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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32053 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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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.

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.

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