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CelestialScribe posted:Is there any circumstance where you think the state has a right to compel someone to take part in a particular action? Yes, but that doesn't mean I want them to have the power to do it routinely. In the same sense that I do not object to the death penalty, but I absolutely do not think it should be an option in the justice system because the capacity for it to be misapplied is far greater than the probability of it being properly used. If you kill like a hundred people (or engage in actively likely to lead to the death or immiseration of large numbers of people  ) I absolutely think you should be shot or hanged or something, but that happens so rarely that having the death penalty be an option for the everyday judicial system that does not normally deal with mass murderers is stupid and means you're going to be executing people for things they shouldn't be executed for. Similarly I do not think the creation of a class of people with the previously described power over others is a good idea because the existence of that power invites its use, and I think the instances where it is absolutely necessary to use it are far rarer than the instances where it will be misused.So, just as I think people can get together to chop the head off tyrants and kings when necessary without an everyday legal framework for doing it, so I think people can organize use of force when necessary without making a full time force monopolizing organization. It is not a thing that should be routine, and creating people who do it day in day out and who you can call to do it for you, makes it routine. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 05:03
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OwlFancier posted:Yes, but that doesn't mean I want them to have the power to do it routinely. In the same sense that I do not object to the death penalty, but I absolutely do not think it should be an option in the justice system because the capacity for it to be misapplied is far greater than the probability of it being properly used. Isn't compelling someone to attend, say, a rehabilitation program for anger management, etc, a use of state-based force? Or are you saying there is literally no circumstance where you think the state has a right to tell someone what to do? I'm just trying to understand the bounds of your worldview here.
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Sep 25, 2020 05:06
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I think if you have to compel someone to do that by arresting them and marching them to the anger management course then the anger management course probably isn't going to make them less angry, on balance. I'm reminded of the last terror attack on London Bridge, the guy had a knife and was attacking people, and he was wrestled to the ground by members of the public. Then the police turned up, cleared the people who were holding him away, and shot him in the head repeatedly while he was on the ground. I don't personally think that was an improvement. I think random members of the public were able to organize a better response than the police. If they'd had a bit longer they might have restrained him (justifiably) and he might have been able to stand trial or something. But no now he's dead and terrorism is still just a thing we can only respond to by having the police shoot people in the head, never ask why it happens, just shoot people in the head.
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Sep 25, 2020 05:16
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OwlFancier posted:I think if you have to compel someone to do that by arresting them and marching them to the anger management course then the anger management course probably isn't going to make them less angry, on balance. I understand what you're saying. At the same time, things happen, right? Accidents happen and things happen, even when we live in a society where we spend more money focused on the root causes of problems. I'm thinking about, say, a guy who drives drunk and kills someone. In the society you're outlining in your posts, what I hear you saying is, the benefits of not having a state-backed force far outweight the negative consequences of that guy going free. Is that a fair summary of your view?
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Sep 25, 2020 05:43
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The implicit assumption that he would face 0 consequence whatsoever kinda suggests you haven't read a goddamn word of this thread
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Sep 25, 2020 06:11
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Harold Fjord posted:The implicit assumption that he would face 0 consequence whatsoever kinda suggests you haven't read a goddamn word of this thread There are some people in this thread who want to abolish the police, and then replace the police with various services and (some) armed forces who could be deployed if necessary. OwnFancier is not one of those people - they are explicitly saying that they reject a state apparatus that would do that. So I'm asking them questions and trying to understand his point of view here. I also didn't say the drunk driver would face no consequences, but that he would go free ie. he wouldn't be retained in custody. I also asked if that was a fair assumption about OwnFancier's view, because I'm trying to understand what they're bringing to the table. So, kindly gently caress off. If you'd like to provide a view about your ideal society would look like post-police, I'd be happy to read that. Until then, shut the gently caress up. CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 06:23
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CelestialScribe posted:I'm thinking about, say, a guy who drives drunk and kills someone. In the society you're outlining in your posts, what I hear you saying is, the benefits of not having a state-backed force far outweight the negative consequences of that guy going free. That's an interesting choice of example given that drink driving is primarily prevented by a cultural shift towards not finding it acceptable rather than drunk drivers being punished after the fact or cops proactively looking for drunk drivers. If you have done things like public information campaigns to create the social unacceptability of drink driving, given people access to alternative modes of transport that don't involve them driving at all, worked to discourage heavy drinking, and someone still drives drunk they can still lose their license and I'm gonna bet a lot of people won't want much to do with them afterwards. If the objective is to stop them from doing it again I don't think police really have much to do with that, or the prevention to begin with. If you just want a bit of blood in return I'm sure you can organize your own angry mob.
