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[Reelya]

Yeah, I still don't believe the assertion that life before the renaissance or the industrial revolution was just wanton violent insanity everywhere.  I understand how it's easy to characterize the past that way when history teaches us all these accounts of horrible things.  But it's a matter of perspective.

But that's not the claim I made.

They still had people doing law enforcement well before the formation of modern policing. So saying you can just abolish police because there was a time before police when everything was fine is a silly claim in an of itself, because they did in fact have people doing police-type work before then. They probably in fact had much worse types of policing back then in fact.

Getting rid of "the police" would pretty much just mean getting rid of police who are part of the public sector. You'd have the real rise of private sector security if that happened. Worse in every way. Blackwater mercenaries, coming to a town near you.

[scriver]

Sure.  All of human history before police was just violent chaos, I guess?  Everyone just murdered each other with impunity and that's how we all lived until after thousands of years, finally, someone invented police to save us from ourselves.

The point isn't that those were good old days, but that things do have the potential to be different.

And yes, thank you, that was my point.  It was just to put in perspective the notion that it's impossible to have a society without police.  You can argue details as to
whether police have made society better, or whether the different circumstances of modern society require them.  But my point was that we had civilization for thousands of years without police.  They are not strictly a requirement to be capable of doing society.

And no, I don't personally believe that life before police was just rife with violent chaos.  Barbarians and bandits and wild west shootouts weren't the daily life experience of everyone for thousands of years.  Yes, they happened.  But our Hollywood depictions of history focus on them because they're sensational and suitable for entertaining media, not because they defined life in those ages.

I don't think anyone was saying pre-police times was all chaos all crime all the time. My point was that the development of the modern-ish (-ish because the 19th century police was a lot different compared to modern Nordic police and much more beat 'em up america style) has brought with it pretty great things. It is much preferable to what we had before.

Yeah, I still don't believe the assertion that life before the renaissance or the industrial revolution was just wanton violent insanity everywhere.  I understand how it's easy to characterize the past that way when history teaches us all these accounts of horrible things.  But it's a matter of perspective.

Recent history has not been some anomaly of peace.  We're still close enough to the last 100 years to put them in perspective and know what the impacts of violence actually were on people's daily lives.  But generations 200-300 years from now will likely be taught the sensational accounts of war, or of the issues of police and gun violence in the USA, or of unrests in the middle east, or the genocides in various countries, etc, and they will get the impression that those things characterized daily life for everyone of this era.  But those are just the things that get taught in basic history lessons, because they're the things that leave a mark.  Precisely because they're not the norm.  They're events with short lifespans, or the effects of longer term systemic issues only have serious effects for certain people.  As we're living this daily life, we know better.  It's the same thing for us looking back on people 200+ years before us.

And what I've heard most commonly from anthropologists is that exile and shunning were the most widespread forms of punishment through most of history, not direct violence.  And those are still the most effective forms of punishment today.  I think modern prisons can be interpreted somewhat as being a consequence of exile being impossible to do in today's modern circumstances, because society is global and intertwined, and shunning is much more difficult to meaningfully execute.

That link is about the violence of war. There's very little doubt we live in the least crimal time throughout history. Well, at least if you go by the words of that famous Swedish statistician guy.

Also you have to realise that exile and shunning were both all but death sentences. Exile in particular was basically a choice between extreme poverty (ie death) or further crime somewhere else.

fakedit: you ninja

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, exile was effectively a death sentence.  But still more respectable, imo, than a literal death sentence.  "We don't necessarily want you to die, but we can't live together with you, either.  This is the best that can be done."

But shunning has also been a common method of punishment throughout history, and was not a death sentence.  Also doesn't need to be permanent and can be practiced on a spectrum.  Humans being social creatures, everyone in your community suddenly refusing to directly socially acknowledge your existence is actually incredibly harsh, while also being not directly violent or necessarily likely to result in harm to livelihood.  I remember it being a major subject of my 101 anthropology class as a point of comparison with modern societies.  Can't find any handy links right now that cover it more generally that way.  They all focus narrowly on specific cultures.  And I don't have time right now to go digging.

