This wouldn't have happened in a state/city where the Second Amendment still exists.
While I stand by the right of self-defense and the RKBA, unless you're in the habit of answering the door with a drawn gun, it would not have made a difference in this case. And if you are in the habit of answering the door with a drawn gun, it probably makes it hard to get any sort of service personnel to enter your home.
Are you one of the misguided people who believe the military should announce battle plans to the world before they are carried out?
Since we're talking about the police, I believe that confusing the police with the military is at the root of many of our society's ills.
And I believe that even the military's ability to force information to be kept secret should be strictly limited, that classification should only be allowed for fixed periods of up to maybe 20 years or so, and that the government has no legitimate authority to force silence on people who come into possession of "classified" information and have not agreed to keep it secret. That's a violation of the First Amendment.
Should the DEA hold a press conference to let us know the details of the multi-million dollar drug ring they are about to bust?
I believe that the DEA should be disbanded and that the federal government should stop trying to tell people what they can do with their own bodies. As I said, if scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
That anyone who wants it should be able to get information on what secret defense projects we are working on?
I believe that the more information available, the less likely things like Iran-Contra and Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are. Technical and operational details might be redacted, but in general yes, we the people should be able to get almost all information on what is being done in the name of defending us.
Using your logic, it should be OK for any ordinary citizen to be stalked in a similar manner both while on the job and off.
Nope.
Police are the government. They retain their arrest powers even when off duty -- in truth, they are never off the job.
We have the absolute right to monitor and comment on how the government does its job. If such scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
If privacy is so important why parade around nude or in outlandish costumes then?
Because parading around nude, or in outlandish costumes, at a private event with a cohort that shares many of your values, is different than parading around nude, or in outlandish costumes, out in the mundane world.
Many people face the possibility of losing their jobs - or even their kids -- if their participation in events outside the cultural mainstream is found out. If someone can get their kid taken away for being at the SubGenius's "X Day", it could certainly happen to Burning Man attendees.
Doesn't mean I necessarily agree with this solution -- at events like Starwood and the Free Spirit Gathering, the rule is basically "You may not take a photo of anyone without their permission". If you want to add a DMCA-takedown enabling clause to that, it seems to me (though IANAL) that adding "If you do take any photographs during your attendance at this event without the permission of all identifiable subjects, you surrender all copyright interest and they immediately become the property of $EVENT_ORGANIZERS".
That way, legitimate photos are yours, and this kicks in only when you've violated someone's subjectright.
Everyone giving gifts to each other works out great, as long as there's a lot of money paid up front to create the temp economy.
The Rainbow Gatherings have been going on a lot longer then Burning Man. Always free.
Regional burns like Playa Del Fuego are quite cheap, just enough to lease the land, maybe a little extra to buy firewood and first aid and safety gear.
I have no idea what it costs to lease the land, and buy the necessary material to build and then disassemble Black Rock City, but I suspect the per capita cost is just about what a ticket costs.
Spending money to build the box in which the gift economy experiment takes place, is different than spending money to prime the gift economy.
Real life doesn't operate for free
Not as long as there are landlords around to squeeze rents out of us, no. But in real life, apart from landlords and capitalists, food actually, literally, grows on trees. As does fuel for cooking and heating, and a wonderful building material called "wood". The sun shines for free; the photosynthesis that makes the oxygen you breathe is provided free of charge. Real life is free; it's humans who add a cover charge.
Are we talking about the same thing? Battlestar Galactica? I remember being enthralled with the original (1987)
I don't think we're talking about the same thing, since the first Battlestar Galactica was a 1978 TV series...I was in elementary school when it came out.
Perhaps you're confusing its timeframe with Star Trek: The Next Generation, which did start its run in 1987?
I know for some of you young'uns, any date before 1990 is all the same, but some of us were actually around back then and remember watching these shows on their first run.
The right solution is to overhaul the US tax system so it is no longer confiscatory.
Compared to almost every other industrialized nation, the U.S. is under-taxed. Switzerland and Japan have slightly lower taxes -- and almost no military.
Early 20th century the US government tool ~3% of GDP
In the early 20th century the U.S. was still mostly an agrarian nation. An industrialized nation (at least, in the form of industry we know) requires a lot more governmental overhead.
Now, a wannabe world empire with a thriving military-industrial complex requires even more; we could certainly lower taxes if we stopped trying to run the world in a manner favorable to American commercial interests.
Government is threatening to take over 40+ to even 50+ % of GDP.
