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Defund is not actually a bad idea. The police are tasked with handling the fallout of failing or non-existent social systems and have been scaled respectively -
by sascha_sl 6y ago
Defund is not actually a bad idea. The police are tasked with handling the fallout of failing or non-existent social systems and have been scaled respectively - in fact police funding is growing every year, and not insubstantially.
If you work in tech you should know what happens if you transfer too many responsibilities to one bloated team.
These funds would be better invested in actual support systems. Homeless shelters. Drug rehabilitation. Fixing subpar education funding in poor school districts.
- csilverman 6y agoYeah, but calling it "defund" sounds a lot like "no more police, anywhere". I think a lot of the insanity here could have been avoided if this was presented as what it was intended to be—a reallocation of resources based on a desire to more effectively address deep-seated problems that make society worse for everyone—and not as, you know, anarchy.
- sascha_sl 6y agoIf you were making that argument about "abolish", I'd agree, but defund? I guess you'd need to know the massive funding increases the police has gotten over the past 20 years. Even abolish acknowledges there needs to be some form of community policing, it's just that the current model is militaristic, has little accountability, incentivizes the wrong things (arrest quotas) and (re-)hires the wrong people. I don't think anarchy is what you think it is. It wrongfully has picked up the entire Mad Max vibe. Any Chomsky talk on anarchism or the book of the same name ("On Anarchism") are a bit more nuanced introductions. Anarchism and police are "natural enemies" because anarchists believe the power police hold right now is unproportionate and unjustifiable. See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24025920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24025920