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> Many black communities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, and increasing the police presence there protects them from that crime and hence sa

> Many black communities are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, and increasing the police presence there protects them from that crime and hence saves many of their lives. Sure, and that was the common understanding 20-30 years ago. (see: Dem and black community support for various crime bills, "Superpredator", etc.). But our understanding of the situation has evolved (based on evidence, I should add!). > I might listen to you mention the drug charges and say, “fine, let’s legalize weed”. I might listen to you talk about how black people distrust their local police departments and vice versa and I might counter by advocating for community-oriented policing. You might convince me that none of that works and the basic concept was wrong-headed. But nowhere in this process do we actually disagree about the basic value you mentioned. But now you're arguing for a bunch of policies supported by various sects of Black Lives Matters supporters, all of which could be summed up in various ways as "reduce police interactions with black people". My point is that there are people who don't accept that. Who insist that nothing should change. The argument goes something like this: (1) Because black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime (2) police will naturally interact more with black people so (3) black people will also be arrested more for nonviolent crimes, and therefore (4) nothing needs to change. This breaks down somewhere between one and two, for a variety of reasons. The amount of violent crime isn't proportional to the amount of overpolicing, a lot of the forms of overpolicing don't actually reduce violent crime, etc. These are the people who I think it's reasonable to have suspicion of. People who agree that some form of action is necessary, cool! But people who think the status quo is fine and dandy, that's the group where I can't quite square things (and I'll note that the person who I linked earlier was in that group).

philwelch 6y ago
> But now you're arguing for a bunch of policies supported by various sects of Black Lives Matters supporters, all of which could be summed up in various ways as "reduce police interactions with black people". I think community-oriented policing is actually intended to increase police interactions by adding more non-adversarial interactions in order to establish trust. I don’t think “reduce police interactions with black people” is necessarily desirable if that includes things like ignoring 911 calls from black neighborhoods. In fact, that strikes me as deliberate failure to provide equal protection under the law, and could be even more ruinous to black communities than the status quo. “Reduce police interactions with black people” is yet another thing that might sound like a good idea at the time, but would ultimately lead, in my opinion, to unintended negative consequences for the very black lives it’s intended to protect. Even if your ideal solution would turn out to have fewer police interactions, setting that as a goal is just begging for Goodhart’s Law to manifest itself. Also, I think you’re minimizing nonviolent crime. DUI, car theft, burglary, and arson are all “nonviolent crimes”. We can’t just ignore them. A neighborhood where these things happen frequently is made more dangerous and impoverished by them. So when you talk about having more police presence in black neighborhoods resulting in more non-violent criminals behind bars, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you drive drunk through a black neighborhood, you might run over a black kid, and that black kid’s life sure as hell matters so I hope the police are around to catch you before that happens. If you’re talking about drug crimes and arguing that the enforcement of those laws is worse than the offense, then maybe you should just repeal those laws. And if I disagreed with you about drug laws I might argue the point with you. > People who agree that some form of action is necessary, cool! But people who think the status quo is fine and dandy, that's the group where I can't quite square things We got into this mess by agreeing that some form of action was necessary. Stopping to make sure we aren’t just making things worse is reasonable.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > We got into this mess by agreeing that some form of action was necessary. Stopping to make sure we aren’t just making things worse is reasonable. That isn't what I said. You can agree that the status quo is bad while being unsure of how to fix it (noticing flaws is a lot easier than finding solutions!). I'm speaking about people who believe the status quo is okay.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    I think you can believe the status quo is better than the set of changes you are proposing without devaluing the lives of black people. “Okay” is a relative term. Fundamentally, no state of affairs on earth can ever be truly “okay” because humanity is imperfect. No human society is capable of perfect justice. No human society ever has or ever will achieve perfect justice. That means injustice will always exist. > noticing flaws is a lot easier than finding solutions Yes, thank you. That’s my point. We’re all noticing flaws in the status quo. And a lot of people, yourself included, are proposing changes to the status quo. Changes which, in and of themselves, will also have flaws. But I think, as a conventional shorthand for “the best of all possible worlds because humanity is imperfect and damned”, you can just say the status quo is “okay” in that scenario.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      > But I think, as a conventional shorthand for “the best of all possible worlds because humanity is imperfect and damned” Then I'd reject this on moral grounds: Which is a better society: that everyone is approximately equally happy, or that overall happiness is greater, but at the cost of an inequality in happiness based on birthright? I'd claim that the second system is inherently unequal and therefore we should prefer the first even if it is, in a strictly utilitarian sense, better.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        That’s beside the point though. I wasn’t making the argument that some people choose to trade off between different values in different ways. I was making the argument that, even if you hold those values constant, you will never achieve any of them perfectly. To put it in concrete terms: every possible human society has some inequalities based on birthright. Or, as I stated it, perfect justice is impossible. It’s not a question of prioritizing certain values over others, although those questions can and do arise. It’s a question of achieving any one of those values in the real world.
malandrew 6y ago
> therefore (4) nothing needs to change. Again this isn't very charitable. I've had many of the same discussions and very few people I've debated this with come to the conclusion that things don't need to change. Most agree that things need to change, but they conclude that different changes are warranted than you do. Many people today focus the change on step 2 ("police will naturally interact more with black people") with policies like defund the police, while others might focus on changes that change the step 1 ("Because black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime"), while others even still will focus on things the are priors to even step 1. Disagreement on the change required is perfectly normal and to be expected. Just because people disagree on the change and don't see things exactly as you do doesn't mean they don't care or are bad people.