Citation needed. U.S. taxation is about 35% of the GDP.
If government policy doesn't change regarding GDP but the tax system tightens up, you'll find even more companies choosing to leave the US entirely.
The idea that we should have a system in which we are held hostage to big business, where were should grovel and scrape to have large corporations stay with us, nauseates me.
The existence of a corporation is a privilege, not a right. If, say, Microsoft, wants to move to Mexico so that its top stockholders can realize slightly higher profits, we are under no obligation to allow it to do so. The federal government has the authority to regulate international trade; the government of Washington state has the ability to dissolve it entirely by revoking its charter.
Anyway, where are these companies going to go? As I said, U.S. tax rates are lower than most other industrialized nations.
Like most liberal fantasies, it rapidly devolved into an authoritarian group usurping natural ownership and dictating rules galore.
What the heck is "natural ownership?" Copyright is a government creation, not a natural right.
Anyway, BM "devolved into an authoritarian group" only once it sold out and lost touch with its "liberal fantasy". Once I saw Verizon running ads about "keeping touch on the playa" in a burner rag, it was pretty clear that the co-option was complete.
Some of the local burns retain the original spirit -- I've been to Playa Del Fuego several times.
RMS for example quibbles over what we call things all the time (open source vs. free software and Linux vs. GNU LInux) and does so with a religious fervor.
People in scientific and technical fields generally appreciate the precise use of language.
The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are different. RMS is right to insist upon the distinction.
Problem is too many DIPSHITS are in the way of plentiful cheap energy.
No, the problem is that physics and geopolitics are in the way of plentiful cheap energy.
Perhaps you've noticed that people are threatening to bomb Iran over the development of fission power? Even if fission was a viable power source from an ecological perspective, the security issues would make it unworkable.
But it's not. The problem of nuclear waste remains unsolved. Reprocessing spent fuel in "breeder reactors", the nuke-think's favorite option, is not just a safety and proliferation nightmare, it still doesn't deal with the thorium, radium, radon, and lead isotopes.
Accelerator-based "energy amplifier" systems have some potential, as do fusion. But fission is a lousy solution, that would never have gotten to the point it is no on its own merits. It's pushed by governments (from the U.S. through Iran) that want to camouflage their nuclear weapons ambitions by talking up "Atoms for Peace" and "Electricity too cheap to meter"!
A breeder reactor is a plutonium factory. Really want to sprinkle them all over the planet? The security, safety, and proliferation challenge would be insolvable.
No wonder we see large movements away from things like vaccinations, which save lives.
Some vaccinations save lives. Smallpox vaccine? Polio vaccine? Rock on. Flu shot? Questionable benefit. Chicken pox vaccine? Might save kids from itching (or might just save them from catching it as kids and let them get chicken pox as adults, when it's more dangerous), but you're more likely to die from a lightning strike than from chicken pox; I'm highly skeptical.
What does a Doctor gain by prescribing you a treatment that isn't needed?
Your money? In a fee-for-service scheme, the more treatments my doctor gives me, the more she gets paid. Fortunately, my own physician is a person of high moral character; and an office visit with a family practitioner doesn't get the sort of payments from an insurance company that drug therapies or surgeries do.
I am of course tlkaing about science based medicine
As this incident proves, "science" and "medicine" are often far apart.
Natural path, homeopaths, acupuncturist and others of there ilk are a different matter. They charge of treatments that do no damn good.
My physical therapist took my money for months, and did me less good than my acupuncturist. As an Asian Bodywork therapist I use some of the same techniques as acupuncturists, and my clients pay me and come back and refer their friends, because my treatments do some good. And I even have some science to back that up.
Placebo effect? Perhaps. It plays a role in any treatment, including surgery. My mom used the placebo effect to help relieve people's suffering when she was a nurse, she got paid for that. If someone can put on a little show that gets my brain to release endorphins and stop the pain, I don't see a problem with paying for that performance, whether it's a nurse's "beside manner" or a shaman's ritual.
The goal of marketing is not to sell you something you don't need. The goal of marketing is to sell you something that you didn't know existed and that will help you.
No. Since at least the 1950s, the primary goal of marketing has been to convince you that you want and need things you never knew you wanted and needed. Marketing creates and sustains the consumer culture that keeps the economy growing -- growing like a tumor, that is.
I don't know of a single marriage where one or both partners have strayed that didn't end in divorce.
I know a bunch of marriages where both partners have "strayed" repeatedly, yet are still happy. That's because I know lots of polyamorous people.
