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Ruining innocent people’s lives is what government is best at doing. Don’t think of as convenient. Think of it as realization of purpose.

swores 5mo ago
Sorry but that's bullshit. It's extremely rare for any part of government to have that as an intended purpose. But it's extremely common, unfortunately, for people involved to be willing to accept that as a side effect in pursuing whatever their goals are - whether that's gaining funding for their police department, or raising political donations from the owners of a private prison, or keeping poor people away from their beautiful upper middle class neighbourhood, or environment-ruining chemical company, or... whatever.
- 20after4 5mo ago
  A system’s purpose is what it does, not what it claims to do.
  - therealdrag0 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    - salawat 5mo ago
      Will say every benefactor of people not thinking that way. The rest of us, on the other hand, look at the objective results and realize if you want them to change, you have to change the system.
      - therealdrag0 5mo ago
        Well duh. “A system will do what it does” is true, but that should not be conflated with its intent or purpose or design which require understanding of human intent. And humans produce unintended results all the time.
    - array_key_first 5mo ago
      It does make sense, because if you were developing a bad or evil system then you would obviously want to obfuscate that as much as possible. The first thing you'd do, clearly, is proclaim that the purpose of the system is something good. This is a common fallacy or I guess maybe shoddy reasoning I see often. Because someone or something either does not announce their intentions or says their intentions are good, then the thing they are using must also be good. Or, we must assume it is good until they announce they're going to use it for not-good purposes. Like with Flock. There's a lot of people who think the simple defense that Flock thinks it is used to fight crime means it's good. Or DOGE. The simple defense that the people behind DOGE say it's to prevent fraud means it's good. But what people say and what actually happens are two different things, and the what actually happens part is 1000x more important. Anyone can say anything, and obviously bad actors will lie. That's just a given. So you can't use the stated purpose of something as a defense for that something. You just can't, it makes no sense.
      - cindyllm 5mo ago
        [dead]
      - therealdrag0 5mo ago
        I never said the stated purpose is a defense. The purpose is the purpose not the outcome. Just because you can’t know the true intent of every actor involved does not mean you’re justified in assuming the purpose is what it does. That is lazy broken epistemology. I agree what a system does is what is important, so why dilute that fact with assumptions of intent and glib moralizing thought terminating cliches?
- anonymousiam 5mo ago
  It's not as rare as you might think. Organizations such as OSF/OSI (Open Society Foundations, not Open Software Foundation) have successfully placed their preferred candidates in positions of power in many major US jurisdictions. If you research, you'll see many cases of OSF DAs prosecuting or not prosecuting based on their political ideology. Many prosecutions are politically motivated, but now we have foundations funding activist candidates who are all pushing the same agenda. The result is diminished trust in government, which the activists will exploit to eventually make things even worse, because "capitalism is not working."
  - kennywinker 5mo ago
