site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32060 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

24
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Matthew Yglesias has a post about fare evasion. I especially love this part:

In theory, if you’re out on bail but you skipped your court date, you ought to be extra-cautious in your day-to-day behavior. In practice, a lot of people who commit crimes don’t make that decision. The police walking around the street aren’t clairvoyant; they don’t know which passersby have outstanding warrants. But if they catch someone jumping the turnstile, that’s a perfectly valid reason to run them through the system. Police can catch bail skippers or people who are already wanted for some other reason — they can also catch people carrying illegal guns.

I know he's moved away from Vox/Slate towards the center, but just this year, places like Philly and Oregon no longer allow the police to pull people over for broken lights because it is racist, and here is Mr Yglesias, literally advocating for more terry stops. I actually think it's a good thing: if both neolibs and neocons are trying to re-center and narrow down the Overton window, this thread might get slow and boring.

And an important virtue of enforcing the rules against “minor” offenses like jumping the turnstile, peeing on the street, or carrying an open container of alcohol is that it’s easy to visually verify who is and isn’t following the rules. If someone isn’t following the rules, police officers can stop them and search them, and if they’re carrying an illegal gun, they can arrest them. Without this kind of low-level stop, the only way to get illegal guns off the street is by stopping people at random — which realistically means racial profiling. That is bad. People have a very legitimate interest in not being stopped and frisked merely for belonging to a particular demographic group. Where progressives have gone too far is in extending this consideration to people who are in fact committing crimes, when those are exactly the people you want to stop.

The bolded part is such a bizarre claim in this context. The only way that random stops can lead to racial profiling is if the law enforcement apparatus is somehow biased. Assuming that's true, how exactly would that bias disappear when pursuing low-level stops? It's impossible for cops to be everywhere and to enforce every possible offense in existence, so naturally they have to make some discretionary decisions. They need to decide what neighborhoods to patrol, what time to do so, what to be on the look out for, and what offenses to prioritize. That's a ton of opportunity for bias to seep in (again, assuming bias exists). In contrast, it's at least theoretically possible to construct a truly random stop system, and you can do so simply by significantly reducing the amount of police discretion by turning them functionally into unthinking robocops. At the beginning of every shift a computer uses RNG wizardry to pick a random part of the city and then tasks cops to stop people based on random arbitrary characteristics (e.g. stop the third person wearing blue, stop the 36th person walking in a northeast direction, etc.).

The majority of shootings are committed with illegal handguns, and we need constitutionally and morally permissible ways of discouraging people from carrying them. Rigorously enforcing boring rules is one of the best ways to do that, because the people shooting each other out there are mostly not mastermind assassins.

Gun possession on its own does not hurt anyone. The argument in favor of enforcing simple possession is as an upstream attack to preemptively address the potential for harm. The problem with this "precog" approach is exactly how indiscriminate the enforcement is. Even if it was enforced by unbiased automatons, a stop-and-frisk system cannot differentiate between the "good guy with a gun" and "bad guy with a gun". It ensnares everyone, regardless of their potential for violence. These kinds of "precog" justifications highlight how much of a waste of time gun control is in general, and how unjust it is. Which is why it's so wild to see folks like Yglesias essentially agree with me, but instead of using it as an opportunity to rethink the wisdom of gun control policy, he just bites the bullet and accepts that indiscriminate enforcement as a necessary evil.

The bolded part is such a bizarre claim in this context. The only way that random stops can lead to racial profiling is if the law enforcement apparatus is somehow biased. Assuming that's true, how exactly would that bias disappear when pursuing low-level stops? It's impossible for cops to be everywhere and to enforce every possible offense in existence, so naturally they have to make some discretionary decisions.

True, but the relationship isn't a pure binary: the more discretion police are given, the more room bias has to operate. "Random" really means that police are given complete discretion since nobody is ensuring mathematical randomness as you propose. Curtailing this discretion will reduce (but not eliminate) racial profiling. Sure, biased police might turn a blind eye to white scofflaws, but they will (in theory) be restrained from harassing law-abiding minorities. The latter injustice is generally more vexing to our sense of equality than the former.

Reading the piece jogged some thoughts for me, so I wanted to sketch them out here. I think the following questions lie under the surface of this issue, that being:

  • How many people in a civil, metropolitan society are defectbots?

  • How should a civil, metropolitan society deal with defectbots? Or, rather, what is the appropriate amount of violence to do to defectbots? (After all, you could argue that any response is violent, and that's the frame I'm going to work from here, insert that quote about energy consumption from Dune: Messiah here.)

  • In what way should this violence be done?

Different parts of the political spectrum have different answers to these: neoliberals would push for solutions that attempt to extract the just result while inflicting the least violence (within a sort of continuum of options/force, starting with a warning or a small fine), neocons would push for harder solutions that maximize along the "severity as deterrence" theory, opting for a good and large dose of violence (harsher fines and jail time).

But there's also the way in which the violence is done: Iglesias refers to gun control and illegal handguns. Putting aside the moral or practical arguments for metropolitan gun control, this perhaps reveals deeper depth in the political spectrum: neolibs/cons would generally prefer that the violence be carried out by a centralized power (after all, states and governments should retain a monopoly on violence), while libertarians would prefer for decentralized violence to allow a sort-of self-policing (basically: everyone gets to carry a gun or at least be able to hire someone to protect them; anyone trying to pull a gun on someone else ideally filters themselves out of the gene pool), authoritarians believe in hardcore centralization of violence backed up with maximal violence for any defection (see: Singapore), and progressives/id-pols can be characterized (however (un)fairly or (un)charitably) as thinking that doing violence to clearly-in-the-wrong defectors is immoral to begin with.

I don't personally really believe this for myself, if only because of the uncomfortable conclusions (again: see Singapore), but if it boils down to law-and-order (and even seemingly-insignificant things like fare-jumping or littering or smoking or public drinking or drug use all fall under law-and-order), this is perhaps the best map I spontaneously thought of.

(But also, this doesn't get into certainty-of-punishment vs. severity-of-punishment, second-order effects or unintended consquences, so don't take this as some Grand Theory of Law and Order. And of course, the "opacity" of this train of thought also lies within that first question: if the vast, vast majority of people aren't the kind you need Terry stops to catch because they don't even go down the path of dumb, destructive criminality, then this is all mu.)