Which brings me to the only useful piece of advice I have: it's up to you and you partner(s) to define the boundaries and style of your relationship. You've already figured out that the "jock/cheerleader" model presented to you is wrong for you: be vigorous in questioning everything else that you're told about how you "should" be.
it is trivial to examine what is going across a network you own and disallow these kind of conspiracy theory shenanigans. If MS ever did this, you can bet your paycheck that between a few competent Windows / Networking admins they could and would determine what was going on
Not if you're an MS-only shop: "I ran a network sniffer to verify that our MS servers aren't phoning home." "Great. Sure am glad we bought a copy of NetSniff for Windows!"
It doesn't take a "computer security expert" to know that you're unnecessarily risking your clients' confidentiality by sending your communications wholesale to a 3rd party.
A third party like your ISP? Your telephone company? The USPS? FedEx?
Unless you're meeting in person, or talking to someone else at the same company as you, your communications always go through a third party.
The VAST majority of alternative doctors are swindlers and con-artists, or simply ignorant.
Much of mainstream modern medicine is not evidence-based -- i.e., is based on ignorance. And for that which claims evidence, a lot of it is simply made up,
Alternative medicines are also commonly psychosomatic, which is where many of the claims of "It works!" originate from.
The fact that modern mainstream medicine remains rooted in a sort of Cartesian dualism that divides a human into "brain" and "everything else", is one of its greatest failings. The way that alternative medical systems like Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda inherently address psychosomatic issues is their strength.
The problem with alternative medicines though is when people turn down medical care or treatment in favor of alternatives. This can get people killed, or exacerbate their conditions.
Indeed it can, and and reputable CAM practitioner will advise a patient to not discontinue their medical care, and will refer a patient to a physician if there is evidence of a serious condition. As a shiatsu therapist, I take a more detailed health history than many physicians, and I've got my hands all over someone for an hour; several times I've noticed something that concerned me and suggested to folks, "You ought to see your doctor about that."
It's too bad that few physicians will do the same, that you almost never hear a surgeon say "Before we cut you open and see if we can do anything about that knee pain (and if we canit may well be a placebo effect, maybe you should try seeing an acupuncturist -- after all, we can always cut you open later."
But in terms of personal experience with cops, let's see. Outside of traffic stops, there's my brother's ex-girlfriend's father, who -- the first and only time I met him -- bragged about how he administered some "street justice" to a purse snatcher who tried to run.
Then there's the group of Baltimore City's finest who showed up while I was trying to trying to keep a street disturbance from breaking out into a major fight -- and who promptly grabbed someone who wasn't involved and slammed him up against the wall, and assaulted another guy who protested.
Then there's the very intelligent, dedicated, peace-loving fellow I know who joined the Baltimore City Police with great hope because he wanted to do something about the city's violence problem. Last time I talked to him, his eyes were half-dead, his idealism almost gone, and I have to hope he quits before the bastards grind him down and turn him into yet another bad cop.
if some guy barges into your house with the intent of killing you, do you really have the gun loaded and next to you
The time required to get the phone, dial 911, ask the operator to send cops, and wait for cops to arrive, is an order of magnitude greater than the time to get my revolver out of the lockbox and loaded.
And yes, when my housemate was being stalked, whenever I was home I kept the gun out and loaded and near me at all times for a week or so, until Baltimore County's finest got around to arresting the dangerous loon in question.
Not only that but the chances of you needing a gun to protect yourself is extremely slim
The chances of me needing a fire extinguisher or a smoke detector are extremely slim. I have them anyway, because it's better to have emergency tools and never need them, than to need them and not have them.
The chances of me needing a handgun or a rifle to protect myself and my neighbors against common criminals, or against rioters, terrorists, tyrants, or whatever, are extremely slim. I have them anyway, because it's better to have emergency tools and never need them, than to need them and not have them.
Odds are far higher that you will die of a heart attack, but how many people have automatic defibrulators in their home?
Quite a lot, actually. They're called" pacemakers" or "implantable cardioverter defibrillators".
And the relative odds of suffering a violent crime versus a fatal heart attack vary widely by socioeconomic status. In some inner-city neighborhoods, young men don't expect to live long enough for heart disease to be a problem.
Because people who dedicate themselves to the service of others, the improvement of their community, and betterment of society are stupid fascist pigs, and should be treated as such.
Such people are great. It would be wonderful if we could get a bunch of them on the police force. Of course that would take high pay (meaning higher taxes), high professional standards for general education, specific training, and accountability (meaning resistance from current cops who wouldn't make the cut), and a decent and reasonable set of laws for them to enforce.
