I can confirm that the media isn't accurately representing what's there. It was a little crazy up until last Sunday (before the formation of CHAZ, right before the police left). It's totally peaceful now. People are bringing their families down there. I've even been there in the middle of the night and it's fine.
Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
871–880 of 920 posts
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#872Earlier quoted context omitted.
Game theory. The instant someone doesn't agree not to destroy, they have a massive upper hand.
And then, what? Suppose the world agrees to dismantle its nuclear arsenal but a single nation, the great atomic nation of Nuclearia, decides that it will keep its weapons and it will destroy the world unless every other nation obeys its rule. And assume Nuclearia has magickal weapons that do not affect Nuclearia lands, or its citizens. The world refuses to obey and Nuclearia unleashes the nuclear holocaust. Now what?…
You don't glass everybody immediately. Nuclearia basically does a protection racket. Do what we want, or we progressively make an example of you. Each "round" is 1) issue demand 2) if no compliance, respond with N units of force 3) N++ 4) repeat until results. Rebels get the Alderaan treatment. Rule by fear. Either every country decides to let themselves get scorched to prevent Nuclearia taking resources as a last FU, bend the knee, or re-arm. But one well-placed rebel ICBM ought to dissuade Nuclearia from their racket.
Having some subpopulation (police or even military) with guns but not the populace is a similar power dynamic. It doesn't take many "rebels" to make the hegemony think twice about a takeover. But a complete monopoly on power means a "clean sweep" military coup with minimal bloodshed is possible. My finding of the world is that most people just want to live their life and do their thing. So in such a takeover, I believe most people would just fold. But a small rebel % can turn that bloodless takeover into an indefinite boondoggle.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#873Earlier quoted context omitted.
Game theory. The instant someone doesn't agree not to destroy, they have a massive upper hand.
this seems to be a common attitude in America. It’s game theory, but you should look more to the nash equilibrium than the prisoners dilemma. Unfortunately it must all start with trust, which seems like the fundamental scarcity in the US
So there's 3 agents:
1. Government. Trustworthy, until it isnt.
2. "Union" - Trusts govt. Ok with "gun grabbing" because civians with guns make them feel safe.
3. "Rebels". doesn't trust government. Ok with guns - armed society is polite society.
So it's a very unstable dynamic. It's stable at the extreme ends - everybody has guns, or only government has guns - but the transitions are high activation energy states.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Camden NJ did do this. They fired their entire police department and started over. Except that's not really what happened. They fired the existing police force at the time but most were hired back (155 of the 220 that reapplied), and then they expanded to a complement of 401 officers (it was 370 before). Then they built a gigantic surveillance apparatus that tracks pretty much everything. So, more police, more surve…
If you're gonna cite Wikipedia, you need to add this: >Thomson announced that officers would no longer be judged on how many tickets they wrote or arrests they made but on relationships they developed in the community and whether citizens felt safe enough to sit on their front steps or allow their children to ride their bikes in the street. Thomson told the New York Times in 2017 that "aggressive ticket writing" was…
If police "reform" amounts to a prohibition on juicing the stats a la The Wire, increasing the size of the force by 25-30%, and adding a measured and deeply considered surveillance regime then great.
Haven't seen any of the activists ask for that though.
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#875Earlier quoted context omitted.
But then there's also this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyClgU4AEJnWf?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EaQyCmMUEAEn_1o?format=jpg&name=... I've not before seen a summer street festival where armed militias wearing bulletproof vests patrol the streets.
I truly don't understand the problem here. Can you tell me what it is that makes these people dangerous and scary, but the similarly armed protestors who showed up at government buildings a month ago — or, frankly, the police — fine?
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#876A friend lives in Seattle and texted me today about his visit last night: > I was there last night and it's such a cool pseudo utopian place > The media coverage of it is WILD > People on the internet are convinced it's protected by armed guards and people are dying of hunger and instead its...like a music festival campground > There are speakers, musicians, art walls. I took a group pic for a bunch of black guys las…
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#877Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well in Seattle, the major outbreak was in Kirkland at that senior center. We know now even in NYC, the vast majority of fatalities happened in senior and assisted living centers. Over 70% of fatalities in Canada, Ohio and other places have been elderly care centers[0]. It's pretty clear this disease wasn't anywhere near as bad as everyone was predicting, and I expect the 100k US fatality number to drop once a year h…
what other singular event has killed 100k people in the US in less than 6 months outside of a couple wars? not as bad as everyone was predicting...... are you fucking kidding me? and this number is after the major cities impacted literally fucking shut themselves down to help prevent the spread.
600k die every year from hearth disease. 700k died globally from mosquito transmitted illness[2]. There are tons of secondary effects. People in America have died of Malaria. Many have committed suicide (Including my best friend's flatmate). Many were told not to come to hospitals. Many hearth attacks were wrongly attributed to COVID if a patient tested positive for it.
We've seen massive amounts of people at beaches in Florida, Texas and other places, as well as these protests and riots, and there are no massive spikes in fatalities 2~4 weeks after those events. The WHO said asymptomatic spread was rare, then waked it back (probably because of political pressure from Dr Fauchi), even though it was known asymptomatic spread was probably not a major transmission in February[3]!
This entire thing has been one massive media manipulation, and in less than two days, the entire thing flipped from one global narrative to another, like a switch!
[0]: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/fighting-with-the-data/#incen...
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg
[2]: https://www.isglobal.org/en_GB/-/mosquito-el-animal-mas-leta...
[3]: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/paper-non-symptomati...
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#878A friend lives in Seattle and texted me today about his visit last night: > I was there last night and it's such a cool pseudo utopian place > The media coverage of it is WILD > People on the internet are convinced it's protected by armed guards and people are dying of hunger and instead its...like a music festival campground > There are speakers, musicians, art walls. I took a group pic for a bunch of black guys las…
> The media coverage of it is WILD I live 7 blocks away from "the zone" and can confirm, I have never in my life seen anything alike in this regard. The scale of the misinformation being spread in social networks and news media reached a level I couldn't believe possible before. Seriously, it's beyond absurd. If anyone is interested, I have been taking some pictures of the ongoing protests (including a few of the zon…
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#879Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know those "summer festivals" from Europe. Especially the "free spech"-debates and their "diversity" of opinion. I just imagine how it must feel living there for years and not being 100%-OK with your neighbourhood becoming a "summer street fair".
This is going to come to either an immediate or tragic end when someone inside this zone needs the police to come save them. Either the police will tear down the fences and fight whoever they must to rescue this person, or the mayor will order them to stand down and an American is left to fend for himself so that a politician's agenda can be advanced.
From https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/11/43892640/busines...: "And get this—the police are still in the neighborhood, doing routine police stuff. Last night I watched two cops deal with a person who had passed out on Broadway. They prodded her and asked “you wanna go to detox?” until medical professionals arrived. (Obviously, we should be funding social workers to take care of these kinds of problems instead of cops!)"
Re: Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone
#880Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder what the end game is. The police is not going to disband. People asking for that don't understand how States work. You cannot have a State without a monopoly on violence. America disbanded police once, in 2003, in a city called Baghdad. That turned out wonderfully. I suspect they'll all just get bored at some point.
The endgame is a radical re-think of society, and how society is funded. You've probably seen "defund the police" as a slogan bandied about lately -- police departments have been taking an ever-increasing chunk of city budgets, while education and other social services have either remained at the same funding level or have been cut. Spend less money on the state's monopoly on violence, spend more on reducing the need…
[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/ha...