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Comment by colpabar | Hacker News Reader

I agree 100%. It was so disappointing to see all the damage done to private businesses during the summer of 2020. Why not go after government buildings? Isn't that who funds all the things that were being protested? How does destroying a target store help anything??

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I agree with you that no one should ever like seeing damage to a community. Two things come to mind in response to your comment:

1. it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property. i am not accusing you of conflating the two but i just feel it necessary to be explicit in these discussions because people often try to slyly discuss one as if it was the other.

2. I think a compelling argument in defense of the demonstrators in 2020, target isn't a part of the community. It pays minimum wage, makes it difficult for small business owned by the community to compete, and most importantly extracts the wealth and moves it away from the community. I am not saying there weren't better targets. I'm not saying we shouldn't (necessarily) go after government buildings if those are you grievances. I'm just saying that there is reasoning behind this even if its blunt.

(Also worth noting i read an interview with a restaurant owner near the target whos restaurant was burned down that effectivly said "yeah this really really sucks, but at the same time i understand the wider context." That's what happens when you're actually a member of the community and get caught up the fallout from these things.)

Many would argue that the destruction of their livelihood does much more long-lasting harm than suffering physical violence. Many a small business owner would rather catch a beating than see their business burnt to the ground.

Lol. Rather get beaten half to death (and pay for it because America!) than replace a building with insurance money?? Wrong.

Plus, it's traumatic for your family to watch you get beat down - more traumatic than watching you cry at a replaceable loss.

Many of the destroyed businesses weren't insured, they were POC owned small businesses that were part of the community and barely afloat. Many did not return.

If you think there are no long lasting health effects from that kind of emotional and financial stress, think again.

Even for those who were insured, having to file claims for this sort of destruction is a good way to make your premiums --and those of nearby businesses that may have been spared direct damage--skyrocket to unaffordability.

I tried pretty hard to specify this bit in my comment: violence towards people IS NOT damage to property. Hard thing for people to engage with earnestly though :( I think its because to them, damage to private property makes life to varying degrees more difficult for the owner of the property. I know from growing up in the middle class suburbs that it is difficult for many people to tell the difference between that difficulty and violence done directly or indirectly to you by a power structure.

Have you considered it's because you've grown up in a middle class suburb, isolated from all the depravity and violence that goes on in these inner city neighborhoods, that you can afford to daydream about "power structures" and dismiss these losses as mere property damage? Do you know how many of these businesses are owned by poor minority and/or immigrant families, who have taken out loans and spent every last penny they had to open up shop?

The enshrinement and protection of private property rights is one of the core principles that separate developed nations from third-world banana republics. If property is worth that little to you, perhaps you should start by offering up your own, and move to one of these places.

This is a pretty big overreaction to a statement no-one should have any issue with accepting. It's manifestly obvious that property damage is not the same as violence against humans. It's something which is reflected in our laws. You can believe that property damage is bad and still accept this as clearly true.

Yes, they're clearly not the same thing, which is why we have different words for them. I would however disagree that any violence is worse than all property damage, which is what seems to be implied. Would you rather be slapped in the face or have your house burnt down?

This is a wild overreach. It seems to presume that because I grew up there that I was middle class. I am now but believe me I was not always. I still do now own where I live and it’ll take me to the end of my thirties before I can, reasonably.

If you consider analysis of power structures “daydreaming” I’m not sure what to say. There is a manifest difference between two random people slapping each other in an argument and a cop slapping a civilian.

Every single interaction which has ever occurred between humans has a power dynamic. It’s the furthest thing from “academic” “philosophical” or “theoretical.”

When, on the flip side, the violence is administered by the State, this comes close to the argument of In Defense of Flogging. Like, "just give me a spanking and get it over with".

(Though, that book is also about the cruelty and dysfunction of the "justice" system.)

This also shows up in personal relationships. If you had the choice between transitory physical abuse, and permanent wage garnishment, which would you choose? Only one of these is considered legitimate, and yet if people could freely choose I think they'd accept beatings a lot of the time.

In a way, this is what everyone who chooses a physically dangerous or even painful job is doing: "Pain ends. Money, and thus private property, I get to keep."

The question is how much permanent injury you suffer.

