site banner
ymeskhout  1yr ago (text post)   3219 thread views

The Bailey Podcast E034: An Unhinged Conversation on Policing

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and RSS.

In this episode, an authoritarian and some anarchist(s) have an unhinged conversation about policing.

Participants: Yassine, Kulak, & Hoffmeister25 [Note: the latter's voice has been modified to protect him from the progressive nanny state's enforcement agents.]

Links:

About the Daniel Penny Situation (Hoffmeister25)

Posse comitatus (Wikipedia)

Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (BJS 1997)

The Iron Rule (Anarchonomicon)

Eleven Magic Words (Yassine Meskhout)

Blackstone's ratio (Wikipedia)

Halfway To Prison Abolition (Yassine Meskhout)

Defunding My Mistake (Yassine Meskhout)

Recorded 2023-09-16 | Uploaded 2023-09-25

12
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

The kind of people who get enthusiastic about free heroin are the kind of people who get extremely uncomfortable when I tell them these things are happening to me. They don't want to hear. They are especially discomfited if I seem angry or, God forbid, judgmental.

I don't know if this was directed at me specifically but for what it's worth I think you have every right to be very angry at the situations you describe. The people you describe all have moral agency and are responsible for their actions, even the ones who might be suffering from mental health issues since they're evidently not getting the help they need. You're describing a quality of life deterioration that I would not want to experience. At the individual level, very often the easiest solution is to just move to a more expensive neighborhood and hope that the property values serve as high enough of a filter to keep the undesirables at bay, and I don't fault anybody for going down that route.

But if you were in charge of the policy levers, the solutions are harder to come by. What can the government do to make your "Neighbor" less of a dick? What do you want them to do about the guy ululating? Maybe he can be arrested for communicating what is sort of maybe an indirect threat? If I had to guess, the guy who stole your janitorial supplies was not doing so to ensure his floors remain spotless, but likely because it would be an easy thing to pawn off for $10-$20. What do you want the government to do about that? You potentially could drastically expand police funding but any increase would be best levied first at the serious crimes they're currently ignoring (like gun-toting domestic violence) before any of it can realistically start reaching "stolen broom" levels. I don't know what property tax levels could sustain that increase.

What can the government do to make your "Neighbor" less of a dick?

They can stop intervening on his behalf. If he happens to end up getting beaten to death with a baseball bat after menacing my wife, they can just let the judgement of the natural order stand.

What standards do you want the state to use in determining which homicides it should let stand? There's self-defense exceptions and the like, but your position would require evaluating the deceased character traits.

your position would require evaluating the deceased character traits.

Yes. And this is good.

So what standards do you want the state to use in determining which homicides it should let stand?

Well the evidence would obviously be in favor of the defendant. The state would need to prove the deceased was not engaged in a felony at the time of the offense. Criminal records should be able to be introduced as part of a defense.

I'm confused because this is how @raggedy_anthem described "Neighbor"'s behavior:

My husband and I introduced ourselves to a new neighbor while he was working on his car on the sidewalk. We were hoping to establish enough of a rapport to ask him to stop parking illegally, blocking the whole sidewalk, and leaving the trash from his car detailing in our garden bed. Perhaps someday we can even talk politely to him about the broken bottles and used condoms we clean up after his hangouts with his friends. When we gave him our names and asked for his, he refused to even look us in the face. He mumbled that we could call him "Neighbor."

...and I don't see any felonious conduct described. You did say in your comment that his homicide should be excused if it happened as a result of him menacing your wife but a) raggedy_anthem never described any menacing and b) menacing would presumably already be covered under current laws governing justifiable homicide. So in terms of proposed policy changes, I'm not understanding what you want to be different.

They also described:

a bedraggled man reached through our fence and stole the commercial-grade broom

a man walking the other way, who was yelling and ululating, waving a stick around

Among the three humans described there appears to be two bad neighbors a local posse should get together to put into the stockades and one guy the homeowner should be free to do with as he wishes, including summary execution.

Would you accept a judgment of the natural order where your neighbor has a bigger bat?

This is why we have police, to stop the true state of nature from emerging. But if they intervene only when the state of nature is superior, as happens in the hobo-vs-normal person situation, the state is a net negative in said subset of interactions.

I wouldn’t be opposed so some sort of maritime law of salvage for improperly parked vehicles. Someone blocks your driveway? You get to sell off their catalytic converter.

Letters of Marque for tow truck operators. They can tow and impound any improperly parked vehicle.

Isn’t that how it already works? Or are they required to have a complaint before they can show up?

Back when I was a contractor I was asked to park in private “no parking” zones all the time. It would be quite strange if a third party could come and tow me without either my or the property owner’s consent.

In such cases, the property owner could simply give to you a signed, exemption, to be placed on your dashboard and visible through your windshield for the duration of your visit.

If he fails to do so, and your vehicle is towed despite having permission to park there, then that's 100 percent the owner's fault for bad signage, not the towing company's.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats