Look. Information is amoral, and the information age a Pandora's Box. We can't have the kind of "instant gratification" society that the global "we" crave (my personal tastes are decidedly retro) without the potential for abuse.
Cops are human. Humans are corrupt. All cops are corrupt. Are sufficiently corrupt cops more common than "terrorists" (as opposed to some other criminal)? Oh, likely.
Subjectively, every time I've been pulled over for speeding or had a fender bender, I was sober, the cop had me dead to rights, I didn't act the jackass, and the interlude went about as smoothly as can be expected. My WASP demographic may have counted in my favor. ...
Can the trend towards "the fishbowl society" be reversed?
I predict a business opportunity for planned communities where individuals can have some sort of broker sit between them and the rest of the economy to maintain privacy. Imagine all mail and email and services going through some kind of portal run by OpenBSD zealots. Sort of an Amish community with internet connectivity, if you will.
...
Noting your Rush sig. I just got tickets to see them in Madison Square Garden in September. For the third time. Absolutely my favorite band. You read Niel's prose?
Police officers are generally believed and cops stick up for each other.
They are, and they do, because, generally speaking, they are trustworthy.
Thus far you've offered some scenarios of abuse, which undeniably occur.
Your argument seems to be that the net damage caused by the status quo is less than the potential damage that could be caused if the fractional number of bad cops had better tools available.
I guess I'd opt for a compromise of giving the cops the tools, but with more public oversight and harsher penalties for screwing up.
The greater danger, to me, is the white collar crime stemming from people who aren't cops at all tapping into various tools.
Yes, my wife is from Germany, and I'm nearly conversational in German, and I think that the Eurabian nanny states have some extreme crises to face in the coming decades.
I suppose I take a dim view to this assertion "Some people are ignorant fools who need a shepherd". In an acute sense, we all have our need for societal structures to help out. Chronically, big government societal structures appear a cure worse than whatever disease they were trying to combat.
Equality of opportunity, not condition, say I.
These claims are all sad, if proven true.
The substantial difference between the bad cops and bad civilians is that the cops are at least notionally accountable to the people.
If the corruption is as bad as you say, and there are systematic abuses underway, then why are not the people taking action against them? We have an internet. Start putting the badge numbers of the bad cops on line, and put pressure on the mayor to clean up the police.
It's a sad truth that there are some bad apples in every bunch. I daresay that if I lost confidence in my neighborhood force, I'd consider a move.
Your argument seems founded on some misapprehension that authority == evil.
For the record, I think the ACLU is like the UN: the only thing worse would be no ACLU or UN. The canary in the coal mine is necessary.
Sample 1000 people who've had their liberty severely curtailed by some overzealous, god-complexed, and/or prejudiced cop
The cops do become what they despise on occasion, and deserve the full weight of the law.
The question becomes where you put the operating point for society.
What is the 'reasonable' ratio of rotten cop incidents vs. rotten citizen incidents?
I suppose I favor fewer rotten citizens, but then my life is probably more boring than yours.
The problem i see here is that this is a small attack on our liberty from all sides.
By the government, or the dudes that thugged your car?
Sample 1,000 people who've had their liberty severely curtailed by some scofflaw, and see if they don't think this is a jolly good idea.
Overzealous cops trying to make a career for themselves with no care for the greater good of society will vigorously pursue average peaceful citizens. Their property will be seized for to pay for the inertia of the police force. Too many people's careers are involved in policing small things for this is lighten up.
Sounds like we have a trade-off between the government and the thugs, with only a blurry line separating.
And yet, we are supposed to feel like government intereference with health care and retirement is somehow good.
What fascinates me is that people want to vote for politicians whose platform includes extending governmental interference in life, particularly in the realms of health and retirement.
O'Rourke: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
I was going to come at the point from a slightly different angle:
It would be interesting to see sales of Win2K after the release of XP,
as well as sales of XP after the release of Vista, to get an idea of the adoption/abortion rate.
Consider, if you will, the need for metaphysical symmetry.
Ponder the roughly decade-long pageant of XML "textnologies" that were supposed to magically unfrobnicate everything, and usher in Web X.O.
From a certain aesthetic/spiritual vantage, we need another decade of unrelenting rejection of bloated obfuscations just to bring the software industry back to a contemplative, resting state.
Or has this just been dogma lifting the leg on another bad/. karma analogy?
Other anarchist communities have enjoyed reasonable levels of success despite frequent hostility, or more often simple disengagement, on the part of the world around them. The Israeli kibbutzim*, the Amish, and lots of smaller communities.
The Amish? I'll be driving through some Amish areas in Maryland later today. I, too, admire their non-approach to politics (though, apparently, they at least listened to Bush http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/7565). Religiously, I respect but don't concur with their pacifism. I also don't buy off on the Calvinism I've heard they often espouse. Other than that, though, I'm personally sympathetic to their Anabaptist views.
