Society isn’t perfect. It’s made up of flawed humans who have flawed ideas.
In theory, we do our best to enact fair laws, justice systems, rules, and helpful programs, but a brief glance around tells us that’s not always true.
There are way too many awful things society normalizes for them to all be accidents.
Society’s Flaws By Design
Many of the worst things society allows are by design. The rich and powerful create awful systems, then convince the rest of us they’re right with heavy propaganda.
These terrible ideas get normalized, then the plans get implemented. We all shrug our shoulders and say “Well, that’s the way it is” because that’s the way it HAS been, and we don’t have the energy (or desire) to change it.
The Most Messed Up Things Society Normalizes
Don’t believe me? See for yourself the terrible things society normalizes, and tell me there’s absolutely nothing we could do to change it if we wanted to.
Rich People Above the Law
Roman Samborskyi via Shutterstock.com.
The rich and powerful people get away with awful behavior and even crime because of their wealth or status.
The US is supposed to have equal justice for all, but in practice, it doesn’t work that way.
The current debacle with the Epstein files serves as a prime example. The justice system redacted the names of the rich and powerful while exposing the victims. Of the hundreds of accused, only two have ever seen the inside of a prison. And now, because the most powerful man in the country might be implicated, the Justice Department is saying “welp, we’re not gonna investigate.”
But that’s just the most recent example. Wherever we look, we can find instances where wealth or status helped someone escape the consequences of their actions.
Brock Turner, convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, was given a break because the judge didn’t want to hurt his prospects. Ethan Couch killed four people while driving, but was let off the hook because he was “too rich to understand.”
Society will never improve if we have two justice systems: one for the powerful and another for everyone else.
Disabled People in Poverty
The US system depends on workers contributing to the economy, so those who can’t work are pushed to the side and often end up in poverty.
The way we, as a society, treat the disabled is atrocious. We offer a pittance in disability benefits that barely allows a person to survive, much less thrive. And what’s even worse is that we include spousal income, so we punish the disabled for getting married.
Society punished the disabled at every turn, allowing companies to pay them less than minimum wage and pushing them into horrific care facilities, refusing to fund those facilities, and subsequently ignoring their existence.
I think a functioning society should be measured on how well we care for those unable to care for themselves, and that’s a metric we’re currently failing.
For-Profit Healthcare
America’s healthcare system is a disaster, making every list of horrible things about society.
People who need care are forced to decide between health and financial security. Medical bills account for nearly 40% of all bankruptcies, and about 14 million people have medical debt of over $1000. Nearly half of all Americans say they struggle to afford their healthcare costs.
Insurance Companies
But the problem isn’t the quality of healthcare. We’ve got the best doctors in the world and top-of-the-line technology.
The problem is the profit-driven insurance industry that sucks money away from healthcare professionals and the citizens needing care. Health insurance premiums cost a family $25,000 per year on average. That’s only $1000 less than the average cost of housing in 2025, according to our annual report on the cost of living. It’s outrageous.
Cutting the middleman out of healthcare would significantly reduce outcomes and decrease the cost for everyone involved.
Child Beauty Pageants
Parents dress their little girls up like adults, load their faces with make-up, and parade them around a stage showcasing their looks.
This gross spectacle sexualizes young kids and gives them a false impression that their worth is based solely on their physical appearance.
It’s a disgusting, misogynistic thing society allows, although a lot of people are waking up to how messed up it really is. We hope child beauty pageants fade into obscurity soon.
Civil Asset Forfeiture
A person must be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to be convicted of a crime, but the same standard doesn’t apply to property.
That means police can seize your stuff simply on suspicion that you may have gotten it illegally (or might be about to do something illegal with it).
Getting it back is nearly impossible, unless you have enough money to pay a lawyer to fight for you.
It’s crazy that society allows the police to steal our stuff with little oversight or recourse.
Horrible Prison Conditions
Society seems to think that imprisoned people deserve anything that happens to them, up to and including sexual assault.
We joke about the atrocities in prisons, never stopping to consider that we should try to rehabilitate people rather than traumatize them further.
And the worst part about it is that there’s a model for a better way. Denmark created a prison system focused on rehabilitation, and has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the world.
But we refuse to do that here, because we have a sick sense of justice and dehumanize prisoners. It’s one of the worst things our society allows.
Three Strikes Rule
It’s not just the awful prison system; it’s how people end up trapped in it for life.
“Tough on Crime” lawmakers instituted “three strikes” rules in cities around the country to lock people away for life. The theory goes that someone who’s committed a crime not once, not twice, but thrice, is incapable of rehabilitation. Therefore, they get harsher sentences, which often means a lifetime of imprisonment.
Usually, the law only applies to felonies, but when you remember that people can get slapped with a felony for drug addiction or tax evasion, you might realize that not all offenders deserve life in prison.
Treatment of Ex Cons
A final factor leading to repeat violations (and another horrible thing society normalizes) is the way we treat ex-cons.
If you have a felony on your record, good luck ever getting a meaningful job. You’re basically unemployable.
Someone who made a mistake when they were 20 and served their time can never improve their lot in life. They often go back to crime because it’s the only way to survive. Now they’ve committed three crimes because they had no other options, and they’re in jail for life.
We can do better.
Racism
The last really messed-up thing about our judicial system is the people who get caught up in it.
