471–480 of 606 posts
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I‘m curious, why don’t hospitals have such an incentive? Naive conjecture would tell me otherwise.
They do have an incentive to tell you your house is on fire (I.G. prescription drugs, and the like), but they don't actively set houses on fire because they don't have 100% market capture to the patients.
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You don't have to believe anything, but if you don't see the racism that pervades our society you're utterly blind.
So whenever anyone suggests a racial motive in a specific case, where this is no supporting evidence in that case, your stance is to just go along with it, because racism pervades our society?
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We shouldn’t be doing anything to increase the number of guns in circulation. It reduces safety for everyone, especially the gun owners.
Ho man, that’s like saying we’ll stop war by banning nuclear weapons. 1) the really problematic people won’t care 2) the ‘normal’ people will just be left defenseless and be preyed upon with fewer worries by the #1 cases. 3) which incentivizes the crazies to arm up more so they’ll have leverage. Notably, this is exactly what happened with nuclear proliferation bans, if we’re being honest. Assuming it’s not actually p…
In fact, are there any countries that have implemented gun controls that have had this problem?
If you find these corruption allegations hard to believe, I lived on the South Side of Chicago in the late 90s, and cops there expected to eat for free wherever they went and blew through stop signs and red lights like they weren't even there. (I have never seen this kind of police behavior anywhere else I've lived, which includes downtown Seattle.) Oh, and I had a detective tell me once (after they'd found the guy w…
> I declined to press charges after I learned that. You were the district attorney at the time this was happening? Why didn't you do more to stop it?
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My favorite part is that California has a roster of handguns approved for sale. The pretext for its existence is consumer safety (it is entirely separate from bans on stuff like assault weapons or large magazines), but the actual effect is that you have a very limited selection in stores, and most of the designs are very dated. But if you're a police officer? You get an exemption! Apparently, the state has no regard…
Another reason why I left California. You can't buy a Canik's as a non-LEO. Also, criminals get whatever guns they want and carry them while law-abiding citizens can't do anything except wish not to be mugged or murdered with strong objections. It's completely absurd given how violent America is.
You have to have been raised pretty sweetly to not have known this kind of racketeering was a 'thing' for a very long time. Pressure to hire cops is rampant. 'rent-a-cop' is not aimed at the fact that security companies apply aggressive mimicry to their people, but that these people are themselves often off-duty cops. Security companies are strongly "encouraged" to hire off-duty cops, and find themselves left out to…
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>It's astonishing the degree to which the public tolerates such forms of ineptitude and subversion – it has a direct impact on everyone's bottom line. The George Floyd protests were huge. I don't think it's a simple matter of the public being too complacent. I'd say that insofar as the protests were unsuccessful, it's because their energy wasn't being directed strategically. There was so much discussion of "defunding…
> without anyone offering a clear, compelling alternative approach A minor gripe: asking protesters of a utterly shitty, but long standing, complex and entranched situation, to come up clear, simple and compelling alternatives is generally unfair. In particular the political process should work in reverse: people voice issues, and their governing bodies come up with viable solutions. That's their job. > police qualit…
I get what you mean but the governing bodies of the people are the people. In a democracy, we are in charge of our own institutions, at least in theory.
I agree that we can't lay the full burden for solving injustice on the people affected by that injustice, and I think finding solutions for injustice is something that everyone should take part in, and there is a particular responsibility for those with the most amount of power to act. But often the people most affected by injustice are the ones who can see the flaws in the existing system best, and who have the best ideas as to where a solution might come from.
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Ho man, that’s like saying we’ll stop war by banning nuclear weapons. 1) the really problematic people won’t care 2) the ‘normal’ people will just be left defenseless and be preyed upon with fewer worries by the #1 cases. 3) which incentivizes the crazies to arm up more so they’ll have leverage. Notably, this is exactly what happened with nuclear proliferation bans, if we’re being honest. Assuming it’s not actually p…
I don't know why you're jumping to nuclear weapons as your analogy when gun control laws in other countries make a far better comparison point. Australia is probably a good example here: they have urban and suburban centres in the cities, but they also have vast rural areas. Guns are not banned but limited and regulated. They do not seem to have had this issue where people have been left defenceless by crazy people w…
For countries with major issues who do have strict gun control? Off the top of my head, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa. Plenty more if I looked, I’m sure.
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It's pretty eye opening to watch every bill pushed through in the name of firearm safety turning out to have massive exemptions for off duty and retired cops. They're such a powerful political force that it's outright expected they should have a disproportionate ability to deliver force even after they're retired .
Most of the reason for cops being security and being excluded from most firearms safety bills is because rhey already have a credential that was more strenuous to achieve than what the proposed bill is. That training, whether effective or not, is also seen to mitigate risks around litigation when they work security due to how our courts work (how things look can be more important). Although there are other laws that…
You have to have been raised pretty sweetly to not have known this kind of racketeering was a 'thing' for a very long time. Pressure to hire cops is rampant. 'rent-a-cop' is not aimed at the fact that security companies apply aggressive mimicry to their people, but that these people are themselves often off-duty cops. Security companies are strongly "encouraged" to hire off-duty cops, and find themselves left out to…