5 ms·

> Certainly, this system isn't perfect Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite t

> Certainly, this system isn't perfect Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known, and the majority of the population is apparently utterly fine with this - even you are merely saying that this situation "needs improvement", like you're marking homework. "The police only murdered one person in cold blood today rather than two, have a cookie!" I've had a friend in an EU country have the police break their bones and leave them locked up without medical treatment for weeks, because they were an Eastern European refugee. This is what "Rule of Law" looks like - it looks like entire populations being utterly terrorised by a sanctioned force that they have absolutely no power to stop. Law is a bunch of words on a piece of paper, it has no power to rule. We leave that to organisations (the police, prosecutor's office, courts and prisons) with a history and present of institutionalised racism and no accountability to the communities they terrorise.

yters 6y ago
would you prefer a country with no rule of law? there are plenty of those around to check out
- komali2 6y ago
  It's getting off topic, but it's worth pointing out that all the examples you're about to drum up may not have rule of law, but they certainly have "law," in that they have someone holding a monopoly on violence and the willingness to use it to meet their ends. I think that's an important distinction to make between such a place, and a place of anarchy or a commune, which aren't necessarily places that don't have "rule of law" and aren't necessarily hubs of raw violent chaos.
  - yters 6y ago
    what exactly is your counter proposal? the united communes of america? monopoly on violence exists because people are evil and violent without a lawful monopoly on violence you get much of what you see in the rest of the world anarchist want to destroy the current system flaws and all for a vacuum of justice
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      So your solution to "people are evil and violent" is to... give a bunch of people carte blanche to be evil and commit violence with no accountability or recourse available to their victims?
      - JoeSmithson 6y ago
        > "carte blanche to be evil" Is this a good faith interpretation of what you honestly think they were saying?
    - komali2 6y ago
      > what exactly is your counter proposal? the united communes of america? That doesn't sound too bad to me. > people are evil and violent It seems that isn't the really the case, it seems only a small minority of people are, but unfortunately violence allows aggregation of power which allows more violence which allows... > anarchist want to destroy the current system flaws and all for a vacuum of justice Not aware of any anarchists that want whatever a "vacuum of justice" is.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  You know as well as I do that there are alternatives to a contemporary legal system that are not a bunch of roving warlords. The current system is not the only system that can possibly work.
  - y2kenny 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on that? I can't really read the mind of either of you ("you know as well as I do"... what do you guys know?)
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      Theorising on alternatives to the contemporary Western legal system have been done for the last century by leftists, and a lot of that gets put into practice on a small scale where it can be. I've been involved in some of it myself. Part of the goal is to prevent creating permanent organisations, such as the police and the court and the prisons, that have a structural incentive to protect themselves against a community trying to hold them accountable. In fact, note that the concept of a jury is intended to work this way (although is missing many elements, and exists under the permanent organisation of the court) - a temporary organisation gathering to find justice, then dispersing. Unfortunately it's difficult to tell the exact outcome of implementing any of it on a wider scale, as the times leftism has actually been in power have largely been during times of war where a lot of theory was thrown out the window, or using leftist messaging to implement something closer to a dictatorship. All we know is that a lot of it works when implemented in our own communities.
      - yters 6y ago
        why dont you think the dictatorship is the outcome of implementing at scale? e.g. if private property must be eliminated to have a commune, and most people wont give up their private property willingly, what other way is there to eliminate private property at scale except via dictatorship and martial law?
  - mercer 6y ago
    Surely you're aware that we are at the end of history, and the current system is the best we can hope for or aspire to!
stcredzero 6y ago
Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. What's happening with the violence and the vandalism is just muddying the waters. It's almost as if the purpose isn't to make things better, but to foment a race war to destabilize the USA.
- vertex-four 6y ago
  > After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results, like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability. The same as all the other times the police have murdered people. It's not like this is a new thing that people are just waking up to.
  - stcredzero 6y ago
    No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results Can you substantiate that, or is it just your opinion? You can justify the imposition of your opinion on everyone? (Through violent intimidation?) like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability This has happened, incrementally. Can you design a system, ground-up that will work as well as the current one? I suspect that's far more likely than iterating on the current one. That's also an opinion.
    - vertex-four 6y ago
      > This has happened, incrementally. Do you have statistics that show that? Are more cops charged and imprisoned after murdering unarmed people every year, or does the number of unarmed murdered people go down, at all? People who die mysteriously in custody?
      - Joeri 6y ago
        “Fatal police shootings of unarmed people have significantly declined, experts say” https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-have-significantly-declined-experts-say/2018/05/03/d5eab374-4349-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2MjduOM-Ak37IhlNLTogd74u43hjxSWHS7YEXU8ajcQAqPQ2HyjohNKbA https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-s... However, the overall trend in police killings is flat. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends Interestingly: “White Police Officers Are Not More Likely To Shoot Minority Suspects” https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731839/new-study-says-white-police-officers-are-not-more-likely-to-shoot-minority-suspe https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731839/new-study-says-whit...

