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[captmorgan]

Care to offer up an explanation? Taking the failure of these ideas as a given (especially considering many of them have worked quite well in practice) without providing any sort of counter-argument is intellectually disingenuous.

Simple with out "cops" if someone cuts in front of me in a line I will mangle them with a sledgehammer.

 

[ProudClod]

so...like cops?

LOL. Not sure if serious.

 

[ProudClod]

Let me ask you this: would you be willing to move to a city such as NYC for 1 year, if there were no cops? Would you go out at night?

Absolutely. On the condition that one or some of the alternative crime-prevention methodologies is/are implemented.

 

[Mad Season]

This would never work

 

[ProudClod]

Simple with out "cops" if someone cuts in front of me in a line I will mangle them with a sledgehammer.

No you wouldn't. Unless you're a psychopath. In which case, the family/friends/community of the person you mangled would take care of you.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Absolutely. On the condition that one or some of the alternative crime-prevention methodologies is/are implemented.

Implemented, or implemented successfully?

A big part of why this list (except #6) wouldn't work is because it works off the assumption that the existence of the outside authority is the root of, rather than a reaction to, the problems. As a general rule of thumb, community courts + direct democracy = mob rule, for instance.

No you wouldn't. Unless you're a psychopath. In which case, the family/friends/community of the person you mangled would take care of you.

How euphemistic are we being here?

 

[Tallshortman]

Rolling stone is really going down hill.

 

[Mr. Tone]

Simple with out "cops" if someone cuts in front of me in a line I will mangle them with a sledgehammer.

As the LORD said, those who live by the sledgehammer will die by the sledgehammer.

 

[FartOfWar]

We should like totally voluntarily scrap our nuclear arsenal and decommission our military too.

 

[The Shogun]

1. Don't fucking patronize. We all live in the real world.

2. The US has more than its fair share of chaos and murder already. A lot of the ideas on this list would prevent crimes before they happen, rather than uselessly destroy lives after they happen.

Imagine your car is robbed by a teenager. Which of the following outcomes do you think is likely to be better for you, for the teenager, and for everybody else:

A: After being brutalized by the cops, who tack on a charge of resisting arrest when they barge into his house with flashbangs, he goes to court where he is sentenced to a few years in prison. You don't get anything you stole back. While in prison, he receives a comprehensive education in violence and crime, and after getting out, is blacklisted by every job he applies for.

B: An unarmed man in normal clothes, not there as an authority figure peacefully visits his house and informs him that although he's been caught stealing, he has the chance to avoid a criminal record if he faces you at a mediation hearing and offers restitution. You both go. He agrees to pay you back the value of what he stole, and also to join a crew keeping your neighborhood clean for a year. He can still go to school and can still get any job he qualifies for.

This response is not based in reality at all. Option B is not how the world works.

You are pretending the average person is MUCH better than they are.

 

[Poodlestrike]

Rolling stone is really going down hill.

I see what you did there.

 

[Purkake4]

A big part of why this list (except #6) wouldn't work is because it works off the assumption that the existence of the outside authority is the root of, rather than a reaction to, the problems. As a general rule of thumb, community courts + direct democracy = mob rule, for instance.

That reminds me of the "people's court" in Eastern Ukraine, very forward-thinking.

 

[Alucrid]

what if we took all the cops out of nyc and just had like..five batmans

That reminds me of the "people's court" in Eastern Ukraine, very forward-thinking.

uhh

 

[potam]

what if we took all the cops out of nyc and just had like..five batmans

need more. not enough prep time on a 5-man rotation

 

[Christopher]

This response is not based in reality at all. Option B is not how the world works.

You are pretending the average person is MUCH better than they are.

The truth is said here I dont think some people have a concept of what the real world truly is.

 

[Valnen]

1. Don't fucking patronize. We all live in the real world.

2. The US has more than its fair share of chaos and murder already. A lot of the ideas on this list would prevent crimes before they happen, rather than uselessly destroy lives after they happen.

Imagine your car is robbed by a teenager. Which of the following outcomes do you think is likely to be better for you, for the teenager, and for everybody else:

A: After being brutalized by the cops, who tack on a charge of resisting arrest when they barge into his house with flashbangs, he goes to court where he is sentenced to a few years in prison. You don't get anything you stole back. While in prison, he receives a comprehensive education in violence and crime, and after getting out, is blacklisted by every job he applies for.

