I kinda gotta say. Police unions are increasingly starting to look like government-supported versions of the KKK (to be clear, at the time it was in power, the KKK was government-supported too, but that's not the case anymore). Whenever a police officer beats randomly assaults someone, the unions come together to defend them, regardless of how bad the offense.
That's been the response of unions nationwide to every random police beatdown caught on video, no matter how extreme or outrageous.
Having been in repressive regimes before, there often just aren't good options. At some point, the only way to affect change is to have those in power realize change is in their interest too.
There's a thin line between lawlessness and revolution. I felt pretty bad when random stores and whatnot were vandalized. However, the police unions have held themselves as above accountability and above the law for so long, that I didn't have that same emotional reaction. It was more of a "good for them."
When people enforcing the law decide they're above the law, what do you do?
In my town, there was nearly universal support for reducing police budgets among citizens. The budget went up by millions.
How, concretely, should I use democracy to address that?
Not the idealized model of democracy where laws that the majority of citizens want get passed, and where if everyone wishes for a law hard enough it happens, but the reality of democracy, where eyeballs cost millions of dollars, and politicians need money and voting blocks to stay in power.
Impatience wasn't the excuse. People are plenty patient. Game theory and organizational dynamics are more of an excuse. It turns out democracies don't work like that.
I'd recommend The Dictator's Handbook to understand why that won't work, but you don't seem like the sort to read books. Rules for Rulers is a nice summary:
You'd be surprised just at how much overlap there might be. I'm a parent, and I still have a nice collection of board books left over from toddlerhood.
Obnoxious is injecting 3-word snide comments when people want to have serious discussions about governance and corruption. If you have something serious to say, please contribute. I'm serious about that -- different points of view are good. If you don't have something to contribute, and you just want to make a douche of yourself, you can expect people to respond in kind.
You think no one tried and jumped straight to this? Its been going on the whole time and democracy didn't work.
The real answer is you use politics. Elections are sometimes part of that process, but there are countless times that more was needed. What we see is a political act by people driven to desperation by the failure of electoralism.
You can form one. Generically, it's called a political party, but there are special-interest groups like the NRA representing gun-owners, or the PTA, which represents families.
I don't think anyone is arguing there shouldn't be police unions. However, those should be reformed as open and transparent organizations which support for law-and-order, good working conditions for police officers, and similar.
Those should not be secretive organizations which support police violence, racism, protect bad cops, and sometimes engage in organized crime.
Isn't that the whole point of unions? To defend their members wherever possible? It shouldn't be the job of the union to criticize their members that's not their role.
They aren’t lawyers who have a duty to defend an individual. One can argue that unions would better serve the majority of their members by not tolerating egregious behavior by individual members.
No. The role of the unions is to protect the collective group of members. That's different from protecting individual members whenever possible.
If a teacher's union protects bad teachers who aren't teaching kids, or a police union protects racist, violent cops, that undermines those groups collectively, and especially undermines the good members of those groups.
The role of unions ought to be to push for higher wages, better benefits, and fair treatment. They should help address when something unjust to one of their members happens. When unions act to protect bad apples, it undermines their ability to do that, not to mention the standing of their professions as a whole.
To give another analogy, if you have a large family, with a fourth-cousin fifth-removed who gets drunk and beats everyone else's kids with a wooden bat, you protect your family by removing that member from family events, not by standing up for her rights to be there, even though she's a member of your family too.
Looking at the news, it doesn't look that way to me. It looks like years of supporting corruption mean its time to pay the piper. Police officers are in a world of hurt right now, largely because of how police unions have acted.
In the "Behind the Bastards" special podcast series "Behind the Police", which ran only a month or two ago, one of the running themes of the police is that they historically are not just entangled with corruption, but are a source of corruption. In particular, in "How Police Unions Made Cops Even Deadlier" [0], they examine several cases where police unions were the primary nexus of organized crime in major cities in the USA.
Another major theme of the police is that they are slave patrollers, which is where the Klan connection becomes most obvious. (And there is an entire episode, "The History of American Police and the Ku Klux Klan" [1], dedicated just to that topic.)
The point of these protests is that you do not need to do any crime in order to be murdered or go to jail. Not to mention that certain crimes are victimless (just look at turing).
As a liberal/progressive/democrat in today's society, you're pro-labor, therefore pro-union, right? When do you make an exception?
I see a parallel with our healthcare system. Undoubtedly, though things are bad and getting worse, capitalism kinda' works. But in the U.S., healthcare is a failed market and that's not going to change. Time to start over. Same with police unions.
In my view unions make most sense as a collective organization representing labor in negotiations against the collective organization of a corporation representing capital.
