Hey, don’t underestimate my stupidity! :P But from your avoidance, I do think I understand what you’re suggesting. It’s righteous, but I don’t think it’s viable. Certainly not from a civil society standpoint. Cops are often sad angry people, they often have a lot less to lose than most active and engaged community members.

I really do think that getting more judges to reject QE is a better path, less ability for cops to retaliate and far fewer institutional hurdles to surmount. No risk to existing labor rights for workers in other sectors. And there is already the precedent of several judges speaking out against QE and deciding not to adhere to it. There is also the precedent of most other common law countries not adhering to QE.

So how would you do that? I’m reading conflicting opinions from your comments. One comment back your entire point was that you can negotiate with police unions to end pensions (Strong disagree from me). Now it sounds like you’re saying that you cannot negotiate ending police pensions as they will soft strike and stonewall (I do agree with this, they already react this way to much softer demands). I literally thought you were a new commenter just now until I read your username.

So how exactly would you do it? How would you convince police to end their pension programs, ostensibly in exchange for greater accountability for bad behavior?

Well unfortunately in the case of US police unions, it’s an anti-labor force using a labor organization as a disingenuous hedge against accountability. And also at the end of the day a police union resisting insurance requirements for it’s members actually is a case of workers (Class traitors, but workers all the same) organizing against their employer.

This has definitely been attempted, in fact I would reckon that the majority of police contract negotiations begin on the topic of pensions as it is one of or possibly the largest cost associated with running a police agency. But as no union worth it’s salt would ever budge on the one thing that is most important to it’s members - Teachers, longshoremen, delivery people, factory workers, none of them have ever given up pensions because it would be wildly against their primary interest - It hasn’t happened yet. What would you do differently to convince police unions to abandon their retirement plan (Or replace it with something that can be deducted from or penalized conditionally)?

Well if there’s a weapon involved - Unstable person waving around a knife in public for instance, which is fairly common - It’s automatically an emergency and PSR isn’t involved (Which ironically means it has a much lower response rate, as the cops here are bad at showing up in time for emergency calls). I think the police are opposed to it because 1) It’s money that might otherwise go to PPB, who already get millions of dollars in budget expansion every year and more importantly 2) It puts the lie to the myth that you need an intimidating security force with weapons to respond to all incidents when e.g. an unarmed 40 year old woman can diffuse a seemingly violent individual possibly in psychosis by offering them a peanut butter sandwich, asking them when the last time they napped was, and sitting down with them on a bench to talk about their feelings and issues for a half hour.

Police pensions are protected by police unions. Abolishing police pensions would almost certainly require kneecapping their labor rights. Sorry, I realize now that I left explanation of this logic step out of my first comment. What I am essentially asking is, how would you undermine police unions without also undermining all unions, and thereby all labor?

You think you’re looking to reform it, but I think you’re actually looking to abolish it and you don’t yet realize that. If you understand that the problem is institutional and not individual, and you intend to reshape the institution to correct this, if you are actually effective and complete in those efforts (And sensitive to why a law is enforced rather than merely the act of doing so for it’s own sake) you will probably wind up with something that looks like community defense. Which is fundamentally different from policing in both form and mission.

Here in Portland, Oregon the city has a relatively new agency called Portland Street Response, tasked with responding to non-emergency calls located in public places. They have social work and related training, show up with a big van full of supplies, are unarmed, and trained in de-escalation. Sometimes if the call holds the possibility of escalating, they will show up with an armed police officer who’s job is to be on the periphery if needed. The program has been wildly successful and popular, is expending, and it’s largest most vocal opposition is… The Portland Police Bureau.

How would you strip police unions of their pensions without also destroying the savings of every other labor union in the US? Dissolving labor rights is not the right way to fight an anti-labor force, it’s very “fighting fire with fire”.

Police have unions (They function as professional organizations, but legally they are labor unions) largely to block legal changes like this. To defeat them, you’d need to somehow pass legislation on the state and federal level that mortally undermines the power of all labor unions in the USA. This would have knock-on effects for all US workers, as unions fight for and uphold labor protections that benefit those outside their ranks. For instance, two day weekends and 40 hour work weeks.

It seems clear to me that ending QE - Which is merely a judicial policy, it’s not even law - Is by far the more potent, simple, and safe avenue of attack. But I’m interested in your thoughts on the above proverbial gun that police unions hold to the head of every US laborer.

This is just the “bad apples” take, repackaged. You think bad actors are to blame, and that if you weed them out the institution will be cleansed. You miss that the problem is the institution itself and it’s very nature, not individual actors. If you reformed the institution to not be this way… Then you’d effectively be doing abolition, the thing you think that you’re not looking to do. And it would likely be a much more radical change than you envision it to be.

Kaws, one of those pop art figures that ended up getting merchandized to hell and back.

IRA member who tortured people was actually English. Shocking. /s

I think the future will be somewhere between what we consider normal now and the austere dystopia you envision. This AI shit certainly isn’t making the world any better, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately that is a laughably miniscule number compared to the DoD budget, and great news for the arms manufacturers they will pay to replace them. As the other commenter said you cannot stop the US war machine with bills, only with body bags.

We used to undermine the security of our customers systems.

We still do. But we used to, too.

Dell used to. Not sure of they still do.

I think that to a degree we’re buying into the showmanship and claims of AI companies concerning the future, when the reality is that there are hard limits to the functionality of generative AI and LLMs. They want us to think that they’re building Rocco’s Basilisk because that’s some good terrifying viral marketing. But it isn’t true.

I’ve personally tried these tools at home. I’ve got LM Studio and ComfyUI on my PC. They’re novel and all, but they do have a hard limit to usefulness. You cannot rely on an information tool that returns the wrong information half the time. Not because it’s annoying but because people want and need to get stuff done, and ultimately AI will get in the way of getting stuff done.

Oh yeah, the presentation he was commenting on did suck, and while what he said to those guys was harsh it was entirely justified.

People like this are completely aware of their hypocrisy and do not care that it gets pointed out. All they want is a platform to broadcast their propaganda and that’s what engaging with them does. If your social media platform doesn’t let you exclude bad actors and forces that engagement then you should abandon that platform. My 2c.