B: An unarmed man in normal clothes, not there as an authority figure peacefully visits his house and informs him that although he's been caught stealing, he has the chance to avoid a criminal record if he faces you at a mediation hearing and offers restitution. You both go. He agrees to pay you back the value of what he stole, and also to join a crew keeping your neighborhood clean for a year. He can still go to school and can still get any job he qualifies for.

And what's to stop him from just killing the unarmed man in normal clothes?

 

[Zantetsuken]

Greed and jealousy are real, cops or no cops.

 

[Alucrid]

And what's to stop him from just killing the unarmed man in normal clothes?

knowing that another unarmed man in plain clothes will show up the next day. i mean, one body you can deal with, two just starts to get messy

 

[Laieon]

This maybe sound like fantasy but there are some countries where the police is a respected and appreciated tool of society.

That applies to the majority of America too.

 

[Poodlestrike]

knowing that another unarmed man in plain clothes will show up the next day. i mean, one body you can deal with, two just starts to get messy

I'm sure that in this glorious, communist cop-free future, we'll all just compost for our yard gardens from which we grow all our food. Problem solved!

 

[ProudClod]

Implemented, or implemented successfully?

A big part of why this list (except #6) wouldn't work is because it works off the assumption that the existence of the outside authority is the root of, rather than a reaction to, the problems. As a general rule of thumb, community courts + direct democracy = mob rule, for instance.

But outside authority IS the root of many such problems. Everyone in this thread seems to ignore the fact that the vast majority of "criminality" is non-violent in nature.

"Between 2001 and 2013, more than half of prisoners serving sentences of more than a year in federal facilities were convicted of drug offenses (table 15 and table 16). On September 30, 2013 (the end of the most recent fiscal year for which federal offense data were available), 98,200 inmates (51% of the federal prison population) were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or other drug crimes." http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/prisons_and_drugs#sthash.qo2AEm7B.dpuf

The criminalization of drugs has deepened wealth disparity, destroyed entire communities, created thriving black markets (which in turn, create more violence), and has arbitrarily prevented millions of decent people from ever finding employ outside of illegal markets.

I understand that people fear violence. I do as well. But the prevalence of violence is grossly overstated. Not to mention the fact that our current system is not doing a very good job of preventing said violence.

I don't deny that mob-rule is a central tenet of democracy. The difference is pretty clear though. Instead of decisions being made for the whole of a population by politicians with zero stake in the safety of low-income communities, a decentralization of decision making will allow the most at-risk communities to solve their own problems rather than relying on indifferent, rich, white men in DC.

 

[captmorgan]

No you wouldn't. Unless you're a psychopath. In which case, the family/friends/community of the person you mangled would take care of you.

I bet my gang will be larger than his.

 

[Poodlestrike]

But outside authority IS the root of many such problems. Everyone in this thread seems to ignore the fact that the vast majority of "criminality" is non-violent in nature.

"Between 2001 and 2013, more than half of prisoners serving sentences of more than a year in federal facilities were convicted of drug offenses (table 15 and table 16). On September 30, 2013 (the end of the most recent fiscal year for which federal offense data were available), 98,200 inmates (51% of the federal prison population) were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or other drug crimes." http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/prisons_and_drugs#sthash.qo2AEm7B.dpuf

The criminalization of drugs has deepened wealth disparity, destroyed entire communities, created thriving black markets (which in turn, create more violence), and has arbitrarily prevented millions of decent people from ever finding employ outside of illegal markets.

I understand that people fear violence. I do as well. But the prevalence of violence is grossly overstated. Not to mention the fact that our current system is not doing a very good job of preventing said violence.

I don't deny that mob-rule is a central tenet of democracy. The difference is pretty clear though. Instead of decisions being made for the whole of a population by politicians with zero stake in the safety of low-income communities, a decentralization of decision making will allow the most at-risk communities to solve their own problems rather than relying on indifferent, rich, white men in DC.

But not all non-violent crimes are acceptable. There's loads of offenses that do tremendous damage despite being "non-violent." What about polluting? Theft? Stalking?

I don't deny that the war on drugs has done more harm than good, but I'd also question whether or not you can carry that assumption to the rest of society.

Also, I've noticed another issue: there's a repeating theme (both in your posts and in the original article) that these communities are being viewed as separate. This simply isn't the case in the modern world. Cars, cities, and the internet have pretty much done in the idea of being able to view communities as self-reliant, largely distinct cells. In fact, viewing (and legislating) them that way is a big part of the problem in Saint Louis. The majority of the wealth generated in a given community stays in that community, so you end up with vast wealth gaps in near-adjacent neighborhoods.

