This blog was inspired by a video by Innuendo Studios

Justice does not exist as a machine

I’ve noticed that there is an unspoken idea across our society that justice is a system that must be followed. The belief in this idea is that, when the system of justice is followed, we can arrive at an ethical outcome regardless of the situation. I call these systems “Justice Machines”, and they are prevalent everywhere.

For example, when trying to find out where we should eat between two restaurants, we might want to vote on which one the group prefers. This is an example of how people tend to view and use Justice Machines:

Any Situation -> Justice Machine -> Acceptable Outcome. 

There are dozens of supposed Justice Machines in the world; “Free Press”, “Online Town Hall/Twitter”, “Presidential Debates”, or the “Judicial System”. Each one has a role to play, but each one can be hijacked and broken.

More importantly, each justice machine can be broken in the same way: By groups not participating in the machine. For example, neither Trump or Biden chose to participate in any primary debates during the lead-up to the 2024 election.

When I was in high school, there were a set of debates between Obama and other potential presidents during the 2012 primaries. I distinctly remember them because I argued why we were viewing the debates during our class, given that Obama was going to win. Despite my opposition, the entire class watched the debates because they wanted to hear the future democratic presidential candidate speak and articulate his viewpoints.

The primary debates are an important system of justice that allows the American people to view the candidates of their party and act as a safety check to make sure the best possible individual is elected to the most important post in the government. By not participating in these debates, the current candidates are breaking this justice machine, and forcing us not to evaluate other potential candidates for the role.

For more on why these Justice Machines exists and how they’re abused, please watch Innuendo Studio’s youtube video.

Restarting a Justice Machine

There is no point in restarting a broken justice machine.

Justice Exists Outside a Machine

These “Justice Machines” have to be treated as dams. In the same way dams control the flow of water to provide us with energy to make our lives easier and control water flow to make us safer, Justice Machines provide value to our society by making the process of an ethical decision easier for us to understand and ensuring that bad actors are exposed during the process.

But when a dam breaks, building a new dam doesn’t just fix everything instantly, you need to deal with the flood that was caused. For our society, as these “Justice Machines” are breaking, we need to understand that we can’t just go back to our old systems after times has passed.

“The next generation of presidential candidates will participate in debates” are the words of an idiot.

Now that two candidates have shown the presidential primaries are not a requirement to be elected, there’s no incentive for them to ever again participate. If Mr. Beast decides to run for president, it would be idiotic of him to bother with the primary process given that he has infinitely greater reach and goodwill than his opponents thanks to his Youtube channel than a debate would every give him.

As a society, we have two options to move forward once these machines have been broken:

• Fix Them
• Abandon Them and Pick a New One

If the American people truly believed in value of primary debates, Donald Trump should have been delisted as a candidate from every single ballot. Even if he was listed, he should have never been elected by the people of the US for skipping the debates.

This is not what has happened. Therefore, we as a society need to abandon the idea of presidential primary debates before they are further broken by other candidates in the future. Instead, we can leverage platforms such as Podcasts/Youtube/Tiktok to invite candidates to participate in process that allow them to speak with the voter through already trusted content creators.