    You make it sound like they are doing corruption. I.e. don’t prosecute your friends, do prosecute your enemies. But this is more like using the power at your jurisdiction level to oppose unjust laws. I.e. where i live the city council long ago directed police to stop arresting people for marijuana possession - on the grounds that this is an unjust law and criminalizing it is tying up resources and doing more harm than good, and because the majority of the city’s population supports legalization. City gov doesn’t have the power to change those laws, but they can fix it locally by directing enforcement away from them. A decade later, it was legalized - imo proving that it was the right decision. This did not “diminish trust” in the gov. In fact, laws that the majority disagree with but stay on the books do far far more damage to the credibility of gov, in my opinion
    - anonymousiam 5mo ago
      If you want to effect change, then change the laws through the approved processes. Do not install a DA that ignores the laws. Doing so WILL diminish trust in government.
      - kennywinker 5mo ago
        Actually, DA discretion is a normal part of the functioning of government. There are a thousand laws on the books that get ignored every day [1]. And every election, candidates run on platforms promising to “crack down” on this or that crime (read: selectively increase enforcement). Gov enforcing laws that the majority of people do not want is a subversion of democracy that alienates people from the idea that gov can be responsive instead of oppressive. I don’t trust a gov that claims to represent the will of the people, but charges people for crimes most don’t see as criminal. So maybe you trust a gov less when you see laws you want enforced being set aside, but you’re in the minority here. How do i know? Because these DAs are getting elected (not installed) to do this. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/society-culture-and-history/social-issues/25-bizarre-laws-that-still-exist-today-unbelievable-statute/ar-AA20e8Nt https://www.msn.com/en-us/society-culture-and-history/social...
- ahhhhnoooo 5mo ago
  The purpose of a system is what it does. If that wasn't the purpose, the system would be changed.
  - therealdrag0 5mo ago
    That’s as dumbs as the saying “there can’t be a 100$ bill on the ground because if there was it’d have been picked up.”
    - ahhhhnoooo 5mo ago
      It's not at all like that? Claiming that a system's purpose is something it consistently fails to do is absurd. Intentions don't matter, outcomes matter. This is a pretty basic systems theorist argument, to be honest...
      - therealdrag0 5mo ago
        A systems purpose depends on its creator. Creators regularly fail to produce intended results. It’s absurd to say an unintended result is the intended result
        kennywinker 5mo ago
        How long is it ok to produce “unintended” results without changing anything, before you can say that’s now an expected part of the system? Because i think that’s the issue. It’s not that the US has a goal to criminalize poverty - the constitution doesn’t say anything about that - but since it’s been that way for so long it seems the system is unwilling to do what needs to be done to prevent that. It’s part of the expected behavior of the system.
        ahhhhnoooo 5mo ago
        > It’s absurd to say an unintended result is the intended result I didn't say that. I said the unintended results are the purpose of a system, not the intent.
Zigurd 5mo ago
More specificity would help. Cops, cop culture, incompetent and purposely harmful training, and the appalling nature of our criminal "justice" system is what ruins lives. Some other parts of government might be just as bad, but in other ways for other reasons.
- kennywinker 5mo ago
  Criminal legal system is what i’ve been using.