 

[ProudClod]

I bet my gang will be larger than his.

Perhaps. But your gang would be defending a heartless, sledgehammer wielding psychopath. Who do you think the community will side with?

 

[potam]

Perhaps. But your gang would be defending a heartless, sledgehammer wielding psychopath. Who do you think the community will side with?

Well after my gang sledgehammers enough community members, I think they'll see our point of view.

 

[kame-sennin]

Sure. But I think it's naive to think that preventative measures could be so effective that we won't ever need a government-funded police service. Who, for example, would be tasked for dealing with someone who decides to kill another person in this capitalism-free utopia? You could argue that point six covers this scenario, in that (ideally) mental health services would be so effective that those whose condition would otherwise worsen to the degree where they would be a threat to others wouldn't reach that point, but what if those services fail? At one point the structure and purpose of the police might be significantly different from the police as they exist now, but there's a big difference between saying "six ideas or a radical police force" and "six ideas for a police-free world".

This would never work

Well, it actually did in Spain back in 1936:

In Spain during almost three years, despite a civil war that took a million lives, despite the opposition of the political parties (republicans, left and right Catalan separatists, socialists, Communists, Basque and Valencian regionalists, petty bourgeoisie, etc.), this idea of libertarian communism was put into effect. Very quickly more than 60% of the land was collectively cultivated by the peasants themselves, without landlords, without bosses, and without instituting capitalist competition to spur production. In almost all the industries, factories, mills, workshops, transportation services, public services, and utilities, the rank and file workers, their revolutionary committees, and their syndicates reorganized and administered production, distribution, and public services without capitalists, high salaried managers, or the authority of the state....

They coordinated their efforts through free association in whole regions, created new wealth, increased production (especially in agriculture), built more schools, and bettered public services. They instituted not bourgeois formal democracy but genuine grass roots functional libertarian democracy, where each individual participated directly in the revolutionary reorganization of social life. They replaced the war between men, 'survival of the fittest,' by the universal practice of mutual aid, and replaced rivalry by the principle of solidarity....

This experience, in which about eight million people directly or indirectly participated, opened a new way of life to those who sought an alternative to anti-social capitalism on the one hand, and totalitarian state bogus socialism on the other.​

George Orwell visited and wrote about it:

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life—snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc.—had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master.​

...

Every shop and cafe had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized; even the bootblacks had been collectivized and their boxes painted red and black. Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had temporarily disappeared. Nobody said 'Señor' or 'Don' or even 'Usted'; everyone called everyone else 'Comrade' or 'Thou', and said 'Salud!' instead of 'Buenos días'. Tipping had been forbidden by law since the time of Primo de Rivera; almost my first experience was receiving a lecture from a hotel manager for trying to tip a lift-boy. There were no private motor-cars, they had all been commandeered, and the trams and taxis and much of the other transport were painted red and black. The revolutionary posters were everywhere, flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues that made the few remaining advertisements look like daubs of mud. Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loud-speakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no 'well-dressed' people at all. Practically everyone wore rough working-class clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of militia uniform. All this was queer and moving. There was much in this that I did not understand, in some ways I did not even like it, but I recognized it immediately as a state of affairs worth fighting for...so far as one could judge the people were contented and hopeful. There was no unemployment, and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all, there was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine."​

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Revolution

 

[GutsOfThor]

This guy is not very bright is he?

#6 is the only one that makes sense.

 

[Lautaro]

Perhaps. But your gang would be defending a heartless, sledgehammer wielding psychopath. Who do you think the community will side with?

The strongest of course.

 

[gutter_trash]

Lol an anarchist pipe dream.


When there no cops, the looters and lowest of the low come out of the woodwork.

http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categori...est/general-27/montreals-night-of-terror.html

Montreal 1969.

 

[captmorgan]

Perhaps. But your gang would be defending a heartless, sledgehammer wielding psychopath. Who do you think the community will side with?

Is this the point they send a unarmed person to our sldgehammer club to inform us we are to go with him to make amends?

 

[The Technomancer]

No you wouldn't. Unless you're a psychopath. In which case, the family/friends/community of the person you mangled would take care of you.

