Moving on, the actual reasonable conclusion here is to be smarter about what we deem a criminal act or not.
Why is getting caught smoking a joint something that can ruin your career for a decade, while drinking a beer on the sidewalk is a wrist-slap?
Minor fine goes unpaid because this month the electric bill is more important.
Leads to more fines.
Leads to license suspencion.
Leads to driving while license suspended.
Leads to license suspension.
Leads to driving while license suspended.
Leads to felony jail time.
Don't get me wrong, there are choices made at each stage of escalation, and often all that's needed is to show up to court, dressed in your sunday best and respectfully explain situation to the judge, and the chain can be broken, but being poor leads to a lot of suboptimal decisions that could make it difficult or impossible to deal with any of this until there is no choice, and a felony conviction often ends up as the escalation that can't be putoff any longer.
There is no evidence that's true. People still take drugs in countries with the death penalty.
Of course, some people are so selfish and impulsive not much will deter them, but at least they're off the streets where they can make life miserable for the rest of us.
But for the sake of argument, let's say you shutter your car. You can spend a ton of time walking to, and waiting on, public buses, time you can't use to study for a degree, or be with your kids. Maybe you rely on a friend's car, but then you miss out on last-minute shift opportunities, and your friend's transport problems become your problems, too, so if they're sick, you miss a shift and risk getting fired.
You're so out-of-touch, I'm surprised you didn't just say "Let them Uber to work, then."
This is standard HN moderation. When a subthread veers away from the original topic and also toward something more generic or ideological, we moderate the subthread as off topic. That caveat is important, since off-topic tangents can also be whimsical and sometimes more interesting than the original discussion. But on HN, 'generic' and 'interesting' are incompatible, and the generic stuff tends to take over the concrete if you let it (+10x when the material is flammable). Therefore we don't let it.
But you're welcome here if you can argue your point instead of throwing out one-liners.
I'm sorry what alternative are you offering? We live in a society where driving is most necessary for those who can least afford it. I think you may grossly misunderstand how difficult life is for people struggling to get by.
You are right, that poor choices can lead someone to a scenario where there are no good choices though. Most of this chain can be broken by just taking some time to take care of their life, but that is not always as simple as it sounds. Right now I personally have societal+familial+work obligations that total 17+hrs daily and I'm lucky to get 6hrs sleep, 3 uninterrupted. I am not poor, and I'm lucky to have a very flexible job, so I could take time to deal a minor fine so it didn't escalate past early court escalations, but I'm not sure I'd be able to trivially take time off to deal with a court appearance if I had a more demanding job, I don't have a lot of flexibility elsewhere to borrow from.
Never forget that it's easy to judge someone's actions from outside, but in their same mental state and reality constraints, you may make the same decisions.
(Regardless of which nation, obviously.)