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Why does it matter that the Texas thing is a workaround? That's just a technical detail. The point remains that in all those mentioned cases, the government is

Why does it matter that the Texas thing is a workaround? That's just a technical detail. The point remains that in all those mentioned cases, the government is encouraging people to turn against one another. Sometimes resulting in violence, as indicated in the article. I feel like people are already becoming increasingly antagonistic toward one another, and this citizen enforcer trend is adding incentive in the wrong direction.

tantalor 5y ago
She state can't enforce an abortion ban by itself; it depends on citizen enforcement. The state can enforce the emission law; citizen enforcement is not required.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  Both these things can be true. Yes, Texas used citizen lawsuits as a workaround for something they couldn't themselves enforce without risking constitutional ire (for now). It's a legal sleight-of-hand that wins them bonus points with conservatives while buying time for the new Supreme Court to outlaw abortion. It's disgusting. At the same time, it is creepy for Texas, California, New York or any government to entice citizens to act as informers and tattle on each other. The social costs of that aren't just measured in less budgeting for meter maids, but also increasing social distrust between neighbors. These aren't mutually exclusive, just two complementary, nasty things happening in government. In all three cases, it mobilizes private citizens to factionalize against each other to fulfill some elitist agenda, creating legal conflict with a profit motive where there wasn't before. Sure, somebody might've rolled their eyes at an idling truck or silently viewed their aborting/gun-toting neighbor with contempt, but these laws encourage active interpersonal conflict in the name of the state, turning untrained citizens with no experience in de-escalation into deputy law enforcement.
  - tantalor 5y ago
    Under your logic, I should not call 911 if a building is on fire. What business is that of mine?
    - technobabbler 5y ago
      How did you go from "the government shouldn't use citizens as secret police against each other" to "citizens shouldn't report a fire"? First of all, a burning building isn't an criminal act (unless it's arson). It's an accident/disaster. Second of all, you don't get paid for calling 911 on a burning building. There's no bounty to collect. Third, you are not turning in a fellow citizen for something that you wouldn't otherwise have if not for the bounty. Fourth, a fire is a life-threatening situation for all involved. A more reasonable example is "You should not call 911 if you catch your neighbor jaywalking across the street." Or, like if you catch them leaving dog poop behind, you don't need to sic SWAT on them. Just fucking talk to them and ask nicely first, and maybe file a complaint somewhere if they're really assholes. But you don't just jump to trying to fine and imprison someone for every minor offense. And with the abortion and guns in particular, they really are none of your business. What someone does with their body or their private property, if they're not hurting anyone else, really shouldn't be policed by their fellow citizens. If you really want to set a bounty on things that have a measurable, tangible threat to public safety -- like actual arsonists, rapists, murderers, and similar felonies -- you know, maybe that's OK by me? But not stupid things like idling your car or regretting who you fucked last night.
  - otterley 5y ago
    Why is trying to improve the health and safety of the population “elitist”?
    - technobabbler 5y ago
      Are you talking about the air pollution from idling? It's elitist because it's minor, and not the sort of thing that citizens would naturally try to prosecute each other for. Should citizens police each other for eating beef? Driving older cars? Not passing smog tests? Not supporting nuclear power? Cooking with natural gas? Flying on planes? It's not the kind of society I want to live in. It's not the kind of relationship I want to have with my neighbors. They're the kind of situations that call for carrots more than sticks, and certainly not secret police. Edit: looks like the idling law was primarily sponsored by a city councilmember back in 2015: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/council-member-wants-to-train-citizens-to-spot-turn-in-illegal-idlers/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/council-member-wants-to... It wasn't like a bunch of citizens got together to tackle air pollution, and somehow came up with that as the most sensible solution (vs, say, emissions standards or the autostop/autostart systems in newer cars, or better transit and biking). It was just some bureaucrat trying to score cheap political points by having citizens snitch on delivery drivers and such who are already underpaid and just trying to get by and do their jobs. Did this measurably improve air pollution in NYC? No, it just gave rise to a cottage industry of the equivalent of ambulance chasers.
      - otterley 5y ago
        It sounds to me like you just don’t believe cutting back on air pollution is important. Perhaps if you spent more time in a heavily-polluted place such as many south Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, etc.) or Mexico City, or if you’d grown up in the smoggy hellhole that was L.A. in the 1970s, you’d feel differently. For wide swaths of the population, it’s definitely not “minor.” We also have an entire planet to think about. Climate change is real, and we want our children’s children to continue to live here and for the complex ecosystem that makes it work to continue to operate healthily. To call the very justified concerns about future survival as “elitist” is unfairly dismissive.
ryandrake 5y ago
As you point out, the people have already turned against one another. This is just harnessing that pre-existing animosity in service of enforcing the law, since it seems the police simply don't enforce the law anymore. People have realized it's a free-for-all, and routinely violate all sorts of traffic laws, knowing that the police are basically doing nothing anymore. I did the math here in a past post I can't find, but concluded: If I could stand by the road with a camera, report all incidents of cell phone use while driving, and get just 10% of each fine, it would be a substantial percent of my income. That's one single law on one single stretch of highway. Yes, it sucks that people are against each other, but the root problem is lawlessness, and that the people whose job it is to enforce the law are off doing whatever else.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  We railed against the cops publicly during 2020, I think the police are happy to sit back as municipal workers and wait 10 years to collect their pensions. What people don't realize is reducing police interactions with citizens is exactly regressive, leading to more mistrust between citizens, traffic deaths, and even pollution and climate change as per this article. This comment on HN would have been downvoted to grey for the better part of 18 months until only recently, as a point of reference. During the Trump years assumptions would have been made about the commenter. Now I think we're all coming to agreeing that we need police to do their jobs and to hold them to it, or we get articles like this one.
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    Maybe it doesn't have to be as binary as more vs fewer police? I wish the call wasn't "defund the police" but "create institutional alternatives to militarized policing". That same heavily-armed force you use to fight druglords doesn't have to be the same force used for routine traffic enforcement, and maybe traffic enforcement shouldn't automatically get people scanned for outstanding warrants and such. A broken brakelight need not escalate into an armed car chase. The same way the fire department is separate from police, maybe there needs to be other institutions for tackling different situations, with academies training for different tactics that don't always involved armed conflict. Our one-size-fits-all policing might seem relatively harmless for middle-upper-class whites and Asians, but they can be outright deadly if you're black or brown. You never really know if you're just going to get a friendly warning or say the wrong thing and be killed. The way we do policing is relatively unusual in the developed world, and very violent, and encourages both arms races and a severe distrust in certain communities. Just reimplementing that sort of system is going to get us back to the same place... armed enforcers that serve one part of the citizenry at the expense of others.

tantalor 5y ago

She state can't enforce an abortion ban by itself; it depends on citizen enforcement. The state can enforce the emission law; citizen enforcement is not required.

technobabbler 5y ago
Both these things can be true. Yes, Texas used citizen lawsuits as a workaround for something they couldn't themselves enforce without risking constitutional ire (for now). It's a legal sleight-of-hand that wins them bonus points with conservatives while buying time for the new Supreme Court to outlaw abortion. It's disgusting. At the same time, it is creepy for Texas, California, New York or any government to entice citizens to act as informers and tattle on each other. The social costs of that aren't just measured in less budgeting for meter maids, but also increasing social distrust between neighbors. These aren't mutually exclusive, just two complementary, nasty things happening in government. In all three cases, it mobilizes private citizens to factionalize against each other to fulfill some elitist agenda, creating legal conflict with a profit motive where there wasn't before. Sure, somebody might've rolled their eyes at an idling truck or silently viewed their aborting/gun-toting neighbor with contempt, but these laws encourage active interpersonal conflict in the name of the state, turning untrained citizens with no experience in de-escalation into deputy law enforcement.
- tantalor 5y ago
  Under your logic, I should not call 911 if a building is on fire. What business is that of mine?
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    How did you go from "the government shouldn't use citizens as secret police against each other" to "citizens shouldn't report a fire"? First of all, a burning building isn't an criminal act (unless it's arson). It's an accident/disaster. Second of all, you don't get paid for calling 911 on a burning building. There's no bounty to collect. Third, you are not turning in a fellow citizen for something that you wouldn't otherwise have if not for the bounty. Fourth, a fire is a life-threatening situation for all involved. A more reasonable example is "You should not call 911 if you catch your neighbor jaywalking across the street." Or, like if you catch them leaving dog poop behind, you don't need to sic SWAT on them. Just fucking talk to them and ask nicely first, and maybe file a complaint somewhere if they're really assholes. But you don't just jump to trying to fine and imprison someone for every minor offense. And with the abortion and guns in particular, they really are none of your business. What someone does with their body or their private property, if they're not hurting anyone else, really shouldn't be policed by their fellow citizens. If you really want to set a bounty on things that have a measurable, tangible threat to public safety -- like actual arsonists, rapists, murderers, and similar felonies -- you know, maybe that's OK by me? But not stupid things like idling your car or regretting who you fucked last night.
- otterley 5y ago
  Why is trying to improve the health and safety of the population “elitist”?
  - technobabbler 5y ago
    Are you talking about the air pollution from idling? It's elitist because it's minor, and not the sort of thing that citizens would naturally try to prosecute each other for. Should citizens police each other for eating beef? Driving older cars? Not passing smog tests? Not supporting nuclear power? Cooking with natural gas? Flying on planes? It's not the kind of society I want to live in. It's not the kind of relationship I want to have with my neighbors. They're the kind of situations that call for carrots more than sticks, and certainly not secret police. Edit: looks like the idling law was primarily sponsored by a city councilmember back in 2015: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/council-member-wants-to-train-citizens-to-spot-turn-in-illegal-idlers/ https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/council-member-wants-to... It wasn't like a bunch of citizens got together to tackle air pollution, and somehow came up with that as the most sensible solution (vs, say, emissions standards or the autostop/autostart systems in newer cars, or better transit and biking). It was just some bureaucrat trying to score cheap political points by having citizens snitch on delivery drivers and such who are already underpaid and just trying to get by and do their jobs. Did this measurably improve air pollution in NYC? No, it just gave rise to a cottage industry of the equivalent of ambulance chasers.
    - otterley 5y ago
      It sounds to me like you just don’t believe cutting back on air pollution is important. Perhaps if you spent more time in a heavily-polluted place such as many south Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, etc.) or Mexico City, or if you’d grown up in the smoggy hellhole that was L.A. in the 1970s, you’d feel differently. For wide swaths of the population, it’s definitely not “minor.” We also have an entire planet to think about. Climate change is real, and we want our children’s children to continue to live here and for the complex ecosystem that makes it work to continue to operate healthily. To call the very justified concerns about future survival as “elitist” is unfairly dismissive.

ryandrake 5y ago

As you point out, the people have already turned against one another. This is just harnessing that pre-existing animosity in service of enforcing the law, since it seems the police simply don't enforce the law anymore. People have realized it's a free-for-all, and routinely violate all sorts of traffic laws, knowing that the police are basically doing nothing anymore. I did the math here in a past post I can't find, but concluded: If I could stand by the road with a camera, report all incidents of cell phone use while driving, and get just 10% of each fine, it would be a substantial percent of my income. That's one single law on one single stretch of highway. Yes, it sucks that people are against each other, but the root problem is lawlessness, and that the people whose job it is to enforce the law are off doing whatever else.

mancerayder 5y ago
We railed against the cops publicly during 2020, I think the police are happy to sit back as municipal workers and wait 10 years to collect their pensions. What people don't realize is reducing police interactions with citizens is exactly regressive, leading to more mistrust between citizens, traffic deaths, and even pollution and climate change as per this article. This comment on HN would have been downvoted to grey for the better part of 18 months until only recently, as a point of reference. During the Trump years assumptions would have been made about the commenter. Now I think we're all coming to agreeing that we need police to do their jobs and to hold them to it, or we get articles like this one.
- technobabbler 5y ago
  Maybe it doesn't have to be as binary as more vs fewer police? I wish the call wasn't "defund the police" but "create institutional alternatives to militarized policing". That same heavily-armed force you use to fight druglords doesn't have to be the same force used for routine traffic enforcement, and maybe traffic enforcement shouldn't automatically get people scanned for outstanding warrants and such. A broken brakelight need not escalate into an armed car chase. The same way the fire department is separate from police, maybe there needs to be other institutions for tackling different situations, with academies training for different tactics that don't always involved armed conflict. Our one-size-fits-all policing might seem relatively harmless for middle-upper-class whites and Asians, but they can be outright deadly if you're black or brown. You never really know if you're just going to get a friendly warning or say the wrong thing and be killed. The way we do policing is relatively unusual in the developed world, and very violent, and encourages both arms races and a severe distrust in certain communities. Just reimplementing that sort of system is going to get us back to the same place... armed enforcers that serve one part of the citizenry at the expense of others.