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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

> 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...

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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.

Extremely well said point. I think a lot of people in our profession have come from more privileged backgrounds. This causes them to not really encounter the kinds of people that you are talking about at least not in a way that they know the people are psychopathic. I realize now that I was probably quite damaged by having a childhood like I did. I suspect that I have a warped view of the world in many ways but one thing I do know is the capacity for evil in some people that will come out as soon as they get the opportunity and a little bit of power.

The privilege surrounding discussions of defunding police in western social media and forums is incredibly overwhelming. We won the lottery in being born in (relatively) extremely stable societies, and have no idea what it is like to live in a society with a far weaker police force like Mexico or Somalia. We are insulated from the harsher realities of the brutality of human nature. Mexico has huge swaths of territory in which police are powerless and cartels rule. There is not a single place on Earth that I am aware of where a lack of police force is not filled by an often times more violent group. What is to stop that power vacuum from being filled?

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)

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

enormous numbers of people in the US are living literally a paycheck or a medical emergency away from bankruptcy and homelessness

I was implying that some people always want more, regardless of how much they already have.

But sure, I agree that those desperate people can also be dangerous.

Not sure whom to attribute this quote to, but "Most of the world's problems are caused by two types of people: those who don't have enough, and those who never have enough."

Would this happen IF we had free guns for the populace who want them who pass background/mental evals (make owning a gun a right for all).

Then we democratize gun ownership. Next we create UBI so nobody has to steal to put food on the table, and guarantee jobs for anyone who wants one, and healthcare for all.

you end the poverty and almost-poverty and you stop a lot of the reasons behind WHY people loot when there's an opportunity to do so.

What happens when a burglar is shot by a home owner and there is a dispute on whether or not it was justified? Almost every single act of self defense would be heavily disputed. You would have "vigilantes" dispensing what they see as justice by trying to apprehend the home owner, who would then again be forced to defend themselves. You would need a higher entity of authority to arbitrate these disputes, possibly with lethal force, which would essentially be just another form of police.

I live in a city with a vandalism problem. People throw benches into the river, break glass panes, and perform other similar feats just for the fun of it. Oh, and the ubiquitous designer drugs ads on every damn wall.

Well, it _was_ a problem until the government put cameras on every street corner and the police started tracking down and punishing every one of the vandals.

How would gun ownership help with this? I look out of a window at 2 AM and see a couple of guys destroying a bus stop. Should I grab my gun and start shooting at them?

The guns are more of a equalization of power. The right loves guns, but would they if they knew every liberal had twice as many guns as they probably have?

that was my point w/ guns...

Day 2 may have been a lot better as store owners started to take matters into their own hands. We only saw the first day, which many people were unprepared for. A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun. Not that this is really any better, I'm just trying to say that we can't really reach any conclusions from one day of this experiment

Pretty sure gangs would take over. Power abhors a vacuum.

Yeah, but police units and private security firms are a form of "gang", just with different pay masters and accountability.

Notably accountability to the people (in principle if imperfect in practice), which is an important distinction indeed.

Oh the greeks! Great application of the quote.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)

This. It would quickly devolve into a power struggle of who could amass the most strength. You only have to sample the mob era to see what would happen, where shop owners for example were paying for protection. In the absense of any form of control there will always be people that will take advantage and sway others to their cause.

> A lot less people would be willing to loot if they had a friend who died after getting shot by a store owner with a shotgun.

Criminals are likely to organize in order to increase their chances of success and survival. Individuals will be quickly overwhelmed if they don't form their own organized defense forces. There's always a lot of extremely violent people protecting the "normal" ones.

Yes people could organize their own protective forces. The shopkeepers could even pool their money and require that you pay in to be protected. We could call this a police force.....

Vigilantism is better than a police apparatus? I don’t understand these takes.

I didn't say it was better overall, I was just responding to "I expect day 2 would have been a lot worse." from the OP

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