I know he's moved away from Vox/Slate towards the center, but just this year, places like Philly and Oregon no longer allow the police to pull people over for broken lights because it is racist, and here is Mr Yglesias, literally advocating for more terry stops.

The thing about MattY is he lives in these spaces where he occasionally stumbles over the truth, and then he carries on as if he never did. Its amusing at times, frustrating at others.

To those below, particularly @greyenlightenment and @Walterodim who argue that this sort of behavior is fine if it means getting various scofflaws off the streets, I'd argue that the problem with that isn't so much that it's bad for criminals but bad for people like you and me who get caught up in these dragnets. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've been pulled over for a light I didn't know was out or some other bullshit that resulted in a totally unnecessary amount of stress and inconvenience. And there's no rhyme or reason to how the interaction goes; in some cases I get a friendly oral reminder and I go on my way, in other cases I get grilled about whether I've been drinking or whether I have guns or drugs in my car and usually end up taking a field sobriety test (that I easily pass) because the cop didn't feel like taking me at my word or felt pressure to make sure because I admitted to having one beer. Two incidents stand out, though.

My final year of law school, the afternoon before Thanksgiving, I met up with friends from high school at one of their homes to shoot guns in his yard. Afterwards, we all went to a local restaurant to get wings. As I was driving one of my friends home (at about 7pm), I got lit up by two state troopers. I was told that the reason I was pulled over was because the light above my plate was a bit dim. I was then grilled for what seemed like forever about whether I had been drinking. During the course of the conversation I admitted to having drunk a single beer several hours earlier, and that no, I was not drinking while driving because the beer was in my trunk. The cop then insisted on my opening the trunk to let him see the case of beer. When I told him that this wasn't necessary, he insisted that he had to because he needed to verify that I had only had one beer. I told him (well, both of them) that this was ridiculous because other people had drunk beer from the case and in any event I had bought it several days earlier and had probably consumed half of it before I even brought it to my friend's. At this point I was asked to leave the car, was illegally frisked (police can't reach into pockets, or even roll fabric between their fingers), and was given every field sobriety test in the book.

After I passed all of them, the police told me that they detected the faint odor of marijuana when they pulled me over a half hour earlier. At this point I knew they were totally full of shit at let them know it, at which point they told me that if I didn't open the trunk in the next five minutes they'd have to call the barracks to bring a drug dog in. At this point it pretty much ended—I told them that if they were calling for a drug dog then the closest dog was a half-hour drive away and it would probably take them 15 minutes to put the call in and get the car loaded so that if they had 45 minutes then I did as well. Then the other cop, who had been talking to my friend, who was still in the passenger seat, told me that he wanted to move the process along so I caved (not my proudest moment) and opened the trunk for them. They looked at the inside for about two seconds before telling me to close it and letting me go. They never mentioned the license plate light once after I had been pulled over, and I didn't get ticketed for anything. My guess is that the trunk was riding low and they thought something looked hinky and after they pulled us over they thought we looked like drug traffickers (I had long-ish hair at the time and I overheard one of the cops say "couple of stoners" when they were walking toward the car). Either way, it was a stressful encounter that no one who isn't breaking the law should have to endure, especially under such bullshit pretenses.

The second incident happened a few years ago. I was driving along a heavily-traveled suburban thoroughfare at about 1am on a weeknight when I got pulled over. I didn't have the slightest idea why (I wasn't speeding), but was told that a strap hanging off my bike rack was blocking one of my license plate numbers. The cop basically spent the entire stop profusely apologizing and explaining that this kind of thing would only happen late at night when there aren't many speeders because the officers are required to make so many contacts in order to justify their jobs. I obviously didn't bother telling him that if this was the best they could come up with then maybe their jobs weren't really needed. Anyway, nothing happened, though I did get a written warning, and I avoid that road late at night. The funny thing is that I actually had been drinking earlier that night, but the cop didn't even ask.

The overall point I'm trying to make is that it's easy to say that cops should have wide discretion to use minor offenses as pretext to stick their nose in is based on the assumption that other people are the ones who will be dealing with the fallout. When you're the one who's constantly getting pulled over because the cop doesn't like the looks of your car and thinks you must be up to no good, then you have a much different attitude. For minor vehicle code violations, there's no reason they can't just run your plate and send a warning in the mail. If they see the guy again and the problem hasn't been rectified, then cite him for it. The vast majority of the time, the cops aren't going to find anything more interesting than a guy who didn't know his brake light was out. And when they do find something interesting, it's not America's Most Armed and Dangerous; you'll get a few DUIs, and the warrants are mostly going to be for things like unpaid fines and missed court dates for minor offenses. These people probably aren't on the run and could be easily found if the police just went to their listed address, but the cases are so minor that they aren't going to make a special trip so instead they tell patrol cops to find reasons to pull people over when it's slow and hope that every once in a while something pops. This doesn't seem like the best way to go about doing things.

I am highly sympathetic to problems stemming from unnecessary interactions with the police. I have multiple stories from my youth that are pretty comparable to what you're describing here, including one that culminated with a state trooper informing me that he'll see me later and that he will get me after I had the temerity to argue my case in court for a failure to dim headlights ticket (I didn't win, unsurprisingly, but I did manage to make the trooper stammer cluelessly, and he didn't appreciate it one bit).

Nonetheless, I don't think automotive issues are all that similar to things like jumping turnstiles and littering. Maybe the reason for that really is just because I know that I won't ever personally have to deal with those, but I actually don't think that's it - I think these are nakedly anti-social behaviors in a way that minor traffic violations (real or fabricated) just aren't. Even when it comes to the traffic violations, having a couple decades of experience driving has taught me that the main reason that I used to have more police interactions is because I broke a lot more traffic laws than I do now. I can absolutely see an argument for diminishing the number of offenses that are likely to have highly selective enforcement or be subject to a great deal of discretion, but I'm really not seeing it when it comes to something as anti-social and unambiguous as littering or jumping turnstiles.

in the mail ... a guy who didn't know his brake light was out.

I've been pulled over for a busted tail light once, and the cop sounded super suspicious (I wasn't doing anything illegal, but I was a lone male taking a somewhat weird road trip though SW Texas...) while he questioned me, but IMHO whatever stress I got out of that was still a better outcome than driving around with a busted light for the next few weeks would have been. Even an email wouldn't have gotten to me until at least a day and 400 miles later.

On the other hand, I was only given a warning, and cops are sometimes more or less biased in my favor (I've been pulled over for speeding 4x in my life, and I've noticed that with my wife and kids in the car I get warnings whereas with a friend or just myself in the car we get tickets...), so I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's some remaining positive bias which is coloring my opinions here. I've had friends and family harmed and killed in vehicle accidents, but never by cops.

Yes. You are half right. We need more BS policing of people statistically likely to be real criminals, and less BS policing of suburbanites who might have an oz of weed in their pocket or might blow a .08. If we let an AI be in charge of policing, said AI would be called incredibly racist, because it would continually fail to break up white kids underage drinking parties in the burbs, while it would also successfully prevent hundreds of city murders of black kids.

An ounce if weed is quite a bit of weed. Not really important but I found this funny.

Thanks. To be fair, you are talking to the guy who has several posts over the past month posting evidence that the median federal inmate in a marijuana related offense had over 100 lbs in their possession at the time.

That really is a shit ton of weed. You may already know this but the standard unit of cannabis exchanged tends to be an eighth of an ounce or eighth for short. An ounce is about the absolute most a consumer might buy in a single transaction and cost at least a couple hundred bucks.

We need more BS policing of people statistically likely to be real criminals, and less BS policing of suburbanites who might have an oz of weed in their pocket or might blow a .08.

Without an AI police overlord running things, what specific instructions would you give police departments now?

To wealthy suburban police: Reduce your force by 50% and allocate almost all of that policing your borders with poorer towns, or quarantining a poor area in your town.

For big cities, follow comstat twice as hard, focus on quarantining bad areas. Double your force, preferably all new officers should be walking, horse, or bike units.

I'd argue that the problem with that isn't so much that it's bad for criminals but bad for people like you and me who get caught up in these dragnets. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've been pulled over for a light I didn't know was out or some other bullshit that resulted in a totally unnecessary amount of stress and inconvenience. And there's no rhyme or reason to how the interac

Possibly, but we're not just talking about random people, btu those who have committed some small transgression, such as fare jumping. It committing a tiny crime such as fare jumping corelated with outstanding warrants for a worse one? Maybe. It's likely that some criminals will take extra precautions .

Yglesias famously got randomly assaulted (knocked down and kicked a bunch of times) by black street thugs in 2011. I suspect that experience has inflected his opinions about criminal behavior, even though he remains a staunch liberal on other issues.

I was living in San Francisco for the past few months (and may return in the new year) and when riding Bart in the odd hours I decided to just ditch the fair. I felt like a chump paying when so many others neglected to; and when the machines didn't work, and there was no one around to help. You just want to get the hell out of those rotten stations as quick as possible at ~midnight in any case.

So I saw how deterioration of norms can come after the bourgeois too. I never skipped fare before but this year was a tipping point.

yeah, that why if you got warrants take public transportation , a cab, walk, etc. And play by the letter of the law.

and here is Mr Yglesias, literally advocating for more terry stops.

It's the Michael Bloomberg sort of position . A neoliberal who advocates for a big state, which is what neoliberalism sorta is in contrast to libertarianism.

I think it's just generally bad policy to use minor crimes like that as a pretext for finding people with active warrants. It is detrimental to society as a whole.

First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.

Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed. And today that could lead to city-wide protests that cause hundreds of millions in damages (from looting, vandalism, and just lost economic opportunity from businesses being closed and consumers staying away).

Third, as a political consequence, we end up with police pulling back, and stupid policies saying not to enforce quality of life crimes, and even some non-violent crimes (primarily drug and property crimes). And that's just going to make life worse for everyone.

Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people. If something goes wrong, they run. If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution. Otherwise cops aren't involved in anything to do with those stops or enforcement of those laws.

We take cops, and instead of paying them $100k+/year to hopefully catch people with warrants and guns while enforcing petty crimes and civil violations, we send them to catch people with warrants by actually looking for the people who have warrants. And they can do things like respond to burglaries, stolen property complaints, things like that.

And this way, if cops end up killing someone, it likely won't be over some petty shit. And if riots do break out over that, politicians and citizens won't be targeting the quality of life enforcers. They can still operate and continue a constant level of enforcement, so that cities don't fall to shit.

It's absurd to pay police officers to be stopping people for broken traffic lights, or for littering, or for evading fares. Because then everybody becomes guarded in their interactions with police. You'll always worry that a stop is about something more. It's unhealthy to have a populace that is constantly worried when police are around, especially if crime is high and you want police around more.

If something goes wrong, they run. If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution.

I looked this up in case I misunderstood:

Summary Execution

A summary execution is an execution in which a person is accused of a crime and immediately killed without the benefit of a full and fair trial.

I don't much like ideas that lead a cop killing someone kneeling and hand-cuffed without any kind of trial. I really don't like the idea that a non-cop can just claim someone slapped them and this results in summary execution.

I was being a bit hyperbolic. I simply mean we use the full power of the state to punish them, and that could of course include shooting them if the circumstances required it.

First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.

I think expediting the capture of criminals is a good thing (except perhaps for petty drug crimes, but certainly for violent crimes).

Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed. And today that could lead to city-wide protests that cause hundreds of millions in damages (from looting, vandalism, and just lost economic opportunity from businesses being closed and consumers staying away).

I think the benefit of getting them off the streets negates such possible secondary effects . It's worth keeping in mind how uncommon events like the Floyd or Michael Brown protests are. If the police did their jobs , events like 2020 would have not happened at all (probably blame the media, lawyers, and politicians for that).

I think expediting the capture of criminals is a good thing

But randomly catching them by targeting people breaking minor laws isn't expediting it. Having police go and find someone when a warrant is issued would be the quickest. Instead, we've turned routine stops into inquisitions.

We could drop the pretext, and just empower police to stop and search/investigate anybody. That would catch even more criminals. At the end of the day, we are giving up more freedom for the masses in order to gain a tiny bit of security. COVID showed us just how far the government can push that, and the masses largely complied (or at least didn't publicly disagree). I doubt the government will reign in their powers; now every institution is going to want to leverage many of those things to apply to their area of expertise. If we can lockdown an entire nation, demand COVID testing and vaccinations to go out in public, why could we not do the same if a serial killer is on the loose? Lockdown a community, require DNA testing and an alibi to go to work.

If the police did their jobs , events like 2020 would have not happened at all (probably blame the media, lawyers, and politicians for that).

Over 200 black people are killed by police each year in the US. (Though they seem to have stopped recording race recently.) It follows that George Floyd-style protests aren't actually caused by cops killing black people. There would be several riots per week.

The media are much more of a causative factor here. They're the ones who decide when and onto what to focus attention.

It also follows that better policing won't solve it. Police will always remain human. The number will never be zero. Even the number of dumb mistakes like grabbing a gun thinking it's a taser will never be zero. And even one is enough in principle.

You could cut police violence across the board by 7/8ths (imagine that), and there'd still be room for two George Floyds a month, whenever the media should desire another. There isn't the desire for that many, so cutting the police violence by 7/8ths would probably not change the frequency of large scale protests/riots at all.

The idea that "the media" manufactured the George Floyd protests is putting the cart before the horse. Protests were already kicking off in the twin cities by the time major media coverage started - that is what drew media coverage in the first place. They might've been able to discourage the spread of protests from the twin cities by refusing to cover it (but then, maybe not - virality is a powerful force), but they're not able to conjure conflict from nothing.

The crucial factors in the George Floyd protests were:

  1. Poor police-community relations. In places where there's high levels of trust between the police and the community, the police get given the benefit of the doubt when they fuck up (even when they probably shouldn't). I'm not from Minneapolis, so I'm forced to rely on the opinions of acquaintances who are, and they're pretty much uniformly negative on the police department and especially the police union. See also: the Ferguson and Baltimore protests in 2014/15, where community relations were also terrible. It isn't just that one guy got killed, it's that the local police had a pattern of harassing and abusing people to the point where malice was simply assumed.

  2. An (apparently) egregious incident. At lot of people who get killed by police either clearly deserve or at least there's enough ambiguity that people aren't going to get up in arms and the media will describe it as an 'officer involved shooting'. The absolute best you could say about Derek Chauvin is that he did nothing while a man in his custody died, and there was widely viewed footage of him doing it. It didn't help that during subsequent protests the police kept vindicating their critics.

  3. Covid - you had a bunch of stressed out people and a larger than usual share of people not working. Without this there probably would have been protests, but nowhere near the magnitude that we actually had.

It also follows that better policing won't solve it. Police will always remain human. The number will never be zero. Even the number of dumb mistakes like grabbing a gun thinking it's a taser will never be zero. And even one is enough in principle.

Better policing will raise trust in police, which will a) make people more willing to cooperate with the police b) make them more willing to extend the benefit of the doubt when something happens. (To a large degree this already happens - the vast majority of instances of the police misconduct pass without evoking protests and many pass without comment beyond a sanitized blurb in the local news).

They stopped recording this? I haven't heard that. Do you have a source? That's awful, I hope it isn't true/there's still a way to know moving forward

You could cut police violence across the board by 7/8ths (imagine that), and there'd still be room for two George Floyds a month, whenever the media should desire another.

You'd mostly have more Ricardo Munoz or Makhia Bryant (see if youtube will show you the bodycam footage) type killings.

It also follows that better policing won't solve it. Police will always remain human. The number will never be zero. Even the number of dumb mistakes like grabbing a gun thinking it's a taser will never be zero. And even one is enough in principle.

I think police on average do a good job but the handful of incidents get inordinate media coverage , yet the media hardly makes a fuss when other people do their jobs poorly . But the use of lethal force is something which needs careful consideration .

The idea that protests/riots are correlated with the police violence rate any more than very tenuously is, imo, obviously untrue. Protests/riots are a result of media coverage, not policing.

Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people.

This is just anarcho-tyranny formalized. The ordinary mostly-law-abiding citizen has to worry about swarms of officers harassing them and eating out their substance (by fining them). The criminal can just run and get away with not only the minor crime, but whatever major crime they would have been arrested for.

In an ideal world, the police would be focusing their resources on catching those criminals, rather than hoping a random broken tail light will lead to a major bust. And major criminals wouldn't feel the need to run (or kill) in order to evade a minor ticket.

If we are simply using minor laws to capture criminals, then why not make more minor laws to catch criminals? I'd prefer to live in a society where laws are meant to keep people on track, rather than to undermine people in order for cops to hold broader investigations. So having wider enforcement, but smaller punishments, for minor crimes and civil violations seems more important, overall.

Police have no incentive in actually reducing minor crime if their purpose is to simply use minor crime as a pretext to find people with warrants, guns, drugs, etc.

We shouldn't make minor laws for the purpose of catching criminals. If we're going to have them, the purpose should be for them to be good in themselves. If they aren't we should just repeal them. That does NOT mean we should go to the point of the minor laws not being enforced against those willing to just run away.

Yep.

The second you say "okay you guys are charged with enforcing the law, but don't put too much effort into people who might be hard to catch," you're just licensing them to sit back and target the most law-abiding, peaceful citizens.

Wait, wouldn’t the same moral hazard apply to the real police? We have to have feedback systems like “firing commissioners” and “cutting funding” to limit them from sitting back and only chasing the easy cases.

Speed trap towns are still a thing.

Yes, it would, and it probably often does. Denver has a notoriously unresponsive (and arguably undermanned) police, but just last week there was a video of DPD trying to arrest a woman sitting on the ground because she had a sealed bottle of beer in public.

Unfortunately, my only knowledge of the DPD comes from video games. They seemed pretty competent there.

Minor in Possession CRS§ 18-13-122 seems pretty applicable and Eric Brandt was asking why they were asking for ID. That video is from pre-COVID anyways since Brandt has been serving a 12-year prison sentence since 2019. Makes sense why the cops would just walk away from him though, he's something of a well known character.

Makes sense why the cops would just walk away from him though, he's something of a well known character.

So you agree the police are willing to do nothing if they have to deal with the obstacle of "one dude yelling at them"?

For one the only evidence they were going to cite her at all is Brandt's editorial text on the video. They might not have been interested in citing an unclassified petty offense at all while talking to her. Some scuttlebutt that they were asking for information to investigate who sold the underaged woman the alcohol. Given the context and a mentally unwell, activist with a history of escalating and suing everyone involved and occasionally winning, exercising discretion to deescalate does not seem out of line. If Denver had laws more like Singapore then perhaps there would be more cause to condemn them for failure to cite.

It applies to almost everything, honestly.

If a system isn't designed to expend extra energy on 'difficult' cases it will select for the easy ones, for better or worse.

First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.

I've got a theory, entirely without data, mind, that the 'smarter criminals' are by and large not committing any sort of easily-detectable property crimes or violent crimes and thus aren't really contributing to the scary 'crime rate' in any significant way.

