40 People Share What Horrible Things That Happen In Society Are Completely Legal
Interview With Author
No matter how you spin things, life is fundamentally unfair. Many people recognize that not everything that's legal is moral. But changing society and its laws for the better is an uphill struggle. Though you can strive to empower everyone and create more equality, it’s a long and arduous process.
Redditor u/custom_dream sparked an important discussion when they asked people to share their thoughts about the horrible things that happen that are “100% legal.” Their answers were eye-opening. Scroll down to see what these internet users believe must be changed in society ASAP.
Bored Panda got in touch with the author of the thread, Reddit user u/custom_dream, to learn more about the inspiration behind their thread and to get their thoughts on the problems plaguing society. Check out our interview with them below.
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People dying because they can't afford necessary medication.
Medical neglect of children because of a parent's religion
Companies bragging about record profits yet giving no more than 2% raises.
I would make companies give shares to their employees so that they can get payouts like shareholders. Minimum 51% shareholdership for workers. The workers CAN own the means of production!
Bored Panda reached out to redditor u/custom_dream and they were kind enough to answer our questions and share their opinion on the discussion that they started.
When asked what the inspiration for their thread was, the internet user told us that it was "just curiosity."
"I am very interested in watching online videos of people committing crimes and being caught and arrested/indicted for them," they explained to us.
"It was appealing to me to find out activities that look illegal but aren't," they said.
Women and girls being forced to give birth.
And once born they're not important anymore, mother and child can drop dead.
Members of Congress can commit securities fraud, mortgage fraud, insider trading, take bribes and become multi-millionaires without being investigated or charged for anything.
Members of the House can use the Power of the Purse to intentionally shut down the government as political leverage and still get paid themselves, while withholding the paychecks of 4 million federal employees until their unpopular demands are met halfway.
"Family" Youtubers/ Instagramers. Using your kids for views.
I'll always click up on kitties, puppies, piglets, baby bats, but I will never understand the kids. Unless they're goat kids. That I get.
Meanwhile, we were interested in getting the thread author's opinion on what they believe should be changed in society as soon as possible.
"Specifically the US society needs to be more tolerant of different opinions," u/custom_dream told Bored Panda.
They added that they believe the American people should also "apply more critical thinking to everyday life and politics."
The redditor was realistic about the ability to create a perfectly fair society in the future.
"In theory it is possible. Whether we can achieve that right now in the US with current conditions, I believe that to be very unlikely," they said.
Every law and loophole that makes rich people pay less taxes, while those laws hit harder on non rich people
Tax on capital is usually _much_ lower than tax on income. This needs to change.
To me, one of the worst is the way the elderly are treated. Especially when it comes to the costs associated with having to go into a nursing home. An entire lifetime of savings will be sucked away by the government, family homes confiscated. And all that after a lifetime of work and contributing to the economy.
The final slap, it seems, is the outrageous cost of funerals and burials. It just seems insane to me. We can’t even die without someone making profit from it. And when you’re alive, it costs money just to exist.
A friend of my mother's spent the money she got off of selling her home on seeing a few primary school friends in Australia, Canada and elsewhere. She had been widow a few years, her kids have good jobs, and she decided to spend it on herself now rather than having to pay it to a nursing home if she ever needed it. ( Over here they are subsidised exept if you have money of yourself over a certain amount.) She's a legend : had not flown before and did it by herself in her seventies.
When you start thinking about all the numerous inequalities that plague society, you can easily end up feeling demotivated, disempowered, or drowning in anger. And while these reactions are perfectly normal, constantly living with them could negatively affect your quality of life. So it becomes important to shift your perspective a bit.
Try to reframe things so that you focus on what you can change instead of constantly obsessing about everything that’s wrong with the world. Taking action and making the world better one small step at a time is miles better than just venting about unfairness.