I mentioned target because it was a very visible event; I think a lot of people saw that one picture of the self checkout machine being smashed with a hammer. What people don't seem to know or remember is that a lot of small, local businesses were also damaged. Even black owned ones!

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/12/901859883/riots-that-followed...

It's just really hard to reconcile all this damage/looting with the notion that all of it was in protest. To me it seems like a lot of people just wanted some free stuff.

If you destroy someone's livelihood and make them and theirs go hungry, are you not committing violence against them? If you destroy cars people need to reach work and earn their keep, are you not doing violence against them? If you burn down a church, are you not stripping someone else of their civil rights?

Many leftists will argue that sanctions are inherently violent and murderous because they often push people on the precipice over the edge and kill them from malnutrition or lack of medical access. Yet when rioters do essentially the same, destroy property in already precarious communities, this argument is made that it's not violence, it is a noble political demonstration. I for one do not buy it and find it hard to believe that your anecdotal business owner is representative of the wider economic and individual impact riots have.

The truth of the matter is that riots are a symptom. There is nothing noble about a riot and they are inherently violent, even if only property is destroyed. In the same way that those capital rioters deserve prison, so too do other rioters. That does not mean the conditions that caused the riots are just or proper but neither are the rioters righteous.

Leftists will also correctly say that when the state murders you extrajudicially there is only one way to respond. What you're saying is that unless you can somehow guarantee that property wont be damaged you can never attack those who are doing violence to you. Unfortunately, the position that many poor people are in doesn't afford them the luxury of being concerned with other peoples private property and, personally, i am of the mind that they shouldn't have to be.

>What you're saying is that unless you can somehow guarantee that property wont be damaged you can never attack those who are doing violence to you.

Nonsense. If rioters burned down a police station and the fire spread to some neighboring buildings it would be unfortunate (and would probably hurt public opinion about the riot to some extent). But it's not even remotely comparable to a riot that doesn't even try to target the sources of its grievances and directly and intentionally harms civilians instead

On the other hand, one can argue that the voters are ultimately the source of the policies that result in the grievances in the first place. When it comes to systemic societal issues, it is not very clear where one can draw the line on fault.

Well, many rioters did target police stations. The issue is that any sufficiently large riot is necessarily disorganized, composed of different people with different motivations. For that reason, I think private property being targeted by rioters is actually not too different from your example of fire spreading to buildings. It seems an impossible standard for any riot / rebellion on a large scale to meet.

If that is a natural element just like fire spreading, then it is also natural to put down riots just as if they were fires. When a fire burns down a building you stop it, so the same should go for riots.

So basically you made the case for "there are no just riots, they are all mindless violence". If they could behave then they could be just, but if you argue that they can't behave then they can't be just and should be stopped.

Note there are many examples of protests being violent in targeted ways that don't harm innocents, so I disagree with you here. There are just riots, but what we saw in USA wasn't that. Its just that when that happens it isn't called a riot, its just called a violent protest or something like that.

You're framing the issue as if the mob meant to attack a police station but accidentally started robbing Targets and grocery stores instead. That's ridiculous.

> Unfortunately, the position that many poor people are in doesn't afford them the luxury of being concerned with other peoples private property

There is a huge difference between being concerned about other's property, and intentional wanton destruction of other people's property.

Also, don't just concede to him that the characterization of the rioters as "poor" or "members of the community" is accepted. Nobody has done any kind of survey of who the rioters are, and from what little we do know, many of those arrested in the larger riots were out of state travelers.

He's painting the most optimistic possible scenario and it's still stomach turning. It's complete moral depravity through and through.

> What you're saying is that unless you can somehow guarantee that property wont be damaged you can never attack those who are doing violence to you.

No, I'm not saying that. My worldview is not poisoned blind by my moral views on rioting. I don't think people can only react one way because they clearly react many ways to injustice, societal change, etc, one of those ways being rioting. I will not argue that they should not do these things because it's the same as arguing that rain should not fall. I do believe that actions have consequences and, in a society of rule of law, rioters do not get a pass to burn down buildings and destroy cars for the sake of their cause. They deserve prison, in those cases, even if they don't always face justice. It's interesting that you feel they shouldn't have to face consequences but your worldview does not mesh with how greater society operates. Criminals that are caught go to prison.

This is an incredibly rosey take on what happened. One guy was okay with his restaurant burned down, probably because he had insurance.