Because in the economic environment of the past 5+ years it with such low unemployment it becomes absurdly easy to get a legitimate job that pays decently, and there are all sorts of remote jobs, gigs, and other weird new ways to make money without being at risk of violence, a 'smart' person has less reason to do petty or violent crime.

Why would someone who is smart enough to evade LEO detection for years on end bother with a criminal enterprise at all unless it was extremely lucrative and, perhaps, didn't carry a massive jail sentence on the other end? Why put themselves into a position where exposure to extreme violence is a daily risk?

With the slight caveat:

The particularly bright minds that still have an knack for criminality will probably turn towards stuff like hacking/identity theft, ransomware, or just running crypto scams. So there's still a definite impact from these types of crimes, and these won't be detected by Terry stops.

TL;DR: the ability to detect stupid criminals is still useful if stupid criminals are the most likely to do violent crimes with visible social impact.

There are probably fewer 'smart' criminals in absolute terms because there are just so many avenues for smart people to make money with less risk right now. They're probably engaging in white-collar criminality if anything.

Why would someone who is smart enough to evade LEO detection for years on end bother with a criminal enterprise at all unless it was extremely lucrative and, perhaps, didn't carry a massive jail sentence on the other end

Some people are smart but dumb in some specific ways, some people just like committing crime, idk, it clearly happens. The smartest violent-crime-adjacent criminals are probably doing things like international drug trade logistics as opposed to smashing windows, and there's tens of thousands of smart people who are 'criminals' in that they're running scams or doing white collar crime, which often pays better for less risk.

I think this usually comes down to having poor impulse control.

I can absolutely think of many 'book-smart' types who have hard time holding their life together because they have difficulty restraining themselves from impulsive financial, romantic, or indeed crime-related actions.

"Smart" criminals, to the extent they exist, are probably in charge of drug gangs. Chicago's drug gangs, for example, were notorious for recruiting the few local kids who got into college to be future leaders. These people are likely making much more money than they easily could going straight.

According to Freakonomics, these kind of people are very careful about being arrested (e.g. not carrying drugs, guns, or excess cash), but also have an incentive to reduce violence since it's bad for business.

Of course, the actual answer to most crime related to these gangs is to decriminalize drugs and gambling and help addicts get clean.

There are probably fewer 'smart' criminals in absolute terms because there are just so many avenues for smart people to make money with less risk right now.

It's not like people who work at McDonald's are that much smarter than criminals. I think even average or low-IQ criminals rationalize that crime pays better compared to a low-skilled 9-5 job. A shoplifting gang can easily steal $1000s of dollars of merch/day, and criminal proceeds are untaxed.

and criminal proceeds are untaxed.

Well the IRS absolutely requires them to be reported, and will absolutely prosecute unreported income from criminal activity.

It's not like people who work at McDonald's are that much smarter than criminals. I think even average or low-IQ criminals rationalize that crime pays better compared to a low-skilled 9-5 job.

This seems beside the point. A person who is smart enough to avoid being nabbed by police for an extended period probably has better prospects than merely McDonalds.

Poor, relatively dumb people might be enticed to a life of crime if they think it shortcuts to riches, but I doubt that a smarter person would be without some other serious motivation.

First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.

Why is this bad? Removing the dumbest and most impulsive criminals from society as fast as possible seems like a net boon. Letting them run around doing dumb, malicious things when they're readily observed being dumb and malicious just seems like a terrible plan.

Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed.

Doesn't this contradict the first point? If you're going to need to arrest these imbeciles at some point, you might as well get it over with.

If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution. Otherwise cops aren't involved in anything to do with those stops or enforcement of those laws.

Wait, I thought you were just saying that arresting the low-level criminals was a problem because it's not politically tenable...

It's absurd to pay police officers to be stopping people for broken traffic lights, or for littering, or for evading fares. Because then everybody becomes guarded in their interactions with police.

Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.

Removing the dumbest and most impulsive criminals from society as fast as possible seems like a net boon.

If they were actually removed. And I'd argue that we could do it faster by actually having cops go after criminals, rather than sifting through traffic stops to find them.

Doesn't this contradict the first point? If you're going to need to arrest these imbeciles at some point, you might as well get it over with.

Completely agree. So let's shift police work towards finding and investigating criminals, rather than ignoring burglaries and property crime in favour of traffic stops and such.

Wait, I thought you were just saying that arresting the low-level criminals was a problem because it's not politically tenable...

I'm not saying we shouldn't arrest low-level criminals. I'm saying that we shouldn't use minor crimes and traffic violations as a pretext to finding them.

The IRS investigates tax crimes, not local police. The USPS has officers that investigate mail crime. Many cities have traffic cops that don't carry weapons, who don't arrest (many) people, who simply issue tickets for parking violations and such. Why not have the average officer focused on 'real' crime, and get parking enforcers to also deal with traffic stops, littering, fare evasion, and quality-of-life crimes?

But if some criminal scum decides to use violence against some lowly, 'underpaid', unarmed citation officer, then we use the force of the state to crush the violent individual.

Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.

Sure, but it extends to traffic stops and basically any pretext cops can use to investigate you because they have some 'gut' feeling. There's a not so insignificant amount of cops (and people in general) who think they are smarter than they are. They think they are Will Smith in MIB, shooting the 10 year old girl with an advanced physics textbook. Some cop thinks they see something suspicious in you, and they start looking for a reason to stop you. And many of those reasons are things regular people do multiple times a day.

Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.

I dunno...for what it's worth, studies have shown even people who consider themselves as honest may commit petty crimes if they think they will not get caught or https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1509/jmkr.45.6.633

Littering is so common, I i don't think it's any signifier or moral worth or lack thereof. It's not like you are taking something from someone, but rather creating a tiny externality.

Littering is so common, I i don't think it's any signifier or moral worth or lack thereof. It's not like you are taking something from someone, but rather creating a tiny externality.

Really? I can barely think of a small act that's a more of a clear marker of a person being a low time-preference scumbag. The externality is tiny, but the benefit is even tinier. Taking trash to the trash rather than just throwing it on the ground takes so close to zero effort that it might as well just be zero effort. Living in a place that's covered with trash because people just throw it on the ground is pretty awful. Throwing trash on the ground instead of in a garbage can is an incredibly clear signal of someone that I want excluded from my community if at all possible.

One thing I've noticed is that if you hire someone to do a job (like pick up litter), many people feel more justified in littering, since they can say it keeps someone employed.