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Sep 25, 2020 15:55
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OwlFancier posted:If you just want a bit of blood in return I'm sure you can organize your own angry mob. 
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Sep 25, 2020 16:00
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That is meant to be disparaging of the idea that you should want that, in case it wasn't clear. Because the guy keeps going on about the need to "punish" everything and for some reason describes anger management as a punishment, presumably with the notion that the point of an anger management course is that the person attending it should dislike it rather than it should have a positive impact on their future conduct. I am not particularly of the opinion that moving the bloodshed into dedicated facilities and professions like cops and prisons and giving it legal protection is necessarily a reduction in brutality given that, as I stated, making these things routine and part of people's job description and keeping them out of sight makes them much easier to do. You don't have to get your hands dirty, you can just have the cops do it and rest easy knowing that someone, somewhere, is suffering, and that's all that really matters. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 16:02
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OwlFancier, it seems like your arguments imply that the threat of being caught or being punished either doesn't act as a deterrent at all. Have you read anything that supports that claim? I'm definitely not an expert, but it definitely seems from just some light reading around that while things like lengthy prison sentences or the death penalty are lovely deterrents, it's pretty generally well accepted that having a high likelihood of getting caught is a pretty effective deterrent. Like I said though, that's just from memory and a pretty quick search around the internet, but that seems to be a pretty important part of what everyone is arguing about.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:39
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enki42 posted:OwlFancier, it seems like your arguments imply that the threat of being caught or being punished either doesn't act as a deterrent at all. Have you read anything that supports that claim? I'm definitely not an expert, but it definitely seems from just some light reading around that while things like lengthy prison sentences or the death penalty are lovely deterrents, it's pretty generally well accepted that having a high likelihood of getting caught is a pretty effective deterrent. Maybe you’re misunderstanding, restorative justice and rehabilitation have been shown repeatedly to provide better results than any form of “deterrence”. I think it’s on you to prove that the current methods provide adequate results, half remembered information and google searches that back up your biases don’t really seem like a good standard. Just to be clear you’re asking him to prove a negative, that “fear of getting caught” doesn’t work. I think the fact that crime rates are significantly higher than other first world nations is proof enough that our system is broken.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:44
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You could have an investigation office without an enforcement component, conceivably. But broadly I don't trust the police to "catch" anyone who is likely to wrong me anyway, they're dogshit at responding to personal crime. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/23/crime-figures-theft-decriminalised-police-fail-pursue-prosecutions/ quote:The failure of the police to successfully pursue criminals emerged as Lord Stevens, the former Metropolitan Police commissioner, warned the latest crime figures exposed a “perfect storm” of rising offences and falling prosecutions overall. The police already don't catch people the overwhelming majority of the time, so what are they for? What prevents crime? Because it certainly doesn't seem to be the cops. And what could address wrongs after they are done? Because again, the cops apparently can't. What they can do, however, is maintain a standing force of assholes willing to crack skulls when there's protests on or re-enact the charge of the light brigade into the nearest traffic light. And while the latter is funny (if you ignore the people the horse trampled afterwards) I don't think that is a valuable contribution to the areas of society I live in. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:58 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 16:45
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I can't really imagine an societal framework that, at its base, doesn't rely on the threat of violence to deal with people who steadfastly refuse to operate on its terms. If someone is a threat to the well-being of others, and won't respond to attempts to resolve whatever issues are causing them to do so, then the only options are to forcibly restrain, eject, or kill them. That said, these are extreme edge cases; arguably the first purpose of society is the establishment of systems for conflict resolution and resource distribution that minimize the need for violence and, done properly, there is very little call for force. This is where the police fail: they don't exist to prevent crime, they exist to punish and intimidate the enemies of capital. The fact is, crime prevention begins a long way from law enforcement. With proper welfare and employment programs, such that everyone has what they need and a reasonable amount of what they want, you end up with a whole lot less low-level theft, burglary, scams, mugging, and other financially motivated blue collar crime. Easily accessible and free therapy, medication, and mediation