the day the victim dies. That's the equivalent of $105,000 for Americans per year.
If you refuse to pay, the victim will take you to court and confiscate all your belongings. If you still refuse to get a job to pay, the court will throw your ass in jail and (here is the important part) force your family to pay, indefinitely, until the victim dies.
So are you going to have your family pays $105,000 per year while you sit in jail, or are you going to make sure the victim is dead?
Trust me when I say no one wants to kill another human, but when the law is lay against you in such way, well don't be surprise that humans can override their natural instinct.
(I am from Hong Kong that, while most people there do not share the same sentiment, but can understand the math behind this horrific logic.
Imagine you broke someone's leg. Would you rather kill the person and pay $1000, or spend the rest of your life in prison? Letting the person live and paying them $1000 isn't an option. You either get away scott-free, or ruin your life. I can completely understand a culture in which the reality of the consequences makes people choose the lesser punishment.
The solution isn't to increase the punishment for killing someone on the street. The solution is to abolish the ridiculous costs associated with merely injuring someone, especially if that injury comes from an accident.
Of course what's absolutely a joke is people acting all aghast about another country's culture from behind their white picket fences. You do realize that if you were born in their country, you would have the exact same perspective? What the fuck is with this high and mighty bullshit? Your upbringing in a privileged society doesn't make you better than those from less privileged societies, it just makes you privileged. Be thankful your day-to-day routine doesn't involve having to worry about the possibility of having to kill someone in order to keep your pristine life intact.
Would I kill someone I don't know in order to save someone I know and love deeply? No. That is murder. Now saving a loved one vs. saving someone who is a stranger is a different scenario. The scenario depicted here is very clear. Kill or suffer loss of property that will impact your family physically.
I can see that this would be much harder to do in a collectivist society, I'll give you that much. But murder remains immoral.
I also agree that the consequence of injuring someone should be less. But I don't know what it's so high in the first place so I'm not at a point to really comment on that.
As an aside, I was not born in the U.S. and have lived the vast majority of my life in my country of origin. You stating that I would have the same perspective of those in China if I grew up there does not make that perspective the morally justifiable one. Not having grown up in that culture has given me (or most of us) the freedom of thought to come to the point where we can clearly identify it as immoral, even if we are never faced with the proposition.
By the time a comment descends to this, it's clear that it shouldn't have been posted to HN in the first place. This is supposed to be a site for civil, substantive discussion. If you can't abide by that, please don't post here.
From the article:
> With so many hit-to-kill drivers escaping serious punishment, the Chinese public has sometimes taken matters into its own hands. In 2013 a crowd in Zhengzhou in Henan province beat a wealthy driver who killed a 6-year-old after allegedly running him over twice.
Clearly people born and raised in China do not "have the exact same perspective".
I don't know if that's the general nature of people though - I think when people have enough, but not too much, they're generally good. But if you're below or above that middle bound, things start to go bad. If you're below, natural hunger and base instincts for survival drive your behavior. But if you're above that "safe" level, it seems like a lot of people go a little wonky - lots of people who get to a significantly higher level, it's almost like it sets off a switch in their brain and it turns into a game, where they can't resist seeing how much they can get, damn the consequences.
Wait what?
http://tijuana.usconsulate.gov/root/pdfs/telegalcriminalguid...
As well it should.
Then being responsible means having the insurance. Not having the insurance is being irresponsible.
Of course, at some point, "Third World" became synonymous with "poor", and was euphemised to "developing".
[1] “Speech by Chairman of the Delegation of the People’s Republic of China, Teng Hsiao-Ping, at the Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly: April 10, 1974” (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1974).
Yea, and Switzerland was "3rd world" back then.
Also firing a gun and not hitting anything also has a harsher punishment than hitting someone, so unless you are a cop that need to draw attention or something, if you need to fire a gun, you need to make sure you will hit someone.
PS: Granted, in a functional democracy changing the perverse incentives is a much better option. But, unfortunately in China the only reasonable response to this IMO is to find and brutally kill the driver and then publish this after the fact. Accidents happen, but murder should never end up as the 'better' option.
On a related topic - if you're dying on the streets of China, your chances of receiving help are slim. Anyone who attempts to help you is responsible for your medical bills. They'll let you die on the streets.
The problem here is laws regarding expenses.
Vigilantism is considered a wide range of things in various cultures, but even in the US if a someone saw a driver drive back and forth over there kid and they pulled out a gun and shot the driver in rage then they would likely get off.
Doing the same thing in cold blood would be considered murder in the US, but we have a mostly functional court system. Without that Vigilantism may preform similar functions as state sponsored executions. Sure, it's far from ideal, but so is cold blooded murder of a child.
PS: Actual death would not be a requierment, but a level of harm that causes people to avoid murder is.
I think we actually have a manifestly dysfunctional court system. But I suppose comparatively it works at some level.
Hackernews serves as a distribution vector for most content which expands the mind to new technologies, cultures, science, or entrepreneurial techniques.
For you, there is still quite a fair amount of technical content posted daily :-).
On a related note, there is crazy stuff like this in China everywhere.
Also, what penalties do people pay in the US if they accidentally cripple someone?
Outrageous claims. No sources. pageviews.exe
1. The article notes that the monetary cost to the driver for accidentally killing someone is much less than the cost for accidentally disabling someone.
For drivers that do not have much wealth, and who are the sole source of income for their family, I can see how [1] they might decide that the harm to their family from having to pay that higher cost might outweigh the harm from killing a stranger. People tend to value their immediate family very much more than they value strangers.
However, it seems a lot of these cases were people driving expensive luxury cars. For people with the incomes or wealth to afford those cars, is the cost difference enough to actually cause serious hardship for them or their family?
2. How does this work when the pedestrian is a foreigner, such as a tourist or a business traveler?
Do drivers know that (1) these people will have their medical bills taken care of by insurance or the national healthcare systems of their home countries, so there is no need to kill them, and (2) it would really piss off their home country, which would cause severe diplomatic pressure on China to seriously punish the driver?
3. Drivers certainly cannot count on always being able to finish off any pedestrian they hit. Why hasn't an insurance market sprung up to deal with the risk of disabling pedestrians?
[1] Note: "I can see how" is not meant to mean "I approve of". It is observational, not judgmental.
Thinking seems to be -- A car versus a pedestrian (or cyclist) unless a glancing blow is going to do a lot of damage to the ped/cyclist. Personal liability could be huge in the case of injury, much more so (potentially) than wrongful death.
We see this commonly in the Bay Area in motorist killing a cyclist, the criminal penalty (if any) is often not as severe as it should be.
(The above said, even when the motorist hits and the ped/cyclist survives, getting justice can be long and involved -- classic case is the Los Gatos/Los Altos business man who severely impacted a cyclist who was permanently injured -- http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20884491/saratoga-businessman-... )
I don't advocate such, just a story and some bay area experiences I remember.
I don't believe anyone enjoys killing there, however when it's tied with huge chunks of money, many of them will choose to kill instead of leaving a disabled human being on wheelchair keeping asking for lifelong financial support. It's indeed similar to the gun-shoot case in USA, either you don't pull the trigger, or you make sure the target is absolutely dead, that explains some victims have lots of gunshots on their body.
The law must be adapted to deal with this.
I see people here are generally sensible but also emotional. I don't have country level statistics related to these extreme behaviors. But people around me are all very kind and I know many having very high standard of morality. We're constantly chasing for the positive and good.
I'm surprised that wasn't explained in the article.