I think this, in general, leads to neighbourhoods getting worse overtime.

I think littering is a shitty thing to do, but i don't think it makes someone a scumbag. It would mean that probably implausibly large % of society are scumbags instead of just lazy or inconsiderate.

It would mean that probably implausibly large % of society are scumbags...

I mean, yeah. Lots and lots of people are scumbags. That isn't implausible to me at all.

Yeah, that shocked me to read. I consider fare-skipping and other crimes that don't cause any obvious negativity much better than littering, which makes everything shitty, just because you're a lazy shit.

I find it depressing when I visit areas with a lot of garbage around. It's like animals shitting in their own cage.

Nothing worse than walking a trail and seeing trash all along the sides. Some people drive along roads through forests and throw trash out their windows...

this is the first time in years of posting that anyone has expressed being shocked by something I had written. This is a rationalist-adjacent sub. It cannot be worse than some of the stuff Moldbug, Yudkowsky, or Hanson has said. I think littering is bad and always go out of my way to not litter, but not on the same level as theft.

Ha! Well, I also consider theft clearly and considerably worse. But I thought it was being put in with fare-skipping and jaywalking, both of which I consider near non-issues. Maybe close to shoplifting, although that has a bit more clear victim.

I wouldn't read too much into it. some people are weird.

I think that for many people's moral intuitions, the severity of a crime is how much negative value it brings other people, but the "scuminess" of a crime is at least partially the ratio of this value lost to the value gained by the criminal.

By this measure littering feels worse than some forms of theft.

that is a good point . if thousands of people do it in a city, it adds up fast

Fare skipping is just as bad. It's literally stealing from the commons and the cost must be made using the by everyone else.

Interesting. I don't consider fare skipping as bad, as there is almost not cost to be made up by everyone else. The train would still run if I weren't on it. My taxes are significantly subsidizing it. I guess there might be a small increase in crowding. Prices (in terms of zones and such where I live) also feel a bit arbitrary. There are also fairly byzantine rules about what counts as one trip (e.g. transfers and such).

I assume you don't consider it fare-skipping if I have a monthly pass, but forget it at home? Or, a classic when when I used to commute -- I got a monthly pass each month, but would sometimes miss the start of the month. Is it fare skipping if I buy a monthly pass for the month, but only Nov 2, and I ride on Nov 1st? Is it fare skipping if I buy a daily pass from someone else? Is it fare skipping if I ask strangers if I can be on their group ticket (which covers up to five people)? Basically, I agree there is some harm, but it's considerably smaller than that caused by littering.

Anyway, I tend not to do it because (1) it makes me unpleasantly nervous on the ride and (2) if everyone did it we'd have a problem. But I don't see it as having a negative effect in the same way that littering does. Similarly, I see a difference between, e.g., leaving your McDonald's garbage in the train (or on the ground at the train station) vs throwing an orange into the woods beside a trail. The latter is mostly not seen, and will disappear in the not too distant future, so has almost no cost (but if everyone did it, and there were a lot of them, would also be something of a problem).

I have littered a nonzero number of times in my life and dodged fares even more (especially when I was a poor student). The chance that anything bad would have happened to me if I had been caught for it was basically zero, and I assume that those for whom it is not the case (i.e. the dumb and impulsive criminals you are talking about) realise this. This breeds resentment (even monkeys, I think, have been found to be sensitive to differential treatment) and presumably reduces buy-in into society from those who are at the short end of this equation.

Now, I know that people on the law-and-order spectrum like seeing criminality (especially non-white-collar criminality, i.e. the type they can't imagine themselves engaging in) in absolutes, where you are either a law-abiding citizen or a criminal who always and at all times is about as bad to the society surrounding them as they can manage to be; therefore there is no point in negotiating or doing anything other than identifying and locking them up ASAP, and in particular they would see "reduced buy-in into society" as a moot concern since they are already being antisocial criminals who don't buy in. However, I don't think this is true; most criminals probably don't engage in antisocial acts nearly as often as they could, and I'd wager they don't commit murder or even smash random windows in all situations they know they could get away with it. In fact they probably subscribe to 90% of the same society-sustaining narrative as the law-and-order crowd, with only some cutouts they have rationalised for themselves to violate it in specific ways in particular contexts. If you make criminals feel that they can't be equal members of society even on their "down-"/law-abiding time, this might just stop being the case, and life for everyone would make a turn for the worse.

(Arguably the US is already halfway there in places with certain minorities being actively fed the narrative that society is not for them, but I assume that the set of criminals that would be caught by "turnstile enforcement anarcho-tyranny" - because this is what it would read to someone whose self-narrative is "productive member of society who sometimes has to stray off the good path for very valid reasons" - is not just a subset of those minorities.)

Removing serious criminals from the streets is good, regardless of how black people feel about it. And arresting people who commit minor crimes is a very valid way to do that.

I'm honestly a little irritated that none of the responses seem to really want to engage with my actual question, which is whether this particular type of crackdown could result in a net loss to society because criminals and criminal-adjacent people will start behaving worse.

Yes, I get that you don't like criminals, and think that removing them is good, and that arresting people who commit minor crimes is a "valid" (what exactly does that mean here?) way to do that. Taken at its most likely interpretation, this is a boring, mainstream position with no nuance and no utilitarian receipts shown. Why do you believe those things? If it's just axiomatic, then talking about it is not really appropriate for the venue, since the only way in which a moral axiom can be persuasive is by showing off a +1 to adherent numbers and hoping for conformism.

arresting people who commit minor crimes is a "valid" (what exactly does that mean here?) way to do that

No, arresting people who commit minor crimes is not a valid way to get serious criminals off the street. Arresting serious criminals who have outstanding warrants for serious crimes when they happen to get caught committing a minor one is. These are not the same thing.

I don't like being attacked or having my stuff stolen. Criminals can't do those things if they're in prison. So it's a good idea to put them in prison.

Well, I don't like people disagreeing with me on the internet, and I would assume you don't get a lot of opportunity to post from prison either...

(Quips aside, "I don't like it" really doesn't amount to much as an argument to remove "it" entirely in the general case. Have you thought through all the different contexts in which the same argument would lead to clearly nonsensical conclusions?)

I think they're much less opposed to it than white progs, frankly.

Saw a recent poll, 82 percent of black dem voters consider crime to be a high priority to them. For white Dems, the number is 31 percent. They live in wildly different spheres, totally disconnected in terms of exposure to the ass end of these high minded but out of touch policies.

