So what is freedom?

[Tetragrammaton]

[blah the Prussian]

Oh fuck, I might pay a fine if I'm careless and step on money! Whatever shall I do?

[Snowy_One]

Oh fuck, I might pay a fine if I'm careless and step on money! Whatever shall I do?

Use the money you just stepped on to pay the fine of course.

[Integrity]

come on dudes, this topic is already kind of riding the line for effort required for serious discussion, you guys know better than to respond to something like that :P

half this thread is a sd thread and the other half is a fftf thread, cut out the other half

(note some of you are having Good and Serious Discussion and i have no complaints with them)

[TheAssassinMercenary]

Those with total freedom will eventually seek government. Total freedom can (and most likely will) lead to anarchy. The freedom to do what I choose, within reason, is plenty enough for me.

[Blaze The Great]

Last post made me look into anarchy a little bit, and what I found intrigued me somewhat. Kant defines anarchy as "law and freedom without force", which makes the law basically worthless and prevents anarchy from bring a true form of civil state. Thoughts? Gotta say, I think this is a very accurate assessment.

[TheAssassinMercenary]

Last post made me look into anarchy a little bit, and what I found intrigued me somewhat. Kant defines anarchy as "law and freedom without force", which makes the law basically worthless and prevents anarchy from bring a true form of civil state. Thoughts? Gotta say, I think this is a very accurate assessment.

One of my history teachers from grade school used to say that when given total freedom, humanity will eventually seek government, and it was only recently that I fully understood. They seek government to prevent anarchy, but that is the simplest answer. I believe it was John Locke that said it is the duty of government to preserve our natural rights. Without some form of control, we will tear each other apart. Think of all the non-zombie post-apocalyptic stereotypes that you've seen. A common trait is that the survivors intend to live another day, no matter what they have to do. That is anarchy. We need government to survive as a species.

Government, however, is a very frail thing. It must find the perfect balance. Giving it's citizens too little freedom will result in a rebellion, while giving them too much will, in essence "spoil them," as a parent would a child. Said "child", used to getting his or her way, would see no reason to listen to the rules should something unsatisfactory present itself.

I'm not sure how or why the first government came to be, but I imagine it was simply a mutual agreement between people with similar goals. When you think about it, isn't that what government is? On a larger scale, of course, but it is the same basic idea.

Just some food for thought, people.

[Snowy_One]

One of my history teachers from grade school used to say that when given total freedom, humanity will eventually seek government, and it was only recently that I fully understood. They seek government to prevent anarchy, but that is the simplest answer. I believe it was John Locke that said it is the duty of government to preserve our natural rights. Without some form of control, we will tear each other apart. Think of all the non-zombie post-apocalyptic stereotypes that you've seen. A common trait is that the survivors intend to live another day, no matter what they have to do. That is anarchy. We need government to survive as a species.

Government, however, is a very frail thing. It must find the perfect balance. Giving it's citizens too little freedom will result in a rebellion, while giving them too much will, in essence "spoil them," as a parent would a child. Said "child", used to getting his or her way, would see no reason to listen to the rules should something unsatisfactory present itself.

I'm not sure how or why the first government came to be, but I imagine it was simply a mutual agreement between people with similar goals. When you think about it, isn't that what government is? On a larger scale, of course, but it is the same basic idea.

Just some food for thought, people.

Well, here's the thing. Long ago mankind had no real laws. We lived tribally in family units or a loose association at best. Yet from that people started to develop rules and organizations. If, tomorrow, all government would vanish, after the partying from being free from taxes died down, people would slowly start to gather together once again and lay down some ground rules for small groups and tribes. Sure, it might just be your neighborhood that decides 'you know what, we hate dogs pooping on our lawn, so all dogs must be properly tended to' as a new law. Despite no actual government a loose association of like-minded individuals has now created a law, one that can be enforced (at least within the group), and can even carry penalties and rewards (if you don't scoop your dog will be chained and you get last pickings when we bring down deer with the humvee).

Post-apocolyptic things function on the assumption that humans revert to beasts the moment rules vanish, but that simply isn't true.

[TheAssassinMercenary]

Well, here's the thing. Long ago mankind had no real laws. We lived tribally in family units or a loose association at best. Yet from that people started to develop rules and organizations. If, tomorrow, all government would vanish, after the partying from being free from taxes died down, people would slowly start to gather together once again and lay down some ground rules for small groups and tribes. Sure, it might just be your neighborhood that decides 'you know what, we hate dogs pooping on our lawn, so all dogs must be properly tended to' as a new law. Despite no actual government a loose association of like-minded individuals has now created a law, one that can be enforced (at least within the group), and can even carry penalties and rewards (if you don't scoop your dog will be chained and you get last pickings when we bring down deer with the humvee).

Post-apocolyptic things function on the assumption that humans revert to beasts the moment rules vanish, but that simply isn't true.

I'm not saying that we would revert to our primitive instincts should government dissapear. The idea of my post was that people will eventually form government should they lack any form of organization.

You bring up an interesting point, though. Could there be an event that would cause humans to become survival focused "animals", similar to our ancestors at the beginning of mankind?

[Strawman]

-snip-

-snip-

I don't know if this pertains to the original topic of this thread, but at least for what y'all were discussing this might be somewhat relevant and interesting.

In one of my Anthropology courses last semester (Political Anthropology) we spent the last part of the semester looking at Anarchism and the Anthropology of Anarchism. We read this interesting book about anarchism and governments in SE Asia that essentially challenges the idea Humans head unidirectionally towards society(governments, nations, city-states, etc). For a long time evolutionary theory was applied to social theory, which created social evolutionism--the idea that societies start primitive and end up through time to be developed with governments and cities and the like. I think a lot of people accept this as common knowledge. This book, however, argues against that assumption and argues against social evolutionism (as much of modern Anthropology does as well). The idea the author asserts is that as centralized, developed society arises out of certain advantages it offers (increased material goods, protection, etc) there are also groups of people that actively avoid becoming a part of that society for other advantages (avoidance of taxes, avoiding military subscription, etc). He put these into two distinct categories of Valley and Hill people. Valley people tend towards sedentary agriculture and developed, hierarchy based cities and society. Hill people tend to egalitarian, dispersed, hunter gatherer societies. Obviously, valleys allow for large fields and monocropping (growing one mass producable crop like rice or corn that becomes the main agricultural product) and large cities while hills/mountains only allow for small gardens and more spread out homes.

But the two aren't mutually exclusive. The author further asserts that Hill people weren't stuck to being hill people nor were valley people stuck to being valley people. In the area in SE Asia he was studying (I forget the time period he was looking at, but this was a historical study not so much a modern one) sometimes there was trade, sometimes people would decide to move to the large city states from the hills, sometimes people would escape from the city to the hills to avoid things, then maybe come back later, raiding the hills for slaves or indentured servants was also a thing that happened. So we have this social climate and geography where people are frequently moving in and out of civilization. Some people are building it, some people are avoiding it, some are in between.

So anyways. We bring it back to modern times right. We imagine the world in Nations. Which have borders that are perceived as solid and static. The world map is completely full, right, theres not just a huge chunk of inhabitable but unclaimed territory sitting around these days (which really when was there ever because people still lived in those places but thats besides the point). The point is, when we look at things like tribes that are considered primitive, theres an idea that they just haven't developed into a civilization yet. When in some cases, when looking at the history of these societies it might be that they are actively avoiding joining or becoming a civilization.

[Anouleth]

Citizens should not have control over the police force. For a very good reason. The whims and wills of civilians can change frequently and leap to bizarre and strange conclusions in boughts of mass hysteria.

Whereas American police officers are enlightened sages that always act perfectly rationally and calmly to uphold the law, and never collude to give themselves enhanced rights, or shoot innocent people without adequate justification, or abuse forfeiture laws to line their pockets, or blatantly lie in court.

Citizens and voters are fallible human beings, with all the accompanying vices and virtues, and so are the police, but the fact is that we must build our institutions from those fallible, flawed beings of flesh and blood, since they are all we have. The best way to do that is to establish a rule of law whom nobody is above, and I'm telling you that right now, US police officers see themselves as above the law. They kill and steal and lie with impunity, and as a result, hundreds of people are dead, and thousands upon thousands are in prison.

That's not saying that the civilians shouldn't have a voice or the government is always right (far from it), but when you take a force like the military or police and make Jo the supermarket sales clerk their 'oversight' despite little to no actual experience, or even knowledge, of what the police and military face; you're begging for trouble. The civilians should work to make and refine the laws, but its the job of the police and military to keep those laws in place.

They're not doing their job right. They're doing their job terribly, by any objective measure of the term. You know how many people have been killed by British police? 33. In the past twenty years. I'm not going to count how many have died at the hands of your police in the past year, but it's a lot. So forgive me if I have more faith in Jo the sales clerk to do a better job.

How would it work though? Obviously someone would have to be paying the police, and that would probably be whoever is rich. Thus, the police would be loyal not to normal people, but to whoever is rich enough to afford them.

You know, civilian oversight committees have existed in the United States for over eighty years now, albeit in a relatively toothless form. So I don't feel any need to explain to you how they work.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Anouleth

[Snowy_One]

Yea... You don't really understand anything. Knowing some police officers IRL and having sat in on quite a few budgetary meetings, one of which dealing with attempting to purchase cameras to record cops on-duty and the requirements to store, utilize, and regulations on how they should be used and the like, I know that you're examples aren't accurate.

By the way, 790 people might SEEM like a big number, but let's put that in some perspective for a second. My postal code alone holds within it ~88,000 people. My state (CT) has about 3 MILLION people. Hartford has about 1,179 violent crimes per 100,000 people and it's not even the most dangerous city in CT with a murder rate of 18/100,000. The US has about ~320,000,000 people. For ease of calculation lets say the police force ends up at an even 1,000 murders by the end of the year. That would mean that there would probably be around only 0.0000003 police shootings per 100,000 people. And remember, this is just shootings. Not accounting for circumstance or anything of the sort.

On the whole, Jo is far more likely to assault and murder you than a police officer is to shoot you for any reason.

But okay, Jo might be a psycho, right? But there are plenty of other people out there who aren't? The problem with that notion is that you will be putting a police force in the hands of people both with their own personal interests at stake as well as their own interpretations as to what is right and wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zHRQn_IShw

That woman now has as much a voice in who the police can arrest, how they can enforce the law, and even if they can exist in the first place. She's far from the only person either whom would would try to swing her weight around to try and get the law and police how they want it.

You know, civilian oversight committees have existed in the United States for over eighty years now, albeit in a relatively toothless form. So I don't feel any need to explain to you how they work.

You realize that you feel that those 80 years have resulted in a horrible police force that you see as willing to shoot people.

The police should work to enforce the law and the citizens should work to make just laws for them to enforce. But citizens whom probably couldn't even pass the basic training course or even properly protect a minimart, let alone handle a patrol, should not be in a position where they they hold a direct hand in something they hold little knowledge of at best. Things may be different in England, but America is not England and neither should ever become the other. Have you considered that a large factor in why the crime rates are so low is because, as an island nation, there is a natural barricade against drug smuggling as well as less smuggling in general? or that England has less diversity in general which drastically reduces a lot of tensions between various groups? You seem to feel that the only reason that England's police has a lower rate of shootings is because of civilian oversight. That simply may not be true and other factors must be accounted for as well.

[blah the Prussian]

Incidentally, I wasn't talking about civilian oversight, I was talking about a situation in which police forces do not exist, due to no tax money going in to them, and thus private armies are the order of the day. I am aware that that is probably not what you support, and that is good. Also that woman in that video has another definition of freedom, and one that is complete bullshit. Civilization is a contract between people and government that both sides have to uphold.

[Phoenix Wright]

By the way, 790 people might SEEM like a big number, but let's put that in some perspective for a second. My postal code alone holds within it ~88,000 people. My state (CT) has about 3 MILLION people. Hartford has about 1,179 violent crimes per 100,000 people and it's not even the most dangerous city in CT with a murder rate of 18/100,000. The US has about ~320,000,000 people. For ease of calculation lets say the police force ends up at an even 1,000 murders by the end of the year. That would mean that there would probably be around only 0.0000003 police shootings per 100,000 people. And remember, this is just shootings. Not accounting for circumstance or anything of the sort.

so what you're saying is the police need to kill millions of people before this whole cops kill citizens thing becomes a problem? lol

[Snowy_One]

so what you're saying is the police need to kill millions of people before this whole cops kill citizens thing becomes a problem? lol

What I'm saying is that people need to get some perspective on just how big of a nation the U.S. is, how populated it is, and that people are basically getting that 790 number for the third (IIRC) largest nation in the world.

[Phoenix Wright]

What I'm saying is that people need to get some perspective on just how big of a nation the U.S. is, how populated it is, and that people are basically getting that 790 number for the third (IIRC) largest nation in the world.

what actually needs to be realized here is that the fact that the number is small in comparison to the size of a city or nation as a whole is irrelevant. it's not normal to have victims of murder be at the hands of the police.

the fact that in this country the police murder its citizens is the problem. it's compounded by the fact that they murder lots of people.

[Snowy_One]

what actually needs to be realized here is that the fact that the number is small in comparison to the size of a city or nation as a whole is irrelevant. it's not normal to have victims of murder be at the hands of the police.

the fact that in this country the police murder its citizens is the problem. it's compounded by the fact that they murder lots of people.

You really don't grasp this, do you? The US is a large and heavily populated nation with a ton of diversities and internal conflicts. There are plenty of gang problems, smuggling crimes, and the like. You're taking a raw number, police shootings that result in deaths, and immediately associate it with ALL of them being abuses of their power to murder people. The simple fact is that this is NOT the case! Many police shoot in self-defense or are in dangerous situations where they have to make a judgement call fast... and mess up.

I'm now saying we should just accept this and move on. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do our best to reduce the shootings. I'm saying that this is a prime example of why civilians whose entire knowledge of the police comes from the news and getting pulled over for driving drunk/speeding shouldn't be placed in a position of authority over them; especially when they make the leap in logic that ALL shootings done by police are murders. Imagine you had a situation in which a police cop had good reason to believe his life was in danger, shot, and killed a criminal pulling out his phone instead of a gun. You'd instantly assume he murdered him instead of saw a criminal reaching for a object in his back pocket and shot believing his life was in danger. That's part of why the cameras I mentioned earlier are coming around; both to weed out cops who do abuse their power to murder and to show when a cop did what he did believing his life was in danger.

Edit: A while back I played a game online in which you played a cop and people would pop up. Some would be holding guns, others would be holding non-threatening items like cell-phones. The intent was actually to judge if cops were more willing to shoot black people or not; but playing the game made it clear. When you're on the job in a situation where your life is in danger and you only have a second to two to decide if you should shoot or not you can very easily mess up and shoot innocents.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Snowy_One

[Rapier]

Last post made me look into anarchy a little bit, and what I found intrigued me somewhat. Kant defines anarchy as "law and freedom without force", which makes the law basically worthless and prevents anarchy from bring a true form of civil state. Thoughts? Gotta say, I think this is a very accurate assessment.

My opinion is that anarchists' (and, in that sense, anarchocapitalists and libertarians) reasoning is based on the premise that people are rational and perfectly responsible for their actions, when actually most people are dumb and irresponsible. Most people need the force of law and the coercion of the State to stay on the line and not harm society. This is oftenly answered with a "well, the State can employ dumb and irresponsible people too", which is true, but even in a minimal State intervention coercion is necessary.

tl;dr, theories are pretty in the books they come from but they ultimately suck in practice, as communism did.

Also, as for the discussion above, what I understood was that it is comprehensible why the police is killing so many innocents (per Snowy's post), but not justifiable. There's a huge gap between both, and it remains a problem despite the statistics.

Edited September 7, 2015 by Rapier

[Phoenix Wright]

You really don't grasp this, do you? The US is a large and heavily populated nation with a ton of diversities and internal conflicts. There are plenty of gang problems, smuggling crimes, and the like. You're taking a raw number, police shootings that result in deaths, and immediately associate it with ALL of them being abuses of their power to murder people. The simple fact is that this is NOT the case! Many police shoot in self-defense or are in dangerous situations where they have to make a judgement call fast... and mess up.