programs would do more to prevent violence and crime of revenge or passion than any number of police could; throw in proper regulation on firearms and other weapons to improve things further. Legalization and regulation of sex workers and reasonable contraband breaks up the most profitable avenues for organized crime. Free taxi services, addiction counselling, and the aforementioned therapy and medication could control actually dangerous traffic crimes, and proper state and federal funding eliminates the need for using traffic fine as fundraising (see also court fees). These sorts of things aren't going to rid us of every instance of the crimes of in question, but reducing the flood to a trickle completely changes how the justice system, both police and the courts, can approach these things. So where does this leave the police, or whatever replaces them? Well, much smaller for one, and probably both more centralized and more subdivided. With the idea that crime prevention means an army of cops occupying the poorer areas of each town and city firmly dumpstered, and the reduction in crime achieved by proper social programs, there's no longer a real need for anything but the largest municipalities to have their own police forces. What law enforcement is needed can be handled at a state level with direct federal oversight. They can also be split into different departments: there's no need for the same organization that tackles organized and white collar crime to also deal with the disparate low-level crime that still exists. Even then, the people who deal with violence crimes shouldn't be the same people who handle stolen property; the expectations, methods, and culture need to be wildly different. The idea that police by default forcibly subdue and arrest people (and kill the ones they can't) also needs to go; most people have jobs and houses and families that they care about, and with proper de-escalation training, most can be convinced to turn themselves in and show up to court dates without any need for violence. In cases of property crimes, force never needs to be brought to bear at all; anyone responsible for handling it needs to understand that the human cost of doing so outweighs the value of the property. So you end up with a much smaller organization with wildly different structures and goals, enough that the end result are barely recognizable as cops. But here's the thing: the existing police cannot be reformed into something like this. It requires a fresh start: new organization, new expectations, new culture. It can't succeed if its being run and staffed by the same good ol boys who spend their entire careers sharing tips on how to violate civil rights and get away with it. It can't have the same people who have adopted a siege mentality and a been trained to treat the people who they serve as the enemy. It can't be run by the same people who actively militarize their departments or the unions that push for tough-on-crime nonsense to justify their own bloated existence. It requires the abolition of existing police forces, nothing less.
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Sep 25, 2020 16:51
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CelestialScribe posted:That's white supremacy apparently. It is, and is a common part of folks failing to ally. Perfectionism is used to explain and excuse inaction. Stating that all edge cases must be covered before change can happen is an example of this. You, rejecting this thought as silly, is an example of fragility. Black people are dying, you don't need to solve for every single instance before abolishing. Nor does this mean you should solve for nothing. You can have a plan that covers 90% or more and move forward with that, but you explicitly stated that people can't move forward with out 100% of everything solved and that's false.
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Sep 25, 2020 17:29
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If we came up with and executed a solid police abolishment strategy, how would this affect people who have been living in a police-having society? Even if we ignore people who argue in bad faith on the internet, they still exist. How do you ensure that a police-abolished society stays that way, or that everyone who is alive right now is on board?
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Sep 25, 2020 18:50
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The crux of the argument is that police are useless or worse than useless and if they didn't exist no sane person would want them to, other than massive assholes and rich people. Lots of people have lots of approaches for getting rid of rich people and what you do about the massive assholes is sort of its own issue but a point of contention is that policing produces them. As in literally joining the police makes people into them and also the concept of policing as a solution to problems breeds that kind of thinking. So getting rid of cops is still an important part of the solution. White supremacy, the police state, and capitalism, all three are interlinked. You can't really get rid of any of them without getting rid of the others too, I think.
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Sep 25, 2020 18:54
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ButterSkeleton posted:If we came up with and executed a solid police abolishment strategy, how would this affect people who have been living in a police-having society? Even if we ignore people who argue in bad faith on the internet, they still exist. How do you ensure that a police-abolished society stays that way, or that everyone who is alive right now is on board? I don't imagine any change is going to be made with everyone who is alive on board. Jim Crow was abolished decades ago and they'res still people mad about that.