Not that these are necessarily practical in our modern circumstances.  Just to prevent drifting from the point - it's about historical violence and humanity's natural inclination to violence being commonly overstated.

[Reelya]

Yup @ Scriver. The argument is that there wasn't actually any such time before policing in some sense, nobody said there was such a "time of chaos". We still have police well before 200 years ago, they just weren't professionally organized. That's the actual point. It was just probably a worse type of policing to be honest.

[martinuzz]

The Romans had professionally organized police in the form of Vigiles and Cohortes Urbanae slightly over 2000 years ago  (not to mention that most of our laws, both criminal and civil, are pretty much based on Roman law)

[Reelya]

We could roll back to a type of medieval system and have a bunch of paladins going around bashing heads in with maces.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I will be happy to make the reasonable centrist pragmatic compromise of replacing the cops' guns with a medieval weapon of their choosing.

[Cthulhu]

I'm not saying the middle ages was a free for all bloodbath.  The statistics I've seen put the homicides rates mostly around what they are in crime heavy cities in the US, which I think most people would consider very violent.

The similarity is why I was drawing comparison.

We could roll back to a type of medieval system and have a bunch of paladins going around bashing heads in with maces.

We already have those, they're called "the police"

[martinuzz]

Roman police weren't a bunch of paladins bashing people with maces, they were more like modern police in that their task was to apprehend offenders so they could be brought before the law. Plus they were tasked with firefighting and emergency medical assistance.

[SalmonGod]

Jesus you guys really like to nitpick aspects of things people say that have nothing to do with the points they're actually trying to make.

My point regarding the formation of modern police wasn't that no sort of law enforcement existed.  It was that there was a point in time where police forces ****as we know them today**** came into existence, which are pretty damn unique and distinct from the rest of history in general.  And my point was never that this is proof that we can just poof away police and everything will be fine.  It was to address the idea that the concept of doing so is something so inconceivably radical, as people tend to make this out be something that would make civilization completely impossible, and I found some reactions here reminiscent of that.  My point was not to say that we should go back.  My point was that the structure of law enforcement that we are used to is not necessarily what it has to be, and was only using historical precedent to establish that point.

Yup @ Scriver. The argument is that there wasn't actually any such time before policing in some sense, nobody said there was such a "time of chaos". We still have police well before 200 years ago, they just weren't professionally organized. That's the actual point. It was just probably a worse type of policing to be honest.

Well you were literally arguing that what I and others were talking about, ****which was not the complete abolishing of law enforcement not a single person said that****, would result in rampant murder, rape, and slavery.  Which pretty easily gives the impression that you're making modern police out to be the only thing keeping humanity from descending into violent chaos.

So you're arguing that making every legal won't cause more things that are currently illegal to occur? Basically you'd be legalizing murder, rape, slavery, etc. There have to be at least a few people who, if police literally didn't exist would think "well dang, I'm going to kidnap me some sex slaves". Hell, breeding sex slaves would be legal. And you're asking "what could go wrong if the police didn't exist". Like, fucking everything could go wrong. Before the idea of "modern police forces" they did in fact have laws, you could be arrested. There were armed people who enforced the laws. This idea that there was no "policing" and everything was fine is bullshit.

That link is about the violence of war. There's very little doubt we live in the least crimal time throughout history. Well, at least if you go by the words of that famous Swedish statistician guy.

So what?  Besides the point.  It's still a shitload of violence.  It's what future generations will focus on when learning about our era, the same way we tend to focus on violence when learning about previous eras.  Yet violence doesn't define the daily experience of our lives, and I doubt it did for previous generations, either, who lived without modern police.  Just a point of perspective against a certain sort of chronological snobbery that has a tendency to become central to discussions like this.

[Reelya]

I will be happy to make the reasonable centrist pragmatic compromise of replacing the cops' guns with a medieval weapon of their choosing.

