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And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

shkspr.mobi

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Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#61

Post by AnimalMuppet »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #31

I agree that there's no difference in principle between the government of the land you live on ordering the cell phone company to send a text message to everyone about wildfire danger; and ordering the cell phone company to send a text message to honest and loyal men about confronting the traitors and criminals and protecting the people and honor of the country. This is simply what it means for a national government…

True, but let's talk about that word "legitimate" for a minute.

Let us accept that sending a text message about wildfire danger is legitimate. (I'm sure there are some here who will argue that it is not, but let's ignore them for the moment.)

Sending a text message "to honest and loyal men about confronting the traitors and criminals and protecting the people and honor of the country" could be legitimate use of the threat of violence to defend the country. Or it could be a horribly illegitimate abuse of power, in a much more fundamental way than a wildfire warning could ever be.

So that's what bugs me about your examples. The second one is far too open to illegitimate use. And if the use is illegitimate, then the monopoly on violence is not legitimate either. (At least not within US civic philosophy: "Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed", and all that.)

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#62

Post by cwmoore »

cwmoore wrote: post #33
HWR_14 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the ideal number of jails is not zero, but why wouldn't the ideal number of homeless people be zero?

Housing is a privilege, not a right, and not a requirement. Except, being a free country, in jail.

I said it is - I'm not saying it should be.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#63

Post by GolfPopper »

cwmoore wrote: post #7
jameskilton wrote: post #3

A good article, but missing one very important word: trust. Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch ". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustwort…

But we have built so many enduring systems that rely on bad apples to function the way the do. See "insurance pricing", "private prisons", and "justice enforcement". In the real world, the ideal number of jails or homeless people is neither zero nor "all of them".

How old are those systems in their present configuration?

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#64

Post by cwmoore »

gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #58
cwmoore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d guess the downvotes are an aberration of today’s politics, because your account of the history is factually and legally valid. (keyword “restorative”) To me, the idea that incarceration and police use of force is wrong because it is racist is backwards. It’s racist because it is wrong.

Is aberration for the ground you claim? My understanding is that in the west up until recently prisons were uncommon due to cost. The courts either fined you or they killed you. You might’ve been part of a Work gang, but the goal was to kill you.

I don't understand your question or your comments. I have not considered the relevance of execution to this discussion, but I do not see fines and imprisonment as the same categories of punishment/correction at all.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#65

Post by ai_critic »

jacquesm wrote: post #40
cwmoore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we have built so many enduring systems that rely on bad apples to function the way the do. See "insurance pricing", "private prisons", and "justice enforcement". In the real world, the ideal number of jails or homeless people is neither zero nor "all of them".

In the real world the jails are for holding, the prisons are for convicted criminals and the homeless people (most of them anyway, because not everybody that is homeless is derelict, and the addicts) get whatever help they need. Because we actually can afford it.

> Because we actually can afford it.

Can you, though? And for how long? With the current policymaking and demographic and economic trends?

There is an argument to be made that the European social experiment has largely been indirectly funded by the largesse of the American hard-and-soft power strategy. As we're moving away from that (for various reasons, most idiotic), there is a question as to how it will persist.

(This is not meant as trolling--there's a real existential question here. A starting point is an attack on that argument: what is the "natural" expenditure on defense versus what you can get away with America's force projection? How much social funding is derived from that delta, in the most generous sense? Maybe it's a red-herring.)

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#66

Post by 3abiton »

jameskilton wrote: post #3

A good article, but missing one very important word: trust. Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to do the right thing. Said society also finds it incredibly important to remove or nullify those who aren't trustworthy because "a rotten apple spoils the whole bunch ". Trust is hard to earn, and easy to lose, and it only takes one person exploiting the trustwort…

> trust

One interesting aspect ij academic literature about trust, it is highly reverse correlated with diversity. No matter the grouping and size, the more diverse, the less trust within the group.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#67

Post by lend000 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #20
cwmoore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we have built so many enduring systems that rely on bad apples to function the way the do. See "insurance pricing", "private prisons", and "justice enforcement". In the real world, the ideal number of jails or homeless people is neither zero nor "all of them".

Obviously the ideal number of jails is not zero, but why wouldn't the ideal number of homeless people be zero?

I knew someone who worked at some sort of homeless services clinic, and I asked how many people they were able to help get back on their feet in a sustainable way. The answer was 1; I don't know what the denominator was, but the takeaway is that most of the visibly homeless people you see are uncoachable and you really can't protect people from themselves. With a huge caveat that the visibly homeless is a subset of the homeless/impoverished population.

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#68

Post by bethekidyouwant »

pianopatrick wrote: post #52
californical wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing there’s a bit of breathing room at the lower end of the system - there will be people who become drug addicts or have major mental health breaks and lose everything. And ideally we have good safety nets that find these people and give them resources and treatment, but some people will refuse everything and end up in bad situations of homelessness due to their drug and/or mental health crises. And even in…

You could also have "zero homeless" if you had a certain amount of cheap housing that even drug addicts and mentally ill people could afford. Or where the cost of helping them is not too much. Like some housing that was built to be closer to "indestructible" than "nice" and was small, like 200 - 300 sq ft.

If it’s not in the city centre it will remain empty and if it is it will already be full

Re: And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway

#69

Post by laughing_man »

It's really difficult to see what technologies will be enablers of state power. IMO, the techs ushering in 1984-levels of control are wifi, cheap cameras, and LLMs. The three technologies on their own are beneficial, but taken together they're going to make Big Brother seem impotent.
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