So instead we mostly get a bunch of under-educated, intellectually dull, poorly trained wannabe action heroes who think in black-and-white terms (philosophically and, often, racially) and get a kick out of beating up the "bad guys" -- generally, anyone who doesn't conform to social norms or who questions cop authority.
Occasionally, by accident, an intelligent, humane, dedicated public servant ends up on a major police force -- rare, but it happens just often enough that I try to assume any given cop I encounter might be one of this minority, until proven otherwise. But these folks generally burn out in a few years, and either quit or come to behave just like the majority of dullards.
Slashdot Mirror
While I stand by the right of self-defense and the RKBA, unless you're in the habit of answering the door with a drawn gun, it would not have made a difference in this case. And if you are in the habit of answering the door with a drawn gun, it probably makes it hard to get any sort of service personnel to enter your home.
Well, the wine is gone, isn't it? You didn't say you still wanted the cotton to be around!
It was a paradox to anti-democrats like Plato.
"We do!" is the answer for those of us who believe that democracy (in some form) is the answer to problems of authority.
Since we're talking about the police, I believe that confusing the police with the military is at the root of many of our society's ills.
And I believe that even the military's ability to force information to be kept secret should be strictly limited, that classification should only be allowed for fixed periods of up to maybe 20 years or so, and that the government has no legitimate authority to force silence on people who come into possession of "classified" information and have not agreed to keep it secret. That's a violation of the First Amendment.
I believe that the DEA should be disbanded and that the federal government should stop trying to tell people what they can do with their own bodies. As I said, if scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
I believe that the more information available, the less likely things like Iran-Contra and Abu Ghraib and Gitmo are. Technical and operational details might be redacted, but in general yes, we the people should be able to get almost all information on what is being done in the name of defending us.
Nope.
Police are the government. They retain their arrest powers even when off duty -- in truth, they are never off the job.
We have the absolute right to monitor and comment on how the government does its job. If such scrutiny makes it harder for the government to do some things, maybe that's because those are things it shouldn't be doing.
Because parading around nude, or in outlandish costumes, at a private event with a cohort that shares many of your values, is different than parading around nude, or in outlandish costumes, out in the mundane world.
Many people face the possibility of losing their jobs - or even their kids -- if their participation in events outside the cultural mainstream is found out. If someone can get their kid taken away for being at the SubGenius's "X Day", it could certainly happen to Burning Man attendees.
Doesn't mean I necessarily agree with this solution -- at events like Starwood and the Free Spirit Gathering, the rule is basically "You may not take a photo of anyone without their permission". If you want to add a DMCA-takedown enabling clause to that, it seems to me (though IANAL) that adding "If you do take any photographs during your attendance at this event without the permission of all identifiable subjects, you surrender all copyright interest and they immediately become the property of $EVENT_ORGANIZERS".
That way, legitimate photos are yours, and this kicks in only when you've violated someone's subjectright.
The Rainbow Gatherings have been going on a lot longer then Burning Man. Always free.
Regional burns like Playa Del Fuego are quite cheap, just enough to lease the land, maybe a little extra to buy firewood and first aid and safety gear.
I have no idea what it costs to lease the land, and buy the necessary material to build and then disassemble Black Rock City, but I suspect the per capita cost is just about what a ticket costs.
Spending money to build the box in which the gift economy experiment takes place, is different than spending money to prime the gift economy.
Not as long as there are landlords around to squeeze rents out of us, no. But in real life, apart from landlords and capitalists, food actually, literally, grows on trees. As does fuel for cooking and heating, and a wonderful building material called "wood". The sun shines for free; the photosynthesis that makes the oxygen you breathe is provided free of charge. Real life is free; it's humans who add a cover charge.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing, since the first Battlestar Galactica was a 1978 TV series...I was in elementary school when it came out.
Perhaps you're confusing its timeframe with Star Trek: The Next Generation, which did start its run in 1987?
I know for some of you young'uns, any date before 1990 is all the same, but some of us were actually around back then and remember watching these shows on their first run.
Compared to almost every other industrialized nation, the U.S. is under-taxed. Switzerland and Japan have slightly lower taxes -- and almost no military.
In the early 20th century the U.S. was still mostly an agrarian nation. An industrialized nation (at least, in the form of industry we know) requires a lot more governmental overhead.
