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20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

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Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#851

Post by godelski »

da_chicken wrote: post #791
pklausler wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As well as the assumption that the kind of weaponry available to the population is effective against that available to the "tyrants".

We just spent 20 years in Afghanistan proving how effective and potent a modern military is against guerilla tactics. I think it's become pretty clear that if you're not willing to ignore the generally accepted rules of engagement, they will just outlast you.

Not to mention the Vietnam war or any of the other wars we've been involved with in the Middle East. Not to mention drug cartels in Mexico and Latin/South America.

I'm not sure how anyone can argue that a population with weapons can't hold off a tyrannical government. It is the same reason Marx said that under no means should we disarm the populous. I think people often forget that a government can't just kill all its population. Not only can you not rule over the dead but you also are going to have a hard time interacting in global trade (thanks globalism, but this even held true in the 1700's). It is kinda odd that this sentiment also often comes out of a country where some farmers fought off the country with the biggest navy and had an empire so great that the sun never set on it. Civil wars are extremely costly to countries. Also I'm not sure why everyone thinks that people from the military (including generals and entire battalions) wouldn't defect. That's also pretty common when looking at history.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#852

Post by poetaster »

corey_moncure wrote: post #647
GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

The CDC collects these statistics. You would find, for instance, that more black people die each year from falling out of bed than they do at the hands of cops while unarmed (Unironically, provably true; look it up before you downvote... ideally no innocent person would die during police interactions). Clearly, whatever motivates policy and politics has no resemblance to a proportional risk-based assessment.

An engineer friend, at VW, told me more people fall to their deaths from ladders than die on the autobahn. In DE, of course. He's one of those engineerz that evaluates the moral consequences of the companies processes, writ large. And you need an engineer for moral calculus. Sadly, this is still new territory for large companies.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#853

Post by lolwut9654 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #807
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you have all this talk of "bump stocks" and "ghost guns" and "assault weapons" and whatnot, but it's all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn't to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don't take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn't focused on handguns and suicides. It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem, well, like two thirds of US fire…

> improve mental health I think that this is a poor target. How do you set out directly targeting mental health? What are the biggest causes of mental health issues? https://www.cdc.gov/mentalhealth/learn/index.htm CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation. How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you he…

Have you tried doing more than nothing?

On many occasions in the past, I’ve found that doing anything often works better than doing nothing, like the US usually advocates.

Turns out that there are no perfect solutions, but there are a lot of partial solutions that in aggregate add up to the mental health the rest of the developed world has.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#854

Post by poetaster »

corey_moncure wrote: post #647
GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

The CDC collects these statistics. You would find, for instance, that more black people die each year from falling out of bed than they do at the hands of cops while unarmed (Unironically, provably true; look it up before you downvote... ideally no innocent person would die during police interactions). Clearly, whatever motivates policy and politics has no resemblance to a proportional risk-based assessment.

Oh, and I alsi think this is a poor analogy. Mine is better (ducks).

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#855

Post by poetaster »

GhostVII wrote: post #537

We should have some kind of dashboard tracking how many people die from terrorism, car crashes, heart disease, COVID, etc., and how much time and money we spend trying to prevent these deaths. We are just so terrible at evaluating risk, for some reason it is OK to waste everyone's time with over the top security to stop a tiny portion of terrorism deaths, while still being OK with high speed limits that kill thousand…

Does coke want kid's to become obese?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#856

Post by dragonwriter »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #819
dragonwriter wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'd be bringing it into the public sphere where it can be regulated better at least, that's already an enormous improvement In the US, political parties are in the public sphere and extensively regulated, unlike private entities that are not political parties but engage in political campaigning independent of formal parties and individual candidates. Abolishing formal parties in the US would increase, not limit, t…

I'm not American, but wasn't the US government itself a non-partisan entity prior to and in the period immediately after independence? Either way, I get that they're regulated in theory as part of the public sphere but that's not the point I'm getting at, the point I'm getting at that in practice these parties often behave as vehicles for private (and often fairly elitist) interests and as a result I think their usef…

> but wasn't the US government itself a non-partisan entity prior to and in the period immediately after independence?

Yes, the intense factions that sprang up without parties immediately after adoption of the Constitution formed the nucleus around which the first parties formed. Parties are a symptom, not the source.

> the point I'm getting at that in practice these parties often behave as vehicles for private (and often fairly elitist) interests

Yes, elite factions do that whether they are formalized as parties or not.

Banning formalized parties has no effect on that.

> I think their useful functions should be carried out more directly by democratic parliaments

There is no possible configuration of laws which would produce that effect.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#857

Post by AniseAbyss »

pope_meat wrote: post #730
mkr-hn wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.

It was all guns rights until the black panthers started arming up, and all the sudden it was "perhaps some sensible limits might be wise" Pretty hard to miss the intent. Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.

Yeah armed black militias marching through white suburban America will get the FBI interested.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#859

Post by dragonwriter »

BoxOfRain wrote: post #801
throaway46546 wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you prevent someone from creating a Democratic Non-party and Republican Non-party that endorse "non partisan" candidates? Would you ban the endorsements of candidates outright? That would seem to cause it's own issues.

You probably would have to ban entities like corporations, partnerships, and non-profits from endorsing a candidate. It would essentially extend and make permanent the concept of Purdah to those entities. Purdah is the state of affairs during the pre-election period in the UK where entities like local governments and the Civil Service can't say anything that might prejudice the outcome of an election, though I can't…

> You probably would have to ban entities like corporations, partnerships, and non-profits from endorsing a candidate.

This makes it practically impossible in the US; so long as not coordinated with a formal party or candidate committee, it has been ruled a violation of the First Amendment to even limit expenditures on promotion of a candidate by private entities; to outright ban such actions would be a more flagrant violation.

> I don't think having very strict rules about the relationships between corporations/non-profits and politicians is necessarily a bad thing in itself, in fact many would see it as a good thing that further protects democracy from manipulation by private interests

You cannot “protect democracy from manipulation by private interests”; the concept is incoherent. Democracy is the aggregate of private interests determining the public interest.

> It could well be a moot point however, I'm not sure how well these "not-parties" would do once society had got used to a few elections without parties and experienced the relief that would come from making politics much less adversarial

We’ve had the absence of formal parties, politics was violently adversarial and formal parties emerged from the adversarial factions.

You cannot alter human nature by abolishing formal parties, which are, again, a symptom not the cause of political factionalism.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#860

Post by collegeburner »

pope_meat wrote: post #730
mkr-hn wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ongoing and ramped up tyrannies don't affect the people with guns, so it's not doing much good so far. When the oppressed arm themselves, people who claim opposition to gun control suddenly become very pro-gun control.

It was all guns rights until the black panthers started arming up, and all the sudden it was "perhaps some sensible limits might be wise" Pretty hard to miss the intent. Arm the homeless is what I say when I'm feeling spicy.

Very pro-2A people agree that gun control is racist though. Mainstream republican party (what people think of as pro-2a) isnt very. Trump implemented bump stock restrictions, hell, reagan signed 86 new machine gun ban. If you talk to very pro-2a people you will hear them agree that armed minorities are harder to oppress; gun control is indeed very racist going back to army/navy laws and other restrictions on former slaves owning arms.
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