I agree, that's a good point. What can the police stop handling and what can replace them? I haven't given it much thought myself. I know they are terrible with domestic disputes.
Police Union Uses A Black Woman's Son In P.R. Photo After Attacking Her
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Sorry I should have specified. I meant it's not true that you only meet them when you did something wrong, they rescue you, or you fucked up. Often it is impossible to avoid them particularly if you are black. We have been called to a house because an angry neighbour wanted to piss someone off (and of course my colleagues would go in looking for blood)
I don't open my house to cops. If I am forced to speak with them I treat them like princes and pray they get bored. I won't let them in unless they have a warrant to search it. The assholes can claim they sniffed weed from my apartment and that is enough of a warrant for a search, so I talk to them through the door. Cops aren't here to protect you, they're here to do their jobs.
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Well generally when there are calls to defund the police that tends to be with the assumption that those funds would be going into more specialized services. But the real question is should those specialized services be rolled into the police or totally separate, because there are a lot of things where having quick police presence would be handy, but on the other hand you run into the possibility that any service you roll out like this that is part of the police ends up being just pushed to the side by the police.
But like with the aforementioned domestic disputes, it would be useful to have some kind of counselor there handling the issue while police are on standby just in case since those can get really ugly. You also probably want more specialized services for dealing with homeless since we have decided we wanted that to be a problem. Same thing with drunks who haven't committed a crime. I mean you do have some cops that are good with these things, then you have others who suck and will make things much much worse.
It really isn't that easy to avoid them. It is not difficult for a cop to find a way to ruin your day if you want to. We were given bullshit hints on how to get someone if we stop their car and they "fail the attitude test". The easiest way to fail that in France is to be Arab.
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Well there are several things we can do, we can do an unpaid voluntaire system, similar to what is done with volunteer firemen like in a shit load of places, this isn't exactly an alien concept, other things we can do is to have the equivalent of police be elected by the people, but have the option to veto them at any point (To answer your other question this is what EZLN does and why it's better than Police since they are entirely accountable to the people, it's actually what most anarchists propose), there could be a system where we have an emergency line and all people on the nearby are gather to help, there could be a system of neighbourhood watch patrols and so on, under a socialist anarchy specifically installing security cameras on everyone's home should be feasible, no one is advocating for a society without protection we're just saying that the current system fundamentally doesn't work, having the police be only accountable to the state which most of the time has no reason to hold them to any accountability rather than directly to the people will generate injustice and oppression every single time, just like @Crystal Violet pointed out, even the richest and more developed countries have problems with abuse of power, because that's the point of the state, to lord power over the people and oppress them, it's why it must be destroyed.
It's also important ton point out that this isn't the only thing that should be pushed, the implementation of social workers to deal with the most common "crimes" the police deal with is crucial, things like homelessness, petty thef, drug addiction and mental illness should be dealt with a caring and empathetic hand, providing them access to shelter or the psychological support they need rather than throwing them in a jail cell or harassing them.
I'll also point out that I don't believe in a punitive system of justice, I think all crimes regardless of severity should be dealt with psychological and psychiatric care rather than violence, I don't know why it's assumed people don't have the capacity to be better when I've personally dealt with many ex-cons and a lot of them had murdered at some point in their like, yet some of them have been the most caring, most helpful and nicest people I've ever met, the truth of the matter is that people can change.
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Not surprising that you assume that there are no alternatives to police.
In any case the establishment of police and getting rid of all of them doesn't involve them not being replaced with something else, as I just addressed to with @Specter Von Baren this could be replaced with an elected force that the people have the power to remove at any point and for any reason (Again, like the EZLN does) which is very different from the point you make later on about Sheriffs, because the people don't really have the power to remove them, only to elect them, since this is the case once the Sheriff's in power he can make sure he has no competition for the position by abusing his power and therefore continue to get elected by running unopposed, granting him the capability to get away with even more crimes, this isn't hard science, it's simple common sense, other alternatives are again volunteers like in the firemen that again answer directly to the people and can be removed at any moment from the position (This is the most important part, really).
The problem is that you assume that your opponent is making the most extreme and absurd version of what they're arguing, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding.
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Fun fact that your rant here ignores: Most sheriffs can, in fact, be subject to recall. They can be removed by the electorate outside of normal elections.
Now that your ignorance has been corrected, let's, hypothetically, take your spiel at face value as correct.