Be careful they might choose crossbows. Let them keep pepper spray and nothing else.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sorry, but as pepper spray is a chemical weapon of mass destruction, I'm going to have to take it off the list. 

[TamerVirus]

Plus they were tasked with firefighting and emergency medical assistance.

But only after you sold the property !!on fire!! at bargain basement prices. *Crassus intensifies*

[JoshuaFH]

The examination of crime & punishment in society hundreds of years ago in the pre-police eras of history, and extrapolating that into the modern era, in totally untenable for two main reasons I think: the size and complexity of civilization has greatly increased since ye olden times, and the physical mobility of individuals has vastly increased.

The population of each individual town and city today is vastly greater than it ever was in a pre-police era. This reduces the sense of community, as each person in their life interacts with orders of magnitude more strangers than any person from an olden community.  I'm not saying that even a 1000 years ago people knew everyone in their town, the age of tribes where everyone knew everyone are ancient history, but the degrees of separation between people were much closer. For example: 1000 years ago, if you met a stranger, you might not know him, but you probably know someone who's related to that stranger. Nowadays, if you meet a stranger, you might know someone who knows someone who's brother has a friend that knows that stranger. That's basically complete anonymity if the person is determined to not let you know who they are.

My point is this: in the absence of a dedicated police force, the community has to police itself. If the community is so large that tracking criminals and executing justice becomes too onerous for even the angriest of angry mobs, then a dedicated police force is required. I believe this is what happened historically: as innovations in technology made living in large, highly populated cities possible and desirable, the resulting surge in population density required the invention of specialized policing force.  (And the further evolution of industrial society into a global modern society probably required the invention of a more sophisticated police system that is able to self-police and expurgate bad actors immediately, as well as uphold it's standards of conduct and service to the highest degree that a modern society requires; but that didn't happen... though now I'm speculating.)

The second reason being the increase in personal mobility. What I'm getting at is that dedicated policing doesn't just create security IN Towns/Cities, but also in every place inbetween; that is, on the roads between towns/cities. In the absence of a police force, there might come into existence a new breed of bandit/pirate that move from place to place, preying on people that are far from any angry mob that could possibly help them, and then quickly move to a new location before any effort to exact justice can be levied against them. In olden times, people were generally much poorer, and had worse forms of transportation, and that's not true today.

There's also the concern that wanted criminals, who might imminently be on the receiving end of a lynching or public ostracization, can just get in their cars and leave town. In olden times, you'd have to leave town by foot or horseback, and you can only get so far, and the total number of places you could possible go are limited. By car however, you could travel to the other end of the United States in a few days if you really wanted to. Unless the offended parties are willing to get in their cars and track the criminal down personally, that person is almost guaranteed to get away with any crime they might have committed.

Now, do I think that "Abolishing Police" (I think that's a terrible misnomer and awful branding; they aren't looking to abolish police, they want to replace them with better and more scrupulous police; but I suppose "Replace Police" isn't as impactful a slogan) is something worth pursuing? Absolutely, the police are meant to be one of the arms of the state that serve the public, and, metaphorically speaking, if my real biological arm suddenly gained a mind of its own and started moving and doing things against my will: like sabotaging me, destroying my things, hurting people or myself, it'd be foolish to not amputate it immediately. Of course, it'd hurt, and I wouldn't want to do it, but in order to even have a chance of living normally and being happy, I'd have to do it, no matter how unpleasant it might be. Then, afterwards, I'd have to undergo some hardship as I learned to cope without an arm, but then I could actually work and go about about getting a replacement arm to fulfill the original function of the amputated arm, without the interference of the malicious arm hindering me.

[martinuzz]

People who have been part of the various demonstrations are called upon to have themselves tested for corona ASAP.
New York, Seattle, San Francisco and Atlanta are offering corona tests free of charge for those who participated in the major demonstrations.
The city of New York has opened 15 test locations specifically for protestors.
New York's governor Andrew Cuomo says "if I were a protestor I would behave as if I were infected and tell people I come into contact with that they had better assume that I am corona-positive".