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Comment by ToucanLoucan | Hacker News Reader

The roots of police departments are the paid security forces of business owners, and their values as organizations reflect this. Business owners worked with local governments to create police departments to socialize some of the cost of securing their private property; their rented homes, their warehouses, their stores. And they reflect this to this day.

Individual property crime doesn't mean shit. A criminal can sell your Macbook if they like, but if they steal from Apple itself? Oh man there will be hell to pay.

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A common good like security should be socialized because the alternative is multiple independent groups enforcing property rights, and when they start to conflict, you get a civil war won by the person who spent the most on security.

The idea that police are inherently corrupt because they developed from paid security forces ignores that the very process of development is what enshrined the rule of law over power.

I don't disagree that security should be a socialized good, it's a good idea. That doesn't change the fact that police in the United States and elsewhere were formed in the basis of law not to protect people but to protect property.

Even today courts have ruled that police are under no obligation to protect civilians from direct, inevitable harm. They are not there to protect you, they are there to protect "the peace" which can be fucking anything.

> police in the United States and elsewhere were formed in the basis of law not to protect people but to protect property.

Be as that may (and as shitty as that is), this thread is about police forces utterly failing to protect property (or even attempt to).

Well right, my point is the damaged party is in the wrong class. That's why it's not being resolved.

The mass of unpunished retail crimes that has afflicted US cities these last several years rather undermines your narrative.

> Even today courts have ruled that police are under no obligation to protect civilians

Yeah, LAPD's "protect and serve" was dreamed up by the City's marketing arm in the 1950s.

And those rulings have come because PDs have stood up and said "We have no obligation to prevent crime or protect people" and the courts have said, "Yup, you're right."

> the fact that police in the United States and elsewhere were formed in the basis of law not to protect people but to protect property.

I've never heard this. Reference, please?

https://nleomf.org/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-p...

There was always enforcement of the law. Banditry, murder, etc., had to be dealt with. And sheriffs predated this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_of_Nottingham_(positio...

The Code of Hammurabi:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi

Wouldn't that be useless without a mechanism of enforcement?

The Code of Hammurabi has more in it about protecting property than people, so...

Also, you've conflated 'enforcement of the law' with 'the law protects property more than people'. Why?

For most of history the people with the power to create and enforce laws were also the people with the most property. This isn't some big mystery.

And yet it did include protecting people. That old "eye for an eye", for example.

You seem to have some trouble keeping track of goalposts; even when people are pointing right at them.

They are to protect order. So you, as a victim of a crime, are only a concern to them to the degree you make your harm public enough to disrupt order. Then they might attempt to solve a crime or make an impression they are doing something to prevent similar ones, but dissuading you from complaining too publicly about it (both by taking your report and showing it was useless) works just as well.

Let's also not forget that cops also pointedly refuse to their do their job when their feelings are hurt when people complain that they don't clean up the corruption and abuse in their ranks.

See: Chelsea Boudin and the SFPD. See DeBlasio and the NYPD.

> A criminal can sell your Macbook if they like, but if they steal from Apple itself? Oh man there will be hell to pay.

Where do you get the idea that there will be "hell to pay" if you steal from Apple itself? People regularly run out of Apple stores with tens of thousands of dollars worth of merchandise and never get caught.

There is an amount of theft that apple is OK with because preventing it would hurt sales and occasional theift of product they can easily brick is certainly under that limit, plus there is likelyreporting biases, as it's likely you've seen videos of it happening but when there are arrests or recoverys you havn't seen those reports.

This is a regressive and defeatist attitude. We actually don't have to tolerate this in a society- those engaging in it should be punished and forcibly removed if they aren't able to change.

Evidence has shown that punitive penalties for crime do not affect crime rates.

Studies have shown that reality conforms to my prejudices.

Recent events show that not prosecuting crimes leads to crime waves.

"those engaging in it should be punished" isn't a call for harsher penalties, it's a call for consistent penalties, which is a good idea.

You misunderstand, the optimal amount of "loss" both internal and external, from Apple's perspective, is greater then zero. They know they could do straight forward things to reduce it, like put everything in the back room so you have to ask for it, or hire security guards to physically prevent theft.

But they decided that would be worse for business to prevent all theft then to simply have a few people steal stuff.

It being easy for people to grab thousands of dollars worth of stuff and run out of the store is a choice they made intentionally.

That's the relative optimal loss given the alternatives presented.

The absolute optimum is zero.

>It being easy for people to grab thousands of dollars worth of stuff and run out of the store is a choice they made intentionally.

Risking rape or death when I leave my house is a choice I make intentionally. That doesn't mean that murder is optimal or should be tolerated.

There are straight forward ways crime could be reduced if the public chooses.

The optimum is never zero. Not because we like murder and rape as a society, but because we don't know how to make it zero and broad attempts to bring it closer to zero significantly limit our freedoms and worsen our society. Of course it sounds horrible if you're the victim of a rape (and I guess it would be terrible as a murder victim if you weren't, well, dead) that we accept a baseline level of crime as optimal but the fact is that the best way to get rid of rape is to prevent people from having sex. This is an extremely unpopular proposition and it is actually unlikely to be effective anyways, because wanting to have sex is far more desirable than wanting to rape people, and making crimes illegal doesn't actually prevent them from happening.

There are a number of less extreme suggestions that you actually probably hold (more policing, stronger sentencing, etc.) that people actually do support and are not obviously dead in the water but they have the same tradeoffs on a smaller scale. Do we accept, as a society, less crime that also makes it more likely that you will be mistakenly identified as a criminal? Should we funnel more money towards crime prevention instead of, say, healthcare? Going "we cannot tolerate any crime" sounds great but the optimal amount of crime will always be nonzero.

You are torturing the word optimal so I think it is meaningless to discuss that feature.

I also reject your view that everything is social tradeoffs. I think it is a extremely narrow perspective that completely ignores culture, norms, and behavior.

That’s literally what it means in this context. Apple puts up with some amount of crime because doing so is optimal for them. Driving crime to zero would cost them more money than it would save.

It is the best option of those available to apple.

That doesnt mean it is the best solution theoretically possible.

If I threatened you with the choice between death and paying me money you would probably choose the money. However, surely you think it would be better not to be threatened at all.

I think it is extremely closeminded to think that there is nothing that nothing else could be changed outside of apples control.

It is absurd to think that this is the optimal configuration of society and culture.

What do you have in mind?

I think there are lots of preferable situations. The simplest and best is probably if theft was simply viewed as a personal moral failing and looked down on. This is reinforced by shaming and is how it works in high trust societies.

Other options include making sure people have enough success that they have something material to lose from getting caught stealing.

Despite agreeing with you in broad strokes I still don't see this being completely feasible. We should obviously strive for a society where people don't need to steal and don't feel compelled to steal either. That said, even in a much better situation there will still be someone who does it. At some point you really do have to go "investing more resources into this is not productive for society".

Like I said, it depends on the assumptions, but I agree that for most assumptions, there will be some tradeoff and non-zero level of theft occuring.

My main rejection is the idea that the current state is the best possible situation given all possible permutations.

> The absolute optimum is zero.

Define optimum. It would be trivially easy for Apple to make theft at their stores absolutely zero.

How is that optimum though? The same measures that make theft zero would also drive away pretty much all legitimate business. Is that optimum for you?

The optimum is the most desirable situation or outcome. It depends on the factors you can change, and those you assume are constant.

Surely you agree it would be best if Apple could have no theft, and no extra costs?

There are factors within apples control and factors outside apples control. Apple has limits to what it can do, but that doesnt mean that no better solutions exist outside the control of apple.

There is a best solution of those you can choose (relative), and also a best solution out of all those that are possible (absolute)

> Surely you agree it would be best if Apple could have no theft, and no extra costs?

I'd also like a unicorn and absolute eternal world peace, if we're wishing for unrealistic things.

It is hardly unrealistic. You see cities, states, and countries where this type of thing simply doesnt happen, and others where it is a repeat problem.

It isnt like blatant and normalized property theft is an unchangeable universal constant.

Even in my local area, I can huge differences between areas a dozen miles apart, and have seen huge changes over time.

This is why I think it is silly to think nothing could be done differently, and whatever is being done is the best possible solution in every way.

This is basically saying every choice is perfect, and there is no room for improvement. This is defeatist and frankly wrong.

The optimum risk level is never zero. There comes a point where the cost of averting the risk is greater than the cost of the risk.

Consider my standard example of this: electric power. We insist nuclear plants be insanely safe, making them uneconomic, making us use far more dangerous sources of power instead.

The word optimum only makes sense in context of limitations and assumptions, which are subject to change.

For the sake of argument, lets assume nuclear power is the safest option available given current technology.

That doesnt mean that no improvement is possible and we should reject alternative design that are even cheaper and safer poses no benefit.

Just because something is the best choice available to apple doesn't mean it is the best choice available to society.

I'm not saying the situation is inherently static. Rather, it's the most extreme case I'm aware of where the effort to reduce risk actually increases it.

Doesn't make it false. Reality doesn't change just because you are sad about it.

Where did you get this idea about the origins of police? It doesn’t agree with the history on Wikipedia, or my understanding of their origin (having more to do with rulers maintaining order). Corporations, and what you call ‘businesses’ are a very modern concept, long predated by rulers, courts, and police.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police

OP’s description of police sounds very similar to the history of the Pinkerton organization in the U.S.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)

Fast forward to today and it’s very common for private security to be composed of ex-cops and former military, creating a very fluid dynamic of all policing as a paramilitary organization in support of capitalism.

From your link

>The first example of a statutory police force in the world was probably the High Constables of Edinburgh, formed in 1611 to police the streets of Edinburgh, then part of the Kingdom of Scotland. The constables, of whom half were merchants and half were craftsmen, were charged with enforcing 16 regulations relating to curfews, weapons, and theft.

That sounds a lot like businesses working with government to secure their property.

Those 'statutory police' were predated by others by thousands of years, and it seems more like the king enlisted business owners to enforce the king's laws in the city than 'paid security forces of business owners'.

Conversely, one of the first recognisably modern police force was Robert Peel's Metropolitan Police, which was explicitly not paramilitary and had (still does) a mandate to police by consent according to what are now called the Peelian Principles which quickly spread all round the country.

This replaced, rather then grew out of, a mishmash of informal local watchmen and constables.

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