>My life and the lives of those I know are affected by criminals or terrorists with absurdly low frequency.
This statement is shocking to me. I guess that you intend to say people are rarely the direct individual victim of petty street crime e.g. robbing, assault, etc?
At this moment there is a thread on the front page pertaining to the widespread problem of fraudulent listings on Amazon. This kind of fraud is affecting people near-universally. It affects my decision making process every time I shop.
Corporate criminals who cheat pollutant emissions regulations affect my life with literally every breath I take.
>If idiots didn’t hoard gas, nothing would really have gone wrong.
Maybe. But, I tend to lay the blame with the foreign criminals/adversaries who attacked us rather than a panicky handful of my fellow country people.
Not sure why some here are blaming the victims while giving the criminals a pass, and even thanking them as if unsolicited, live pentesting on critical infrastructure with a side order of extortion is a good thing.
Everywhere in the US maybe. I couldn't imagine normalizing this sort of behavior. Peace is definitely a huge blessing that many people take for granted.
> A lot more than a lack of violence is required in order for cooperation to be possible.
You predicated everything you said on the dangerousness of criminals. Now it seems like you're backpedalling.
Overall, your response shows a tendency towards hyperbole. How to manage crime is a complicated topic; you seem prone to catastrophising the worst, and this catastrophising leads to unrealistic conclusions like "let's pack them all away and make them a problem for some other country."
There are lots of things we would like to trust about people around us. Eg, we would like to trust that we can make mistakes in life and that there is a way to come back from those mistakes.
> But that won't become a concern, I suspect, until something unfortunate happens.
And then it will just be dismissed as an unfortunate side effect, shadowed by all the times the system worked and did good. After all, isn't it worthwhile to have a SWAT team bust down a few doors and maybe kill one innocent person if it helps catch hundreds of 'bad guys'?
> One possible solution to such problems is to prohibit paying ransom by law. Hackers can still be destructive, but at least they will have less incentive to participate in such activities.
One possible solution to rape is that women walk around with a bomb and if someone tries to rape them they kill themselves and the attacker. Rapists can still be destructive, but at least they will have less incentive to participate in such activities.
> It is so easy to dismiss people, but seriously -- if millions are complaining -- just accept there is probably something there.
Millions of people complaining about "Muslim terrorism" led to you being inappropriately placed on a no-fly list. Millions of people complaining about "the Jew" led to significant and severe atrocities (plural...).
Millions voted for Trump. Millions voted for Clinton. Millions voted for Bernie. And millions will vote for the next Stalin, Hitler, or Mao.
I don't disagree that there is a problem with policing but I can't conceive of a more evil world where millions of people are just listened to without question.
Why?
US people kill more US people than any other nation.
Seems more logical to keep yourselves under constant surveillance. Tight GPS tracking surely will help solving homicides.
>I don't understand, how can you blame the citizens for this, when they were ignorant, against their will, about this?
>When the institution that is performing these acts out-and-out lies about the impact and severity, how can random citizens be held accountable? That honestly makes no sense to me.
because the institutions and individuals doing it know that they will go unpunished once the truth gets discovered. Whenever stuff like this surfaces nobody gets punished and thus the citizens/society give clear approval to the actions that have already been perpetrated and to perpetrate it in the future as long as visibility of convenient "ignorance" is maintained.
> There's always gonna be those people in every single community.
Violent crime is also a grim reality we all have to live with, even if things are as a whole improving (statistically).
> I found the page hilarious, wonder if I've become desensitised.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe it can come in handy (e.g. easier to remain calm in a bad situation). I hope neither of us ever has to find out.
> Criminals by and large just want money, governments want power. That makes them a far more serious threat.
It's really, really easy to say this living in a place where the rule of law is reasonably robust. There are many parts of the world where this isn't the case.
>"so according to you, your neighbors committing murder gives YOU the right to do the same because what ??"
Problem is when said murderers assume self-righteous position and pontificate how bad everyone else is.
If they punish the perpetrators and fix the situation than sure, full respect. But just for the fuck of it: who for example got punished in UK for deporting and otherwise ruining lives of their own citizens (Windrush scandal)? The answer is most likely zilch. Still they teach everyone else.
And yes I agree that the scale of abuse is way smaller in the countries like the US. But they compensate by abusing citizens of the other countries by dropping democratic bombs.
Every time I see something like this I'm reminded how fortunate I am to live in Europe. "Known criminals" are people too, you know, you can't just take anything from them for free, they are not slaves, they deserve a fair compensation for the value they provide. Not to mention, being "tough" on them simply doesn't work the way you'd hope to. I really think that the system in your country would benefit tremendously from being a bit more humane.
The problem is the criminals can be anywhere in the world and can not be removed. When criminals are a constant, security is the only variable.
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