philwelch 6y ago

> But now you're arguing for a bunch of policies supported by various sects of Black Lives Matters supporters, all of which could be summed up in various ways as "reduce police interactions with black people". I think community-oriented policing is actually intended to increase police interactions by adding more non-adversarial interactions in order to establish trust. I don’t think “reduce police interactions with black people” is necessarily desirable if that includes things like ignoring 911 calls from black neighborhoods. In fact, that strikes me as deliberate failure to provide equal protection under the law, and could be even more ruinous to black communities than the status quo. “Reduce police interactions with black people” is yet another thing that might sound like a good idea at the time, but would ultimately lead, in my opinion, to unintended negative consequences for the very black lives it’s intended to protect. Even if your ideal solution would turn out to have fewer police interactions, setting that as a goal is just begging for Goodhart’s Law to manifest itself. Also, I think you’re minimizing nonviolent crime. DUI, car theft, burglary, and arson are all “nonviolent crimes”. We can’t just ignore them. A neighborhood where these things happen frequently is made more dangerous and impoverished by them. So when you talk about having more police presence in black neighborhoods resulting in more non-violent criminals behind bars, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you drive drunk through a black neighborhood, you might run over a black kid, and that black kid’s life sure as hell matters so I hope the police are around to catch you before that happens. If you’re talking about drug crimes and arguing that the enforcement of those laws is worse than the offense, then maybe you should just repeal those laws. And if I disagreed with you about drug laws I might argue the point with you. > People who agree that some form of action is necessary, cool! But people who think the status quo is fine and dandy, that's the group where I can't quite square things We got into this mess by agreeing that some form of action was necessary. Stopping to make sure we aren’t just making things worse is reasonable.

joshuamorton 6y ago
> We got into this mess by agreeing that some form of action was necessary. Stopping to make sure we aren’t just making things worse is reasonable. That isn't what I said. You can agree that the status quo is bad while being unsure of how to fix it (noticing flaws is a lot easier than finding solutions!). I'm speaking about people who believe the status quo is okay.
- philwelch 6y ago
  I think you can believe the status quo is better than the set of changes you are proposing without devaluing the lives of black people. “Okay” is a relative term. Fundamentally, no state of affairs on earth can ever be truly “okay” because humanity is imperfect. No human society is capable of perfect justice. No human society ever has or ever will achieve perfect justice. That means injustice will always exist. > noticing flaws is a lot easier than finding solutions Yes, thank you. That’s my point. We’re all noticing flaws in the status quo. And a lot of people, yourself included, are proposing changes to the status quo. Changes which, in and of themselves, will also have flaws. But I think, as a conventional shorthand for “the best of all possible worlds because humanity is imperfect and damned”, you can just say the status quo is “okay” in that scenario.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > But I think, as a conventional shorthand for “the best of all possible worlds because humanity is imperfect and damned” Then I'd reject this on moral grounds: Which is a better society: that everyone is approximately equally happy, or that overall happiness is greater, but at the cost of an inequality in happiness based on birthright? I'd claim that the second system is inherently unequal and therefore we should prefer the first even if it is, in a strictly utilitarian sense, better.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      That’s beside the point though. I wasn’t making the argument that some people choose to trade off between different values in different ways. I was making the argument that, even if you hold those values constant, you will never achieve any of them perfectly. To put it in concrete terms: every possible human society has some inequalities based on birthright. Or, as I stated it, perfect justice is impossible. It’s not a question of prioritizing certain values over others, although those questions can and do arise. It’s a question of achieving any one of those values in the real world.

malandrew 6y ago

> therefore (4) nothing needs to change. Again this isn't very charitable. I've had many of the same discussions and very few people I've debated this with come to the conclusion that things don't need to change. Most agree that things need to change, but they conclude that different changes are warranted than you do. Many people today focus the change on step 2 ("police will naturally interact more with black people") with policies like defund the police, while others might focus on changes that change the step 1 ("Because black people commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime"), while others even still will focus on things the are priors to even step 1. Disagreement on the change required is perfectly normal and to be expected. Just because people disagree on the change and don't see things exactly as you do doesn't mean they don't care or are bad people.