So, mob justice? That's what most of these suggestions seem likely to lead to. Insular communities with their own justices and an ineffectual if even existent overarching system for larger crimes

See, that's what scares most of us about these suggestions. We know cops abuse power. We also know what happens when civilians band together and abuse power

 

[gerg]

...

I guess here's where I say that I'm not anarchist in nature.

I appreciate that there are some who propose getting rid of overarching government (and even the nation state!), but even in an anarchist society would there be no force that took on a comparable amount of services that our current police forces provide? Who would mark out a crime scene? Who would obtain evidence? Who would investigate leads? Would each of these individual duties be given to different teams of (self-organising) groups? If so, who would co-ordinate all that information and standardise (where possible) procedure? Would those people be the police?

Perhaps the answer is that all those questions would be much irrelevant if an anarchist system functioned properly. My concern, however, is that that answer seems to be a No True Scotsman fallacy - "in a truly anarchist society, we'd achieve systems of crime prevention and social harmony such that large-scale policing is no longer an issue". But what if those systems fail?

 

[The Technomancer]

Perhaps. But your gang would be defending a heartless, sledgehammer wielding psychopath. Who do you think the community will side with?

Depends on if the victim is black and the community is white

Like, you seriously don't see the problems with this? These are all suggestions that could and some of us think would lead to further violence between various demographics.

 

[Dai101]

Simple with out "cops" if someone cuts in front of me in a line I will mangle them with a sledgehammer.

Then you are a fucking psycopath that deserves to be in jail instead of someone that got 20 to life for smoking pot.

 

[Krappadizzle]

Let's take away food while were at it. If the evil cops can't eat they can't be vicious devils. Smh.

 

[GYODX]

How idealistic.

 

[The Technomancer]

The thing about having a large police system is that we can do things like order all of the police in a city to wear cameras or something instead of just suggesting that a dozen different neighborhood groups try and be more accountable.

 

[captmorgan]

Then you are a fucking psycopath that deserves to be in jail instead of someone that got 20 to life for smoking pot.

Why? Under these "6 ideas" hitting someone with a sledge hammer and smoking pot would both be legal. I would have committed no crime.

The vast vast majority of people are psycopaths in their own way.

Edit: and if we are going by each community gets to set their own laws and enforce them as they see fit, I dont think it would be too hard to get a community to make smoking pot punishable by sledgehammer

 

[Bam Bam Baklava]

Why we still got money?

If there was no money everyone would be rich and have ferraris and shit.

 

[vas_a_morir]

I did a double take at number 1... You want mediators to be violent criminals?! wut

 

[Purkake4]

Then you are a fucking psycopath that deserves to be in jail instead of someone that got 20 to life for smoking pot.

And then the community votes you in jail and sends a nice man to convince you to go there.

 

[The Technomancer]

I did a double take at number 1... You want mediators to be violent criminals?! wut

Its not a terrible idea on its own actually, with obviously some rigorous screening going on. But as one of several ways to "replace" police? No I think it only works in the context of something like our current infrastructure

 

[Log4Girlz]

We could give them a special name, like cops or something.


Community observation patrols

 

[Purkake4]

Community observation patrols

Citizens on patrol?

 

[Tawpgun]

These kind of things have no trust in cops or authority figures.

They instead put their trust in all of humanities human nature. The part of humanity that makes the bad cops bad in the first place.

So deluded.

 

[The Technomancer]

I don't really get the neighborhood thing. I work on one side of town and live on the other. What if I'm mugged near work by someone who's from a third different neighborhood? Without an overarching justice system how does responsibility for this even work? What if no-one in the local group cares that much about my case because they don't feel connected to me?

 

[Log4Girlz]

Citizens on patrol?

Crime observing persons

 

[Rebel Leader]

Crime observing persons

good

 

[Scrooged]

I don't really get the neighborhood thing. I work on one side of town and live on the other. What if I'm mugged near work by someone who's from a third different neighborhood? Without an overarching justice system how does responsibility for this even work? What if no-one in the local group cares that much about my case because they don't feel connected to me?

It won't work in a modern society. It's all idealistic nonsense.

 

[captmorgan]

I don't really get the neighborhood thing. I work on one side of town and live on the other. What if I'm mugged near work by someone who's from a third different neighborhood? Without an overarching justice system how does responsibility for this even work? What if no-one in the local group cares that much about my case because they don't feel connected to me?

It wouldnt matter there would be no law against mugging. You would have to round up a posse hunt down the mugger then talk him into jail.