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Ah the fallacy that resources can be applied equally everywhere. The fallacy that reducing enforcement of "mean tweets" can equally be applied to increasing the

Ah the fallacy that resources can be applied equally everywhere. The fallacy that reducing enforcement of "mean tweets" can equally be applied to increasing the enforcement of burglaries. In microeconomics this dichotomy is described as the Production Possibility Frontier that recognizes tradeoffs exist. I dislike seeing the arguments "why are we spending money here when we could there" when they are not a 1 for 1 trade. We may sacrifice a large percentage of "here" to get a small percentage of "there". Read more on the Production Possibility Frontier if curious what I mean by that. An example is that the guy who solved this "mean tweet" problem is the same guy who could go and solve the burglaries problem. Assume you have a team that analyzes cyber crime that is underemployed but the team is required for rare cases. In their free time they enforce "mean tweets" (I'm not arguing that is okay, I'm arguing about resources). The assumption that they could use their free time better to solve burglaries is probably not true. Unless they Aram Mojtabai from the Blacklist. All of his resources are 1:1 as he can do anything.

tryptophan 5y ago
Its not really a fallacy...you can just fire the the mean-tweet-enforcers and hire more other-crime-enforcers. You are the one making assumptions that firing people doesn't exist as a concept.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  +100 Like
- Diesel555 5y ago
  I think the OP was simply discussing the officer's time and he may be right. The article doesn't state who initially reported and pursued the charges. But your comment shows the issue I was trying to highlight. You missed the point which was not normative - that resources are not always interchangeable at a 1:1 ratio. You can clearly fire and hire wherever you want. It's the efficiency of that transaction to be discussed. Does the value gained by adding an enforcer outweighs the value lost by removing a "mean-tweet-enforcer"? If the force's problems are caused by a shortage of enforcers and adding one more enforcer provides a huge value... while at the same time this "mean-tweet-enforcer" provides little value, then absolutely, make the trade. But if this "mean-tweet-enforcer" does a lot of other valuable things, and this one article that made the news is just a one-off, while at the same time the police are not at a shortage of people but have process issues leading to the reported evidence failures, and adding another enforcer does not help much - the trade may not value society. I just see a lot of arguments that we should reallocate resources without analyzing the tradeoff where one side may gain little from a lot of expenses. The OPs article states that the burglary issues, from what I can see before the paywall, were caused by evidence failures. If the argument were able to show that the resources lost by looking into this tweet could be reallocated to solve the evidence failures in the article by securing more CCTV feeds or something, then that's a strong argument. Either way, the comparison is theoretical. There are no mean tweet enforcers. The discussion is not normative, but positive. Simply not all resources are a 1:1 trade.
JackFr 5y ago
It’s a bit of an optics problem. Presumably it’s a great benefit to have law enforcement respected by the community and not objects of ridicule and laughingstocks. You seem focused on the economics of the situation and I’m hard pressed to come up with a number for police who are a joke vs. police whom the public have faith in. But a cheap way to get that benefit is stop having law enforcement act like asses.
pseudo0 5y ago
The whole point of police training is to give a baseline level of competence to all officers. While they may not be perfectly fungible, any officer enforcing a "mean tweet" law already has the necessary skills and qualifications to do something more useful (ie. literally anything else).

tryptophan 5y ago

Its not really a fallacy...you can just fire the the mean-tweet-enforcers and hire more other-crime-enforcers. You are the one making assumptions that firing people doesn't exist as a concept.

hungryforcodes 5y ago
+100 Like
Diesel555 5y ago
I think the OP was simply discussing the officer's time and he may be right. The article doesn't state who initially reported and pursued the charges. But your comment shows the issue I was trying to highlight. You missed the point which was not normative - that resources are not always interchangeable at a 1:1 ratio. You can clearly fire and hire wherever you want. It's the efficiency of that transaction to be discussed. Does the value gained by adding an enforcer outweighs the value lost by removing a "mean-tweet-enforcer"? If the force's problems are caused by a shortage of enforcers and adding one more enforcer provides a huge value... while at the same time this "mean-tweet-enforcer" provides little value, then absolutely, make the trade. But if this "mean-tweet-enforcer" does a lot of other valuable things, and this one article that made the news is just a one-off, while at the same time the police are not at a shortage of people but have process issues leading to the reported evidence failures, and adding another enforcer does not help much - the trade may not value society. I just see a lot of arguments that we should reallocate resources without analyzing the tradeoff where one side may gain little from a lot of expenses. The OPs article states that the burglary issues, from what I can see before the paywall, were caused by evidence failures. If the argument were able to show that the resources lost by looking into this tweet could be reallocated to solve the evidence failures in the article by securing more CCTV feeds or something, then that's a strong argument. Either way, the comparison is theoretical. There are no mean tweet enforcers. The discussion is not normative, but positive. Simply not all resources are a 1:1 trade.

JackFr 5y ago

It’s a bit of an optics problem. Presumably it’s a great benefit to have law enforcement respected by the community and not objects of ridicule and laughingstocks. You seem focused on the economics of the situation and I’m hard pressed to come up with a number for police who are a joke vs. police whom the public have faith in. But a cheap way to get that benefit is stop having law enforcement act like asses.

pseudo0 5y ago

The whole point of police training is to give a baseline level of competence to all officers. While they may not be perfectly fungible, any officer enforcing a "mean tweet" law already has the necessary skills and qualifications to do something more useful (ie. literally anything else).