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Notes -
Perhaps they should though.
As @crushedoranges observes down thread there seems to be this paradoxical complete confidence in the power of the state while simultaneously existing in a world where public defecation and getting attacked on the street are just things the public are expected to tolerate. The only reasonable conclusion from my perspective is that the citizens of New York want to live in filth, that they want to live in Hobbes' state of nature, and this is what I mean when i say that there seems to be a massive Hobbes/Burke shaped hole in the discourse.
Edit to add.
I think the "illegal = flat out impossible" conceit is much more common here than you give it credit for. At the very least it seems to be a reasonably common failure mode of the "systematizing" personality type in general, and rationalists in particular. I actually think it's a large part of the whole "rationalists as quokka" meme. There seems to be this endemic belief in the fundamental correctness of "systems" and "inductive reason" that is simply not supported by observed reality because any scenario involving multiple actors/agents is by its nature going to be anti-inductive and actively resist systematization.
All "laws" must ultimately reduce to the consent of those governed by them.
Ah, I actually think that kind of "you will eat the bugs bigot" doomposting follows the recognition of that truth, but also the next step - that consent can be manufactured and 90% (charitably) of the populace are incapable of seeing through it.
After living through Australian covid I know that it doesn't matter if you sit someone down and walk them through it - 'yes Anastasia Palecek said masks and lockdowns and vaccine mandate, but she can't actually stop you from going to the shops, let alone force you to get drugs injected - and the only reason she is getting away with it currently is because you let her, if everyone walked outside right now and set their masks on fire she would have to accept that Queensland no longer tolerates masks.' they might agree with you in principle, but they will turn around two minutes later and tell you you need a mask if you are going driving.
Did I consent to any of that shit? No, the closest I got was malicious compliance when absolutely necessary. Did it change anything? Yes, dozens of people I once considered friends now refuse to talk to me on the grounds that I am The Joker. Anything in the nature of covid management? Not a thing. None of the people in charge will ever be held responsible.
And if it happens again - maybe this time China weaponises eczema and we all have to handcuff ourselves behind our backs so the infected don't scratch themselves to death - everyone will do as they are told and give me disappointed looks when I tear my hair out wondering why they play along. What else can I do but doompost?
Yeah that's fair. I always assume they are getting carried away with their arguments and forgetting is/ought, because I do that a lot, but that's the other thing I do too much - typical minding.
I sympathize.
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I think a lot of people end up cowed because they at least perceive they have something to lose by defecting. If youâre PMC especially, the prospect of jail is much more scary because itâs not just jail, but a complete economic and social death sentence. Youâll lose most of that comfortable lifestyle, the good job as an apperachnik, the nice house, the nice car, respect and social standing. Rebellion takes that, if youâre arrested. Felons have very few optionsâ most of them terribleâ for work. Respectable places donât want you. The wages (n.b. The felon generally must take an hourly wage) is generally barely a survival wage. Most respectable people donât hang around with felons either.
With that much to lose, most of those raised PMC are raised with a very strong dose of âobey the law and be a good boy.â Other classes donât. Someone whoâs in the working class thumbs their nose at authorities all the time. They arenât really the worse for it. If you worked for a survival wage at QuikTrip before you got arrested, you arenât that much worse to work at QT afterwards. Your shitty house and car arenât going to get worse. As such the hold the system has on you is much lighter. And at least in America, the bulk of the COVID rebellion came from such stock â people with nothing much to lose.
And quite possibly a literal one, depending on which facility they decide to put you in. Defend yourself too vigorously during the trial and you might find yourself becoming the newest bitch at Five Points.
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It is possible both to be above the law, and below it.
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They do not. To think that there is some "must" there is to make the same mistake as the lady with her cat.
Laws can and often do just reduce to whoever has the most power, consent has nothing inherently to do with it.
You've got that backwards It is those who appeal to silly abstractions like "power" and "legitimacy" who are making the same mistake as the lady with her cat, because a cat is always going to do as the cat pleases. You're appealing something that does not exist.
The only way to prevent a cat from walking through an open door is ensure that the cat does not want to leave the house in the first place. IE to attain the cat's consent.
Legitimacy is an abstraction but power is not. Power is very real. A man who holds a gun to another man's head has power over that man. If cats understood language and understood what guns do, you could also prevent the cat from walking through the open door by telling it that you would shoot it if it did.
No he doesn't, or at the very least only in so far as the man being threatened chooses to allow it. That's kind of what I'm trying to get at. You're imagining that "the system" (or whatever you want to call it) is self-acting when it manifestly is not.
The man with the gun does have power over the other man. In some very unusual sense -- the sense in which "your money or your life" is a free choice -- he does not have the power to force the other man to act as he wishes. But he does have the power to force the other man to choose between acting as he wishes and dying.
I know what I'm about to say is a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason.
We are all dying. we are all going to die.
Even the retarded Yudkowskite who achieves his dream functional immortality by of uploading his consciousness to a block of computronium is doing to die when the last embers of the universe burn out, assuming the molecular structure of his processor didn't get melted down and repurposed long before that.
Death is not the end of things.
I'm a materialist; that's one thing I do have in common with Marxists. Death is the end. I'm not so sure about the heat death of the universe being the end of everything, it's not a concept I can wrap my head around. But as for me, when I die I'm done.
And there in lies the core of the problem, a materialist can never be free because he will always be a slave to the material.
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Well, the vagrants have nothing to lose. They have no property that can be confiscated if they commit a crime. Being behind bars might even be an upgrade.
A taxpayer on the other hand is leading a life and owns property and actually stands to lose from state punishment. Even though you can just eat the fine or jail time, the state reaching in to screw you doesn't really seem like a state of nature to me.
Sort of. They have nothing to lose that society is willing to take from them. They have their lives and their freedom (for some definition of those things). They can absolutely lose those things, we're just not willing to take them.
We can solve vagrancy tomorrow, it's just an "atrocity". If it becomes a big enough problem, people will start to look for real solutions, and most of them are pretty bad.
They have their lives but their freedom is worth almost nothing to them, I suspect. Prison is probably better than living on the street.
No, they do value their freedom at least in the moment; if you confine them they will attempt to escape.
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Of course it is; the state of nature is all versus all. If you proclaim yourself free of the state, at the same level of actor of the state, then you have opened yourself up to be legitimately screwed by the full might of the state, because a state of nature has no rules but "the strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must". And the state is strong and you are weak.
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The ordinary citizens of New York don't have that much say. Every few years they get a vote between people all of whom will either not solve the problem, or cause other problems even worse, or both; that's all the say they have (besides exit). The government has decided it's OK for homeless people to live and shit on the street and terrorize subway passengers; it has decided it's not OK to harm these homeless people (even when they're acting threatening) nor to carry a gun. And it has easily enough power to achieve these ends. It is true that the government COULD decide otherwise; it certainly has the capacity to do it (except in as much as it is constrained by higher-level governments, which is in fact a great deal). But it does not want to.
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