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Remember, the problem of violent organized crime has a solution, one Australia of all places should be familiar with: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/20

Remember, the problem of violent organized crime has a solution, one Australia of all places should be familiar with: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-02/el-salvador-election-bukele-seeks-second-term-on-popular-crime-policy https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-02-02/el-salvad...

mr_toad 3y ago
Doesn’t really work when the organised criminals are the government and police.
- 20after4 3y ago
  But they always will be. The people who desire power are the very people who should not have it.
errantspark 3y ago
Mostly bad take. The long term solution is to remove the incentives for criminal behavior and enact laws that prevent power concentration, authoritarianism is not stable. That being said I can see the value in an authoritarian clamp down as a way to rapidly improve the situation in a country as far gone as El Salvador, I remain extremely skeptical about the long term efficacy. Australia is not in a situation analogous to El Salvador by any stretch of the imagination.
- Georgelemental 3y ago
  > remove the incentives for criminal behavior Prosecuting and imprisoning the criminals is a necessary (though not sufficient, I agree) component of this.
- troad 3y ago
  > remove the incentives for criminal behavior Is that all? Just a post scarcity society then?
- ActorNightly 3y ago
  As California has so clearly proven, the issue with human society is that there will allways be optimizing agents that prod the wall of enforcement of law to its extent. With humans it seems that there is ALLWAYS an incentive for crime until ever single human has a star trek replicator and a holodeck, or we put aside consent/freedom aside and have mandatory psychological conditioning for everyone. You dont need authoritarian rule to have strong law enforcement. You just need sensible laws and good funding for police enforcement.
- bagels 3y ago
  So, remove all property rights?
- namlem 3y ago
  You can never remove all incentives for crime. There will always be some incentive to try to cheat the system or otherwise defect in societal coordination problems. You are right that power concentration must be avoided though, as that creates much stronger incentives for corruption. More distributed power structures make bribery much more expensive and logistically difficult.

mr_toad 3y ago

Doesn’t really work when the organised criminals are the government and police.

20after4 3y ago
But they always will be. The people who desire power are the very people who should not have it.

errantspark 3y ago

Mostly bad take. The long term solution is to remove the incentives for criminal behavior and enact laws that prevent power concentration, authoritarianism is not stable. That being said I can see the value in an authoritarian clamp down as a way to rapidly improve the situation in a country as far gone as El Salvador, I remain extremely skeptical about the long term efficacy. Australia is not in a situation analogous to El Salvador by any stretch of the imagination.

Georgelemental 3y ago
> remove the incentives for criminal behavior Prosecuting and imprisoning the criminals is a necessary (though not sufficient, I agree) component of this.
troad 3y ago
> remove the incentives for criminal behavior Is that all? Just a post scarcity society then?
ActorNightly 3y ago
As California has so clearly proven, the issue with human society is that there will allways be optimizing agents that prod the wall of enforcement of law to its extent. With humans it seems that there is ALLWAYS an incentive for crime until ever single human has a star trek replicator and a holodeck, or we put aside consent/freedom aside and have mandatory psychological conditioning for everyone. You dont need authoritarian rule to have strong law enforcement. You just need sensible laws and good funding for police enforcement.
bagels 3y ago
So, remove all property rights?
namlem 3y ago
You can never remove all incentives for crime. There will always be some incentive to try to cheat the system or otherwise defect in societal coordination problems. You are right that power concentration must be avoided though, as that creates much stronger incentives for corruption. More distributed power structures make bribery much more expensive and logistically difficult.