How much do we need the police? • Hacker News Board

Re: How much do we need the police?

#501

Post by ALee » Sat, Jun 06, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #38

Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in what happens without police. Steven Pinker describes how that went: > "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the…

Recent New York data during a slowdown paints a different picture:

"De Blasio, in this sense, is a remarkably unimaginative politician, like Andrew Cuomo. Police did stop doing their jobs, momentarily, after the murders of Liu and Ramos, in protest of de Blasio’s allegedly anti-police gestures. Arrests and summonses plummeted in early 2015. This, in labor and political parlance, is called a slowdown. The truth about the slowdown, as I’ve written before, is that crime remained quite low. Lack of police enforcement did not unleash the sort of disorder Lynch and his ilk always promise would come. It’s a small sample size, yes. But de Blasio has never used this data point to his advantage. Instead, he has grown only more defensive of his police department. Even in an age of COVID-19-induced catastrophe, with tax revenue evaporating by the month, de Blasio cannot bring himself to meaningfully cut funding to his police department."

Source: https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/why-is-the-nypd-so-powerfu...

Re: How much do we need the police?

#502

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 6:44 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #320

smsm42 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're in a situation where the only people with serious weapons are criminals and police Isn't this what the administration of virtually every major city have been working for decades to create? So this is an experiment that matches current conditions. Somehow I don't see most folks arguing that we don't really need police also being for unrestricted firearms ownership and repeal of the myriad of barriers that exi…

> Somehow I don't see most folks arguing that we don't really need police also being for unrestricted firearms ownership and repeal of the myriad of barriers that exist between the law abiding citizen and gun ownership right now. Obtaining arms should be, for every single adult, as quick, easy, convenient, and cheap as obtaining a blog. Many, many of us have been saying that for hundreds of years.

> Many, many of us have been saying that for hundreds of years.

Not many enough, apparently. There are many cities where it's literally impossible to own a handgun legally unless you are connected to either law enforcement or one of the political mafias. There are even more places where it's possible but has so many idiotic limitations that the intent is clearly to discourage all but the most determined and evade lawsuits by pointing "yes, you need a form that can be only found in a disused closet behind the door saying 'Beware of the leopard!' - but the form is there, your honor, so no undue burden for firearm ownership!"

And the funniest thing that all these things happen in exactly the same places where they talk about not needing the police anymore.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#503

Post by smsm42 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 11:16 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #344

wwwwewwww wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a blog such as "Common Sense" printed in those days was much harder then getting a firearm.

I'm not so sure about that. Firearms in those days were custom made by hand one by one by specialized and highly skilled (i.e. expensive) craftsmen. A firearm was a prized possession, and often a work of art. A pamphlet might be typeset in an hour by the unskilled printer's apprentice.

Not in 18th century. You could get a gun then for about month's wage of a skilled worker. Not exactly cheap, and significantly more expensive than now, but not exactly impossible to have even for a skilled worker or a middle-class person. And there are now firearms in that price range, though many common ones are significantly cheaper. Something like a cheap car - not pocket change, and you won't get one unless you need one, and if you aren't rich you probably won't get more than one - but for most people, not out of reach entirely.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#504

Post by goldforever » Tue, Jun 09, 2020, 8:35 PM UTC

markc wrote: post #176

BurningFrog wrote: post #38

Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in what happens without police. Steven Pinker describes how that went: > "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the…

It was a natural experiment in what happens without police when the city is in the midst of an extreme wave of crime and violent protest, and one of the protests turns into a riot while the police were on strike. The idea that this incident demonstrates that any city will go up in flames immediately if the police take the day off is a misreading this specific moment in history. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murr…

Dumb response. Try leaving your doors and windows unlocked at night.

Re: How much do we need the police?

#505

Post by gremlinsinc » Wed, Jun 10, 2020, 5:21 AM UTC

psexec wrote: post #327

gremlinsinc wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would this happen IF we had free guns for the populace who want them who pass background/mental evals (make owning a gun a right for all). Then we democratize gun ownership. Next we create UBI so nobody has to steal to put food on the table, and guarantee jobs for anyone who wants one, and healthcare for all. you end the poverty and almost-poverty and you stop a lot of the reasons behind WHY people loot when there's…

I live in a city with a vandalism problem. People throw benches into the river, break glass panes, and perform other similar feats just for the fun of it. Oh, and the ubiquitous designer drugs ads on every damn wall. Well, it _was_ a problem until the government put cameras on every street corner and the police started tracking down and punishing every one of the vandals. How would gun ownership help with this? I loo…

The guns are more of a equalization of power. The right loves guns, but would they if they knew every liberal had twice as many guns as they probably have?

that was my point w/ guns...