As psychologist Sherrie Bourg Carter, Psy.D., put it in a blog post on Psychology Today, viewing yourself as a victim isn’t helpful because it keeps you in the past and makes you feel powerless. “Bad things happen every day, but humans can be quite resilient. By stepping out of the victim mindset and viewing yourself as a survivor, you may find it easier to move forward and play an active role in creating a new outlook for yourself,” she says.
Lobbying. It's legally sanctioned bribery
Edit: By "lobbying" I specifically mean corporations giving politicians large sums of money to sway their vote. I agree that there should be a more specific word for it.
A lot more is ’legal’ if you have money
just now was i introduced to the fact that rich people literally don't have to follow the rules. Laws are there to hurt the poor.
For profit prisons.
It’s also healthy to be aware of the nuances in life, instead of seeing everything as purely black or white. Yes, there is a lot of unfairness in society that can be incredibly frustrating. However, it is not just doom, gloom, and evil that you’ll find in the world. Positive and negative events constantly interweave in society.
“Even if nothing negative is happening in your own life, tragic, depressing stories are rampant in the media,” writes Bourg Carter. “That's not to suggest that you should bury your head in the sand and ignore current events, or pretend that bad things don't happen. They clearly do. However, in reality, what we hear and see on the news and the unfairness that happens in our personal lives are typically outliers in a world of mostly positive, kind, and pleasant interactions.”
Pretty much everything related to health insurance
Just spent half a day dealing with my health insurance company because they assigned me a PCP in a completely different city. American health insurance is so broken.
The psychologist urges people to think of the times when others were supportive and kind to them. She also points out that good experiences often outweigh the bad for most people, however, it is “more common to dwell on the bad than to celebrate the good.”
As we’ve mentioned on Bored Panda before, many people are raised to believe that life is perfectly fair or, well, at least that it should be. However, no matter how much we strive, we cannot change the world in a heartbeat. Real change takes generations of dedicated work to achieve, and you have to be realistic about this. Instead of thinking just about fairness, it might be a good idea to focus on becoming more resilient so that we can weather what life throws at us better.
Pharma companies posting record profits while many struggle to afford medications.
some jobs will force you to use vacation time if you're sick because they think sick pay is too much. catch Covid? hope you weren't planning to do anything else the rest of the year cause that time's gone!
only in America here in the UK if your sick your sick you dont get a certain number of days if its for long time you might need a doctors note but you get paid still
Dumping raw sewage into the ocean.
Dumping raw sewage in to a fresh water supply is much worse and, yeah that's a thing.
Tax laws being so friendly for millionaires and billionaires
Stupid high prices for everything (food, house, gas, medicine, etc.) despite being the same s****y quality.
I hear this a lot from idiots who don't know how money works but blame Biden for some reason.
If you get pulled over for a routine traffic stop and it's somehow discovered that you're carrying large amounts of cash. Full legal tender American cash, even with a full paper trail as to where you got it and what you intend to do with it. Even in amounts around $100. They can label it as "suspicious" and simply seize it from you. If you fight ridiculously hard, you can USUALLY get MOST of it back, and the rest goes directly to them. They can legally take your money and keep it simply because you have it. I can't believe this isn't talked about more.
It's called civil forfeiture. "...civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime [so not the person, GA]. To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity..." - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States
Spousal abuse is still legal in many places. (Russia for instance)
Unfortunately, it goes together with the fact that it is not rape if it happens in marriage. In Finland it became a punishable crime only in 1994. Sick.
People dying because they don't have the money to get into a hospital or acquire their basic necessities.
Homelessness.
People working full time jobs but being unable to provide even basic necessities to themselves and their families.
People being so rich compared to the average that they could never hope to spend all the money that they have accumulated, while the former 2 exist at all.
i work a full time job and earn a pretty decent monthly wage but i live with my parents because i simply cant afford to live by myself
Politicians trading stocks, ETFs, options or whatever, using inside information.
Edit:typo
Routinue infant circumcision. Lets not to surgery on babies' genitals so they look better to us. Its so easy to not do that.