Not disputing that. But even inside the frame of reference, the decision to prioritize the feelings of black people over real world crime control is, well, a choice, and not an obvious one either, and needs to be called out as such.

The fact that the choice happens not to be grounded in any particular real world data about the feelings of black people is irrelevant to that point- crime control is more important than the feelings of any one group.

I have littered a nonzero number of times in my life and dodged fares even more (especially when I was a poor student). The chance that anything bad would have happened to me if I had been caught for it was basically zero

If you had been caught, you would have been fined.

and I assume that those for whom it is not the case (i.e. the dumb and impulsive criminals you are talking about) realise this.

If a dumb and impulsive criminal is caught littering or fare jumping, they will be fined as well. If they have outstanding warrants, they will be arrested -- because they have just been caught for something other than littering or fare jumping as well.

If you had been caught, you would have been fined.

it depends i guess. I fare jumped in the US many times because I saw that the tickets were never checked. Eventually they did check and my punishment was being asked to get off the train and I had to walk the rest of the way, which was not that big of a deal but felt like an idiot. Would not recommend. This was 12 years ago

If you had been caught, you would have been fined.

I'm aware. (Not sure about littering, where I lived.) It was a calculated risk I could take.

If a dumb and impulsive criminal is caught littering or fare jumping, they will be fined as well. If they have outstanding warrants, they will be arrested -- because they have just been caught for something other than littering or fare jumping as well.

The bottom line still is that they couldn't take what for me is a calculated and very bounded risk. Fast food can give me gastric distress, but sometimes still is the best option; fare dodging can give me a 40 euro fine, but sometimes likewise is the best option. If criminals were reliably arrested on sight in gastronomic establishments, would they think of it as "shucks, guess it was my bad for doing crime once" or as "fuck this society that has made it clear I can't live in it normally"?

Getting caught having outstanding warrants is doing crime at least three times.

The first crime for which the warrant is issued, the second crime of dodging the warrant, and the third crime that you got caught perpetrating.

Why shouldn't we arrest triple criminals exactly?

Littering and fare-dodging are hardly what one typically thinks of as a "crime" (or, well, as I said above, I'm an unrepentant multiple-time criminal along with approximately everyone I know).

Responding also to @Jiro above, this is in fact the essence of the question I'm asking - is it actually for the better to arrest criminals no matter what? No human has ever lived in a society anywhere close to a 100% capture rate for law-breakers, and I for my part am not only not ready to tear down that fence but also feeling iffy about it constantly getting pushed around and climbed over. It seems likely to me that plenty of criminals with outstanding warrants continue living a mostly positive-sum life in society; some of them may have passed by my window without breaking it, passed me by in a dark alley without mugging me, and sold me food at a convenience store. I don't think it's obvious that it's worthwhile to reduce incentives for them to do so, just so you can capture some greater percentage of them. I assume the "what's the punishment for being late?" story is pretty widely known around here, too.

Littering and fare-dodging are hardly what one typically thinks of as a "crime" (or, well, as I said above, I'm an unrepentant multiple-time criminal along with approximately everyone I know).

Yes, stealing from and polluting the commons is bad actually.

More comments

If criminals were reliably arrested on sight in gastronomic establishments, would they think of it as "shucks, guess it was my bad for doing crime once" or as "fuck this society that has made it clear I can't live in it normally"?

It's not "doing crime once". It's "having an outstanding warrant because I missed a court appearance for another crime I committed". People with outstanding warrants aren't supposed to be able to live in society normally; they're supposed to be arrested.

The fact that criminals can't jump turnstiles without going to jail is irrelevant because they should be going to jail anyway. They're not supposed to be able to live in society normally because they are supposed to be taken out of society.

If criminals were arrested on sight in restaurants, it would be fine that criminals can't go to a restaurant, because they're supposed to be in jail where they can't go to a restaurant anyway.

Well, not everybody. Pretty much all decent people just don't litter or jump turnstiles.

Before COVID, the NYC MTA transit police had a little scheme. They ignore scruffy fare-jumpers during rush hour; those people are going to be a pain and not pay fines anyway. But late at night, people with unlimited metrocards would come and the turnstiles wouldn't accept their card (because MTA maintenance ain't the best). The stations are unstaffed so there would be nobody to help. So sometimes they'd then just jump the broken turnstile. BAM! Out of a hidden room, two cops would appear to fine them and throw them out. Of course the cops knew the score; they'd been watching the whole thing on camera. But it's an easy ticket. The proposal here just formalizes that system -- harsh control for the decent people, freedom for scum.

I am going to have to ask for actual evidence for this. First of all, I have been in plenty of NYC subway stations, and while there are some with doors and rooms off the platforms, there is generally no room for such things in the area in view of the turnstiles. Second, there is no such thing as an unstaffed subway station in NY; although not every entrance is staffed, every station has at least one manned booth. In addition, data on fare evasion tickets is available here. The spreadsheets list tickets by station, and note that, eg, in the 4th Quarter of 2019, there were very few tickets issued at individual stations other than major ones such as 14th St or Times Sq, which are very much manned 24 hrs.

Third, each station has several turnstiles; if one has a glitch, the one next to it won't.

Also, since it is ** fare evasion** , not turnstile jumping, which is illegal, I rather doubt that I have committed a crime if I jump the turnstile while in possession of an unlimited metrocard.

Finally, the station with the highest number of tickets in 4Q 2019 was Times Sq, with 517. That is fewer than 6 per day. There are only three stations with more that 360 tickets (i.e., 4 per day). There is no way that the MTA was spending time running the operation you describe, given the paltry returns.

I am going to have to ask for actual evidence for this.

I know people this has happened to. (Not me, I don't have an unlimited)

First of all, I have been in plenty of NYC subway stations, and while there are some with doors and rooms off the platforms, there is generally no room for such things in the area in view of the turnstiles.

Yes, that's why they have a camera.

Second, there is no such thing as an unstaffed subway station in NY; although not every entrance is staffed, every station has at least one manned booth.

On paper, anyway. Even if it's actually true, going back out, maybe crossing the avenue and walking a few blocks to check all the other entrances means you're missing the next train at best.

Third, each station has several turnstiles; if one has a glitch, the one next to it won't.

I suspect what happens in these cases is the first broken turnstile activates the 18-minute wait for the pass to be used again, but fails to allow entry. This prevents use of the pass at any turnstile in that station.