Who exactly "removes" the elected people from power? Do we rely on the other elected powerholders? What if they band together to not remove eachother?
And how does "for any reason" get enforced? If I dislike Bill because he called me names when we were children, can I on my own remove him even if 90% of the rest of the community believes he's the best person to have doing the job? And if that's not a good enough reason, who arbitrates the "valid" vs "invalid" determination of a remove request?
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*cracks knuckles* Lets start poking holes. Well an unpaid voluntary system isn't the best idea, for one you run into them being vulnerable to corruption right out the gate, even if you end up with a fully communist system you still have that issue cause you are putting them in a position of authority where they might decide they want a little more. And you still run into the issue that normal police forces have where its not uncommon for a certain type of person to want the authority that comes with being a cop. Sure you could vote them out but most of a population isn't going to really care unless they are really corrupt and even then you run into things like ex-sheriff Joe Arpalo who was a piece of shit but kept getting elected cause people liked his tough on crime stuff. You seem to forget that the police are already accountable to the people, through voting for elected officials which include sheriffs and police commissioners in a lot of places. Sometimes the majority of people want someone who will be brutal on crime and criminals and all that that implies. This is also ignoring groups that would try to game that system. Since they are unpaid positions they would probably not be that popular, so you would either end up with a too small to do much police force or you could even just have a bunch of members of a certain group sneak into positions and entrench themselves in a way that they just take over.
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So your alternatives to police are just police? Brilliant.
Sheriffs can already be removed in ways other than elections, and they are technically accountable to the people. The problem is getting enough people to vote them out. One man's police overreach is another man's "tough on crime approach." People aren't a hivemind.
Replacing police with volunteers seems immediately open to corruption. Also effective police investigations take a lot of effort, man-power, and follow-through. Some investigations take months or years to complete. You can't really rely on volunteers who can come and go as they please to finish a lengthy investigation.
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Yes of course, it's not as if the world is close to being irreparably damaged thanks to over-exploitation of resources and a refusal to adapt to more environmentally friendly technologies due to a lack of profitability, it's not like poor communities are being left without drinking water due to the privatisation of it, which of course leads to hunger too.
Obviously not every single problem is capitalism's fault, but it'd be absolutely idiotic to claim that a great amount of the world's largest problems are not, let's take a look at poverty for example, why are poor countries poor?
So what typically happens is that in order for a country to be formed, there is typically some conflict let's say for example México since that's where I live but this applies to countless examples, this country has a revolutionary war to free itself from the previous system (Feudalism in this case), the people fight for a stateless society where everyone can at least in theory be equal, but foreign intervention starts pushing support on a fa faction of bourgeoisie that support Capitalism, since these guys fit the agenda that foreign powers like the USA want, they launch a campaign to defame the revolutionaries by claiming they are bandits or terrorists, while paying for propaganda that this capitalist regime is the one we need, once the capitalist regime triumphs due to large amounts of support the other factions support, the country is founded, but they've just wasted most of their resources in a war and are in need of structure in order to truly establish the new regime, then the rich countries that supported them come in and agree to help but in exchange the country must agree to sell the resources that they do have, specifically to those countries and at a price below market value, now the countries have little other option as lack of structure would cause massive destabilisation and a possible revolt of the people, so they accept, they are now both indebted to these countries for exorbitant amounts of money and forced to sell resources that they either needed for themselves or could have sold to someone else for far more though admittedly negotiations would have taken time, the absurd interests of such a deal keep making the debt even larger practically locking them into a permanent cycle of debt, which prevents them from developing as well as the older richer nations.
This is pretty much how capitalism works.
Worse, they always have, they beat the homeless, extort the poor and middle class and whenever you report a crime they don't do anything about it or just plain don't take it seriously, not to mention that crimes like murder and rape are mostly left unresolved and they often try to minimise the gravity of them.
If the police did their advertised job, but that's not really their job, their job is simply to harass and terrorise the people being dressed up in a nice hero costume.
And to address my point about the restaurant, if you don't fail to see the absurdity of someone starving because they can't buy food, while simultaneously throwing away food that they're not allowed to have despite the fact it's making no one any money, I don't know what else to say or what better argument one could come up with against capitalism.
