It's clear that many commenters here are operating from completely different factual bases, in terms of who did what, and in what order. Fog of war seems to be in effect.
How extensive is the violence of the protests? I saw some images shared of cars that were burned, maybe some buildings damaged. But also lots of images from other protests from previous years. Are the images of the same 3 cars and storefronts or many? Trump says the riots are out of control, Newsom says the protests are largely peaceful.
A basic claude search suggests the overall level of violence is moderate, and smaller than many recent protests [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/ef220c3d-c6d9-4b4b-bb3f-2...)
How much of a strain do undocumented immigrants place on the US? You can answer this question from a financial and criminal point of view. From the point of view of crime, Trump and ICE are parading every violent undocumented immigrant they can, but that is not statistics. Do undocumented immigrants account for a significant portion of violent crime in the country?
Studies overwhelmingly show that undocumented immigrants are significantly less violent than the general population [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/a92623b8-5c02-4c3a-84ae-f...)
From a financial point of view, what resources are undocumented immigrants straining, and is it to a significant degree?
The economic picture is much more nuanced. On the cost side, a criticized study (FAIR) reported the cost at about $182bn annually (this is likely an over-estimate). For comparison, undocumented immigrants pay about $100bn in taxes, boost the GDP, and create jobs. Mass deportation is estimated to cost $315Bn.
Studies show that the impact on wages is small.
The biggest cost factor ($78bn but estimates vary) seems to be K-12 education, and that is mostly born by states. [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/29f10fcf-c8a7-4655-979f-b...).
https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/a-look-back-on-2021-ri...
As recently as last year a Waymo stopped at a stop sign and then accelerated directly towards me in a crosswalk.
These vehicles aren't ready and have already injured people. Lighting them on fire seems a valid defense strategy since the government's unwilling to intervene to protect its citizens.
Any mode of transportation will cause injuries, especially since other humans are on the road. So just saying "Waymos have already injured people" is kind of a meaningless comment. I do think the type of accidents matter as much as the number of incidents. For example, the video that went viral recently of a self-driving Tesla randomly making a dramatic left turn into a tree on a rural road (possibly because it misinterpreted a shadow in the road) is not a mistake a human would have made.
This is speculative. Waymos hit people too.
I agree that pedestrian infrastructure in the USA is sorely lacking. The proven solution that worked in other countries is to take measures to reduce the number of cars on the road, not try to replace every driver with a computer that can only be trained by putting stupider computers on the road first to experiment on the population.
Public transit. A subway moves literally millions more people than car infrastructure can with significantly fewer injuries - basically 0 if the platforms are built with doors or gates. Busses and cable cars, driven by professional drivers, have far lower incidence per capita of injury as well.
I chased up the old email. First, apologies, it was a Cruise driverless car, not Waymo.
I informed them of the incident, and here was their response, about 24 hours after my email to them:
> Copy of CUSTOMER SUCCESS (2)
> Hi Caleb,
> I'm sorry to hear you experienced this. At Cruise we take safety very seriously and this is not the experience we’d like you to have. This issue is being escalated to the appropriate team to be looked into further. Your input is greatly appreciated as we grow our ride-hail service, We appreciate your assistance.
> Best Regards,
> Jamilla
> Cruise Support
I never heard back from them again. The incident was on sep 4, 2023, at just about exactly 4pm, in San Francisco around potrero hill, perhaps Mariposa street. The vehicle was named "Bruschetta," I believe I saw that on the back or something.
- "Waymo drove through a red light (while being driven by a human)"
- "Waymo involved in a hit and run (it recorded a hit and run by a human using it's cameras)"
- "Waymo was involved in a multi-car accident (while it was stopped with other stopped cars)".
Maybe Cruise is worse, maybe it's unlucky. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-ge...
I understand that what I'm basically saying is that, if Cruise, Waymo, etc, want to develop self driving cars, they need to basically figure out a way to do so without testing in live environments against a non-consenting population. I understand that for you, you're down, and it's frustrating to hear that someone who might be your neighbor not wanting that means you don't get self driving cars.
I don't have a solution for this annoying aspect of democracy, other than to try to convince you that I'm not crazy for not wanting self driving cars at all - really, truly, it's just not the path we need to go down, we should be getting rid of cars almost entirely in cities and switching to public transit, with private vehicles driven entirely by professional drivers.
From the first Claude link:
> Damage remains far below 2020 George Floyd protest levels
Ugh. Is this the bar now?
Aside from quantifications, I see the disagreement largely on the qualitative/philosophical/ideological (tribal) side. An inverse of the Jan 6th insurrection (which also caused much less damage than the George Floyd riots, and much less than now in LA, so was it ok in retrospect?). But the damage was not in property, but that the state and its laws itself was attacked. The sides are just now switched again between left/right: the former shout rule of law, the latter want resistance/insurrection.
I think the question is - why is the national guard and the military being sent to CA without the governor's consent?
Part of the justification for this from the administration is that the riots are out of control, are posing an immediate risk of violence and property damage. Based on what I've found of the actual violence and damage being done, this justification does not hold up, as the violence and property damage are lower than previous protests in which there didn't seem to be a need for interference.
The rule of law is a different argument. What is the rule of law that is being undermined? I think here too you can have an argument about the operations that ICE is conducting, are they lawful - given that they are being conducted in sanctuary cities? Who has jurisdiction in this case? Is the administration lawful in sending in the national guard without the consent of the governor? What about the military? Newsom is now suing Trump over deploying the marines and the national guard despite his wishes, so there is a claim that such actions were unlawful.
Based on my brief research into this, ICE was operating in an unconstitutional way and making many procedural violations. City Sancutary status is lawful and has been upheld in the court of law. Newsom's challenge of Trump's deployment of the National Guard also held up in court. [link](https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/99a64b2d-e3b6-4d37-956f-c...)
When you say that "the law is being attacked" in this case, what do you mean?
Some see a Mexican invasion as the protesters are carrying flags of Mexico. Not sure why they’d expect that to garner support.
Some see violence against police / military
Some see poor people being abused by people in power.
Some see violence against powerless people
Some see actors staging fake protests (see thread for proof that some people see this)
Some see political posturing
And let's not even mention the reason behind it all: ICE's torture center, and the multiple raids they carry in the city, to abduct legal immigrants.
What happened was that people took clips of events in specific cities at specific times and then tried to extrapolate that out. When, in reality, most protests had no violence. Meanwhile, police were shooting rubber bullets at people while the people were just standing there.
Even now, with these "riots", most of the clips I'm seeing are actually from BLM protests years ago. Does anybody know this? Is anybody fact-checking anything? Apparently not. But, for gullible authoritarians that's all it takes. Show them a picture of a car on fire and their mind will hop and skip out of their ear.
In many cases, “events” performed by people later (or concurrently, but to too little attention) unmasked as white supremacist provocateurs aiming to discredit the BLM protests and/or provoke violent racial conflict, not the actual BLM protestors.
As the media also ignores police brutality, reporters being shot at, and how outright illegal this whole deployment is. You can't have it both ways.