If an adult wants to be circumcised, that's their business and their *business*.
Price gouging. "Hey, just so you're more aware that we're all feeling the hurt of inflation, we're raising your monthly bill by 20%."
The fact that for-profit medical industries and the concept of health "insurance" exist.
Also for-profit utilities, schools, and prisons.
At least 97 current members of Congress bought or sold stock, bonds or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or a dependent child…
I see no problen with those who REPORT it. But for them who don't : they should be kicked out AND fined. And if they can't/ won't pay : emprisoned.
Turning a blind eye to crimes that happen in a prison. I believe that’s a type of cruel punishment.
Family vlogging (specifically families with children). It should straight up be illegal to do, you're trading your children's privacy for profit and all the while they have no say in the matter and they won't get a single cent from the revenue once they're old enough to ask for it.
Time and time again we see child actors grow up with horrific trauma that was inflicted on them from the industry - the trauma from having to be the breadwinner as a CHILD is enough honestly, but then you add on the s**t we know they go through too. And that's and industry that's at least somewhat regulated (not regulated well mind you but it's *something*). What the fuckdo we think children of family and mommy vloggers are going through?
IMAGINE being presented with having a camera pointed at you 24/7 by your own caregivers, who willingly put your face, name, and most intimate moments on the internet for anyone to find and use against you AS A CHILD - all the while knowing that you're the reason your family gets to put food on the table and that if you say you don't want to vlog your life anymore it's on YOU for removing the income source.
It's f*****g hellish.
I always thought influencers were bad - how weak-minded do you have to be to have someone tell you what to wear, what to listen to, what to think. But then Vloggers that prank their children hopefully have reserved a special layer in Hell, just for them. What they do is abuse, not entertainment. And it's allowed to happen.
We got people making slave wages for companies boasting about record profits
These c***s realize the 99% peasants are too busy about dumb s**t so they keep robbing the people that keep them rich
Divide and Rule is the game: claim that it's the immigrant's fault that your wages are so bad, not the greedy management and shareholders. Conglomeration is also a part of this because there is nowhere near enough competition in the marketplace(s).
Watch the Telemarketers documentary. People can call you, claim they're raising money for the police, and keep 90% of it. Or even lie and say they are police officers.
There are still states where the age where a girl can legally marry is LOWER than the age of consent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_age_in_the_United_States
I wish the "men" who marry them got punished for rape of a minor if they ever get pregnant.
Social media & influencers being accessible to teens & kids.
Middle-management treating employees like s**t to meet their own needs.
"Needs" ??? You mean whims I think. Or is compensating for low self-esteem a medical necessity ?
Note: this post originally had 41 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
Literally 80% of these apply to USA. The rest of the world HAS legislated against a lot of this.
What bothers me the most is shows like Live PD (now On Patrol Live) and shows that follow ambulances and fire trucks. Unless the laws specifically state that you HAVE to get consent to show faces, they show your face without consent. For things that arent even illegal, like catching people having sex in their cars or people getting pulled over going to work and have a dildo in the car. The cameraman zooms in on the dildo, zooms on their face, then zooms on the Amazon name tag. They show children without the parent's consent. They show DV victims. One time they showed a rape victim. It's so wrong. And when people ask why they are being filmed the police say, "it's a documentary, don't worry about it." No it's NOT a documentary. You are getting away with this by claiming it's all live news but then lying to people who ask why they are being filmed? Because you are ruining their lives 100 times worse then just getting arrested. Live PD was in my county 10 years ago and TWICE I refused to call the police because I didn't want anyone to see we were living in a campground with a baby. Our camper caught on fire on Thanksgiving and we put it out ourselves before there was any damage beyond the stove, and the second time my daughter locked me out. I walked outside and she locked the door behind me and was too little too understand I needed her to unlock it. Finally, my husband got home with a key, but both times calling 911 was NOT an option. I couldn't bear the thought of being broadcasted live across America but mostly throughout my own town. Read the book When She Woke by Hillary Jordan. It's REALLY good. About people getting their skin dyed different colors for committing crimes (red is abortion and murder) and when the main character is in prison for abortion, people watch the cells on live TV 24/7 and I fear we are moving in that direction.
