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Unlike Mexico, New York City does not need to maintain its borders or enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a supreme law -- because New York City is not a

Unlike Mexico, New York City does not need to maintain its borders or enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a supreme law -- because New York City is not a Westphalian state, it is just a municipal government covering a few hundred square miles! It is completely bonkers to have this many uniformed officers and this much money poured into security forces, and so little positive result of any of it. The reason that comparisons to Mexico are alarming is that it plainly does not make sense for a municipal government enclosed within a large and heavily militarized state to have an army of its own! It is strange to compare a city government to a large country! It is SUPPOSED to sound strange!

gruez 5y ago
> Unlike Mexico, New York City does not need to maintain its borders or enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a supreme law -- because New York City is not a Westphalian state, it is just a municipal government covering a few hundred square miles! you'd think that's the case, but it seems fairly normal for countries to have more police officers than soldiers[1][2]. Just looking at g8 countries: soldiers police officers Canada 67,400 67,425 France 203,250 282,612 Germany 183,500 279,200 Italy 165,500 276,750 Japan 247,150 296,700 United Kingdom 148,500 148,893 United States 1,388,100 686,665 Which makes sense, considering that it's the police officers that are in charge of "enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a supreme law". In the 21st century, border incursions are rare compared to criminal activity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-size-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-...
- cycomanic 5y ago
  But that was not what he was saying. His argument was that just because NY has such a high GDP does not mean they need to spend that much on their police force. The number of police (+soldiers) you need is more a function of the number of citizens and area. Just taking your numbers above. The NY police has 50,000 police for ~8.5 M people. Germany has ~280k police for 80 M people, and that number likely includes border police, customs police, federal police (all jobs the NY police does not do). So NY has probably around 2x as many (regular) police per citizen as Germany.
  - chelical 5y ago
    NY deals with more violent crime than Germany tbf.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  That makes sense by number of personnel, but not overall budget. Your local police department doesn't need tanks and aircraft carriers...
  - hapless 5y ago
    The NYPD does actually maintain tanks God only knows what they expect to do with them

gruez 5y ago

> Unlike Mexico, New York City does not need to maintain its borders or enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a supreme law -- because New York City is not a Westphalian state, it is just a municipal government covering a few hundred square miles! you'd think that's the case, but it seems fairly normal for countries to have more police officers than soldiers[1][2]. Just looking at g8 countries: soldiers police officers Canada 67,400 67,425 France 203,250 282,612 Germany 183,500 279,200 Italy 165,500 276,750 Japan 247,150 296,700 United Kingdom 148,500 148,893 United States 1,388,100 686,665 Which makes sense, considering that it's the police officers that are in charge of "enforce a monopoly on the use of force and a supreme law". In the 21st century, border incursions are rare compared to criminal activity. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_number_of_police_officers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen... [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-size-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/military-...

cycomanic 5y ago
But that was not what he was saying. His argument was that just because NY has such a high GDP does not mean they need to spend that much on their police force. The number of police (+soldiers) you need is more a function of the number of citizens and area. Just taking your numbers above. The NY police has 50,000 police for ~8.5 M people. Germany has ~280k police for 80 M people, and that number likely includes border police, customs police, federal police (all jobs the NY police does not do). So NY has probably around 2x as many (regular) police per citizen as Germany.
- chelical 5y ago
  NY deals with more violent crime than Germany tbf.
seoaeu 5y ago
That makes sense by number of personnel, but not overall budget. Your local police department doesn't need tanks and aircraft carriers...
- hapless 5y ago
  The NYPD does actually maintain tanks God only knows what they expect to do with them