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Sep 25, 2020 18:59
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It's a frankly unreasonable expectation that makes those putting it forth look like the comic strip politicians waiting for approval of an issue hit the acceptable number before leaping on board. You can just want to do the right thing because it's right, that's ok! Im sure here it was probably meant somewhat hyperbolically, but any argument based on what other people not here might do feels unproductive. We may have to abolish the *new thing we made up* too, for sure. Maybe a few times til we get it right. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Sep 25, 2020 |
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Sep 25, 2020 19:50
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OwlFancier posted:If you have done things like public information campaigns to create the social unacceptability of drink driving, given people access to alternative modes of transport that don't involve them driving at all, worked to discourage heavy drinking, and someone still drives drunk they can still lose their license and I'm gonna bet a lot of people won't want much to do with them afterwards. But haven't you said that in your model, there isn't a state apparatus that can enforce this type of thing? How can someone lose their license if there isn't an infrastructure there to enforce that decision? Under a model like Fool of Sound described, there is a state infrastructure there to make sure that if there is something to be dealt with, the appropriate unarmed force deals with it, etc. In what you're describing (I think), that apparatus doesn't exist. Unless I'm missing something in your proposal? OwlFancier posted:That is meant to be disparaging of the idea that you should want that, in case it wasn't clear. Because the guy keeps going on about the need to "punish" everything and for some reason describes anger management as a punishment, presumably with the notion that the point of an anger management course is that the person attending it should dislike it rather than it should have a positive impact on their future conduct. Right, but you yourself just mentioned that losing a license is a possibility. Is that not a punishment? If so, if there isn't a state apparatus to manage that process, how is it enforced under your model? fool of sound posted:So where does this leave the police, or whatever replaces them? Well, much smaller for one, and probably both more centralized and more subdivided. With the idea that crime prevention means an army of cops occupying the poorer areas of each town and city firmly dumpstered, and the reduction in crime achieved by proper social programs, there's no longer a real need for anything but the largest municipalities to have their own police forces. What law enforcement is needed can be handled at a state level with direct federal oversight. They can also be split into different departments: there's no need for the same organization that tackles organized and white collar crime to also deal with the disparate low-level crime that still exists. Even then, the people who deal with violence crimes shouldn't be the same people who handle stolen property; the expectations, methods, and culture need to be wildly different. The idea that police by default forcibly subdue and arrest people (and kill the ones they can't) also needs to go; most people have jobs and houses and families that they care about, and with proper de-escalation training, most can be convinced to turn themselves in and show up to court dates without any need for violence. In cases of property crimes, force never needs to be brought to bear at all; anyone responsible for handling it needs to understand that the human cost of doing so outweighs the value of the property. So you end up with a much smaller organization with wildly different structures and goals, enough that the end result are barely recognizable as cops. Yeah I think this is the most ideal scenario here (mostly) but I'm just fascinated by OwlFancier's responses here because even they are saying what you describe goes too far. OwlFancier posted:The crux of the argument is that police are useless or worse than useless and if they didn't exist no sane person would want them to, other than massive assholes and rich people. I'm not really sure about that. This Gallup survey found that while 47% of overall respondents said funds should be moved into social services from police departments, and 88% of African Americans say police need "major changes", only 22% of African Americans say they want to abolish police entirely. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/22/abolish-police-gallup-poll/ Now obviously there is a lot of nuance missing in this type of polling, but when it comes to what happens after abolishing the police, I think people are much more willing to get on board with the idea of something like Fool of Sound proposed than not replacing it with a state enforcement model at all, like you're describing. CelestialScribe fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 01:30
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Since the premise is "if they didn't exist" data based on them existing is meaningless
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Sep 26, 2020 01:50
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I think perhaps there is a difference between, say, requiring a license to buy and tax and service or even to purchase fuel for a car and having a police force. You can have state-like institutions that do not revolve around violent coercion. I would certainly like to retain a universal health service as much as possible, for example, and I think that the NHS works much better than the cops do because the inherent nature of healthcare provision is different from the inherent nature of police work. One very obviously helps people in an immediate way and the other very obviously hurts people in an immediate way and doing one of those things day in and day out will have a different effect on the people doing it and the culture of their workplace than the other will. Losing a driving license in a society with good public transport provision because you ran someone over doesn't seem like a punishment? It seems like pretty common sense that if