These are all awful. Let me just add how amazingly awful the VA medical system is. I had a simple problem that got delayed treatment for 5 years. Yes, the American taxpayers are on the hook for more than 75k when it could have been solved for 5 k. Plus 5k per er visit as prescribed by the VA instead of taking care of it while I'm standing in the clinic. My cost to you is over 500k at this point. You're welcome.
Another one that cracks me up - Phone Spam. I don't recall when I got an SMS that wasn't just spam advertising from places I never even heard of. What's worst? My country passed a law against spammed commercials. You know what's the exception? Politics. Politicians can you spam freely and it's perfectly legal. It's almost like whomever passed the laws were politicians.
I hope guns (for civilians) is on there. It just doesn't seem to matter how many people are murdered, does it?
Children in advertising. Children don't realise that there's a difference between lying to friends and lying to several million people. There are reasons we have child labour laws, and this is one of them. For a paltry one day's pay, they may be stuck with having to wear a disguise for the rest of their life.
After the very first one I knew this entire string was gonna get my blood boiling... still, I continued on lol
Literally 80% of these apply to USA. The rest of the world HAS legislated against a lot of this.
What bothers me the most is shows like Live PD (now On Patrol Live) and shows that follow ambulances and fire trucks. Unless the laws specifically state that you HAVE to get consent to show faces, they show your face without consent. For things that arent even illegal, like catching people having sex in their cars or people getting pulled over going to work and have a dildo in the car. The cameraman zooms in on the dildo, zooms on their face, then zooms on the Amazon name tag. They show children without the parent's consent. They show DV victims. One time they showed a rape victim. It's so wrong. And when people ask why they are being filmed the police say, "it's a documentary, don't worry about it." No it's NOT a documentary. You are getting away with this by claiming it's all live news but then lying to people who ask why they are being filmed? Because you are ruining their lives 100 times worse then just getting arrested. Live PD was in my county 10 years ago and TWICE I refused to call the police because I didn't want anyone to see we were living in a campground with a baby. Our camper caught on fire on Thanksgiving and we put it out ourselves before there was any damage beyond the stove, and the second time my daughter locked me out. I walked outside and she locked the door behind me and was too little too understand I needed her to unlock it. Finally, my husband got home with a key, but both times calling 911 was NOT an option. I couldn't bear the thought of being broadcasted live across America but mostly throughout my own town. Read the book When She Woke by Hillary Jordan. It's REALLY good. About people getting their skin dyed different colors for committing crimes (red is abortion and murder) and when the main character is in prison for abortion, people watch the cells on live TV 24/7 and I fear we are moving in that direction.
These are all awful. Let me just add how amazingly awful the VA medical system is. I had a simple problem that got delayed treatment for 5 years. Yes, the American taxpayers are on the hook for more than 75k when it could have been solved for 5 k. Plus 5k per er visit as prescribed by the VA instead of taking care of it while I'm standing in the clinic. My cost to you is over 500k at this point. You're welcome.
Another one that cracks me up - Phone Spam. I don't recall when I got an SMS that wasn't just spam advertising from places I never even heard of. What's worst? My country passed a law against spammed commercials. You know what's the exception? Politics. Politicians can you spam freely and it's perfectly legal. It's almost like whomever passed the laws were politicians.
I hope guns (for civilians) is on there. It just doesn't seem to matter how many people are murdered, does it?
Children in advertising. Children don't realise that there's a difference between lying to friends and lying to several million people. There are reasons we have child labour laws, and this is one of them. For a paltry one day's pay, they may be stuck with having to wear a disguise for the rest of their life.
After the very first one I knew this entire string was gonna get my blood boiling... still, I continued on lol