In 2023, Stanford Law published a study showcasing the disparity at every step. Black Americans are more likely to be arrested, denied reasonable bail, charged, convicted, and given higher sentences than white Americans.
But racism transcends the judicial system. It’s everywhere. Black-sounding names are less likely to get called in for interviews. Black customers are more likely to be followed around the store. Historically black schools are chronically underfunded.
Society allows it at every step, either by actively engaging in it or pretending it doesn’t exist at all.
The Nine to Five
The nine-to-five lifestyle is outdated, but society hasn’t kept up.
The nine-to-five worked during the Industrial Revolution and was far superior to the 18-hour workday people were forced into before.
However, with technological advances, we need to look past outdated systems and find ways to give people more balance.
Toxic Work Culture
American society normalized a toxic work culture, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Our friends in Europe have workers’ rights. They have 30 days of paid vacation, protections against layoffs and unjust firings, and unlimited sick leave.
They can’t get fired for getting sick and don’t have to work ungodly hours just to pay the bills.
Treating workers like replaceable cogs in a wheel is one of those messed-up things society normalized that we could easily fix.
Profit Above All
Our capitalistic system worships profits at the expense of all else. Workers and consumers both suffer to make room for further gains.
Workers make paltry wages and can barely afford life, while consumers pay ever-increasing prices for the things they need.
The only winners are the shareholders, who’ve extracted all the value and placed it firmly in their own pockets.
It will take a cultural shift to change our profit-driven society. We need the desire to prioritize people, families, and wellness over profit, but at the moment, that doesn’t seem high on our list.
Private Equity
Private equity firms buy beloved businesses, take out loans against them, destroy everything that made them good in a quest for short-term profits, then file for bankruptcy, leaving behind a broken shell while walking away with a big bucket of cash.
Some of our favorite businesses fell victim to private equity firms. Panera, while still limping along, isn’t worth visiting anymore. Red Lobster and Joanne Fabrics had to close hundreds of stores. Pizza Hut declined in quality so much that they’re now also closing a ton of restaurants.
It feels like there’s nothing we can do but watch our favorite places get destroyed.
Low Skill – No Living Wage
Vitaliy Abbasov via Shutterstock.com.
The minimum wage isn’t a living wage in most states. Society seems to think that people working these essential, low-skill jobs don’t deserve a living wage.
We need clerks, line cooks, janitors, busboys, retail workers, hotel maids, and all the other low-skill, low-wage positions. They’re vital to society’s proper functioning. Yet we refuse to pay them enough to live.
Far too many people say, “Well, get a better job,” but who would do these menial tasks if everyone in them got a better job? Society would cease to function.
We must acknowledge how much we need these workers and pay them enough to live. That starts with understanding that the original intent of the law, as passed by Franklin Roosevelt, was to pay everyone a living wage, despite what your propaganda channels tell you.
See what he really said for yourself:
“It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By “business” I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white-collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.”
Opinion vs. Truth
Our society values individualism so much that we give uninformed opinions just as much weight as scientific results.
In addition, we take what we hear from family, friends, and even social media as absolute truth without checking sources or verifying the facts.
It doesn’t help that “news” channels are now “opinion” channels that parade their opinions as fact, or that social media allows the most obnoxious voices to rise to the top.
As a result, the real truth gets buried under a sea of conjecture and misleading information, making it virtually impossible to determine what’s real and what’s not.
We could solve this by forcing companies with “news” in their name to stick to the facts, teaching critical thinking in schools, and regulating social media algorithms.
Parental Rights
I know I’m going to get a lot of flak for this one, but society allows parental rights to go too far.
One of the most messed up thing society normalizes is that a parent always has their kids’ best interests at heart. They don’t, and even when they do, they sometimes don’t really know what’s best.
We don’t dare question someone’s parenting unless they physically harm their child (and even then, we don’t do enough). We allow parents to sell their teenage daughters into marriage contracts with grown men (yes, child marriage is legal in the US with parental consent, and yes, the majority of child marriages are little girls to grown men). In addition, we let parents kill their kids for lack of medical care, because the adult’s personal beliefs on care trump the child’s right to treatment.
We allow parents to pull their kids out of school and “homeschool” them without any educational background. As a result, some kids reach high school and can’t even read. We also allow parents an unbalanced say in public school curricula, giving them the ability to limit what other kids learn in addition to what their own kids learn.
All of this falls under the “parental rights,” and it’s all child abuse. Children deserve human rights to education, freedom, and medical care. We shouldn’t allow parents to take these away.
Misogyny
When you hear about sexism and misogyny, you know it’s wrong, but it’s one of those things society normalizes so much that you don’t even realize it’s happening in your day-to-day life.
That women make less than men on average (and that men try to justify it), the disparity in household labor, the sexist jokes, that men think women talk more when they only talk 30% of the time, the constant belittling and interruptions, motherhood penalties, and the many examples of sexism women face every day prove misogyny still thrives.
We’ve just all normalized it so much that we don’t recognize it for what it is.
Money in Politics
One of the worst things society normalized over the years is money in politics. The Citizens United Supreme Court case decided that money = speech, and therefore, they can’t limit money in politics.
In effect, that means the rich and powerful can buy political leaders, who then craft policies that help them become even more rich and powerful.
Today, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people only works for rich people.
What Else Does Society Get Wrong?
Society is filled with people, so of course, it’s flawed and will get things wrong occasionally. Do you agree that these things need work, or do you think society got it right?
What do you think society gets wrong?