solarpunk memes

wakanda

it assumes (1) conflict mediation is always possible and (2) and you do not want a system which is racist. (2) is fine, but (1) is not easy

1 is actually not as hard as people make it out to be, people just think 'mediation' and 'giving orders' are the same thing. I did care for developmentally disabled adults, and part of my training was in conflict mediation. I've also worked in a low-cost hotel that housed drug dealers, and preferred to de-escalate conflicts between tweakers myself instead of calling the cops. One of the huge problems with the US police forces is that they generally assume conflict mediation isn't going to work and jump straight to guns.

I also don't understand why it's not a political talking point that happy people don't commit crime to begin with. The US is allergic to taxes being used to increase happiness. Benefits keep getting shot down like, oh no, we can't have aid because people won't use it to better themselves, they're just going to stop stealing booze and start paying for it. Even their supposed downside is an actual improvement, I don't get it.

Do you have evidence? A controlled study?

Also firefighters may be racist magas, but they provide a universal good with no downsides. I've never personally witnessed three firefighters gang up on a homeless person chilling on the sidewalk, for example. Very unaware of any firefighters trying to charge you a fee for not knowing your tail light was out.

OP: [proposes alternatives]

You: "So you're basically suggesting Mad Max"

Your post makes it look like a binary choice between cop-filled reality and cop-free fantasy. But there are marked differences between how many cops (many = often more stupid, untrained, poorly selected, corrupt) a society needs and what activity is expected of them.

Existing societies also demonstrate a vastly different need for imprisoning people.

Myself, I think that prisoners per capita is a better indicator than cops per capita. The latter gives weird results heavily tilted towards microstates (lead by Vatican, Pitcairn Islands and Motserrat).

• Maximum of prisoners per capita: North Korea (undisclosed but estimated), El Salvador (1600 per 100K), Cuba (794), Rwanda (637), Turkmenistan (576), United States (541).
• Minimum of prisoners per capita: go and have a look, it's interesting. The leading 5 have a trend towards microstates and very poor developing countries, but if one filters them out and chooses sizable countries with functioning economies, the first that comes across is Japan - with an incarceration rate of 33 per 100K. That's 48 times less than El Salvador and 16 times less than the United States. The first European country on the list is Finland with 52 per 100K, indicating approximately what a "western style" society can achieve. The EU average seems to be around 100 per 100K. The highest rated EU country seems to be Poland with 194 per 100K.

Notably, the first somewhat sizable European country and western-type society on both lists is Finland. It has the lowest prisoners per capita in Europe (at 52 per 100K) and the lowest cops per capita in Europe at 132 per 100K. It is not a known haven of rampant crime - it has really low crime rates too. Apparently in some conditions, you can have few cops, few prisoners and limited crime.

My guess - I could be wrong - is that the quality and coverage of social security, education and health care are what actually make the difference. Most people don't start criminal activity for fun. Contributing factors include desperate poverty, poor parenting, lacking education, mental illness and exposure to trauma, damage from disease and substance abuse, etc, etc. Lots of full prisons are probably a factor that contributes to criminality, by making a "higher education in crime" accessible to more people.