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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

It's kinda funny to me when I see the police drag protesters away from these industrial sights that they occupy. Because if we are to believe climate research then some of these industries are literally damaging the living space for all humans. In some cases the police should be hauling the exeutives away, not the protestors.

But the regular police can't be expected to do such deep investigations based on scientific data, so instead they end up protecting the interests of large corporations by hauling regular concerned citizens away. It's quite a bizarre state of events.

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Yeah, well life is not so simple. Everyone would like to see a green energy transition, but we still need energy to power our everyday life and we need it also at a reasonable price. Protesting without providing alternatives is futile and counter-productive.

>Protesting without providing alternatives is futile and counter-productive.

I hear what you're saying, but please don't say that. The alternative is to just accept unchecked capitalism destroying our environment. So no, protesting is not futile and counter-productive. It's absolutely necessary to ensure that people remember what we're trying to change, while we change it.

> Protesting without providing alternatives is futile and counter-productive.

Alternatives are suggested but they are largely ignored, postponed to the next legislation, criticized (with no scientific evidence) and finally hijacked by fake environmentalist who are just creating disinformation for their own interest/agenda

Last I checked a car industry expo is not against the law. Disrupting or legitimately threatening a lawful activity is. These people are properly in custody and serving their cause by generating less CO2 in the process.

Seems like a win-win.

I wonder if police acts in same way if, for example, traffic is blocked by protesting tractors or trucks.

Or slashing tires in the name of protecting the world from ICE?

Seems you're missing the point of the comment you're replying to. You are focused on it presently being legal when the question is, "Should it be legal?"

Yup I should have quoted.. Police generally haul away those who are breaking the law. I interpreted the comment as Police should be making a determination outside the law on who to arrest.

>> In some cases the police should be hauling the executives away, not the protestors.

That's their job. Police exist as armed enforcement of the status quo, and the status quo is that rich people make the rules and everybody else suffers the consequences.

It doesn't really make sense, because in a democrazy the rich people are not the majority. But it pretty much looks like it none the less^^

Then it seems it is not really a true democracy.

The police exists to protect capital, not regular folks like us.

Yep, most people forget this fact. Police is explicitly there to protect property.

Sometimes they do protect people, but that is typically an exception

I think sweeping statements like this might seem fair in the context of this article, but are actually harmful to democracy.

A fundamental right in liberal societies, for better or worse, is that of property rights. Yes, some people have a large amount of property so police will try to protect that large amount of property, but the police will also protect your property. More generally, police will protect you if you someone tries to physically attack you. We shouldn’t take this for granted since autocratic regimes care much less about these principles and will take away your property or physically harm you if they feel like it.

To say that the police will protect you is not accurate. The police are a preventative institution. They try to maintain order and reduce the incidence of crimes and act as a deterrent for those who would otherwise commit a crime. But they aren't a condom around violence. If somebody wants to hurt you, they can, and you're mostly on your own. They will only be brought in to investigate the case later, and maybe catch the perpetrator. It is kind of funny how we Europeans are brought up with this illusion of safety, believing that the police are some kind of superhero characters that will spring to action the second before we get knifed or shot.

In the US there are tens of thousands of violent criminals in prison. The police were integral to many of those investigations or arrests.

Please look at the proportion of Americans in prison compared to the rest of the world, then realize that the rest of the world manages to maintain law and order without holding 25% of the entire world's prison population

Stupid comparison. To dramatically reduce our prison population would mean releasing tens of thousands of very violent black men into poor black communities. Europe has tons of low level violence and intimidation that they punish with EXTREMELY short sentences. They would be much better off with a lot larger number of people in prison.

> how we Europeans are brought up with this illusion of safety

That's not exclusive to Europeans. But also - many Europeans aren't particularly fond of this delusion.

The illusion of safety prevents people getting armed to their teeth and as such participate to their safety.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY

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