Having said all that, the Amish are in the United States because, although they "have enjoyed reasonable levels of success despite frequent hostility", they weren't keen on the persecution they faced in Europe.
Actually, both of your examples seem to underscore my point about this kind of societal organization: It Simply Doesn't Scale.
The Amish do well because they all subscribe to a homogeneous lifestyle. Try to make that work in a bigger society.;)
As an aside, do you have a blog or something? This has been one of the more stimulating bits of dialog for me on/. Not to disrupt your anonymity, if that's what you prefer, but I'll confess curiosity as to your name.
Well, that all depends. Under our current liberal social-democratic system, it's handled by a byzantine accumulation of laws defining who can do what, when, where, to whom, and how hard. Under anarchism, the landlord's probably screwed -- one natural consequence of an anarchist society is that the artifical construct known as "property" gets replaced by its more natural cousin, "possession." And that house is in the family's possession, so the landlord's going to have something of an an uphill battle on his hands. It's not like he could call the government for some armed goons to force them out. (Heh.)
Turn the tables: give the family the deed to the property, and put the landowner in their position. Do the family members show mercy?
"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
Mark Twain
The new nation, as they perceived it, was coextensive with the settler community and with those Africans who were assimilated into it. Mutual mistrust and hostility between the "Americans" along the coast and the "Natives" of the interior was a recurrent theme in the country's history, along with (usually successful) attempts by the Americo-Liberian minority to dominate people whom they considered uncivilized and inferior.
People who had been slaves in the US apparently often "dominated" the "inferior" natives.
Thus, I'd contend that societies drift into hierarchical relationships as a matter of course. While communal living certainly goes on, It Simply Doesn't Scale.
Good a place as any to shill Boylans a sugar-cane sweetened beverage you can get in better supermarkets.
Orders of magnitude better than the major brands.
A family is behind on their rent, yet they have no place else to go. Do you support the landlord kicking them out and leaving them homeless, or do you support the family?
Given no more information than this, the family should definitely stay.
However, as you expand the scope of the scenario, my question is: how do you manage the words "acute" and "chronic" in the context of individuals/families who are delinquent on agreements?
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Eccl 1:9
Solomon may not have been a strong proponent of software patents, one surmises.
What's particularly interesting about this thread is the way both sides of the argument seem to claim the statement for themselves.
What a gloriously subjective reality I enjoy.;)
Paying SOMEONE ELSE to earn something, then taking most of what they earn (leaving them a lesser share) while YOU sit on YOUR dead butt is what capitalism is all about.
Capitalism is about buyer, seller, and marketplace. Labor, while certainly a means to an end, ain't no end in itself. Don't care what the AFL-CIO says.
The same entropy of the human soul that drives the abuses present in pure capitalism also shows up when the socialism leads to a) relatively limp economic performance, and/or b) largely authoritarian states. That fact that you can argue the politics separately from the economics is great in theory, but of little historical relevance, IMO.
For an interesting history, see:
The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 which seemed, IIRC, to have a thesis about history showing a need for a blend of elements of socialism and capitalism.
I'll argue that "less is more" when it comes to socialism, but "blind faith" in the "invisible hand" can lead to undesirable outcomes.
Slashdot Mirror
There has to be a joke about the US government in here somewhere...
Look. Information is amoral, and the information age a Pandora's Box. We can't have the kind of "instant gratification" society that the global "we" crave (my personal tastes are decidedly retro) without the potential for abuse.
...
...
Cops are human. Humans are corrupt. All cops are corrupt. Are sufficiently corrupt cops more common than "terrorists" (as opposed to some other criminal)? Oh, likely.
Subjectively, every time I've been pulled over for speeding or had a fender bender, I was sober, the cop had me dead to rights, I didn't act the jackass, and the interlude went about as smoothly as can be expected. My WASP demographic may have counted in my favor.
Can the trend towards "the fishbowl society" be reversed?
I predict a business opportunity for planned communities where individuals can have some sort of broker sit between them and the rest of the economy to maintain privacy. Imagine all mail and email and services going through some kind of portal run by OpenBSD zealots. Sort of an Amish community with internet connectivity, if you will.
Noting your Rush sig. I just got tickets to see them in Madison Square Garden in September. For the third time. Absolutely my favorite band. You read Niel's prose?
Thus far you've offered some scenarios of abuse, which undeniably occur.
Your argument seems to be that the net damage caused by the status quo is less than the potential damage that could be caused if the fractional number of bad cops had better tools available.
I guess I'd opt for a compromise of giving the cops the tools, but with more public oversight and harsher penalties for screwing up.