Now, a wannabe world empire with a thriving military-industrial complex requires even more; we could certainly lower taxes if we stopped trying to run the world in a manner favorable to American commercial interests.
Citation needed. U.S. taxation is about 35% of the GDP.
The idea that we should have a system in which we are held hostage to big business, where were should grovel and scrape to have large corporations stay with us, nauseates me.
The existence of a corporation is a privilege, not a right. If, say, Microsoft, wants to move to Mexico so that its top stockholders can realize slightly higher profits, we are under no obligation to allow it to do so. The federal government has the authority to regulate international trade; the government of Washington state has the ability to dissolve it entirely by revoking its charter.
Anyway, where are these companies going to go? As I said, U.S. tax rates are lower than most other industrialized nations.
What the heck is "natural ownership?" Copyright is a government creation, not a natural right.
Anyway, BM "devolved into an authoritarian group" only once it sold out and lost touch with its "liberal fantasy". Once I saw Verizon running ads about "keeping touch on the playa" in a burner rag, it was pretty clear that the co-option was complete.
Some of the local burns retain the original spirit -- I've been to Playa Del Fuego several times.
People in scientific and technical fields generally appreciate the precise use of language.
The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are different. RMS is right to insist upon the distinction.
No, the problem is that physics and geopolitics are in the way of plentiful cheap energy.
Perhaps you've noticed that people are threatening to bomb Iran over the development of fission power? Even if fission was a viable power source from an ecological perspective, the security issues would make it unworkable.
But it's not. The problem of nuclear waste remains unsolved. Reprocessing spent fuel in "breeder reactors", the nuke-think's favorite option, is not just a safety and proliferation nightmare, it still doesn't deal with the thorium, radium, radon, and lead isotopes.
Accelerator-based "energy amplifier" systems have some potential, as do fusion. But fission is a lousy solution, that would never have gotten to the point it is no on its own merits. It's pushed by governments (from the U.S. through Iran) that want to camouflage their nuclear weapons ambitions by talking up "Atoms for Peace" and "Electricity too cheap to meter"!
A breeder reactor is a plutonium factory. Really want to sprinkle them all over the planet? The security, safety, and proliferation challenge would be insolvable.
Nonsense. Peer review is nothing other than forming a consensus.
...in which case, you all reach a consensus.
Some vaccinations save lives. Smallpox vaccine? Polio vaccine? Rock on. Flu shot? Questionable benefit. Chicken pox vaccine? Might save kids from itching (or might just save them from catching it as kids and let them get chicken pox as adults, when it's more dangerous), but you're more likely to die from a lightning strike than from chicken pox; I'm highly skeptical.
Your money? In a fee-for-service scheme, the more treatments my doctor gives me, the more she gets paid. Fortunately, my own physician is a person of high moral character; and an office visit with a family practitioner doesn't get the sort of payments from an insurance company that drug therapies or surgeries do.
As this incident proves, "science" and "medicine" are often far apart.
My physical therapist took my money for months, and did me less good than my acupuncturist. As an Asian Bodywork therapist I use some of the same techniques as acupuncturists, and my clients pay me and come back and refer their friends, because my treatments do some good. And I even have some science to back that up.
Placebo effect? Perhaps. It plays a role in any treatment, including surgery. My mom used the placebo effect to help relieve people's suffering when she was a nurse, she got paid for that. If someone can put on a little show that gets my brain to release endorphins and stop the pain, I don't see a problem with paying for that performance, whether it's a nurse's "beside manner" or a shaman's ritual.
(Hey, I just found yet another case where a surgical technique was found no more effective than a placebo surgery. That makes 5. I have yet to find a trial where a surgical intervention was compared to a sham in a blinded trail and proved superior.)
No. Since at least the 1950s, the primary goal of marketing has been to convince you that you want and need things you never knew you wanted and needed. Marketing creates and sustains the consumer culture that keeps the economy growing -- growing like a tumor, that is.
I know a bunch of marriages where both partners have "strayed" repeatedly, yet are still happy. That's because I know lots of polyamorous people.
Which brings me to the only useful piece of advice I have: it's up to you and you partner(s) to define the boundaries and style of your relationship. You've already figured out that the "jock/cheerleader" model presented to you is wrong for you: be vigorous in questioning everything else that you're told about how you "should" be.
Not if you're an MS-only shop: "I ran a network sniffer to verify that our MS servers aren't phoning home." "Great. Sure am glad we bought a copy of NetSniff for Windows!"
It's the old "trusting trust" problem in a new form.
