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If the laws are idiotic, you can always employ people who work outside it. A team of Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care of your squatter problem
by bserge 5y ago
If the laws are idiotic, you can always employ people who work outside it.
A team of Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care of your squatter problem for less than 1000 Euros. There's likely people of other nationalities doing this, I wouldn't know, I only dealt with these three and they operate everywhere.
And no deaths or major injuries, of course, that's just bad business.
Sadly there's no easy app for connection.
- tptacek 5y agoThere's really no problem you can't solve, with the law or otherwise, by paying people to commit violence on your behalf.
- bserge 5y agoWell, unless you're going against someone much bigger than you.
- DamnYuppie 5y agoHit first, hit fast, hit hard.
- contravariant 5y agoThere are a couple, in particular I imagine violence won't be much help when the law has one of its psychotic episodes and refuses to reflect reality in a sensible way. So stuff like people being declared dead incorrectly, identity fraud. I'm also reminded of an incident in the Netherlands that lead to the fall of the current (still acting; it's complicated) government, where the tax agency was somehow convinced people had fraudulently received particular subsidies and decide to get the money back plus interest, which it turns out tax agencies are very good at. Good luck finding anyone to beat up there. You can scare people but you can't intimidate red tape.
- rblatz 5y agoIf your violence isn’t working it means you just aren’t using enough of it.
- contravariant 5y agoWell I suppose one way or another the problem stops existing or stops being worth solving.
- belter 5y agoThe detail you forgot to mention there was the criteria the tax administration used to decide the "people" they fought were fraudulent. And the detail of the documents they destroyed when parliamentarians tried to investigate the issue. There is the law and there is above the law.
- contravariant 5y agoThere's a lot of details I neglected to mention, simply because it's impossible to succinctly explain on just how many levels things went wrong.
- alasdair_ 5y ago> You can scare people but you can't intimidate red tape. The history of Scientology versus the IRS suggests otherwise.
- ptudan 5y agoExcept maybe curing disease, self fulfillment etc
- throw123123123 5y agoSquatting is also violence. You can't solve violence without violence.
- frabbit 5y agoYour definition of violence appears to equate things done to objects and things done to people. Failing to differentiate between these things makes me wonder are you some sort of animist?
- throw123123123 5y agoDoing things to objects that belong to other people is doing things to those people.
- jjnoakes 5y agoSure, for two different definitions of "doing things". But the existence of different definitions is precisely the point. Unless you are claiming that cutting someone's paper is equal to cutting their skin?
- jcelerier 5y agoEh, one would need to cut a lot of skin to hurt me as much as one would by cutting one of my father's paintings
- helloworld11 5y agoYou apparently live one hell of a privileged life in a fully functional country with a good legal system if you're saying such simplistic things. Striving for such nice conditions in all jurisdictions is laudable, but the practical reality is that in much of the world, a normal person subjected to abuse often has to resort to extralegal and sometimes violence recourse. The law is next to useless in these places. I live in one such country and your platitude would have just maintained a status quo of abuse against innocent people in many situations where they had to use or pay for violence by others to solve major problems.
- robbedpeter 5y agoWe live a civilized life, because our ancestors banded together, fought, and died to establish a government that was stable. That's not privilege, that's a way of life bought and fucking paid for. It doesn't just happen, and has to be guarded and cultivated. Unless and until similar costs in lives are paid, I honestly don't see a path to civilized life in much of the world. It keeps getting proved over and over that first world, well off countries can't pay or train or subjugate other cultures into civilized engagement with the world or even their own people. Nation building is an awful joke of a policy, and at some point people have to figure their own shit out. There are legal and illegal immigration and asylum possibilities all over the world, or you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny. It sucks, but being born doesn't entitle you to anything unless there's a culture and civilization to make good on those entitlements.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"you can take up arms against corruption and tyranny." Taking up arms is thr easy part mate, there is no shortage of thay going round. creating a functional society is the difficult one.