The greater danger, to me, is the white collar crime stemming from people who aren't cops at all tapping into various tools.
Yes, my wife is from Germany, and I'm nearly conversational in German, and I think that the Eurabian nanny states have some extreme crises to face in the coming decades.
I suppose I take a dim view to this assertion "Some people are ignorant fools who need a shepherd". In an acute sense, we all have our need for societal structures to help out. Chronically, big government societal structures appear a cure worse than whatever disease they were trying to combat.
Equality of opportunity, not condition, say I.
These claims are all sad, if proven true.
The substantial difference between the bad cops and bad civilians is that the cops are at least notionally accountable to the people.
If the corruption is as bad as you say, and there are systematic abuses underway, then why are not the people taking action against them? We have an internet. Start putting the badge numbers of the bad cops on line, and put pressure on the mayor to clean up the police.
It's a sad truth that there are some bad apples in every bunch. I daresay that if I lost confidence in my neighborhood force, I'd consider a move.
For the record, I think the ACLU is like the UN: the only thing worse would be no ACLU or UN. The canary in the coal mine is necessary.
The cops do become what they despise on occasion, and deserve the full weight of the law.
The question becomes where you put the operating point for society.
What is the 'reasonable' ratio of rotten cop incidents vs. rotten citizen incidents?
I suppose I favor fewer rotten citizens, but then my life is probably more boring than yours.
Sample 1,000 people who've had their liberty severely curtailed by some scofflaw, and see if they don't think this is a jolly good idea.
Sounds like we have a trade-off between the government and the thugs, with only a blurry line separating.
And yet, we are supposed to feel like government intereference with health care and retirement is somehow good.
Zimbabwe, Canada, the US: all populated by people. What's your point?
Writing code--drudge work.
Writing code that writes code--now we're thinking!
What fascinates me is that people want to vote for politicians whose platform includes extending governmental interference in life, particularly in the realms of health and retirement.
O'Rourke: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
Or a head, upon reviewing that most disturbing link.
I was going to come at the point from a slightly different angle:
It would be interesting to see sales of Win2K after the release of XP,
as well as sales of XP after the release of Vista, to get an idea of the adoption/abortion rate.
Consider, if you will, the need for metaphysical symmetry. /. karma analogy?
Ponder the roughly decade-long pageant of XML "textnologies" that were supposed to magically unfrobnicate everything, and usher in Web X.O.
From a certain aesthetic/spiritual vantage, we need another decade of unrelenting rejection of bloated obfuscations just to bring the software industry back to a contemplative, resting state.
Or has this just been dogma lifting the leg on another bad
Having said all that, the Amish are in the United States because, although they "have enjoyed reasonable levels of success despite frequent hostility", they weren't keen on the persecution they faced in Europe.
Actually, both of your examples seem to underscore my point about this kind of societal organization: It Simply Doesn't Scale.
The Amish do well because they all subscribe to a homogeneous lifestyle. Try to make that work in a bigger society.
As an aside, do you have a blog or something? This has been one of the more stimulating bits of dialog for me on
How about a concrete historical example, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia People who had been slaves in the US apparently often "dominated" the "inferior" natives.
Thus, I'd contend that societies drift into hierarchical relationships as a matter of course. While communal living certainly goes on, It Simply Doesn't Scale.
Good a place as any to shill Boylans a sugar-cane sweetened beverage you can get in better supermarkets.
Orders of magnitude better than the major brands.
Yeah, although he should look to be more elaborate with this code. If we wanted terse, we'd write in C, no?
However, as you expand the scope of the scenario, my question is: how do you manage the words "acute" and "chronic" in the context of individuals/families who are delinquent on agreements?
This is such an exquisite example of design pattern overkill that I may require a private moment.
What's particularly interesting about this thread is the way both sides of the argument seem to claim the statement for themselves. ;)
What a gloriously subjective reality I enjoy.
Capitalism is about buyer, seller, and marketplace. Labor, while certainly a means to an end, ain't no end in itself. Don't care what the AFL-CIO says.
The same entropy of the human soul that drives the abuses present in pure capitalism also shows up when the socialism leads to a) relatively limp economic performance, and/or b) largely authoritarian states. That fact that you can argue the politics separately from the economics is great in theory, but of little historical relevance, IMO.
For an interesting history, see: The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 which seemed, IIRC, to have a thesis about history showing a need for a blend of elements of socialism and capitalism.
I'll argue that "less is more" when it comes to socialism, but "blind faith" in the "invisible hand" can lead to undesirable outcomes.
Not known as the oldest profession for nothing.
Now, is politics the second oldest profession, or merely a variation on the first?
Yes, but it has to be run at a frequency high enough to qualify as a DOS attack. ;)
Don't you know that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom?