Assorted Problems

Here are some issues that I feel are a huge drain on society. It's not a complete list and it's not ordered in any way.

Lack of respect for nature and other people. Stealing, vandalizing, littering, dumping chemicals, cutting trees without replacing them, all these things make our entire nation a little bit poorer one disrespectful act at a time. Our attitude should be to preserve and improve the world, not lash out in anger or damage it out of laziness or greed.

Unwillingness to let other people suffer the consequences of their own actions or inactions. If you want to help, that's great, but don't make slaves of good people to help lazy or unfit people. By this I mean that taxing everyone to provide free food, clothing, and housing for a few people who refuse to work is very unfair. Very few people have a legitimate disability that prevents them from doing anything useful at all. Those people need to be cared for by their own families, not by the taxes of everyone else. And if they don't have families, and absolutely zero value to anyone, why do they deserve to live on the backs of everyone else? When we make such a system possible (as it is today) then a lot of people find reasons why they can't work, and this class of freeloaders grows as large as the rest of society can support.  Too many people have seen the case of the food-stamp shopper who talks on a nice new cell phone and drives a nice new car, and this is an injustice to everyone who was forced to pay for those food stamps with their taxes. Therefore helping the poor must be the work of charities, not government.

Overprotection of criminals. We treat even the most violent criminals to free room, free food, free education, free medical care, and free entertainment. Except for being confined to the prison,  we give them rights just as if they were free people, and that's not fair. They are in prison as punishment for their crimes, it must not be healthy, delicious, or enjoyable. So we must ensure that non-criminals aren't sent to prison. Prison isn't suitable for people who only violated the law, who hurt someone unintentionally, or who paid reparations for what they damaged or stole. Prison is for people who intentionally hurt other people and can't or won't pay the damages. Prison should be slavery. Prison time should have a rate at which we value the work done by prisoners and credit it toward their reparations. When the reparations are fully paid the inmate can be released after some counseling to live a non-violent life and to comply with the law. Reparations are possible for everything but the most violent and permanent of crimes - murder and rape. The work done by prisoners should be valuable and pay for the costs of their imprisonment, with excesses going into a fund that will be used to pay reparations to the victims faster, or to fund law enforcement and judicial activities. Extreme care must be taken so that the role of the jury in convicting criminals is not undermined by a desire to increase production in prisons. Prisoners must never work in cooking or baking; their food should be prepared by free citizens to serve as a reminder that it is society that is keeping them alive there and also for food security.

Misinterpretation of the constitution. The constitution isn't perfect but some things are clearly widely misinterpreted. The right to assemble and the right to free speech are meant to protect people's political rights. I don't believe for a second that the founder George Washington would have let the crazy Westboro Baptist Church protest with their hateful and idiotic messages at the funerals of his Soldiers. It's a crime, they are hurting the mourners. Free (political) speech is only intended to protect people from being arrested only for voicing displeasure with the government. That is not at all the same as the right to say anything, anywhere, to anybody; especially not the same as this church group desecrating funerals to promote a hateful homophobic message.

Injustice.  If a poor or middle class man steals $50,000 from someone, or robs a bank at gunpoint, when he is caught he would definitely spend some time in jail and if he still has the capability to earn an income he may be ordered to pay it back.  If a network of banks and brokers steals billions of dollars from the American public by rigging the bond bidding system, when they are caught some junior executives are fined and the banks are fined but only for a fraction of the amount for which they defrauded the public, and the rest is never paid back and the banks are allowed to continue to operate and do business with the government and receive more public money.  When the largest insurance company made bad investment decisions that should have caused it to go out of business, the government gave it large amounts of money as a "bail out" to prevent it from crashing. Yet the government doesn't bail out any of the thousands of small businesses that close every year due to not being profitable. That is a huge injustice. If an individual is hurt by circumstances involving a business, and the business is held liable for all of the damage even though some of the fault clearly was with the individual, and the business is fined for millions of dollars in damages more than the actual damage done just to make a point, that is also a huge injustice.  Justice is not prejudiced against the rich or the poor. Justice must be created one case at a time. There may be some guidelines about what is justice but the facts of the case are everything. The courts may be doing a good job in general on small cases but there are far too many large cases that end up with injustice, and that is causing a feeling of unrest in the public.