A third party like your ISP? Your telephone company? The USPS? FedEx?
Unless you're meeting in person, or talking to someone else at the same company as you, your communications always go through a third party.
Much of mainstream modern medicine is not evidence-based -- i.e., is based on ignorance. And for that which claims evidence, a lot of it is simply made up,
The fact that modern mainstream medicine remains rooted in a sort of Cartesian dualism that divides a human into "brain" and "everything else", is one of its greatest failings. The way that alternative medical systems like Chinese Medicine or Ayurveda inherently address psychosomatic issues is their strength.
Indeed it can, and and reputable CAM practitioner will advise a patient to not discontinue their medical care, and will refer a patient to a physician if there is evidence of a serious condition. As a shiatsu therapist, I take a more detailed health history than many physicians, and I've got my hands all over someone for an hour; several times I've noticed something that concerned me and suggested to folks, "You ought to see your doctor about that."
It's too bad that few physicians will do the same, that you almost never hear a surgeon say "Before we cut you open and see if we can do anything about that knee pain (and if we canit may well be a placebo effect, maybe you should try seeing an acupuncturist -- after all, we can always cut you open later."
In terms of judging the educational qualifications or training requirements for police officers, how many cops I know personally is irrelevant.
A national commission recommended back in 1973 that a bachelor's degree be made a minimum requirement for entry-level police officers. But few police forces have done so; most require only a high school diploma, or perhaps two years of college. Some departments disqualify people for being overly intelligent. Those are simply facts, and they do not indicate a profession seeking to attract the best and brightest intellects.
But in terms of personal experience with cops, let's see. Outside of traffic stops, there's my brother's ex-girlfriend's father, who -- the first and only time I met him -- bragged about how he administered some "street justice" to a purse snatcher who tried to run.
There was the karate instructor who was a cop, who I met at a martial arts get-together, and who after a few beers told us a story about how police really do have the hypocritical (he didn't call it that, of course) "courtesy" of letting their fellow cops break speed limits. No wonder then that some Maryland cops feel that they can ignore the speed cameras they use on us.
Then there's the group of Baltimore City's finest who showed up while I was trying to trying to keep a street disturbance from breaking out into a major fight -- and who promptly grabbed someone who wasn't involved and slammed him up against the wall, and assaulted another guy who protested.
Then there's the very intelligent, dedicated, peace-loving fellow I know who joined the Baltimore City Police with great hope because he wanted to do something about the city's violence problem. Last time I talked to him, his eyes were half-dead, his idealism almost gone, and I have to hope he quits before the bastards grind him down and turn him into yet another bad cop.
The time required to get the phone, dial 911, ask the operator to send cops, and wait for cops to arrive, is an order of magnitude greater than the time to get my revolver out of the lockbox and loaded.
And yes, when my housemate was being stalked, whenever I was home I kept the gun out and loaded and near me at all times for a week or so, until Baltimore County's finest got around to arresting the dangerous loon in question.
The chances of me needing a fire extinguisher or a smoke detector are extremely slim. I have them anyway, because it's better to have emergency tools and never need them, than to need them and not have them.
The chances of me needing a handgun or a rifle to protect myself and my neighbors against common criminals, or against rioters, terrorists, tyrants, or whatever, are extremely slim. I have them anyway, because it's better to have emergency tools and never need them, than to need them and not have them.
Quite a lot, actually. They're called" pacemakers" or "implantable cardioverter defibrillators".
And the relative odds of suffering a violent crime versus a fatal heart attack vary widely by socioeconomic status. In some inner-city neighborhoods, young men don't expect to live long enough for heart disease to be a problem.
Such people are great. It would be wonderful if we could get a bunch of them on the police force. Of course that would take high pay (meaning higher taxes), high professional standards for general education, specific training, and accountability (meaning resistance from current cops who wouldn't make the cut), and a decent and reasonable set of laws for them to enforce.
So instead we mostly get a bunch of under-educated, intellectually dull, poorly trained wannabe action heroes who think in black-and-white terms (philosophically and, often, racially) and get a kick out of beating up the "bad guys" -- generally, anyone who doesn't conform to social norms or who questions cop authority.
Occasionally, by accident, an intelligent, humane, dedicated public servant ends up on a major police force -- rare, but it happens just often enough that I try to assume any given cop I encounter might be one of this minority, until proven otherwise. But these folks generally burn out in a few years, and either quit or come to behave just like the majority of dullards.
The great thing about standards is that there's so many to choose from.
BTW, OttoBib rocks.