Also, since it is ** fare evasion** , not turnstile jumping, which is illegal, I rather doubt that I have committed a crime if I jump the turnstile while in possession of an unlimited metrocard.

First, it's usually a civil ticket rather than a criminal offense. Second, the transit judges (who work for the MTA, naturally) have heard that argument and dismiss it.

I know people this has happened to. (Not me, I don't have an unlimited)

I am sure that there are people who have been accosted by police after jumping a broken turnstile. But that was not your claim; your claim was that the police were running a very specific operation aimed at those people.

I suspect what happens in these cases is the first broken turnstile activates the 18-minute wait for the pass to be used again, but fails to allow entry.

Again, evidence for that? Is that what your friends said? That the turnstile gave the "sorry, you can't reuse this pass yet" message? Or the "please swipe again" message?

First, it's usually a civil ticket rather than a criminal offense. Second, the transit judges (who work for the MTA, naturally) have heard that argument and dismiss it.

  1. That is probably not true; it is probably a criminal infraction. Regardless, that is irrelevant; if I did not violate the law in question, it does not matter whether it is denominated a civil penalty or a criminal infraction

  2. Again, evidence?

Again, evidence for that? Is that what your friends said? That the turnstile gave the "sorry, you can't reuse this pass yet" message? Or the "please swipe again" message?

It's been years, if they mentioned what the turnstile said I don't remember.

That is probably not true; it is probably a criminal infraction. Regardless, that is irrelevant; if I did not violate the law in question, it does not matter whether it is denominated a civil penalty or a criminal infraction[/quote]

Here is the MTA itself telling you it's a civil ticket. They're rather more reliable than a random lawyer's site. I believe it is also possible for the police to write it up as criminal (in which case you'd get a desk appearance ticket instead of a notice of violation), but they usually don't.

Again, evidence?

What, you think I have access to the records of arguments in Transit Adjudication Bureau cases?

It's been years, if they mentioned what the turnstile said I don't remember

OK, so you don't have evidence for your supposition that the gate erroneously recorded an entry without opening the gate.

Here is the MTA itself telling you it's a civil ticket. They're rather more reliable than a random lawyer's site.

Maybe so, but as noted, it is irrelevant. If I did not violate the law in question, it does not matter whether it is denominated a civil penalty or a criminal infraction

What, you think I have access to the records of arguments in Transit Adjudication Bureau cases?

I wouldn't think so. But, if you don't have access to evidence, why did you claim to know how the judges rule?

Honestly, it seems that you are making stuff up, from your initial post onward.

More comments

Also, since it is ** fare evasion** , not turnstile jumping, which is illegal, I rather doubt that I have committed a crime if I jump the turnstile while in possession of an unlimited metrocard.

"A person who shall be upon a rail transit vehicle and who shall lack proof of payment of the required fare shall be presumed to be in violation of this section."

How are you going to have proof of payment if you jump the turnstile?

(Presumably if you use the card, the proof of payment is recorded in the system.)

Is the card itself not proof of payment? It's not like it would be hard to validate that it's a real unlimited pass, rather than a forgery.

The claim was specifically re an unlimited metrocard, eg a monthly or weekly pass. That is per se proof of payment.

How are you going to have proof of payment if you jump the turnstile?

Because you're holding a valid unlimited metrocard.

Probably being the victim of what many called a polar bear attack may have increased his power level some, too.

As with so many things like this, I do wind up with an involuntary "Dems are the Real Racists" response when I think about the notion that it's "racist" to stop people for things like jumping turnstiles. Whatever racial bias I may have, it's nowhere near strong enough to believe that it's unreasonable to expect people of all races to not go around acting like anti-social scumbags all the time. I would think decent black people would be thoroughly affronted by the idea that they can't really be expected to act like decent people.

The basis is not "let's lower these standards so the savages can get stay out of jail." It's "let's remove these opportunities for selective enforcement."

Proponents agree with you that jumping turnstiles or driving with broken taillights is bad, and that no one should be expected to do them. They disagree that the laws on the books are good at discouraging such, because they observe (or assume) that those laws are being exploited by racists.

Compare also the three-felonies-a-day canard which gets cited whenever someone wants to minimize a crime.

Proponents agree with you that jumping turnstiles [...] is bad

If even looting can be justified by outlets as mainstream as NPR, I doubt that free-riding the tube, which inflicts a lesser and a more abstract sort of harm, would be difficult to rationalize.

That looks more like a (sympathetic) author interview than any actual justification by NPR personnel.

Either way, I’m glad to see an example for your earlier post. It’s absolutely bizarre to see people defending looting outside of Twitter.

I was doubtful that free-riding would meet her standards for social impact, but...

So you get to the heart of that property relation, and demonstrate that without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free.

That’s quite a blank check. If she’s willing to ignore how the shelves get stocked, she’d probably cheer for dismantling the M.T.A.

NPR is often embarrassing, but I am curious if you are willing to co-sign Wesley Lowery’s “moral clarity” replacement for aiming in the direction of objectivity in journalism?

While your politics might or might not differ from Lowery’s, who is on the id-pol segment of the American left, you certainly seem to share his idea that a news outlet interviewing someone with controversial opinions is an endorsement of them — as evidenced by your framing of that NPR interview with an author who does not work for NPR but thinks looting is justified.

Not the person you are replying to, but.

I suspect how the coverage is affects that judgement, as does whether the platform hosts other arguments and interrogates them at the same level of rigour. It’s probably also important to note that someone - or some organisation - might not be strictly “pro-x”, but nonetheless is “x-sympathetic”.

As far as that goes, I’m willing to agree with the woke left on a very weak version of that argument, but that amounts really to no better than “people and organisations have biases, and some groups often find common cause or sympathy despite disagreeing on some issues”. It certainly is not the almost maximalist version of that idea that woke people often resort to (the “you tried to argue with some right wing person? Literally Hitler!” level of guilt-by-association), and I suspect most would not take kindly to efforts at equivocating the extreme end of this with the mild end of it.

In any case, though.

share his idea that a news outlet interviewing someone with controversial opinions is an endorsement of them — as evidenced by your framing of that NPR interview with an author who does not work for NPR but thinks looting is justified.

I thought that piece close to a puff piece, or at the very least tries really really hard not to ask any real questions of the author. Does NPR do similarly toothless pieces on other political positions?

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats