Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Criminalization of Everyday Life

tomdispatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 347 posts

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#201

Post by philwelch »

a_c_s wrote: post #148
iambateman wrote: post #32

If every police station in the country is equipped with military-grade weapons and vehicles, what happens in the event of despotic leadership? Suppose someone rises to power with little regard for legislative oversight and activates the sleeping military at home. It might start with a real (or faked) terror event coordinated across several major cities. It wouldn't take much at all, 5-10 cities, and suddenly: 1. Inte…

What is the difference between using militarized police and actual military? If in the hands of a despot one is a problem, then so is the other. So I don't see how weaponizing the police changes this equation. (Some other commenters suggest the police is more loyal to the local citizenry, in which case weaponizing the police could be seen as providing a counterbalancing armed force that could defend against a militar…

If I had to generalize about the military and the police, I'd have a lot more fear for police. The veterans I've known by and large hate the government, which is ironic. But cops have zero compunction against violently attacking the people.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#202

Post by dragonwriter »

LekkoscPiwa wrote: post #196
jseliger wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

quote more Foucault's Discipline & Punishment Foucault's style is (possibly deliberately) obtuse, and his knowledge of history dubious at best, per Keith Windschuttle's book The Killing of History : http://www.amazon.com/The-Killing-History-Theorists-Murderin... . It's the question of why we all let this happen without any resistance Because it's easy, because most of the time it doesn't affect us, and because it's h…

So when in 1960s students revolted against the War in Vietnam, an average American knew all those things? I don't think so. I'd rather draw parallel to Ancient Rome and its citizens. As long as there were "Games" in town and bread for free nobody cared. Once the Rome was on fire they woke up. For some time. The situation is hopeless. The only solution is when US runs out of money. Goes bankrupt. Which is quite possib…

> The situation is hopeless. The only solution is when US runs out of money. Goes bankrupt. Which is quite possible. Once USD isn't the world currency, the country defaults.

Why would it? The US dollar not being the world currency wouldn't drop the value of US industrial output, but it would (presuming that it dropped the value of the dollar due to reduced global demand for US dollars) reduce the value of US debt.

Which would be bad for entities with incomes or assets denominated in US dollars, but good for entities with debts denominated in US dollars, and neutral for entities whose income was dependent, say, on US output.

> The US has currently the biggest debt of any empire in the history of the world.

In absolute terms, maybe, but relative to the size of its economy, its not even the largest of countries in the world today.

> Impossible to repay.

This is neither true nor meaningful; as long as the debt can be serviced, it doesn't actually need to be repaid (and could, in fact, grow in absolute terms over time without limit without harm so long as output was growing apace.)

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#203

Post by blah32497 »

coldtea wrote: post #174
blah32497 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mass surveillance =/= authoritarianism This is a false equivalence that keeps being brought up on HN. Yes, authoritarian government have mass surveillance, but the converse isn't necessarily true. The only very clear example of the government getting more authoritarian is in the TSA. (where they now are fondling our balls for our "safety") and to a smaller extent the DHS, prison authorities, and NSLs - smaller in the…

> This is a false equivalence that keeps being brought up on HN. Yes, authoritarian government have mass surveillance, but the converse isn't necessarily true. Perhaps (which is still arguable). But that's not the case here, because we have both. From the Patriot Act to the SWAT-ization of everyday police operations, and from the TSA to the massively increased legal overload (compared to 1960's laws and practices) an…

It's not like last year they passed the evil-fascist-police bill that allows the cops to buy tanks. This is all happening within the preexisting legal framework. (The Patriot Act has been around for already 12 years) There has been no significant expansion of the power of the state over the past decade.

If you think the existing framework is flawed (and I would strongly agree), then definitely fight against it. Vote for people that support your view, and write to your representatives.

The fight against surveillance is essentially defeatist and fear mongering. It assumes the government will turn evil and it'll start trying to make your life miserable. It's all part of a collective psychosis. We think that it's an inevitability that one day the US will turn into an evil dystopian nazi regime.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#205

Post by philwelch »

alan_cx wrote: post #156
JonnieCache wrote: post #48

The fact that this is being instigated by the federal government makes me suspect that this is deliberate planning for the long-term consequences of american societal breakdown, for when the war on drugs isn't enough to control the ever-growing underclass anymore. Does this kind of thinking still place me firmly with the tinfoil contingent?

Having a so called police force like this is societal breakdown. To me, current US policing looks much like how the Brits patrolled Northern Ireland back in the day, with the army. Only thing the US is missing is check points and road blocks. Don't kid yourselves, the US does not have a police force, it has a domestic army. Only hope Americans have is in the individuals who wear the uniform. Would American uniformed…

I've had these kinds of conversations with military veterans before, actually. It's surprising how libertarian-leaning veterans are. I'm not sure why but I would trust veterans or even active duty military over cops any day.

Cops shoot dogs, taze people for fun, pretend to be badasses, and then go home to their families every night. It's the perfect profession for a bully. But serving in the military sucks, they do a better job screening out the psychopaths, and once you've been in combat once or twice you tend to take the whole organized violence thing a little more seriously.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#206

Post by noonespecial »

marincounty wrote: post #144

I have felt we have too many laws and over zealous cops for some time now. I guess I'm old--I was born in 1972, but I can assure you; things were not like it has been in the last twenty years. I started noticing a change in the late 80's and it's(a over regulated society, cops who abuse the system) just gotten worse. If Jesus Christ reappeared he would most likely be arrested for indecency. Ticketed for fishing witho…

If Jesus Christ reappeared he would most likely be...

All those crimes?! Jeeze, its sounds like they'd friggin' crucify him...

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#207

Post by philwelch »

eseehausen wrote: post #159
pistle wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Foucault is SmallTalk. Tangentially inspirational, but mostly useless in modern practice. Deleuze's postscript... "metastable states coexisting in one and the same, like a universal system of deformation." That's your counter-argument?

This sort cherry-picking of "obtuse" quotes to attack high-level theory is pretty absurd. It's equivalent to somebody from the humanities putting down this formula: Y = λf.(λx.f (x x)) (λx.f (x x)) and saying "I have difficulty understanding this, ergo computer science is absurd nonsense."

And if "theory" or whatever the fuck you English majors call it were mathematically rigorous you'd have a point.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#208

Post by dclowd9901 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #195
csallen wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human nature is hard to change. Systems are (relatively) easy to change. Rather than worry about people being irresponsible, lazy, greedy, immoral, incompetent, etc, we should focus on building systems that work well and protect all involved despite all of that.

A very important part of a system that works well is making sure that the people with the worse character flaws don't get into power positions, and that the people in power get punished when they display those character flaws. Or, in other words, stop blamming the system, and start making it work.

Actually to parent's point, it's ensuring that even if the worst people got into positions of power, things would be structured enough and there'd be enough checks to keep them from doing any real damage.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#209

Post by marcosdumay »

JonnieCache wrote: post #48

The fact that this is being instigated by the federal government makes me suspect that this is deliberate planning for the long-term consequences of american societal breakdown, for when the war on drugs isn't enough to control the ever-growing underclass anymore. Does this kind of thinking still place me firmly with the tinfoil contingent?

It's interesting that the drugs are much more effective in controlling an underclass than the US war on drugs will ever be.

Re: The Criminalization of Everyday Life

#210

Post by dragonwriter »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #208
marcosdumay wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very important part of a system that works well is making sure that the people with the worse character flaws don't get into power positions, and that the people in power get punished when they display those character flaws. Or, in other words, stop blamming the system, and start making it work.

Actually to parent's point, it's ensuring that even if the worst people got into positions of power, things would be structured enough and there'd be enough checks to keep them from doing any real damage.

This is one of those things that sounds nice but is mostly self-contradictory (or, at least, requires magic) -- if there is something checking to prevent "the worst people" from doing real damage in "positions of power", then:

1) The positions you are atalking about really don't have all that much power, and 2) Assuming that the checks aren't magical external impersoal forces, the people doing the checking actually exert the real power.

Post reply on HN