deathgrips

If this statement didn't have racist intent, how would you know?

It doesn't have a compilers construction class. Analysis of Algorithms is an elective class. It's not a real computer science degree.

American police departments have no duty to protect you. They are law enforcement officers who choose at their own discretion to arrive at your home seven minutes after you dial 911.

I have a gun and my right to defend myself is a practical, factual statement. American police have no duty to protect you and are free from legal punishment if they choose to idly wait while you are assaulted and raped.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia...

It looks like the only way progressives can confront surveillance in 2020 is by attacking it whenever it becomes racist: "algorithmic racism". One would assume that they wouldn't object to the same technology which oppressed in a racially equitable manner.

>Homelessness is a complex problem which I believe namely stems from psychological and substance abuse disorders

I think this is about as useful as saying "homelessness is caused by loitering". We're confusing cause and effect. Try living on the streets for a few years where people treat you worse than shit without developing some mental illness or abusing drugs to deal with the stress and loneliness. If you think that the cause is mental illness and drugs and throwing money at it mostly does nothing, why do you think San Francisco has by a long shot the highest rate of homelessness in America?

Do you mind if I put up a barricade around your house so cops can't come near us? :)

>Should people really be entitled to live in an expensive city that they cannot afford? Cities like Manhattan or SF have sort of taken a stance on that and it favors the prosperous.

I find it eerie that you're excluding from the equation the tens of thousands of homeless people in those cities. The right question is "to what lengths should we go to give people the ability to live with a roof over their heads?" The bay area has answered with "very little", where most people are barely offering human empathy to the homeless.

Don't you think qualified immunity is a bit much? Take the pensions and subtract the money that would have been awarded in lawsuits and it probably evens out to $0.

With regular assholes you have the right to self-defense. With the police you don't.

>The protests happening now

Do you think the police will stop their violence? When is the last time that people got politicians to do something they didn't want to do already?

It's because HN is basically a subreddit.

>There are advantages to the efficiency of authoritarian power, but how do they handle peaceful transition of power?

Europe had hereditary transitions of power, which were about as peaceful as any other form of transition of power. In Rome you would choose your successor and he would be the next emperor.

> I probably could not be persuaded that limits on speech and government censorship are good long-term for the health of a society that I'd want to actually live in. I think it's a good thing for governments to ultimately be accountable to their people.

Just because it's supposed to work that way doesn't mean it actually works that way. Do you think Americans are using free speech well? Do you feel like the government is accountable to you? In America you have free speech but it's not practically useful for anything. Have a go at trying to stop some government abuse of power.

You're not considering the real and terrifying strengths that dictatorship has over democracy. In true democracies the politicians never undertake a plan that lasts longer than one election term because they have no incentive to do so. In China they feel free to undertake 20 year plans with large upfront investments because the party does not care about winning an election every 2-4 years. Why do you automatically assume that elections provide a reality check? Would you say that the Democrats and Republicans in the USA are tightly coupled to reality given their frequent elections? On the contrary I believe that elections merely tie legislative actions towards what voters perceive as electable. It doesn't matter what the PATRIOT act does as long as a political ad can sell the idea of "safety" to you. Politics in democracies have devolved to little more than entertainment.

On the other hand, China has achieved something very close to a technocracy where rules are based on expert opinion. The economy is controlled by economists, health policy is controlled by epidemiologists, and media censorship is controlled by political and social scientists. You are more likely to advance based on competence in Chinese politics than you are in the USA, where elections are just a high school popularity contest. The Chinese government has plenty of terrifyingly competent bureaucrats.

Communists don't think that political dialogue exists as a genuine process between rational actors. They think that people's political beliefs are a product of their environment and class. This is why they don't like free speech and don't like debates. They think that schools are only capable of indoctrination. Therefore they seek to turn this indoctrination in favor of the workers rather than the bourgeoisie.

Edit: if you disagree, please explain why. Marx believed that history moved according to dialectical materialism where almost all individuals are little more than atoms in a moving body.

Please go outside and talk to all the homeless people. It doesn't matter to the rest of us how high the GDP is if it's not evenly distributed.

Do you really think voters are in charge?

Clearly the solution is to make it more expensive because it's ok to buy from that factory if you're rich :)

If you're avoiding war and you don't have the ability to win war, you're not peaceful or virtuous, you're just weak.

How will you help other people if the economy breaks down?

I think you're missing a lot. It might seem repetitive because in almost all the stories Jocko is practicing almost all the principles at the same time, but in different chapters he definitely teaches different lessons.

Rule number 1 is don't tell people that you prep. Rule number 2 is don't tell people that you prep.

Everyone should just get along and not produce weapons :)

National Institute of Health?

You mean the stuxnet attack?

The market is enforcing DRM at the operating system level. Look it up in the documentation, search "DRM".

But what about all the nuclear weapons that were disabled because we asked nicely?

I agree.

It's exactly this line of thinking that will tell people the problem is solved once those four policemen are convicted. If a gang is terrorizing people, does the problem go away when you put a few members in jail?

Get out in the streets until the problem is solved. Your representatives distract you from how much power you have as an individual.