5 ms·

I don't think you can separate the individual from the organization when the organization either fundamentally or in practice is engaged in negative/harmful act

I don't think you can separate the individual from the organization when the organization either fundamentally or in practice is engaged in negative/harmful activities. Policing is broken in the US, and though its original intention is good, the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. The same applies to companies like Facebook and Google. They fundamentally exist to extract data from their users. They never had another legitimate mission that was corrupted over time, unlike the police. Apple, Netflix, Amazon at least have services that do not revolve around taking advantage of their users and manipulating their behavior. Organizations are made up of individuals at the end of the day. If you are a cop or work at companies like Palantir, Google, Facebook, you are helping prop up organizations that actively do harm to many people. You may not be as responsible as cops that murder or decision makers at the top, but their guilt would not be possible without you. Please think long and hard about where you work and why you work there.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Are you honestly saying that FB and Google don't provide anything that users value?
- kchr 6y ago
  Sure they do. But at a huge cost for our society.
chordalkeyboard 6y ago
I agree with much of what you have said but you appear to be lumping all policing organizations together on the basis of some recent high-profile events. Many cops work in local departments serving communities across the US and we simply do not have data on how prolific (or not) these abuses are, nor do we have data on the natural background rate of human-on-human abuses with which to compare the current level of abuses with a hypothetical alternative (such as mafia rule). This is akin to saying that all programmers are evil because of the actions of google et al.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Is there an appreciably significant number of police departments that are structurally not prone to these kinds of a abuses? And if there are, how many of them don't enable others who do? Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    The issue is not the social function though, it’s flaws in some police departments. Even on the left, there are very few who actually don’t want police around serving the function of stopping crimes when they occur.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      It's not a flaw in some police department, it is a flaw in the social order that manifests itself in abuses by numerous police departments, but the seeds of that are present in essentially all of them. Expressing the violence of the state is much broader than stopping crimes when they occur.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    the coercive function in society is prone to abuse but that does not imply that all personnel engaged in the coercive function are complicit in what amounts to a criminal conspiracy. > Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument. The social function that cops represent is the enforcement of laws and many of these laws are of a net benefit to society. it is an error to reduce the law enforcement function to brutality and expropriation when there are plenty of violent, malevolent, and larcenous individuals who are not police and still engage in socially undesirable behaviors.
kortilla 6y ago
By this poisoned well logic, you are responsible for any increase in crime that occurs from a reduction in policing. Adults that work for an organization which is critical to every civilization to date (law enforcement) work to fix it from the inside. Only immature people take the unethical stance that there should be no law enforcement because there are flaws in the current structure. Even in Minneapolis, the only thing the council can agree on is that “defunding the police” doesn’t actually mean taking away the police funding. Only a small anarchist percentage of the population wants nobody to actually be in the police. > the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. Care to say what the goal of the Boulder, CO police department is? How about the one for Waco? If the goal is not law enforcement, how does that square with the fact that people keep electing the heads of these orgs (Sheriff, Mayor, etc)?
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  Does defunding police increase crime? Police department budgets have absolutely ballooned in many places, but crime hasn't really dropped a commensurate amount. (In Seattle, police budget has increased over 33% in the past decade, while crime rates haven't moved.) Reductions in policing are paired with increases in spending on community and social programs that address the root causes of crime rather than just punishing those who turn to it from necessity. With the two combined, it's plausible that reducing police funding could actually reduce crime rates if the money was well invested elsewhere.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Depends on what defunding means. If it’s the textbook definition of stopping funds entirely [1], then it’s definitely going to increase crime. Only a fraction of criminals turn to it from necessity. - The Kansas City mob is not operating out of necessity. - The Mexican cartel is not operating out of necessity. - Child traffickers are not operating out of necessity. When someone hears their drunk neighbor beating his spouse, who should be called if there are no police? 1. https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Are you honestly saying that FB and Google don't provide anything that users value?

kchr 6y ago
Sure they do. But at a huge cost for our society.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago

I agree with much of what you have said but you appear to be lumping all policing organizations together on the basis of some recent high-profile events. Many cops work in local departments serving communities across the US and we simply do not have data on how prolific (or not) these abuses are, nor do we have data on the natural background rate of human-on-human abuses with which to compare the current level of abuses with a hypothetical alternative (such as mafia rule). This is akin to saying that all programmers are evil because of the actions of google et al.

sudosysgen 6y ago
Is there an appreciably significant number of police departments that are structurally not prone to these kinds of a abuses? And if there are, how many of them don't enable others who do? Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument.
- kortilla 6y ago
  The issue is not the social function though, it’s flaws in some police departments. Even on the left, there are very few who actually don’t want police around serving the function of stopping crimes when they occur.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    It's not a flaw in some police department, it is a flaw in the social order that manifests itself in abuses by numerous police departments, but the seeds of that are present in essentially all of them. Expressing the violence of the state is much broader than stopping crimes when they occur.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  the coercive function in society is prone to abuse but that does not imply that all personnel engaged in the coercive function are complicit in what amounts to a criminal conspiracy. > Cop!=Programmer, cops integrate into one social function while programmers integrate onto many. The correct mapping would be public employee <=> programmer, or Raytheon weapons engineer <=> Soldier, for example. It really is the social function that is core to this argument. The social function that cops represent is the enforcement of laws and many of these laws are of a net benefit to society. it is an error to reduce the law enforcement function to brutality and expropriation when there are plenty of violent, malevolent, and larcenous individuals who are not police and still engage in socially undesirable behaviors.

kortilla 6y ago

By this poisoned well logic, you are responsible for any increase in crime that occurs from a reduction in policing. Adults that work for an organization which is critical to every civilization to date (law enforcement) work to fix it from the inside. Only immature people take the unethical stance that there should be no law enforcement because there are flaws in the current structure. Even in Minneapolis, the only thing the council can agree on is that “defunding the police” doesn’t actually mean taking away the police funding. Only a small anarchist percentage of the population wants nobody to actually be in the police. > the daily practice of it today is systemically flawed and no longer has the original intent as its goal. Care to say what the goal of the Boulder, CO police department is? How about the one for Waco? If the goal is not law enforcement, how does that square with the fact that people keep electing the heads of these orgs (Sheriff, Mayor, etc)?

Pfhreak 6y ago
Does defunding police increase crime? Police department budgets have absolutely ballooned in many places, but crime hasn't really dropped a commensurate amount. (In Seattle, police budget has increased over 33% in the past decade, while crime rates haven't moved.) Reductions in policing are paired with increases in spending on community and social programs that address the root causes of crime rather than just punishing those who turn to it from necessity. With the two combined, it's plausible that reducing police funding could actually reduce crime rates if the money was well invested elsewhere.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Depends on what defunding means. If it’s the textbook definition of stopping funds entirely [1], then it’s definitely going to increase crime. Only a fraction of criminals turn to it from necessity. - The Kansas City mob is not operating out of necessity. - The Mexican cartel is not operating out of necessity. - Child traffickers are not operating out of necessity. When someone hears their drunk neighbor beating his spouse, who should be called if there are no police? 1. https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund https://www.wordnik.com/words/defund