Of course they did and they would still be happening even after Capitalism is destroyed, however at a much lower rate, murders due to robberies would be less likely if you don't have to pay for food and shelter, the vast majority of kidnappings are made for profit, be it to extort money out of families or to sell the people as slaves, these would be less likely if we operated on a need base economy rather than a commodity based economy, as for starvation, we actually have enough food right now to feed the entire world a healthy diet, we also have the technology to implement the logistics needed to move the food, in any socialist society it could be possible to vastly reduce starvation rates.
Because nobody's arguing that, you're just projecting that argument because you want to make your opponents positions seem ridiculous so that they can be taken less seriously.
Oh, I'm not claiming that, but that's the image they sell to you on their propaganda, México is a horrible criminal hellscape, so is China and the Soviet Union, especially compared to the paradise and freedom afforded to you by the USA and Capitalism!
And while I heavily dislike the Soviet Union and China as I do all authoritarian power-structures, however it would be disingenuous to claim that the Soviet Union or Mao's China (Which very much were Communist) killed even close to as many people as the USA's imperialist Capitalism has.
Again, I have never stated that all of the problems of the world would be solved if we lived under Anarchy, specifically a Libertarian Socialist Anarchy which what I'm advocating for, but a lot of problems would be addressed, a change of economic system has historically helped, the world improved when we got rid of Feudalism and Mercantilism, Capitalism has outlived it's usefulness now, it needs to be replaced like those other systems before it, eventually the new system will be replaced too and that's fine, it's necessary for progress, but at this point in time it's very clear that Capitalism is holding back humanity.
Yes, the true problem with addressing police brutality and murder is Authoritarianism, the only economic system that seeks to address this is Anarchy.
But to address the point about the countries you mentioned, they have put stock in a more reformative system of prison, at least for what little I know about them, this is a necessary step to reduce crime.
I'm pretty sure I've addressed this by now, but feel free to raise further questions, I'm just some idiot on the Internet though, I don't have all the answers and my proposals might be flawed.
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All of them need to be fired, the whole organisation needs to be disbanded and we need to establish something new with a completely different structure, that is directly accountable to the people, that is what I have been trying to say, half-measures like what you say will solve absolutely nothing.
Edit: This thread is waaaay too long, I'm taking a break, I will try to answer everyone but I'm going to be honest I'm not the biggest fan of being in these very long threads so I might get bored.
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Your only mistake was walking through the door bbyMe right now
I never got stopped by police before when I was driving. I thank the heavens I don't get to go through that ordeal. I don't know how I'd go through with it - I tell myself I'll keep my windows closed and talk to them through it, but I don't think the law lets me do that.
I'm actually well aware of the issues of environmental degradation. I've probably spent more time on this forum talking about those issues than a lot of people.
However, when I say the world's getting better, I'm keeping the following trends in mind:
-Life expectancy is up
-Literacy is up
-Infant mortality is down
-Gender equality is up
-War is down
-Extreme poverty is down
-Famine is down, to the point that 'natural famines' are completely gone.
-Murder is down
-Death by natural disaster is down
And so on and so forth. On a historical timescale, there's never been a better time to be alive. That's not to say that this won't come crashing down, but in this specific point in time, and over the last hundred years ago, we've seen a great improvement in human welfare. One of the biggest issues facing the world is whether we can maintain that incredible leap in human flourishing without trashing the planet. Personally, I'm dubious.
Actually, environmentally friendly technologies have primarily been adapted because of profitability, not in spite of it. The reason why there's so much solar and wind is because it's cheaper to build them rather than coal-fired power plants, and even LNG. Alternatively, nuclear has become more expensive, not less.
It doesn't make me overly happy that this is due to the profit motive in most cases, but it's at least something. Sad reality is that cost-effectiveness has driven reductions in emissions far more than some glorious human desire to save the planet. Now, I'm definitely for government subsidies for renewables, and yes, nuclear, but I can't deny that over the past 5-10 years, the private sector's picked up a lot of the slack.
I'll grant you that, but again, globally, hunger's down, not up.
I've never heard of anyone fighting for a stateless society. I mean, maybe communist revolutions, but how did that go?
Most rebellions are to create a new state, not a stateless society.
That's incredibly myopic. There's been rebellions and wars throughout human history, you can't boil that down to class struggle.
Now, all of the above isn't anything I'm going to defend. I'm no fan of neoliberalism. But everything you've described has happened in some form well before capitalism or alongside it in equivalent forms. You could get rid of capitalism today, and more powerful nations would exert influence over less powerful ones. We've been on that track for the last 12,000 years.
Okay, so your police are corrupt by the sound of things. So does your quest for abolition go global?
