What is funny is police in common law nations tend to be modeled on the British police. Who were designed to be unarmed paramilitary but civilians authority with clear identification (badge number) for criminal investigation as opposed to the French model designed for political repression

Maybe getting back to the original vision of a organization designed around collective safety is a good idea

The problem with that model is that unarmed police only works in a country where firearms are effectively banned. All other European nations arm their beat cops.

Yeah but if you invest more heavily in deescalation and social workers you can see results. Also NZ cops are armed but they keep guns in the trunk so their first instinct isn’t to reach for them. You can have armed police without hyper paramilitary police

In a country where only 300,000 people are legally allowed to own guns, I'm sure that works.

It’s more about the mindset. Do US cops really need MRAPs and should their first reaction always be to use maximum force. Signs point to no www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

The mindset is driven by the fact that virtually any criminal one might encounter *likely* has a firearm, because our gun laws are so insanely lax that it is ludicrously easy to acquire semiautomatic weapons capable of penetrating vests. MRAPs are absurd; police having rifles in their cars is not.

Fair point although in my experience cops pull guns at the first instinct seems like major restrictions in guns would solve a lot of problems but alas

It is hard for someone in a country with sane gun laws to understand how insane ours are. I live in a rural county in Nevada and it is not at all uncommon to see people open-carrying semiautomatic pistols.

Grew up in Texas 😑 there is a lot of reasons I left proliferation of open carry was one. My brother lives in Montana and he has every reason to have heavy pistols available Bears are no joke

Because that's perfectly legal here!

Plus center-fire semiautomatic rifles are banned, which makes eminent sense. You have to reckon with the fact that there are no such laws in the U.S. and it is easier to buy an AR-15 in most places than it is marijuana.

So back to thief takers hue and cry and private for profit prisons eh?

Before the mid-19th c., literally 70% of the US population (enslaved, servants, wives, sailors, soldiers, and children) was subject to lawful private physical chastisement. But sure, hey, get rid of the cops!

Strong correlation between saying that and being the first one getting all of their shit robbed with no police

what do they think happened back then lol back, like any time in history.

Some local person had a guy with a club who was willing to use it

A lot of this is downstream of having a Unified Theory of Everything (Marxism) and retconning the past to fit. All bad stuff today must be downstream of a 19th-century industrial mode of production, and certainly can’t have any other explanans. I have a Master of Divinity, I recognize the skill set.

You know mate that’s a pretty good point. I read a lot for pleasure about life and society Middle Ages to enlightenment what existed before industrialization seems to escape people and they twist everything to fit this world view

i am not a Marxist but this retvrn to pre modernity stuff is like the least marxist worldview imaginable?

like it is pretty much incompatible with historical materialism as a chronological process - the foundational view which you need to hold to be a Marxist?

as far as I know!!!

I’m not a Marxist either, and I’m only on the first book of Capital — so I’m not sure I can give a good answer. But I *have* been surprised to find Marx a little Romantic about pre-industrialized barter. I could see someone taking that strain in his thinking and running with it.

Regardless, I’m pretty confident a Marxist would consider the London Metropolitan Police and Scotland Yard as paramilitary enforcers of capitalist exploitation, keeping the workers in their place. Modern Western policing is downstream of those institutions, so there ya go.

Pfft, all this talk about enforcers... reminds me of the Mabia days. Still, less paperwork than chasing mice on the blockchain.

I have found that modern Marxists are about as divorced from what Marx actually wrote, as modern capitalists are to what Adam Smith wrote.

I think they dislike pre-19th century societies too as a general rule. No historical society is legitimate. Instead, the tendency I've seen is to harken back to an imagined golden age of prehistory with none of modernity's problems (patriarchy, economic inequality, etc).

Not even the state, just like your neighbours or local rich people

forget laws too

hey why does common law exist again