One of the Anglo things that is commonly criticized in continental Europe is the judicial system. The complaint is usually formulated as "I wouldn't want to delegate the question of guilt to twelve randos that have no understanding of the law".
This is strawman of the position that it brings laicism into the law. But it is not only about understanding, it brings whole new baggage. There are things like emotional appeals and courtroom theater, there are issues with outside influences by pressure campaigns or even threats to jurors who did not select this as a career. There are issues with tribalism where jury plays favorites, there is a reason why Jim Crow juries is a term. Who knows how jury system will work in Somali communities. There is of course other stuff, we are far from 18th century and juries are there to decide complex fraud schemes, patent litigation and other stuff. It is not just about stealing groceries.
The biggest bonus is ability to insert local values, however this also works against you. If you are known in community as fraudster by hearsay, then good luck. The biggest advantage is extra check on judiciary corruption, however it is also double edged sword as there is no written deliberation of their verdicts and it introduces system uncertainty. This also provides incentive toward frivolous litigation - what if you randomly get a "good jury" and make some free money? Even better if you strike gold and you are sympathetic victim against nameless corporation or goblin like Alex Jones, then you can get 1.4 billion in damages for defamation, basically using the judicial system as class defining wealth transfer.
Average gross margins for grocery stores in NYC is 1,6% on total revenue of around $50 billion a year. The proposed stores should offer unachievable 30% discount with revenue of around $50 million, one thousandth of overall grocery store market volume. It cannot work for a problem at hand, it is not designed to do it.
If he is smart, then he will offer some selected number of discounted goods with limited volume per person as with normal shops, who use this promo tactic to attract buyers. He can then make photo ops of happy customers, while the rest of the store will be competitively priced in order to prevent empty shelves and related PR disaster. It will work splendidly for the main purpose: generate positive PR and reward people in his circle who will be involved in this money hog.
The jury came up with the final number, they could have said it is $100k per family. Claimants originally asked for $550 million - a dollar for each view of the video. Why a dollar? Because it is nice number, there is no history behind it, there is no calculation or anything. It just sounds nice and reasonable. This is by the way a common practice in jury system, where you provide a psychological anchor for jury, so you massage them toward maximum payout.
The jury then just said - fuck it, Jones will pay almost three times that number, because why not? He is a stupid evil goblin. Or maybe it was something else and jury came up with some novel idea of how to calculate these punitive damages as $2.54 per view, or maybe they used a different key. We will never know because jury does not have to explain shit.
Sympathetic victims, goblin perpetrator who is crazy enough not to even defend properly and good jury is what is key to get class defining payout. By the way the verdict also stipulates that 50% of Jones income is to be transferred to victims indefinitely despite not even being sentenced for criminal activity without ability to go bankrupt. So he became something akin to debt slave by this. That is exactly how the jury system works.
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