Barbarian

joined 2 years ago
[–] Barbarian 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Like most things law-related, it's more about enforcement than anything else. Things dramatically improved while our anti-corruption force was under the control of Laura Kovesi. She kicked some serious ass. Now things are treading water a bit, but Romania is not quite the kleptocratic corruptofest it was in the 90s. There's always improvements to be made ofc.

[–] Barbarian 5 points 6 months ago

If they get into an accident, or it's a spot check, or something like that they get breathalized.

[–] Barbarian 14 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Yup, exactly. Strictly 0.0. There are cases where people have lost their licenses after having one of those little chocolates with the rum-flavored fillings. This was a reaction to a huge wave of deaths due to DUIs.

[–] Barbarian 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

Cheaper? Maybe. Easier? No, not really. Ion Popescu from Bumfuck, Nowhere doesn't have the DNA breathing down his neck, watching for any signs of living outside his means and any unusual bank account activity.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not saying corruption doesn't happen. It does. I'm just saying it's not automatically much worse than juries.

[–] Barbarian 40 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

There's also the fact that appealing a judgement goes to more judges, always different than ones who have seen the case. Basically:

1st judgement -> 1 judge

1st appeal -> 2 different judges (must be unanimous)

2nd appeal -> 3 different judges (must be unanimous)

This makes corruption less common, as getting 6 different judges to all risk their career for a bribe is unlikely.

I'm not going to claim this system is perfect. There are issues with the fact that there is no mechanism for preventing enforcement of an unjust law. If it's on the books and it's an open-shut case, the law will be applied no matter how unjust it is. The inverse is also true though: you can't have unjust rulings that ignore laws the other direction, for example jury nullification of the murder of a black person (used to happen all the time in the US).

Like most things, it's a tradeoff. Some things are better, some are worse.

[–] Barbarian 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Did my comment need a /s on it?

Probably. Poe's law becomes firmer every day as vocal crazies become more and more outspoken.

[–] Barbarian 117 points 6 months ago (21 children)

Fun fact about our legal system: we don't do jury trials. The evidence and arguments are heard by the judge, who decides both guilty/not guilty and the sentence.

[–] Barbarian 50 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (11 children)

Sounds like he's still stuck in the 90s. The police used to be corrupt as all hell, but things have slowly improved. Most would probably take a kickback for something very minor, like drinking a beer in a park, but there's too many eyes on them for anything more major.

Just 2 months ago a guy I know came in from Italy, but didn't realize Romania has a zero tolerance policy on drunk driving. He had a single glass of wine and was driving. Police stopped him, asked if he'd been drinking, he said yes. Once he realized how much shit he was in, he tried to bribe them. They added that to the charges. He's now banned from driving in Romania (he had to get a pair of friends from Italy to come pick up his car), but they were nice enough to not cancel his driving license completely.

[–] Barbarian 18 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Not sure about the rest, but Romania does. Communism fucked us up in many ways, but a positive legacy is how enshrined unions are in law.

Companies can get legislated to oblivion if it turns out they tried to suppress a union. We have "codul muncii" (the labour code EDIT: Found a decent English translation if anyone's interested) which is a surprisingly readable government legal document that goes through exactly what rights you have and what obligations the company has towards you, as well as what legal incantations you need to do in which situations.

We have problems that spring up when both the workers and the company don't know how this works. Workers being taken advantage of, unaware how much power they have, and companies not realising it only takes one person to report them before very bad things start happening to them.

We also have 18 days national holiday, minimum 21 days PTO per year (2 weeks of this per year must be consecutive and the company gets punished if it isn't). Maternity leave is 126 days at 85% of your income (42 of it mandatory). These rules are fairly middle of the pack in Europe, nothing exceptional except the huge number of national holidays.

[–] Barbarian 6 points 6 months ago

Living next to a park is great. I do the same, except I've got my phone with me connected to teams. I can get back home on my computer in under 2 minutes if I need to.

[–] Barbarian 138 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

But seriously, are there really women who talk about men in those terms?

Yes. Personally, I see it as the mirror image of the "tradwife" thing where toxic men see their partner as a subservient maid. Seeing men as primarily an income source comes from a similar place imho.

[–] Barbarian 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It takes more than a few weeks to undo 14 years of damage. Negotiations have started for limited regulation alignment with the EU, the response to the race riots was decent, legislation is starting to go through.

Hold them to account, but I would recommend being fair about it.

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