someone kills somebody while driving they shouldn't be driving any more? I don't think that requires a moral punitive element though you could interpret it that way if you were particularly inclined, but to me it's just the same sort of rationale as not letting people who don't know how to drive a forklift drive a forklift because they might hurt someone doing it? We can, I think, as a society, expect people doing potentially dangerous things around other people, to know what they're doing. And we can even develop systems of accreditation and licensing to make "oh Jim knows how to drive a forklift cos I've seen him do it for ten years" work over a larger distance, between people who might not know who Jim is or anything about his forklift cred. And I think that those, like a lot of public services, are distinct from the police, they don't need to involve a gang of assholes coming around to hit you with sticks or shoot you as a routine part of their function. I think you can probably have a network of services and accreditations and licensing for things that benefit from accreditations and licensing where the consequence of losing your accreditation is simply a lack of access to services associated with the thing you are accredited for. I think most workplaces would agree to not allow unlicensed drivers to drive their vehicles, I think most businesses would agree not to service unlicensed drivers who bring their vehicles in, if the profit motive is less of a thing and if the majority of society can agree that licensing drivers is a good idea, which I think most people do outside of the libertarian annual conference. I believe that we can construct systems to our benefit that are not predicated on violence. Especially as we now have the technology to make things like this extremely easy to check. If we can electronically pay for things across the world with cards in our pockets tied to our own bank accounts I think it should be possible to make it so you need a valid license to buy fuel for your car. Also the key phrase in that last sentence is "if they didn't exist" because yes, it is a lot harder for people to envisage changes than it is for them to see the ways in which the status quo works. The question was about how do you keep a society police free, to which the response "once they don't exist and society works differently without them, it will be a lot harder to recreate them" is perfectly valid. Again to circle back to healthcare, the UK has remained largely health insurance free since the creation of the NHS, because if you have free healthcare it is a lot harder to sell people on the notion of paying for it, to the point that it has been very difficult for our right wing parties to change that, they all have to claim to love the NHS because it saves people's lives every day. I also, critically, don't think any of this is incompatible with what fool of sound posted, really. This exact same philosophy can be applied to people who just want to drastically scale back the police. I think I just apply the logic further initially. But there is absolutely no reason why this same thinking would not be possible, even more possible, in a minimal-police society. If anything I think a society with greatly reduced police presence would be even more amenable to this sort of thinking and I think they would be in a better position to try it out in practice. It is possible, even probable, that the road to the society I want would go through some sort of minarchist police phase. But I think the logical end state of the desire to end police violence is to see all the places we could remove the need for violence in society. And I think that that end goal is necessary too, because it represents the logical end point of the philosophy. If you aren't moving towards that you run the risk of regressing, I think. Fool of sound might believe that some sort of state police is the best we can do, but I don't. I don't think we really disagree on the philosophy though, only the achievable end state. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 02:08
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[quote="OwlFancier" post=""508378023"Losing a driving license in a society with good public transport provision because you ran someone over doesn't seem like a punishment? It seems like pretty common sense that if someone kills somebody while driving they shouldn't be driving any more?[/quote"] I mean, it's a punishment in the sense that someone is facing a consequence for their incompetence. From their perspective, yes, it's a punishment. You're right though we don't necessarily need to call it that. quote:I don't think that requires a moral punitive element though you could interpret it that way if you were particularly inclined, but to me it's just the same sort of rationale as not letting people who don't know how to drive a forklift drive a forklift because they might hurt someone doing it? We can, I think, as a society, expect people doing potentially dangerous things around other people, to know what they're doing. And we can even develop systems of accreditation and licensing to make "oh Jim knows how to drive a forklift cos I've seen him do it for ten years" work over a larger distance, between people who might not know who Jim is or anything about his forklift cred. Let's stay on this for a minute, because I'm struggling to see how the practicalities of your situation play themselves out. I suspect it's probably a difference in terminology. But I just want to get this clear. In your ideal society, how would someone losing their license actually be enforced? Like, are there people who show up at the scene of the traffic accident and take this guy's confession? If he hits and runs, do they investigate where he goes? Do they advocate for him to give himself up and vow that he won't face any negative consequences for doing so, etc? Because on the one hand you say, the state shouldn't have any possible way to enforce police actions on its citizens, and on the other you say, it makes sense for people to have licenses, to have safety regulations and have them upheld, etc. So I'm just trying to understand how someone losing their license in your society would work. Lack of imagination on my part, maybe, but I'd be interested in hearing you describe the play-by-play here. If you feel like it.