Of course I see the issue with it, it's absurd. It's morally repugnant. But again, you'd have similar problems under other systems. Food waste isn't an issue confined to one economic system.
Socialism doesn't have the best record for reducing starvation - see Venezuela and North Korea. Also, the murder rate. Again, on the global level, murders have gone down, not up. Now, this isn't a case of "correlation equals causation," but if we agree that murder and robbery is less likely once people are lifted out of poverty, then, well, what's done a better job of lifting people out of poverty over the last 100 years?
I've literally seen people argue that in debates, including ones I attended personally.
I have little time or interest in argumentum ad extremum. Anyone saying "capitalism is the best thing ever, it's the perfect economic system, it can never be improved or replaced" is someone I have little time for either. The problem, as I see it, is that attempts at alternative economic systems (see socialism and communism) haven't provided a good alternative. I certainly hope there is an alternative out there (the closest I've seen is donut economics, but that's basically just theoretical at this point), but you're not going to sell me on the idea of state socialism/communism.
Granted, a lot of people say that any form of government interferance is socialism, and as per the above comments, I have no time for these people. There's a happy medium between the government running everything and the government running nothing.
First of all, who's "they?"
Second of all, I don't think Mexico's a horrible hellscape, but it's not propaganda to acknowledge that Mexico has a lot of problems. You haven't really painted a pretty picture of Mexico yourself when you've already acknowledged corrupt police, drug cartels, and separatist movements.
Third of all, China isn't a hellscape. It is, however, a country that has serious human rights issues and dubious foreign influence. This isn't some grand conspiracy, everyone knows it.
Fourth of all, I don't live in the USA, and the USA hasn't really afforded me or Australia anything since WWII (in a societal sense, there's obviously plenty of US media and technology I consume). Capitalism isn't some magic genie that's given me everything good in my life - good government has, and plenty of other things that exist regardless of an economic system. The USA has its own breed of insanity with capitalism, and it's not an insanity I'd be keen to live under. Better than the USSR, China, or Mexico? Sure. But not my first choice. The United States is disintegrating before my eyes, and a lot of that has to do with income inequality.
Again, happy mediums.
I've nothing against capitalism being replaced, because by God it's got some issues. However, I have no desire to live in anarchy (and yes, that includes the actual system, not a descriptive).
Except anarchy requires everyone to do a pinkie promise that they won't go authoratarian.
We lived in anarchy until around 10,000BCE. Come the year 2020, how's that turned out? Anarchy only exists as long as the world allows it to.
Again, true. What's that got to do with economics?
I'm aware of private prisons (which strike me as insane), but again, a reformative prison system is a good idea, and most people acknowledge that. But there isn't a 1:1 relationship between economics and prison systems.
I don’t care about abiding by your trivial standards of maturity.
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That's kinda the point of community police, they have to be part of the community so that they have less of a reason to not protect it, also like I said the way it's handled in these communities is in such a way that they are made easy to remove from power, just call a meeting and have the community explain why that person should be removed, everyone votes on it, bam they're gone, do keep in mind that crimes under Anarchy are defined very differently, as they have to be infringing in other people's rights and also in order for it to work optimally there has to be education first, the implementation at first would be a bit rough but it's plausible.
I mention this because the key difference, is that in Anarchy everyone shares the power, everyone's voice is at least in theory equal in value, under the current system and under communism the state has an overwhelming amount of power over the people, so even if you are given the choice to vote it won't matter, as the state and corporations can choose to ignore the people even if they have majority vote, or purposefully manipulate the media to portray cops as heroes, under Anarchy keep in mind that the media wouldn't be beholden to the state in any form, so while I can picture some things going wrong, it should at least in theory be less biased towards protecting the state.
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That's my same point, it's not really sustainable at all, if we keep going at this pace most of the things you listed will change for the worst, once the resources become scarce, which would invariably happen under the effects climate change.
That's why we can't trust Capitalism, they're wasting too much time and using all their propaganda to actively slow down progress on this front, seriously all climate denying scientists are being employed by massive corporations, like I don't think there's any possible argument you could make in favour of Capitalism at this point.
Does it matter that it's down, when it could easily be much better?
I said I was using México as an example, that's what happened in México and while some details change such as fighting for a communist society, the vast majority of revolutions in modern times have been over the class struggle, to not see it, is to practically be blind.
True, that's why nations shouldn't exist.
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