Many of the businesses affected (thinking lake street in minneapolis and kenosha) were POC owned small businesses. Many were permanently closed because the owners lost everything and didn't have insurance to cover it.

> it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property

Tell that to the people who put blood, sweat and tears into getting where they are. You think the emotional, mental and financial pain didnt do any damage?

> target isn't a part of the community

What about the cub foods that was totally trashed? Empty shelves, aisles flooded with broken containers. The community didn't deserve that. Nobody benefitted from it. Nobody saw that and thought to themselves "Yeah, go protesters!" It took 8 months to reopen after all of the damage and unrest.

Absolutely fair argument. I don't live there so im not gonna comment to deeply here, but one thing i know to be true is that by and large the people who were participating in the demonstration were also members of the community. This doesn't necessarily justify harm done but it makes their view just as relevant as someone who is more successful than they are. (Though notably it wasn't just the poor demonstrating.)

Usually the term "demonstration" refers to something like a march, sit-in, or some other form of non-violent protest. We're not talking about that, we're talking about people destroying private property.

> by and large the people who were participating in the demonstration were also members of the community

Does that make it okay? Just because someone lives close to a business doesn't give them the right to destroy it. It seems that you would be ok with it happening to your business, but I bet 99% of small business owners would not.

The supposition that demonstration doesn’t include obstructing or destroying property is relatively new. When I say demonstration I mean it to include everything from drum circles in zucotti park to the 60s civil rights demonstrations which locked down cities and towns to the events which triggered the Bolshevik and Cultural revolutions and the de-colonization of India.

To think that change happens without damage to property or obstruction of daily life is historically inaccurate and myopic.

Mobs are hard to control. Negative elements tend to take over and the crowd often follows the flow.

Ofyen times thieves, corrupt politicians, bad businesses, etc., are part of a community. A community includes all. Good and bad. Saying “but they were part of the community does not speak at all to their intentions.

Even in families, when someone is irrationally upset they may do things they regret later on. Even the self can do irrationally negative things to itself.

We should still be able to revisit events and determine what was bad and could be prevented and how we can provide tools for people to prevent a recurrence. Also highlight the good that might have come out.

A lot of people depend on corporations for employment and the services they provide. So if a large store gets burned down and doesn't reopen that will likely just lead to decay and harm the community, especially if it's in a low-income area where sources of fresh food are already generally rare.

>Also worth noting i read an interview with a restaurant owner near the target whos restaurant was burned down that effectivly said "yeah this really really sucks, but at the same time i understand the wider context." That's what happens when you're actually a member of the community and get caught up the fallout from these things

No, what this means is that this owner is privileged enough that this isn't life ruining to them. A lot of small business owners in poor areas have partial coverage at best and will never recover, having their store burned down is having their livelihood burned down.

> it is important to differentiate between violence done towards individuals and damage caused to private property.

It’s important to note that when your property is being looted, you can’t actually know for sure whether the mob is going to turn violent. In this case, fleeing to safety and leaving your home or business burned to the ground may be the only legally safe response. (ie, it is usually not

To be clear, I would never sympathize with the political cause of those who would violently destroy the interests of my friends and neighbors. I also don’t believe that violence against people is acceptable simply because they can be considered separate from a community.

I don't think going after government buildings would have been justified either; those buildings are all of our buildings. We paid (and pay) for them, and they provide services to the community.

I am all for widespread recognition of the horrible state of American policing, including the fact that a lot of (but not all, and I do not think I am prepared to say "most" either) of the people who go into it are clearly bad people. I am also into significantly modifying or abolishing qualified immunity, a move which I think most Americans, of all political persuasions, would favor if they read some of the caselaw and came to understand how much police officers have gotten away with under current law.

In addition to having an obvious direct negative impact on our economy and the victims of such riots, lawless, destructive riots only damage both of those causes.

I just want to put a pitch in here that I am related to several LEOs, and I can assure you that the number of "bad people," are a tiny minority. And I am also STRONGLY opposed to this idea that it's OK to attack government buildings, and I don't think I'm alone. If 2020 riots happen again, I think you can expect all out war.

> How does destroying a target store help anything?

If only someone had just won a prize for a fifteen page theory of how riots can be justified.

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