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Sep 26, 2020 03:21
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As I said, it is conceivable that you could have an investigations office without an enforcement component. So the hit and run would be investigated as much as they usually are, it might be caught on camera, someone might report suspicious damage to a car in their area coinciding with the time of the accident or whatever. But instead of someone going to prison or having the cops kick down their door they could just be asked to attend something like a court, someone could have the job of informing them that they are under investigation on suspicion of having killed someone with their car, and they can either show up and make a defence or not. Either way though you could have a similar process where some sort of deliberating jury can look at the evidence and decide whether or not it was compelling and if they find that it is, the investigations office can contact the licensing office and say "hey this guy ran someone over please revoke their license" And you could also do things like make a public announcement of the findings of the trial, as you normally would, so everyone would know the guy had killed someone. But I don't think that prison would be particularly helpful in that instance. So they lose their ability to keep a car and everyone knows they got shitfaced and killed someone, which I think would probably carry pretty serious social consequences, like I don't think he's gonna have many friends after that, I think the message is going to be pretty well sent and they will have a greatly reduced ability to do it again, that seems like a reasonable set of actions to prevent a recurrence of the wrongdoing. But ultimately if you're not planning on imprisoning someone I don't really see why you need to involve the actual guns and clubs police? That's the point, the idea of society and justice revolving around punishment of people and that it should simply exist to cause pain in kind is what you need police to facilitate, if you drop that and focus on minimising harmful behaviour then the police become a lot less necessary. I'll even do you one further. Suppose it's a more serious crime, suppose you have a serial killer on the loose. Like some guy who is literally just completely antisocial and is just killing people left right and center, totally irredeemable, absolute menace to everyone, worst person in the world kind of guy. In that instance that person is a direct threat to the community, and in that instance it would be entirely reasonable for people to take direct, violent action against that person. That might take the form of just shooting them dead in self defence during an attempted attack, but supposing the investigations office figured out who the person was and publicized that information, people could elect to form a temporary force to apprehend (or possibly kill if the killer is a gun toting lunatic) them and work out some sort of carceral option for them, convert a house into a prison for them perhaps, though again I have suggested that I don't have an issue with execution for mass murderers. If you can't safely imprison someone and the incarceration doesn't serve a purpose other than keeping them away from other people then that seems like a situation where execution is understandable? But again I think this is vanishingly rare and shouldn't be a thing the judicial system normally has as an option. I might go so far as to conscience the possibility of like, a single national prison for people like that. Like just one building for the handful of mad serial killers you might have alive in the world at any one time. But again I think this is so rare even in the very violent world we live in that I just cannot see it being something you need to base society around preventing. The process of arresting someone like that would be similar to what you might imagine a police force would be best suited for, but the difference is that this would not and should not be people's full time jobs. There should not be an institution of people looking for people to arrest because arresting people is their job. Arresting someone should be something that normal people do when needed, I suppose you would call it a citizen's arrest. If you establish a police force you necessitate the creation of people to arrest, if you build a prison you necessitate the creation of people to incarcerate. By not having these things I think you can still reasonably expect people to be capable of doing them when it's absolutely necessary, but you discourage them being relied upon or becoming routine. I don't think people are incapable of coming up with solutions to things like hypothetical murderous madmen, but I think they are rare enough that we don't need to structure our society around perpetual vigilance against them at the cost of creating systems which in turn create far more regular death and misery than any amount of crazed killers we would realistically see. I think a society can work where everyone "polices" everyone else, to a degree, where we are all equal parts police and policed. Where we all behave in a way that lets us get on with the other people we encounter. Like, how people work 99% of the time. You don't need a cop to force you to get along with people, and you wouldn't need a cop to tell you how to respond in an emergency. Some emergency services don't have drawbacks, most of them in fact don't, it is much better to have trained and equipped firefighters and medics to respond to things and there is no downside to people being good at medicine or firefighting and going through their lives thinking about fire safety and medical safety, but trained and equipped fighters? I don't think that's a good idea. A standing fighting force creates the incentive to violence. Especially when it's a force the explicit purpose of which is to be ready to use violence on any member of the community at any time. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:02 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 03:52
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Thank you for the effort post - I don't have time to reply now but just acknowledging that I've read it.
