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I agree yet am not really confident in that the police can be de-militarized in a country where every minor criminal has a gun and living is segregated in a way

I agree yet am not really confident in that the police can be de-militarized in a country where every minor criminal has a gun and living is segregated in a way so some neighborhoods actually are much more dangerous than others.

ALittleLight 5y ago
The police haven't always been as militarized as they are now. We could easily go back. I think ending the drug war with legalization and decriminalization and ending no-knock warrants without extreme circumstances would go a long way.
- qwerty456127 5y ago
  As for this - yes, I'm rather sure. The drug war is evil. I'm glad some states are legalizing psychedelics already. I would add that zero-tolerance policies by which people loose jobs and schools for trace amounts of light drugs found in their urine samples after a weekend should be banned too.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    Drug tests should be banned for most folks. Additionally: What is a trace amount after a weekend? Can you tell if someone smoked pot on Sunday rather than Monday on a Wednesday drug test? Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Does it matter that someone did a couple of lines of coke saturday rather than be drunk and high from Friday to Sunday?
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      > Can you tell if someone smoked pot on Sunday rather than Monday on a Wednesday drug test? I don't really know. I thought there would be difference in concentration. > Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Mushrooms are not a hard drug. Fentanyl/heroine and crack are. > Does it matter that someone did a couple of lines of coke saturday rather than be drunk and high from Friday to Sunday? IMHO the second is worse.
      - netizen-936824 5y ago
        There is no such thing as a "hard" or "heavy" drug. These terms are not in pharmacological literature and are not defined by any property of the chemical or their pharmacological action.
        qwerty456127 5y ago
        Nevertheless it is rather easy to tell them apart. Hard drugs quickly cause heavy addiction in almost everybody who tries them, destroy their health and can even kill them easily. Psilocybin does not, it can actually be used to improve neural health and cure addictions (just search it here on HN, there are many papers to reference). There are things which are hard to define precisely nevertheless easy to distinguish intuitively.
        netizen-936824 5y ago
        I guess we can consider alcohol a hard drug then. Time to make it illegal? I don't know anybody who uses it responsibly, therefore those people don't exist right?
        qwerty456127 5y ago
        I know many people who use alcohol responsibly and even people who use meth responsibly (it's great for heavy ADHD if you have enough willpower to only use tiny doses occasionally) but I seriously doubt there are many who use crack responsibly.
        netizen-936824 5y ago
        Believe it or not I have met people who use cocaine, in both salt and base (crack) forms, responsibly. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. Same with methamphetamine and heroin. Do you think Dr. Carl Hart uses heroin irresponsibly? You may want to look him up.
      - 5y ago
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      I'd outright refuse to work at a place that imposed them on principle, body integrity is one of my strongest-held values. There's enough creepy corporate manipulation of our private lives as it is, the only piss they'll get from me is a swift "piss off" and I'll work somewhere that respects personal boundaries.
      - qwerty456127 5y ago
        Me too, but we are privileged to choose a job according to our preferences. Meanwhile, there are many people for whom it is way harder to find a better job in their life circumstances / places they live. Losing it can easily ruin their lives.
        BoxOfRain 5y ago
        Yeah, I'm definitely aware it's a luxury to be able to turn down jobs and that this sector-specific good job market isn't going to last forever either. I really think we should ban drug testing in the vast majority of cases to protect people who are less fortunate from the ridiculous puritan corporate culture many places adopt. I can see a case for it in roles where heavy machinery or other potentially deadly outcomes are a possibility but for the overwhelming majority of jobs it's just controlling behaviour for the sake of being controlling in my opinion.
        Broken_Hippo 5y ago
        Even the thin veil of "heavy machinery" isn't really enough: Your average factory worker deals with "heavy machinery" and trash compactors, commonly used in retail for boxes, are the same. Folks employed in these positions in other countries don't have drug tests and do not have bad safety records, so the danger isn't as high as the employer makes it out to be. I think employers should prove that there is either a federal mandate for drug testing the position OR that drug use, even outside of work, affects work.
- roenxi 5y ago
  I don't understand why "we could go back to the exact framework we had 10 years ago" is a permanent political impossibility. It implies either there are no experiments or no mistakes in the legislative process - both of which are implausible ideas. On the big ticket stuff it makes some sense, but no example springs to mind where something was tried then just totally rolled back after a few decades.
  - blkhawk 5y ago
    cough Prohibition
  - makomk 5y ago
    As I understand it, rolling back even ten years means substantially more people - including black people - being killed by the police, because this has gone down over time in the US and a substantial amount of work went into achieving this. That is to say, there was no perfect time in the past where this didn't happen, and if people think there was and things have gotten worse they've been lead astray by the news media.
- lenkite 5y ago
  Go back to which era ? Just asking out of curiosity. AFAIK, gun violence has always been endemic to the USA - and most especially in places where guns are banned. I suspect this will only change with a national ban on Guns. Yet gun traffickers across the border would love that. The American continents have more guns than anywhere else in the world.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Not "go back to" some era, but roll back the militarization of the police for the present/future era. A ban on guns wouldn't change anything. There are many countries that are much more violent with much more violent police and bans on guns. Other countries have high gun ownership and low crime and low police violence.
    - formerly_proven 5y ago
      > Other countries have high gun ownership and low crime and low police violence. I.e. "la comparaison suisse" It doesn't really hold up. Switzerland has a very low crime rate, but also has one of the highest gun violence rates in Europe (most are suicides).
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        Around here lots of guns were removed from the equation 10 - 20 years ago and I haven't heard about a corresponding decrease in suicides. As far as I can see guns doesn't trigger suicides.
        atq2119 5y ago
        The comment you reply to does not claim that there's a causation between fun ownership and suicide. It merely notes that the gun violence in Switzerland is largely suicide, which is probably simply because the share of gun suicide among suicide overall is higher in Switzerland than elsewhere.
  - hadlock 5y ago

ALittleLight 5y ago

The police haven't always been as militarized as they are now. We could easily go back. I think ending the drug war with legalization and decriminalization and ending no-knock warrants without extreme circumstances would go a long way.

qwerty456127 5y ago
As for this - yes, I'm rather sure. The drug war is evil. I'm glad some states are legalizing psychedelics already. I would add that zero-tolerance policies by which people loose jobs and schools for trace amounts of light drugs found in their urine samples after a weekend should be banned too.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  Drug tests should be banned for most folks. Additionally: What is a trace amount after a weekend? Can you tell if someone smoked pot on Sunday rather than Monday on a Wednesday drug test? Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Does it matter that someone did a couple of lines of coke saturday rather than be drunk and high from Friday to Sunday?
  - qwerty456127 5y ago
    > Can you tell if someone smoked pot on Sunday rather than Monday on a Wednesday drug test? I don't really know. I thought there would be difference in concentration. > Does it matter if it is a "heavy" drug (say, mushrooms?)? Mushrooms are not a hard drug. Fentanyl/heroine and crack are. > Does it matter that someone did a couple of lines of coke saturday rather than be drunk and high from Friday to Sunday? IMHO the second is worse.
    - netizen-936824 5y ago
      There is no such thing as a "hard" or "heavy" drug. These terms are not in pharmacological literature and are not defined by any property of the chemical or their pharmacological action.
      - qwerty456127 5y ago
        Nevertheless it is rather easy to tell them apart. Hard drugs quickly cause heavy addiction in almost everybody who tries them, destroy their health and can even kill them easily. Psilocybin does not, it can actually be used to improve neural health and cure addictions (just search it here on HN, there are many papers to reference). There are things which are hard to define precisely nevertheless easy to distinguish intuitively.
        netizen-936824 5y ago
        I guess we can consider alcohol a hard drug then. Time to make it illegal? I don't know anybody who uses it responsibly, therefore those people don't exist right?
        qwerty456127 5y ago
        I know many people who use alcohol responsibly and even people who use meth responsibly (it's great for heavy ADHD if you have enough willpower to only use tiny doses occasionally) but I seriously doubt there are many who use crack responsibly.
        netizen-936824 5y ago
        Believe it or not I have met people who use cocaine, in both salt and base (crack) forms, responsibly. Just because you don't know them doesn't mean they don't exist. Same with methamphetamine and heroin. Do you think Dr. Carl Hart uses heroin irresponsibly? You may want to look him up.
    - 5y ago
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    I'd outright refuse to work at a place that imposed them on principle, body integrity is one of my strongest-held values. There's enough creepy corporate manipulation of our private lives as it is, the only piss they'll get from me is a swift "piss off" and I'll work somewhere that respects personal boundaries.
    - qwerty456127 5y ago
      Me too, but we are privileged to choose a job according to our preferences. Meanwhile, there are many people for whom it is way harder to find a better job in their life circumstances / places they live. Losing it can easily ruin their lives.
      - BoxOfRain 5y ago
        Yeah, I'm definitely aware it's a luxury to be able to turn down jobs and that this sector-specific good job market isn't going to last forever either. I really think we should ban drug testing in the vast majority of cases to protect people who are less fortunate from the ridiculous puritan corporate culture many places adopt. I can see a case for it in roles where heavy machinery or other potentially deadly outcomes are a possibility but for the overwhelming majority of jobs it's just controlling behaviour for the sake of being controlling in my opinion.
        Broken_Hippo 5y ago
        Even the thin veil of "heavy machinery" isn't really enough: Your average factory worker deals with "heavy machinery" and trash compactors, commonly used in retail for boxes, are the same. Folks employed in these positions in other countries don't have drug tests and do not have bad safety records, so the danger isn't as high as the employer makes it out to be. I think employers should prove that there is either a federal mandate for drug testing the position OR that drug use, even outside of work, affects work.
roenxi 5y ago
I don't understand why "we could go back to the exact framework we had 10 years ago" is a permanent political impossibility. It implies either there are no experiments or no mistakes in the legislative process - both of which are implausible ideas. On the big ticket stuff it makes some sense, but no example springs to mind where something was tried then just totally rolled back after a few decades.
- blkhawk 5y ago
  cough Prohibition
- makomk 5y ago
  As I understand it, rolling back even ten years means substantially more people - including black people - being killed by the police, because this has gone down over time in the US and a substantial amount of work went into achieving this. That is to say, there was no perfect time in the past where this didn't happen, and if people think there was and things have gotten worse they've been lead astray by the news media.
lenkite 5y ago
Go back to which era ? Just asking out of curiosity. AFAIK, gun violence has always been endemic to the USA - and most especially in places where guns are banned. I suspect this will only change with a national ban on Guns. Yet gun traffickers across the border would love that. The American continents have more guns than anywhere else in the world.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Not "go back to" some era, but roll back the militarization of the police for the present/future era. A ban on guns wouldn't change anything. There are many countries that are much more violent with much more violent police and bans on guns. Other countries have high gun ownership and low crime and low police violence.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    > Other countries have high gun ownership and low crime and low police violence. I.e. "la comparaison suisse" It doesn't really hold up. Switzerland has a very low crime rate, but also has one of the highest gun violence rates in Europe (most are suicides).
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      Around here lots of guns were removed from the equation 10 - 20 years ago and I haven't heard about a corresponding decrease in suicides. As far as I can see guns doesn't trigger suicides.
      - atq2119 5y ago
        The comment you reply to does not claim that there's a causation between fun ownership and suicide. It merely notes that the gun violence in Switzerland is largely suicide, which is probably simply because the share of gun suicide among suicide overall is higher in Switzerland than elsewhere.
- hadlock 5y ago