site banner
ymeskhout  7mo ago (text post)   2430 thread views

The Bailey Podcast E034: An Unhinged Conversation on Policing

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, and RSS.

In this episode, an authoritarian and some anarchist(s) have an unhinged conversation about policing.

Participants: Yassine, Kulak, & Hoffmeister25 [Note: the latter's voice has been modified to protect him from the progressive nanny state's enforcement agents.]

Links:

About the Daniel Penny Situation (Hoffmeister25)

Posse comitatus (Wikipedia)

Lifetime Likelihood of Going to State or Federal Prison (BJS 1997)

The Iron Rule (Anarchonomicon)

Eleven Magic Words (Yassine Meskhout)

Blackstone's ratio (Wikipedia)

Halfway To Prison Abolition (Yassine Meskhout)

Defunding My Mistake (Yassine Meskhout)

Recorded 2023-09-16 | Uploaded 2023-09-25

12
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I understand how distasteful a "free heroin" arrangement would be, from the standpoint that you describe. Ultimately it boils down to a variant of "do you want to be right? or do you want to win?". I don't like property crime. The cost of shoplifting gets shifted onto me the customer. Stores also respond by putting items behind locks, or just shift their inventory to less valuable things. I would like there to be less shoplifting but I don't see a feasible or practical way to get to that point given the continuing prevalence of addicting drugs. Yeah it would suck to see someone contribute nothing to society and just wait around for their regular heroin drop, but that's preferable to me if it means a significant reduction in property crime. We're already spending money on police, prosecutions, higher prices, etc. it's just a matter of how to spend it efficiently.

If you believe the accounts in this documentary (timestamped 40:50-42:30, CW: conservative propaganda), the addicts receiving free drugs from the government proceed to exploit their higher risk tolerance by trading the clean drugs to their dealers in exchange for (presumably higher qty. of) street drugs. Then the dealers resell the government handouts to addicts elsewhere with lower risk tolerance and no access to free drug programs.

Obvious follow-up questions: Is this just a case of insufficient dakka? Also, even if it's not providing safer drugs to the population it intends to, doesn't it reduce some property crime?

I don't know enough about the Vancouver program but the black market exchange described in the video does not seem implausible to me. I hadn't considered that as a possibility. If it's a concern, one way to mitigate it is to require supervised consumption on site. On the second question my assumption would be that property crime still gets reduced, because whatever drugs the addicts use to barter means they need less money from stealing.

I don't know if I needed to mention this but the core premise behind my argument is that theft generates a ridiculously high deadweight loss. Smashing a car window ($250 repair bill) to steal a cordless drill ($250 retail) that might only net $20 on the street means that the addict is causing ~$500 worth of loss for every $20 they acquire. In that context, it's way cheaper for society writ-large to just give the $20 worth of drugs away for free.

Or… we just ruthlessly police drug use, forcibly imprison chronic drug abusers, and execute drug dealers. You have yet to articulate an argument that such a policy wouldn’t achieve it’s stated goals; you merely oppose it on philosophical and political grounds, which means you’re then forced to come up with these convoluted alternatives to maybe possibly make somewhat of a dent in the problem using non-coercive or minimally-coercive means.

I do think a strong point Kulak made in the debate was that, instead of policing drugs, you policed public intoxication/vagrancy with the punishment being a week in the stocks + caning the drug problem would solve itself fairly expediently, while preserving Scott Alexander's ability to use mushrooms for a mind expanding camping trip.

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