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Sep 26, 2020 04:15
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CelestialScribe posted:Thank you for the effort post - I don't have time to reply now but just acknowledging that I've read it.  Thanks OwlFancier!
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Sep 26, 2020 04:17
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OwlFancier posted:
You don't feel you left out one tiny little detail about that situation?
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Sep 26, 2020 09:52
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OwlFancier posted:As I said, it is conceivable that you could have an investigations office without an enforcement component. So the hit and run would be investigated as much as they usually are, it might be caught on camera, someone might report suspicious damage to a car in their area coinciding with the time of the accident or whatever. But instead of someone going to prison or having the cops kick down their door they could just be asked to attend something like a court, someone could have the job of informing them that they are under investigation on suspicion of having killed someone with their car, and they can either show up and make a defence or not. What happens if they completely ignore you and carry on driving anyway ?. OwlFancier posted:But ultimately if you're not planning on imprisoning someone I don't really see why you need to involve the actual guns and clubs police? That's the point, the idea of society and justice revolving around punishment of people and that it should simply exist to cause pain in kind is what you need police to facilitate, if you drop that and focus on minimising harmful behaviour then the police become a lot less necessary. If someones off their meds and on the rampage how quickly could you hold the election of the people you want to go sort it out ?.
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Sep 26, 2020 11:12
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Morningwoodpecker posted:What happens if they completely ignore you and carry on driving anyway ?. This is where the absence of a coercive force loses the plot. The assumption that people will comply with toothless decrees without punishment backing it up is naive as hell. I'm not sure where you guys live and maybe it doesn't make the news because of more serious issues but here often a habitual drunk driver is caught multiple times (after their license is suspended) until they get jailed. Ultimately fines or whatever punishment is imposed have to be backed up by force otherwise non compliance with the punishment is just met with another empty demand to stop that behaviour. I guess if you grew up sheltered from the members of society who don't really give a gently caress about society this may not be intuitive.
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Sep 26, 2020 12:00
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flashman posted:Ultimately fines or whatever punishment is imposed have to be backed up by force otherwise non compliance with the punishment is just met with another empty demand to stop that behaviour. I guess if you grew up sheltered from the members of society who don't really give a gently caress about society this may not be intuitive. Bolded the key word. Pushing back when we end up having to have armed men pointing guns at people is going to be a net good. Morningwoodpecker posted:What happens if they completely ignore you and carry on driving anyway ?. In OF's scenario they run out of gas and can't buy more, problem solved I think. IMO we probably add fines. From time to time more enforcement will be necessary. You can create that position in advance, sure, but we have to be very careful that it doesn't become more of the same.
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Sep 26, 2020 14:29
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Harold Fjord posted:In OF's scenario they run out of gas and can't buy more, problem solved I think. What if they fill up the tank and drive off.
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Sep 26, 2020 14:44
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Morningwoodpecker posted:What if they fill up the tank and drive off. Is there anywhere that lets you pre-pump these days?
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Sep 26, 2020 14:44
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socialsecurity posted:Is there anywhere that lets you pre-pump these days? The whole of the UK.
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Sep 26, 2020 14:46
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Morningwoodpecker posted:The whole of the UK. Oh I thought we were talking about reforming the US police, it gets wonky trying to talk about solutions when you roll in other places that already have implemented the kind of solutions we want.
