Police in the US use force on at least 300,000 people each year, injuring an estimated 100,000 of them, according to a groundbreaking data analysis on law enforcement encounters.
Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group that tracks killings by US police, launched a new database on Wednesday cataloging non-fatal incidents of police use of force, including stun guns, chemical sprays, K9 dog attacks, neck restraints, beanbags and baton strikes.
The database features incidents from 2017 through 2022, compiled from public records requests in every state. The findings, the group says, suggest that despite widespread protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, overall use of force has remained steady since then – and in many jurisdictions, has increased.
My issue with this is the notion that there are thriving modern societies. Our modern world is a complex web of torture and exploitation. The police in my country (the USA) act far more as maintainers of the status quo of torture than they do protectors of the populace from violent crime
My issue with this notion is the implication that the modern world is uniquely tortuous and exploitative. Humans are violent, greedy, opportunistic apex predators. Our nobility and justice are individual and aspirational. The whole point of the complex web is to introduce friction and disincentives to that violence.
Should we try to minimize that violence? Absolutely! But our institutions are our attempt to crawl out of the jungle. Without police we’d have other violent gangs with even less oversight.
I encourage you to read Humankind by Rutger Bregman. The notion that humans are inherently animalistic, greedy, and violent has not been supported by the bulk of anthropological study throughout modern history, and his book does a good job of breaking down why there’s such a divide between the perception of so-called “human nature” and the anthropological and sociological evidence.
TLDR: humans aren’t inherently greedy, we respond to our systems and environment more than anything.
That’s a nice thought, and I certainly won’t completely disregard our capacity for, but our extensive history of war and brutality proves that this absolutely universal. I’m not saying that every human is violent, but it’s silly to suggest that there aren’t violent humans at every stage of history.
What your original comment suggested was not that you acknowledged the human capacity for violence, which nobody can deny and I am not debating.
The comment implied - and this is an assumption so ingrained in our western society that nobody could blame you for it - that the only thing separating humans from violent, animalistic, or selfish impulses is societal structure and policing.
That just isn’t demonstrable, as much as it may feel intuitive. It’s a Hobbian philosophy.
I’m not here to pretend I can convince you otherwise in one comment thread, took me a long time to change my mind on that and I’m not anthropological authority. That’s why I recommend the book, it’s quite eye-opening. At least it was for me.
Specifically what I said was that individual choice separates humans from violent, animalistic, and selfish impulses. I said that societal structure introduces friction to disincentivize those impulses for those who would submit to them.
Thank you for this. I was about to bring up that history is littered with societies who had things pretty well squared away and were doing just fine before the touch of colonialism reached them. Societies that don’t exist anymore because they stood in the way of “progress.” Societies whose people were either enslaved, genocided, or both
Maybe relatively small societies, but there has always been violence in any society of consistent size.
I mean, I think there are, most Nordics for one.
Whether US police is a uniquely thuggish corrupt arm of the moneyed establishment or not, is a different question.
But the way you are phrasing it I think you are skirting with the idea of anarchy as a (non) system of governance so the primary question here is if you think there is a need for any rules at all.
And if there is, how are they agreed upon, adjudicated and enforced in societies larger than a village.
Anarchy means “without rulers” not “without rules”. Anarchists love rules.
https://harvardpolitics.com/nordic-racism/
And for the record. Yes. I am an anarchocommunist. If the cost of large societies is large scale violence, then maybe we should adjust our primary societal units into smaller, more communal units. The ideal government is one that protects the liberties of the populace from exploitation by others. As it stands our governments mainly function to ensure the exploitation continues. I’m not advocating the immediate abolishment of all government right now, but I want to make it clear that I don’t think a society that justifies the violence it enacts as being necessary to maintain society is worth maintaining as is. Such a society requires adjustment
I’m not sure there will ever be a society that doesn’t require adjustment.
Anarchocommunism - I see. In my mind seems like a theoretical construct, a temporary situation that would quickly shift to something else either by internal or external forces, a construct similar to libertarianism.
And indeed historically this has been the case.
This “small communities” construct is also pretty unhealthy if you ever had any experience in small communities as I have.
Your neighbours are your oppressors and you theirs.
Societal norms of dress, sexual preference and everything else, are enforced by societal shame, isolation, expulsion and occasional beatings in extreme cases. The rumour mill would whip up neighbours into all kinds of idiocy. They know everything about you and you about them.
Anyone that has lived the village life that had any sense couldn’t get out of there fast enough and into the anonymity of a large city where the people didn’t police each other but if needed was the protection of an independent and dispassionate (from interpersonal animus) arbiter that mostly left them alone.
You’re misunderstanding what I mean when I say smaller communities and that’s partially on me. The largely anonymous city is the unit of organization I champion as being the ideal target. We want populous cities that are self organized and self sufficient. Personally, my experience with this independent and dispassionate arbiter has never been good, so my vision for community policing moves away from a paid police force to the mechanisms I’ve already invested myself more in in the forms of mutual aid and support.
Smaller in this case is a comparison between countries that span across nearly entire continents vs the idea of a city state. We also need to protect ourselves from multinational companies that are so anonymous and foreign to the people they exploit that it’s impossible to hold them accountable
In which case how does a community of that scale operate without a rule enforcement arm?
Will there be environmental laws? Traffic laws? Food safety? Defence? Adjudication of differences?
How does it work?
Will someone be issuing driving licenses based on competence? Who’s going to check if I don’t have one?
If I don’t have the sense to drive properly or secure a dangerous load, or I drive drunk or I keep running people over or running red lights who is going to stop me?
If I assault or murder someone is it vendetta rules? What if someone accuses me of that but I haven’t done it - who figures out what happened? Are there investigators? Who’s going to stop me? Or defend me?
In fact, the Courts ruled they don’t actually have to protect you at all! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
EDIT: District Court