I'm not convinced yes that unions make sense when the other party represents the interests of the people - ie the government. As a similar example, I don't want our military to have a union - it seems like that would be overall detrimental as well.
The government might claim that it represents the interests of the people but they do not seem to put their words into actions. Would you support teachers employed by the state not having unions?
It depends. If you are using your union to get out of jail free for killing black teens that dashcam footage would show did nothing wrong then I think you need to reevaluate what you believe and consider that perhaps blindly believing in a philosophy in every scenario is a bit nieve to say the least. You need to have a robust understanding of the world and that includes understanding what function something is providing beyond just it's name.
I am pro the existence of unions, and certain protections for unions and the people in them, but like any organization I am capable of supporting or not supporting any specific union based on their actions.
This is similar to how I am generally pro the existince of non-profits and charities, but do not inherently support a non-profits mission because it's non-profit.
This post, which has a title that could be construed as critical of the protesters, has been flagged. You can search "portland" by date at HN and find many other stories about the unrest which have not been flagged. Articles are being flagged based on politics.
Not just the title. The article is heavily biased. Framing protestors as “vigilantes” implies wrongdoing, and using words like “protestors facing off with police” with no other context implies that protestors and police are equal or comparable in force. It’s not even close.
31 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 79.2 ms ] threadTheir response to the murder of Floyd:
https://twitter.com/StribJany/status/1267471624397361162
That's been the response of unions nationwide to every random police beatdown caught on video, no matter how extreme or outrageous.
Having been in repressive regimes before, there often just aren't good options. At some point, the only way to affect change is to have those in power realize change is in their interest too.
There's a thin line between lawlessness and revolution. I felt pretty bad when random stores and whatnot were vandalized. However, the police unions have held themselves as above accountability and above the law for so long, that I didn't have that same emotional reaction. It was more of a "good for them."
When people enforcing the law decide they're above the law, what do you do?
In my town, there was nearly universal support for reducing police budgets among citizens. The budget went up by millions.
How, concretely, should I use democracy to address that?
Not the idealized model of democracy where laws that the majority of citizens want get passed, and where if everyone wishes for a law hard enough it happens, but the reality of democracy, where eyeballs cost millions of dollars, and politicians need money and voting blocks to stay in power.
I'd recommend The Dictator's Handbook to understand why that won't work, but you don't seem like the sort to read books. Rules for Rulers is a nice summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
That's obnoxious, and you know it. I have hundreds of books that I have read in my home, although they probably overlap little with your collection.
Obnoxious is injecting 3-word snide comments when people want to have serious discussions about governance and corruption. If you have something serious to say, please contribute. I'm serious about that -- different points of view are good. If you don't have something to contribute, and you just want to make a douche of yourself, you can expect people to respond in kind.
The real answer is you use politics. Elections are sometimes part of that process, but there are countless times that more was needed. What we see is a political act by people driven to desperation by the failure of electoralism.
If they don't like something about the job conditions, they can vote democratically to change it.
I can't form a tax union and negotiate with the government, why should they be able to?
I don't think anyone is arguing there shouldn't be police unions. However, those should be reformed as open and transparent organizations which support for law-and-order, good working conditions for police officers, and similar.
Those should not be secretive organizations which support police violence, racism, protect bad cops, and sometimes engage in organized crime.
If a teacher's union protects bad teachers who aren't teaching kids, or a police union protects racist, violent cops, that undermines those groups collectively, and especially undermines the good members of those groups.
The role of unions ought to be to push for higher wages, better benefits, and fair treatment. They should help address when something unjust to one of their members happens. When unions act to protect bad apples, it undermines their ability to do that, not to mention the standing of their professions as a whole.
To give another analogy, if you have a large family, with a fourth-cousin fifth-removed who gets drunk and beats everyone else's kids with a wooden bat, you protect your family by removing that member from family events, not by standing up for her rights to be there, even though she's a member of your family too.
Another major theme of the police is that they are slave patrollers, which is where the Klan connection becomes most obvious. (And there is an entire episode, "The History of American Police and the Ku Klux Klan" [1], dedicated just to that topic.)
[0] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
[1] https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236...
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...
I see a parallel with our healthcare system. Undoubtedly, though things are bad and getting worse, capitalism kinda' works. But in the U.S., healthcare is a failed market and that's not going to change. Time to start over. Same with police unions.
I'm not convinced yes that unions make sense when the other party represents the interests of the people - ie the government. As a similar example, I don't want our military to have a union - it seems like that would be overall detrimental as well.
This is similar to how I am generally pro the existince of non-profits and charities, but do not inherently support a non-profits mission because it's non-profit.
Wouldn't want to imply wrongdoing on the part of arsonists, after all.