Fuck the Police

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SlixSC wrote:

That's not how I see it unfortunately, but that has more to do with my perspective on morality than any real insight into what GGG's motives are.

Sometimes we have to choose to believe what what we believe, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. This is what we call faith, and it is indeed a powerful tool for the forging of hope.

Yes, but this cuts both ways, none of us actually know GGG's intentions. I'm not even sure Chris (or whoever was responsible for this decision) himself knows, for he may be rationalizing his decision to himself in this tragically liberal way, but ultimately his prime concern could still be the financial wellbeing of his company. But I think it would be naive to assume that money played no part in this decision making process at all. It's, at the very least, a counter-intuitive assumption.

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SlixSC wrote:

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SlixSC wrote:

That's not how I see it unfortunately, but that has more to do with my perspective on morality than any real insight into what GGG's motives are.

Sometimes we have to choose to believe what what we believe, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence. This is what we call faith, and it is indeed a powerful tool for the forging of hope.

Yes, but this cuts both ways, none of us actually know GGG's intentions. I'm not even sure Chris (or whoever was responsible for this decision) himself knows, for he may be rationalizing his decision to himself in this tragically liberal way, but ultimately his prime concern could still be the financial wellbeing of his company. But I think it would be naive to assume that money played no part in this decision making process at all. It's, at the very least, a counter-intuitive assumption.

I can't argue that, so I'm just going to have a hissy fit and stamp my feet.

:)

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I can't argue that, so I'm just going to have a hissy fit and stamp my feet.

:)

You do that, in the meantime I will casually smoke my cuban cigar, sip on my glass of Glenfiddich and burn a few hundred dollar-bills. But wait.. I forgot, I have a flight to catch. I just realized that I haven't checked on my chinese factory workers in a while. Isn't it great how I altruistically improve their lives by making them work 80 hours a week for extremelly low wages? I'm such a great entrepeneur.

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lolbam wrote:

with out the police you would be dead

When parts of the UK were rioting badly enough that the police totally lost control and were forced to retreat, communities very quickly came together to prevent the violence. Here in Cambodia where the police are completely useless (and yet the crime rates are comparable to well developed nations) it's much the same thing, criminals are more scared of getting caught by the public than they are of the police (who they can just pay off). The notion that we would all be raping and killing each other unless our governments have a complete monopoly on violence and retribution is illogical and demonstrably false.

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Charanjaydemyr wrote:

Bully for you for representing Cambodia.

I neither represent it nor do I think it couldn't be a lot better. I didn't have a huge amount of respect for the police before I came here either, as I said, even in places like England a few nights of rioting was all it took for police to retreat and for communities to set up their own groups to protect their communities. Of course it's not like they got refunds or anything, the police aren't accountable to any sort of SLA like anyone in the private sector would be, they just demand that you pay your taxes even when they completely fail to do the job they are paid to do.

Sorry, enough ranting for today.

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MonstaMunch wrote:

I neither represent it nor do I think it couldn't be a lot better. I didn't have a huge amount of respect for the police before I came here either, as I said, even in places like England a few nights of rioting was all it took for police to retreat and for communities to set up their own groups to protect their communities.

Which works fine if there is an immediate threat that is not only easy to identify, but publicly known. However, if the threat is more obscure, then communities alone could never provide safety or justice, for they would always lack the necessary means to do so and such perceptions of justice could never be universally applied, for different communities would naturally evolve different understandings of justice, which would then naturally lead to vigilantism in the long run.

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Of course it's not like they got refunds or anything, the police aren't accountable to any sort of SLA like anyone in the private sector would be, they just demand that you pay your taxes even when they completely fail to do the job they are paid to do.

Which is a rather ridiculous argument, for the private sector is only accountable to SLA's for as long as the public sector (government) enforces those SLA's, the level of accountability is thus identical, for they are ultimately both accountable to the government.

Now I understand that in the US in particular, police accountability is a real issue, but we shouldn't allow for this practical problem (in one particular country mind you) to cloud our judgements when it comes to the greater picture.

But most importantly, nobody is arguing that in the absence of a police force or even government, we would all start raping and killing eachother, that is a complete strawman. The argument has more to do with means and perceptions of justice in general.


If I and my friend wanted to take a more Proudhon-esque approach and declare all private property as theft, would we be justified in walking into your house and in using your computer because that's what our community of two people decided? The point is, such communities can work for as long as there is an immediate threat that is easy to identify and as long as there are few ideological disagreements. But if you really think this "privately-enforced" law could ever work, even with people who are opposed to private property, who think rape isn't immoral, etc.. then you are deeply mistaken.

Ask yourself why we are pushing for universal human rights... because otherwise we would still (and in some cases actually still do) have places where child-labour is ok, where people are stoned to death for having the wrong sexual-orientation (or religion/skin color), etc... it already pains me enough to see that there are still barbaric places on this earth that treat women and children like complete shit and it should be our goal to eventually (if necessary) impose a more just and humane law in those places. It really pains me to see that there are still people in Western society who think private laws are a sensible idea.

Yes, let's give those fundamentalist christian communities (in the US or Europe) their own legislative powers and see how that will work out for their women, children, homosexuals, etc...

Now, I don't want to argue from "guilt by association", but...

And I know, I know, you would say "no those people's actions are clearly immoral and any community would thus be justified in punishing or using force against them, even if they are not the majority", so you are effectively saying what the government is saying, except that you've replaced the word "public" with "private". WOW, what an intellectual heavyweight...