61–70 of 183 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is racist about it? I don't see any racism in that statement. He was simply stating that he was more comfortable around other white collar criminals.
had he said black or jewish criminals you would have been raging on twitter spewing woke slogans. he was simply singling out an ethnicity, the english criminal did.
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I am having trouble taking this as a sincere question. You've honestly never seen or heard of hierarchical power being misused? I mean, just to pick one enormous historical trend, there's a reason the world has mostly gotten rid of monarchies, and it's not because we thought crowns and scepters were maybe a bit tacky.
Everything can be misused, that doesn't make everything bad per se. Saying that hierarchies must be mitigated (because they are bad, I assume) is unreal.
And of course saying that hierarchies should be mitigated is far from unreal. It was the central message of the people who started America. They put a great deal of effort into checks and balances on power both at the federal level (between the 3 branches) and in having local, state, and federal governments, none of which have a hierarchical relationship. They put a strong emphasis on individual rights, which are counter-hierarchical as well. And let's not forget the freedoms of press and political speech, first among the Bill of Rights, which is very much a check on hierarchy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am having trouble taking this as a sincere question. You've honestly never seen or heard of hierarchical power being misused? I mean, just to pick one enormous historical trend, there's a reason the world has mostly gotten rid of monarchies, and it's not because we thought crowns and scepters were maybe a bit tacky.
The opposite of hierarchies is not some blissful state of civilized anarchy, it is chaos, violence and free for all. If you think some leftist state is the solution, sorry for breaking it to you but they are highly hierarchical if not more than state tending toward classic liberalism. Most experiments in this vein have ended badly (millions dying), see communist China (now a hierarchical dictatorship btw), USSR, Cuba…
As I explain elsewhere in this thread, one alternative of hierarchical authority is carefully limited, distributed power. There are historical examples of it working pretty well for hundreds of years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22415807
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Not necessarily. Smuggling contraband into prison has got to be as old as the existence of prison itself, and there are numerous examples of contraband being snuck in and traded without the knowledge of the staff. It’s errant to assume that all cases of contraband existing in prison is due to corrupt staff. In fact, this issue is becoming more and more of a challenge today as drone technology advances and decreases i…
Smuggling is impossible unless staff turn a blind eye, or procedures are sufficiently lax. Preventing visitors from passing things to inmates is not rocket science, if you allow visitors at all. As for drones, let me try to fly a drone over GCHQ or the Pentagon and let's see what happens... But over a prison and then actually drop something? "Oh well, what can we do? Can't even find what they drop..." The point in al…
...or effective procedures would toss human rights into the bin. Client-Attorney communication secrecy and visitation rights are one point, body cavity searches and visitation rights for close relatives of inmates another.
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Not necessarily. Smuggling contraband into prison has got to be as old as the existence of prison itself, and there are numerous examples of contraband being snuck in and traded without the knowledge of the staff. It’s errant to assume that all cases of contraband existing in prison is due to corrupt staff. In fact, this issue is becoming more and more of a challenge today as drone technology advances and decreases i…
Smuggling is impossible unless staff turn a blind eye, or procedures are sufficiently lax. Preventing visitors from passing things to inmates is not rocket science, if you allow visitors at all. As for drones, let me try to fly a drone over GCHQ or the Pentagon and let's see what happens... But over a prison and then actually drop something? "Oh well, what can we do? Can't even find what they drop..." The point in al…
So the Atlantic/Hellen Lewis consider it a negative that non-violent and mentally healthy people aren't housed together with violent and mentally ill ones ? Isn't this basically what the US prison reform advocates want to see their system make its way up to ?
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I am having trouble taking this as a sincere question. You've honestly never seen or heard of hierarchical power being misused? I mean, just to pick one enormous historical trend, there's a reason the world has mostly gotten rid of monarchies, and it's not because we thought crowns and scepters were maybe a bit tacky.
Careful, you're going to hear some lobster arguments...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily. Smuggling contraband into prison has got to be as old as the existence of prison itself, and there are numerous examples of contraband being snuck in and traded without the knowledge of the staff. It’s errant to assume that all cases of contraband existing in prison is due to corrupt staff. In fact, this issue is becoming more and more of a challenge today as drone technology advances and decreases i…
Smuggling is impossible unless staff turn a blind eye, or procedures are sufficiently lax. Preventing visitors from passing things to inmates is not rocket science, if you allow visitors at all. As for drones, let me try to fly a drone over GCHQ or the Pentagon and let's see what happens... But over a prison and then actually drop something? "Oh well, what can we do? Can't even find what they drop..." The point in al…
> The only answer is corruption of the prison staff.
But what you're describing here seems just as likely to be a resourcing and procedure issue.
For example, do you think it's fair that all visitors must undergo a full cavity search before being allowed to see an inmate? Even attorneys? If not, then should the inmate go through that procedure after every visit? Will we all be happy with the increased costs to hire additional staff?
The creativity of prisoners is much higher than you expect. To 100% eliminate smuggling into prisons, you'd need to operate every facility as if its SuperMax.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The opposite of hierarchies is not some blissful state of civilized anarchy, it is chaos, violence and free for all. If you think some leftist state is the solution, sorry for breaking it to you but they are highly hierarchical if not more than state tending toward classic liberalism. Most experiments in this vein have ended badly (millions dying), see communist China (now a hierarchical dictatorship btw), USSR, Cuba…
I agree that left-wing authoritarianism is as bad as right-wing authoritarianism. But thinking that the only alternative to hierarchical power is chaos is going to be one sort of authoritarianism or another. As I explain elsewhere in this thread, one alternative of hierarchical authority is carefully limited, distributed power. There are historical examples of it working pretty well for hundreds of years: https://new…