3 ms·

> They work for us. Ooh sweet summer child.

by bestouff 7mo ago

gonnagetbanned 7mo ago
well, to be fair, there are a higher-than-average number of business owners on here, so they really might work for them
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago
  Only insofar as those business interests align with the government's interests. The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government. While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
  - notlenin 7mo ago
    yes. It is also worth noting that in some cases, government and business owners have diametrically opposed interests - namely governments can nationalize companies (and if I'm not mistaken, some governments, like the Nazis, did, or would use the threat of nationalization to make business owners do their bidding with no regard for the interest of the business owner)
schiffern 7mo ago
Cynicism is very cooler-than-thou, but it's not because we don't know better. It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.
hbn 7mo ago
It's logistically a fact. Their paycheck comes from taxpayers. If you believe they're doing a bad job it's unrelated.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- notlenin 7mo ago
  er... if you'll excuse me confirming the "HN is the 'well actually capital of the internet' stereotype"... If you look throughout history, you'll see that before the advent of what we'd call 'modern states', most people who got their paycheck from 'taxpayers' did not see themselves as working for said 'taxpayers'. Example: Pharaonic Egypt. Alexander's Empire, Bourbon France, Tsarist Russia, or more generally any kingdom, empire or any sort of duchy/earldom/county/etc where you have someone (the King, Tsar, Emperor, Duke, etc), whose job it is to lord over the peasants and take a cut of their work, not because they are an elected public servant doing the will of The People, but because they believe God Almighty has decreed that living off the wealth of others, and occasionally wasting large amounts of that wealth on building palaces or waging costly wars is what they were born to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings as such, if you view the modern state as "basically an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy", then the police are not in fact working for 'Joe Taxpayer', but are just playing the same role that medival knights played for the Kings of France - they are the armed force of the extractive state, whose job it is to keep the peasants in line via violence so that they can continue to live off the fruits of peasant labor.
maerF0x0 7mo ago
I understand what you're saying, but I was speaking in the ideal or purpose, rather than the defacto/pragmatic.

> They work for us. Ooh sweet summer child.

gonnagetbanned 7mo ago

well, to be fair, there are a higher-than-average number of business owners on here, so they really might work for them

cucumber3732842 7mo ago
Only insofar as those business interests align with the government's interests. The police get paid by and do the bidding of the government. They work for the government. While you can screech about the degree of overlap between government interests and big business interests, and it absolutely is something worth screeching about, acting as though they are one in the same is counterproductive to understanding either.
- notlenin 7mo ago
  yes. It is also worth noting that in some cases, government and business owners have diametrically opposed interests - namely governments can nationalize companies (and if I'm not mistaken, some governments, like the Nazis, did, or would use the threat of nationalization to make business owners do their bidding with no regard for the interest of the business owner)

schiffern 7mo ago

Cynicism is very cooler-than-thou, but it's not because we don't know better. It's because we do know how the system fails, and holding power accountable to those high aspirations is the only thing that pushes back the equilibrium.

hbn 7mo ago

It's logistically a fact. Their paycheck comes from taxpayers. If you believe they're doing a bad job it's unrelated.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
notlenin 7mo ago
er... if you'll excuse me confirming the "HN is the 'well actually capital of the internet' stereotype"... If you look throughout history, you'll see that before the advent of what we'd call 'modern states', most people who got their paycheck from 'taxpayers' did not see themselves as working for said 'taxpayers'. Example: Pharaonic Egypt. Alexander's Empire, Bourbon France, Tsarist Russia, or more generally any kingdom, empire or any sort of duchy/earldom/county/etc where you have someone (the King, Tsar, Emperor, Duke, etc), whose job it is to lord over the peasants and take a cut of their work, not because they are an elected public servant doing the will of The People, but because they believe God Almighty has decreed that living off the wealth of others, and occasionally wasting large amounts of that wealth on building palaces or waging costly wars is what they were born to do. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings as such, if you view the modern state as "basically an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy", then the police are not in fact working for 'Joe Taxpayer', but are just playing the same role that medival knights played for the Kings of France - they are the armed force of the extractive state, whose job it is to keep the peasants in line via violence so that they can continue to live off the fruits of peasant labor.

maerF0x0 7mo ago

I understand what you're saying, but I was speaking in the ideal or purpose, rather than the defacto/pragmatic.