- robbedpeter 5y agoThere are lots of examples to use as templates. You can have hyper religious militant sharia, or you can have civilization compatible with the rest of the world. If you try for both, the community of nations is not going to let you participate meaningfully. I guess "hermit kingdom" is option 3, if you can get nukes.
- ptr2voidStar 5y agoI like this statement; at first blush, it appears uncouth and brutish - upon closer inspection however, it reveals the "natural state" of nature itself.
- whatshisface 5y agoI can think of one. What if your problem is that someone with more money than you is paying thugs to commit violence on their behalf? You'd have to band together with other people like you to stop them. I guess you'd also need some mechanism for restraining the worst impulses of the mob we've just organized, like a governor restrains a steam engine. We could call it a "government." I bet it would be a hit.
- rasz 5y agoNo violence, and not breaking the law. The way it works a couple of big loud slobs moves in and starts a 24/7 party. They are squatters too so police cant throw them out, and your problem tenants quickly give up after slipping on vomit , listening to music all night and being unable to use kitchen/bathroom.
- rokhayakebe 5y agoA team of Romanian/Bulgarian/Polish big guys will take care of your squatter problem for less than 1000 Euros...., then they can squat in your house.
- tptacek 5y agoBut that's bad for business, see.
- bserge 5y agoThey could. Once you decide to go outside the law, you take responsibility, do your research and prepare as best as you can. See, these people don't exactly want to be criminal gangs, they just want a quick Euro for little risk. So, your house and you want to kick out squatters - yeah, sure. Someone else's house and you want them to break in - no way, we're not insane. Most of the time. If you deal with some crazy cunts, they can burn your house down. Generally why the legal way is preferable. But if you're desperate, you can look at alternatives.
- kazinator 5y agoThe problem is that the big guys will very soon figure out: hey, squatters good, make business for us! And before you know it, the thugs themselves are doing the squatting. And before you know that, the biggest thugs are doing that because they beat the weaker thugs in the squatting turf war: there are no bigger thugs you can call.
- tomatotomato37 5y agoYou're not thinking far enough. Squatting property will only pay the bills. Stripping literally everything of value out of the property before using the husk as a pop-up drug lab is the way you make real money
- gowld 5y agoThis entire thread is covered in the OP.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoIs there no risk of retaliation? They know who you are and where you live, and presumably, they do not have much to lose.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoIt’s probably a safer strategy for a full-time landlord than someone who wants to kick squatters out then move in themselves.
- jnosCo 5y agoI think this has the same problem as all non-legal security. I can see entrepreneurial big guys deciding this a good business, and just paying some people a nominal amount to squat, while offering their services to the property owners to "remove them". Eventually, they don't even need the squatters in the loop, just "Nice place you got here. It'd be a shame if someone squatted in it."
- munk-a 5y agoOr forcing out legitimate residents and becoming the squatters themselves. Privatized legal enforcement comes with a whole lot of problems.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoBut the legal system probably wouldn’t treat these types of thugs as nicely as garden-variety squatters, no? Otherwise such gangs would have already taken over France. I think in order to avoid open conflict from law enforcement, these types will try to avoid residing at the scene of the crime. Instead, they will rely on referrals for repeat business, while keeping things on the down low.
- CamTin 5y agoRegular state-employed cops can and often do employ largely the same strategy but on a much bigger scale.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoThat's what the government does already with the police / court system / lawmaking. You pay taxes for protection. In the past they were at least removing squatters. We're at a point where they don't even bother doing their job. Any use of violence need opposing and competing forces in a market to work. Judging by the quality of service, it obviously doesn't work when the government has a monopoly of legal violence. As you mentioned, having people doing it illegally is prone to the creation of a black market. Black markets need to stay hidden so they'll have lower standards and generally a worse experience for everyone involved. If there wasn't any control on these "big guys", eventually someone would come up with a way to broadcast these "big guys" reputation. Someone could easily hire some other "big guys" to keep the other ones in check.
- lovich 5y agoNot gonna lie buddy but that’s pretty fucked up of you. Where does this not lead to people paying more money to go beat you down if you try and evict them?
- 3GuardLineups 5y agoSquatters are not likely to have the money for that
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agoThe citizen seized the the monopoly on violence to the state under the condition that justice is upheld. If that condition is violated, the contract between state and individual is broken.
- ISO-morphism 5y ago> The citizen seized the monopoly on violence I think you meant to write "ceded". To seize is to grab hold of, to cede is to give away.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agoRight, thanks.
- the_only_law 5y agoYeah, you go do that, see how well that works for you in The state’s courts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gjs278 5y agothey don’t have any money, that’s why they are squatting lol
- why_Mr_Anderson 5y agoWe used to call them 'Russian lawyers'
- skewedmap 5y agoI think comment should sit on hackernews’ wikipedia page for a while. @dang is this a new low or a new high for hn? how is this person not banned yet?
- DamnYuppie 5y agoOddly I have a simplistic view that this is how the Feudal system began. Meaning the populous realized their current government wasn't protecting their property and safety, so they got together and hired some people to do that for them. Over time those men took power for themselves. This theme is played out time and time again in history, if a government can't protect the property of its people it will eventually be replaced. Sadly this may take many decades to occur but the trend is there historically.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoI think it arose in the opposite direction. Rulers realized that they didn't have enough centralized power to effectively rule their territory, so they hired lower-level rulers who would get land in exchange for military service.
- hodgesrm 5y agoPart of the motivation was economic: armed horsemen, the dominant military units of the time, were expensive to maintain. The breakdown in the economy in early medieval Europe meant that centralized rulers didn't have money to pay them. They gave them land instead, so they could support themselves in return for military service. You might say it was a medieval take on the military-industrial complex.
- ErneX 5y agoThere's a company famous in Spain dedicated to that, they appear on TV news constantly.
- inasio 5y agoThey're all over the BBC article this post is about. In fact it reads like an informercial
- contrarianmop 5y ago@dang any specific guidelines being violated here, or is this acceptable?
- medo-bear 5y agohow is this comment ok ?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gjs278 5y agohow is it not?
- syspec 5y agoCover your delicate ears, it's a real world out there. While I don't agree with the idea in the comment.c this person is speaking from experience (supposedly). They should be allowed to share it, and their viewpoint
- medo-bear 5y agoit's not the point of covering delicate ears. it's just not proper. substitute the eastern european nationalities the parent refers to for the term 'black' and tell me how does it ring to you :)
- xwolfi 5y agoFrench too, this was attempted ofc, we have documentaries about big guys employed by desperate home owners trying to kick squatters out of their main property they "lost" when going to vacations, and it doesnt work. They get sued, it often becomes very violent, because to have the balls to seize the property of someone who s in short vacations you need to be quite violent yourself, children are always involved and well meaning outrage artists always point out the poor children being sent back to the streets etc. I live in Hong Kong now where real estate is "a dream". You can rent anything with just a pile of cash and 30 minutes because if you dont pay rent they know the police just enter, throws everything out and put you in jail awaiting trial. I d recommend France to try, not sure what we d truly lose.
- thedailymail 5y agoWhile it may be a solution to your immediate problem, there can be consequences to developing a "relationship" with those who operate outside the law. (Because now 1) know your identity; 2) know you are to some extent nonchalant about operating within the bounds of the law; 3) know you have money; and 4) now have evidence of your extralegal actions.) Working to reform suboptimal laws may be difficult, but it is a better investment than handing your money to organized crime.
- freshhawk 5y agoThis is a hard thing to get across to people coming at it from a perspecitve of being higher up on some imaginary natural hierarchy. Also, real organized crime immediately flips on you when people notice their loud obvious daylight crimes and there is blowback.
- chii 5y ago> better investment than handing your money to organized crime it is, but this investment is costly, because it takes a lot of time and effort, with no real guarantee of success, and when you are eventually successful, other people could easily free-ride off your investment (since it's a non-excludable outcome). So what a "rational" actor would do is wait for someone else to expend their resources doing this, while they themselves pay to gangs/organized crime to obtain their own property back in the mean time.
- kristianov 5y agoDon't give the big guys money. They'll be coming for more. Try offering them something else.