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A dismissive cynical attitude helps no one. Sure, some perhaps many, people are corrupt and exercise power given to them for wrong ends. Nevertheless, at large,

by zaat 7y ago

A dismissive cynical attitude helps no one. Sure, some perhaps many, people are corrupt and exercise power given to them for wrong ends. Nevertheless, at large, people want law enforcement, they want stolen goods returned to them, they want criminals to be stopped. You have better suggestion to maintain law and order?

southerntofu 7y ago
> Sure, some perhaps many, people are corrupt and exercise power given to them for wrong ends. That's in the nature of power dynamics. Not abusing power is the exception to the rule. > You have better suggestion to maintain law and order? I think having the rules decided upon and enforced by the people (not some centralized institution that's disconnected from the social fabric) would help a lot. What would help even more is to address the roots of criminality. There are for example many studies in the past two centuries showing that social inequalities necessarily lead to theft and violence (whether institutionalized or de facto), and that reducing unemployment (not with shitty uberized jobs) is an effective way to lower crime rates, if that is your objective. Other root causes include the repression itself of crime: prisons and psychiatric hospitals are themselves fostering very violent human interactions. Emma Goldman had a very good piece back in 1911 on prison as part of the problem: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/prisons.html http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/...
- zaat 7y ago
  Sure, our institutions can and should be improved. And I believe that by and large, we are moving forward. But it is not the case that we are currently doing it wrong and we can do it somehow right. We can only aim to do it better. The state of society changes and get reevaluated. Still, the way I see it, in any point in history or in the future, crime will exist and, if we want law and order maintained, we will have to maintain a database of stolen goods and of criminals. Do you see any alternative?
- jfk13 7y ago
  > I think having the rules decided upon and enforced by the people (not some centralized institution that's disconnected from the social fabric) would help a lot. And how exactly are "the people" going to decide upon and enforce the rules? Just gathering all the people together to talk until they come to consensus is hardly scalable to the size of a small town, let alone a country or continent. Hence representative democracy, institutions, governments, police forces, court systems.... all that stuff. It may be far from perfect, but it's not clear anyone has come up with a better mechanism.
- pergadad 7y ago
  Representative/indirect democracy exist because'the people' can't make informed decisions. A regular parliament session in any bigger country (or the EU parliament) will vote on a dozen laws. No way to scale this to country level decisions. Even in Switzerland direct votes on an issue are the exception, not the norm.

by zaat 7y ago

southerntofu 7y ago

> Sure, some perhaps many, people are corrupt and exercise power given to them for wrong ends. That's in the nature of power dynamics. Not abusing power is the exception to the rule. > You have better suggestion to maintain law and order? I think having the rules decided upon and enforced by the people (not some centralized institution that's disconnected from the social fabric) would help a lot. What would help even more is to address the roots of criminality. There are for example many studies in the past two centuries showing that social inequalities necessarily lead to theft and violence (whether institutionalized or de facto), and that reducing unemployment (not with shitty uberized jobs) is an effective way to lower crime rates, if that is your objective. Other root causes include the repression itself of crime: prisons and psychiatric hospitals are themselves fostering very violent human interactions. Emma Goldman had a very good piece back in 1911 on prison as part of the problem: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/prisons.html http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/goldman/aando/...

zaat 7y ago
Sure, our institutions can and should be improved. And I believe that by and large, we are moving forward. But it is not the case that we are currently doing it wrong and we can do it somehow right. We can only aim to do it better. The state of society changes and get reevaluated. Still, the way I see it, in any point in history or in the future, crime will exist and, if we want law and order maintained, we will have to maintain a database of stolen goods and of criminals. Do you see any alternative?
jfk13 7y ago
> I think having the rules decided upon and enforced by the people (not some centralized institution that's disconnected from the social fabric) would help a lot. And how exactly are "the people" going to decide upon and enforce the rules? Just gathering all the people together to talk until they come to consensus is hardly scalable to the size of a small town, let alone a country or continent. Hence representative democracy, institutions, governments, police forces, court systems.... all that stuff. It may be far from perfect, but it's not clear anyone has come up with a better mechanism.
pergadad 7y ago
Representative/indirect democracy exist because'the people' can't make informed decisions. A regular parliament session in any bigger country (or the EU parliament) will vote on a dozen laws. No way to scale this to country level decisions. Even in Switzerland direct votes on an issue are the exception, not the norm.