swores 5mo ago

Sorry but that's bullshit. It's extremely rare for any part of government to have that as an intended purpose. But it's extremely common, unfortunately, for people involved to be willing to accept that as a side effect in pursuing whatever their goals are - whether that's gaining funding for their police department, or raising political donations from the owners of a private prison, or keeping poor people away from their beautiful upper middle class neighbourhood, or environment-ruining chemical company, or... whatever.

20after4 5mo ago
A system’s purpose is what it does, not what it claims to do.
- therealdrag0 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - salawat 5mo ago
    Will say every benefactor of people not thinking that way. The rest of us, on the other hand, look at the objective results and realize if you want them to change, you have to change the system.
    - therealdrag0 5mo ago
      Well duh. “A system will do what it does” is true, but that should not be conflated with its intent or purpose or design which require understanding of human intent. And humans produce unintended results all the time.
  - array_key_first 5mo ago
    It does make sense, because if you were developing a bad or evil system then you would obviously want to obfuscate that as much as possible. The first thing you'd do, clearly, is proclaim that the purpose of the system is something good. This is a common fallacy or I guess maybe shoddy reasoning I see often. Because someone or something either does not announce their intentions or says their intentions are good, then the thing they are using must also be good. Or, we must assume it is good until they announce they're going to use it for not-good purposes. Like with Flock. There's a lot of people who think the simple defense that Flock thinks it is used to fight crime means it's good. Or DOGE. The simple defense that the people behind DOGE say it's to prevent fraud means it's good. But what people say and what actually happens are two different things, and the what actually happens part is 1000x more important. Anyone can say anything, and obviously bad actors will lie. That's just a given. So you can't use the stated purpose of something as a defense for that something. You just can't, it makes no sense.
    - cindyllm 5mo ago
      [dead]
    - therealdrag0 5mo ago
      I never said the stated purpose is a defense. The purpose is the purpose not the outcome. Just because you can’t know the true intent of every actor involved does not mean you’re justified in assuming the purpose is what it does. That is lazy broken epistemology. I agree what a system does is what is important, so why dilute that fact with assumptions of intent and glib moralizing thought terminating cliches?
anonymousiam 5mo ago
It's not as rare as you might think. Organizations such as OSF/OSI (Open Society Foundations, not Open Software Foundation) have successfully placed their preferred candidates in positions of power in many major US jurisdictions. If you research, you'll see many cases of OSF DAs prosecuting or not prosecuting based on their political ideology. Many prosecutions are politically motivated, but now we have foundations funding activist candidates who are all pushing the same agenda. The result is diminished trust in government, which the activists will exploit to eventually make things even worse, because "capitalism is not working."
- kennywinker 5mo ago
  You make it sound like they are doing corruption. I.e. don’t prosecute your friends, do prosecute your enemies. But this is more like using the power at your jurisdiction level to oppose unjust laws. I.e. where i live the city council long ago directed police to stop arresting people for marijuana possession - on the grounds that this is an unjust law and criminalizing it is tying up resources and doing more harm than good, and because the majority of the city’s population supports legalization. City gov doesn’t have the power to change those laws, but they can fix it locally by directing enforcement away from them. A decade later, it was legalized - imo proving that it was the right decision. This did not “diminish trust” in the gov. In fact, laws that the majority disagree with but stay on the books do far far more damage to the credibility of gov, in my opinion
  - anonymousiam 5mo ago
    If you want to effect change, then change the laws through the approved processes. Do not install a DA that ignores the laws. Doing so WILL diminish trust in government.
    - kennywinker 5mo ago
      Actually, DA discretion is a normal part of the functioning of government. There are a thousand laws on the books that get ignored every day [1]. And every election, candidates run on platforms promising to “crack down” on this or that crime (read: selectively increase enforcement). Gov enforcing laws that the majority of people do not want is a subversion of democracy that alienates people from the idea that gov can be responsive instead of oppressive. I don’t trust a gov that claims to represent the will of the people, but charges people for crimes most don’t see as criminal. So maybe you trust a gov less when you see laws you want enforced being set aside, but you’re in the minority here. How do i know? Because these DAs are getting elected (not installed) to do this. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/society-culture-and-history/social-issues/25-bizarre-laws-that-still-exist-today-unbelievable-statute/ar-AA20e8Nt https://www.msn.com/en-us/society-culture-and-history/social...
ahhhhnoooo 5mo ago
The purpose of a system is what it does. If that wasn't the purpose, the system would be changed.
- therealdrag0 5mo ago
  That’s as dumbs as the saying “there can’t be a 100$ bill on the ground because if there was it’d have been picked up.”
  - ahhhhnoooo 5mo ago
    It's not at all like that? Claiming that a system's purpose is something it consistently fails to do is absurd. Intentions don't matter, outcomes matter. This is a pretty basic systems theorist argument, to be honest...
    - therealdrag0 5mo ago
      A systems purpose depends on its creator. Creators regularly fail to produce intended results. It’s absurd to say an unintended result is the intended result
      - kennywinker 5mo ago
        How long is it ok to produce “unintended” results without changing anything, before you can say that’s now an expected part of the system? Because i think that’s the issue. It’s not that the US has a goal to criminalize poverty - the constitution doesn’t say anything about that - but since it’s been that way for so long it seems the system is unwilling to do what needs to be done to prevent that. It’s part of the expected behavior of the system.
      - ahhhhnoooo 5mo ago
        > It’s absurd to say an unintended result is the intended result I didn't say that. I said the unintended results are the purpose of a system, not the intent.

Zigurd 5mo ago

More specificity would help. Cops, cop culture, incompetent and purposely harmful training, and the appalling nature of our criminal "justice" system is what ruins lives. Some other parts of government might be just as bad, but in other ways for other reasons.

kennywinker 5mo ago
Criminal legal system is what i’ve been using.