zlacker

>>js2+(OP)
Montreal once had a 16 hour police strike, creating a natural experiment in what happens without police.

Steven Pinker describes how that went:

> "As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin's anarchism. I laughed off my parents' argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 a.m. on October 7, 1969, when the Montreal police went on strike. By 11:20 am, the first bank was robbed. By noon, most of the downtown stores were closed because of looting. Within a few more hours, taxi drivers burned down the garage of a limousine service that competed with them for airport customers, a rooftop sniper killed a provincial police officer, rioters broke into several hotels and restaurants, and a doctor slew a burglar in his suburban home. By the end of the day, six banks had been robbed, a hundred shops had been looted, twelve fires had been set, forty carloads of storefront glass had been broken, and three million dollars in property damage had been inflicted, before city authorities had to call in the army and, of course, the Mounties to restore order. This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (and offered a foretaste of life as a scientist)."[16]

>>Burnin+uc
How is this a natural experiment? Anarchism isn't just "when there are no police" Obviously looting should be read as exposing underlying ills and unmet needs within society. Like are you suggesting the natural state of people is just to loot and behave completely selfishly? look how many people in just the US riots alone cooperated to form medical stations, to work against police tactics, to make sure protestors had water and snacks etc..

>>vnceca+Ss
> Like are you suggesting the natural state of people is just to loot and behave completely selfishly?

Don't know about that, but there is ABSOLUTELY enough selfish/predatory/angry people in any population that will commit violent acts for profit and pleasure if the risks of being brought to justice disappears.

I would not have guessed it would erupt as fast as it did in Montreal, but empirically, it did.

I expect day 2 would have been a lot worse. Pray that we never find out :)

> Obviously looting should be read as exposing underlying ills and unmet needs within society

Well, some people never find their needs met...

>>Burnin+1u
Researchers studying sociopathy often put the number somewhere between 2-8%, with variance seemingly driven by cultural and other environmental factors. Whether or not you believe that sociopathy is a distinctive thing, it's hard to dispute that a not insignificant subset of human populations are primarily restrained by deterrence alone--specifically the threat of punishment. That doesn't mean such people are evil or intrinsically violent, they're just opportunistic to the point of almost being mechanically opportunistic.

I'm a glass is half full kind of person so I see factors like empathy as a defining characteristic of humanity, but even I can't deny that such internalized inhibitions, biological and cultural, which mute anti-social behaviors aren't universal.

>>wahern+5w
Generally agree but not that they are deterred by punishment alone, no. They will do whatever they get away with. Which would imply - “the right thing” must also be objectively better to the individual, not only backed by moral+force, for it to work generally.

(Not to mention the sociopaths are already present in politics and police. Drawn to power)