I'm now saying we should just accept this and move on. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do our best to reduce the shootings. I'm saying that this is a prime example of why civilians whose entire knowledge of the police comes from the news and getting pulled over for driving drunk/speeding shouldn't be placed in a position of authority over them; especially when they make the leap in logic that ALL shootings done by police are murders. Imagine you had a situation in which a police cop had good reason to believe his life was in danger, shot, and killed a criminal pulling out his phone instead of a gun. You'd instantly assume he murdered him instead of saw a criminal reaching for a object in his back pocket and shot believing his life was in danger. That's part of why the cameras I mentioned earlier are coming around; both to weed out cops who do abuse their power to murder and to show when a cop did what he did believing his life was in danger.

Edit: A while back I played a game online in which you played a cop and people would pop up. Some would be holding guns, others would be holding non-threatening items like cell-phones. The intent was actually to judge if cops were more willing to shoot black people or not; but playing the game made it clear. When you're on the job in a situation where your life is in danger and you only have a second to two to decide if you should shoot or not you can very easily mess up and shoot innocents.

you didn't read the article.

i used murder purposefully to differentiate between murder and self-defense. i know cops, have cop friends, etc. etc. i've been involved with court proceedings, warrants, stops, etc. this does not affect that i think american police are infamous for itchy trigger fingers and poor restraint (as well as racism and profiling).

[blah the Prussian]

I do think that American police need more oversight, but civilian oversight is not the answer. The police are a sample of the American people, who would be just as likely if not more to racially profile.

[Phoenix Wright]

not exactly. civilian oversight can mean making it mandatory to wear body cameras, or making punishments harsher for police that violate the law, or making it harder to become a cop, etc. etc.

[blah the Prussian]

not exactly. civilian oversight can mean making it mandatory to wear body cameras, or making punishments harsher for police that violate the law, or making it harder to become a cop, etc. etc.

But why are any of these reforms impossible normally?

[Snowy_One]

not exactly. civilian oversight can mean making it mandatory to wear body cameras, or making punishments harsher for police that violate the law, or making it harder to become a cop, etc. etc.

I'm pretty certain that that isn't what Anny was suggesting though as these things simply make it so that the police are accountable to the laws, not under direct oversight by civilians. By the way, I missed this earlier...

You bring up an interesting point, though. Could there be an event that would cause humans to become survival focused "animals", similar to our ancestors at the beginning of mankind?

Yes. Sort of... If something were to go around and kill off the majority, if not all, people over 10 years of age then the surviving children would likely revert to a more... feral... nature. On its own this wouldn't do it but, if a group remains isolated enough its very likely that they will start to slide backwards. It's unlikely that they'll forget how to wear pants or something, but they'll certainly be operating on the lowest rungs of civilization possible.

[Radiant head]

Whereas American police officers are enlightened sages that always act perfectly rationally and calmly to uphold the law, and never collude to give themselves enhanced rights, or shoot innocent people without adequate justification, or abuse forfeiture laws to line their pockets, or blatantly lie in court.

Citizens and voters are fallible human beings, with all the accompanying vices and virtues, and so are the police, but the fact is that we must build our institutions from those fallible, flawed beings of flesh and blood, since they are all we have. The best way to do that is to establish a rule of law whom nobody is above, and I'm telling you that right now, US police officers see themselves as above the law. They kill and steal and lie with impunity, and as a result, hundreds of people are dead, and thousands upon thousands are in prison.

They're not doing their job right. They're doing their job terribly, by any objective measure of the term. You know how many people have been killed by British police? 33. In the past twenty years. I'm not going to count how many have died at the hands of your police in the past year, but it's a lot. So forgive me if I have more faith in Jo the sales clerk to do a better job.

You know, civilian oversight committees have existed in the United States for over eighty years now, albeit in a relatively toothless form. So I don't feel any need to explain to you how they work.

Thanks for saving me a lot of typing.

the link between policing and empire

[blah the Prussian]

Thanks for saving me a lot of typing.

the link between policing and empire

That website is called Jacobinmag. That's honestly kind of like calling a magazine Nazimag, based on what the Jacobins did in France. I would question its neutrality.

Edit: Hopefully it doesn't become self aware and guillotine us all.

Edited September 9, 2015 by blah2127