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Sep 26, 2020 14:48
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Morningwoodpecker posted:The whole of the UK. I'm sure you could change that? I don't think requring pre-payment and a valid license is some impossible task? Like yes I'm sure it would be possible for someone to learn to fix their own car and steal petrol all the time as they are desperate to keep driving even though driving is not a necessary thing for them to do but the point i have consistently made is that the system does not have to be perfect, it just has to be better than what we have. If you want to become some kind of off grid hermit because you loving love driving I don't think there is much stopping you from doing that now. Morningwoodpecker posted:If someones off their meds and on the rampage how quickly could you hold the election of the people you want to go sort it out ?. You don't need to "elect" people to do it, if someone is actively going crazy people respond automatically, there is documented evidence of that happening. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 14:52
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socialsecurity posted:Oh I thought we were talking about reforming the US police, it gets wonky trying to talk about solutions when you roll in other places that already have implemented the kind of solutions we want. Owl Fanciers from the UK I think, or his avatar is a UK politician anyway. UK cops are just as corrupt, racist and inept as they are everywhere else. Mostly unarmed though which limits the damage they can do when they get the wrong door or person.
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Sep 26, 2020 14:58
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OwlFancier posted:I'm sure you could change that? I don't think requring pre-payment and a valid license is some impossible task? I'm not sure every legal driver in the country would want to put up with that. OwlFancier posted:Like yes I'm sure it would be possible for someone to learn to fix their own car and steal petrol all the time as they are desperate to keep driving even though driving is not a necessary thing for them to do but the point i have consistently made is that the system does not have to be perfect, it just has to be better than what we have. If you want to become some kind of off grid hermit because you loving love driving I don't think there is much stopping you from doing that now. Transfer the car to the wife's name get her to fill it up, carry on driving drunk as a lord. OwlFancier posted:You don't need to "elect" people to do it, if someone is actively going crazy people respond automatically, there is documented evidence of that happening. Lynch mobs don't have the best record and really violent people don't always attack people with handy crowds nearby, they've been know to target vulnerable isolated people. How do you stop the mob being weaponized by racist Karens ?. Morningwoodpecker fucked around with this message at 15:10 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 15:01
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Once again, for the hard of thinking, the police are already an extremely racist murderous mob and the intent of getting rid of them is to reduce that, that racially motivated attacks by individuals would be less prevalent than a full time racially motivated murderous mob with state endorsement, training, and equipment. You do, of course, still need to solve racism generally, but as I have suggested previously if you had read more carefully, I believe the police uphold and enforce racial segregation and actively promote racism in the population, getting rid of them is a necessary step to getting rid of racial violence because they are a leading cause of it. If you can't stop people from starting a race war with their own two hands then I don't see how you hope to stop them from doing it when you supply them with a literal license to kill and a mandate to inflict violence on other people for the benefit of the majority in society.
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Sep 26, 2020 15:08
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If you can't answer few really basic questions about the glaringly obvious holes in your plan its probably a very bad one. I'd try to build on whats already there and limit the scope for dishonesty. Issue all officers with individual body worn camera's and ensure they use them at all times by treating the camera's as time cards for hours worked. No footage or missing footage during a shift no pay for that shift. Morningwoodpecker fucked around with this message at 15:22 on Sep 26, 2020 |
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Sep 26, 2020 15:14
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I just did answer them, the consistent theme that I am getting at is that there likely isn't a perfect solution that makes everyone perfectly peaceful at all times, but that I believe that the structures in our society encourage particular kinds of behaviour, that in particular the structure of the police encourages the behaviour of the police. That police racism and violence should be seen as emergent from the nature of their job, and that abolishing their job is necessary to curtail the kind of violence they engage in. If you're just not going to engage with that approach and simply repeat "well you're not answering the question" then there isn't anything to discuss.
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Sep 26, 2020 15:19
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Replacing them with vigilantes would create far more problems than it solved. "Vigilantes have forced a doctor from her home after daubing her walls with anti-paedophile graffiti. Yvette Cloete, who works at Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, found her home daubed with the word "Paedo". Police said they believe vigilantes confused the words paediatrician and paedophile." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/vigilante-mob-attacks-home-of-paediatrician-710864.html
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Sep 26, 2020 15:41
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