zlacker

>>obilgi+(OP)
A friend lives in Seattle and texted me today about his visit last night:

> I was there last night and it's such a cool pseudo utopian place

> The media coverage of it is WILD

> People on the internet are convinced it's protected by armed guards and people are dying of hunger and instead its...like a music festival campground

> There are speakers, musicians, art walls. I took a group pic for a bunch of black guys last night and they were so proud of what was built because they felt like they fought for it, which in a sense, they did.

>>conroy+fz1
"they were so proud of what was built"

Curious, since I can't trust news media to not sensationalize this:

What has been built, according to your friend? Have they set up infrastructure of some sort for housing people? Kitchens, latrines, etc?

>>JPKab+MC1
They put up a cardboard sign that said "you are now leaving the USA" and graffitied some surfaces.

https://i.imgur.com/f6VHPJ0.jpg

>>missed+JF1
I wonder what the end game is. The police is not going to disband. People asking for that don't understand how States work. You cannot have a State without a monopoly on violence. America disbanded police once, in 2003, in a city called Baghdad. That turned out wonderfully.

I suspect they'll all just get bored at some point.

>>djsumd+w13
The endgame is a radical re-think of society, and how society is funded. You've probably seen "defund the police" as a slogan bandied about lately -- police departments have been taking an ever-increasing chunk of city budgets, while education and other social services have either remained at the same funding level or have been cut. Spend less money on the state's monopoly on violence, spend more on reducing the need for violence.

>>ascagn+o83
Not according to marginal revolution[1] who presented a graph showing it remaining flat relative to other spending

[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/06/ha...