yters 6y ago

would you prefer a country with no rule of law? there are plenty of those around to check out

komali2 6y ago
It's getting off topic, but it's worth pointing out that all the examples you're about to drum up may not have rule of law, but they certainly have "law," in that they have someone holding a monopoly on violence and the willingness to use it to meet their ends. I think that's an important distinction to make between such a place, and a place of anarchy or a commune, which aren't necessarily places that don't have "rule of law" and aren't necessarily hubs of raw violent chaos.
- yters 6y ago
  what exactly is your counter proposal? the united communes of america? monopoly on violence exists because people are evil and violent without a lawful monopoly on violence you get much of what you see in the rest of the world anarchist want to destroy the current system flaws and all for a vacuum of justice
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    So your solution to "people are evil and violent" is to... give a bunch of people carte blanche to be evil and commit violence with no accountability or recourse available to their victims?
    - JoeSmithson 6y ago
      > "carte blanche to be evil" Is this a good faith interpretation of what you honestly think they were saying?
  - komali2 6y ago
    > what exactly is your counter proposal? the united communes of america? That doesn't sound too bad to me. > people are evil and violent It seems that isn't the really the case, it seems only a small minority of people are, but unfortunately violence allows aggregation of power which allows more violence which allows... > anarchist want to destroy the current system flaws and all for a vacuum of justice Not aware of any anarchists that want whatever a "vacuum of justice" is.
vertex-four 6y ago
You know as well as I do that there are alternatives to a contemporary legal system that are not a bunch of roving warlords. The current system is not the only system that can possibly work.
- y2kenny 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on that? I can't really read the mind of either of you ("you know as well as I do"... what do you guys know?)
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    Theorising on alternatives to the contemporary Western legal system have been done for the last century by leftists, and a lot of that gets put into practice on a small scale where it can be. I've been involved in some of it myself. Part of the goal is to prevent creating permanent organisations, such as the police and the court and the prisons, that have a structural incentive to protect themselves against a community trying to hold them accountable. In fact, note that the concept of a jury is intended to work this way (although is missing many elements, and exists under the permanent organisation of the court) - a temporary organisation gathering to find justice, then dispersing. Unfortunately it's difficult to tell the exact outcome of implementing any of it on a wider scale, as the times leftism has actually been in power have largely been during times of war where a lot of theory was thrown out the window, or using leftist messaging to implement something closer to a dictatorship. All we know is that a lot of it works when implemented in our own communities.
    - yters 6y ago
      why dont you think the dictatorship is the outcome of implementing at scale? e.g. if private property must be eliminated to have a commune, and most people wont give up their private property willingly, what other way is there to eliminate private property at scale except via dictatorship and martial law?
- mercer 6y ago
  Surely you're aware that we are at the end of history, and the current system is the best we can hope for or aspire to!

stcredzero 6y ago

Well shit it isn't, it results every year in people being murdered in cold blood, nobody being arrested for it despite the perpetrators being known After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. What's happening with the violence and the vandalism is just muddying the waters. It's almost as if the purpose isn't to make things better, but to foment a race war to destabilize the USA.

vertex-four 6y ago
> After the George Floyd incident, everyone was in agreement that this should stop. No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results, like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability. The same as all the other times the police have murdered people. It's not like this is a new thing that people are just waking up to.
- stcredzero 6y ago
  No, they really weren't - or at least not in any way that might lead to actionable results Can you substantiate that, or is it just your opinion? You can justify the imposition of your opinion on everyone? (Through violent intimidation?) like building systems that do not give cops the power to murder people without accountability This has happened, incrementally. Can you design a system, ground-up that will work as well as the current one? I suspect that's far more likely than iterating on the current one. That's also an opinion.
  - vertex-four 6y ago
    > This has happened, incrementally. Do you have statistics that show that? Are more cops charged and imprisoned after murdering unarmed people every year, or does the number of unarmed murdered people go down, at all? People who die mysteriously in custody?
    - Joeri 6y ago
      “Fatal police shootings of unarmed people have significantly declined, experts say” https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-have-significantly-declined-experts-say/2018/05/03/d5eab374-4349-11e8-8569-26fda6b404c7_story.html?fbclid=IwAR2MjduOM-Ak37IhlNLTogd74u43hjxSWHS7YEXU8ajcQAqPQ2HyjohNKbA https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/fatal-police-s... However, the overall trend in police killings is flat. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/nationaltrends Interestingly: “White Police Officers Are Not More Likely To Shoot Minority Suspects” https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731839/new-study-says-white-police-officers-are-not-more-likely-to-shoot-minority-suspe https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731839/new-study-says-whit...