Even if you added deaths by police and deaths by terrorists together, it would probably still not be in the top 50 leading causes of death (I'm still trying to find data with all causes of deaths in the US).
True, but people fear terrorism because it's something they can't control. Police are also something people can't control, so comparing police deaths to terrorism deaths is a great comparison.
I think a lot of people think they can control police deaths. I think a lot of people see a young man killed by the police and think "that would never be me; I'd just do what they ask" or "my son would be polite and not argue so he wouldn't find himself in that situation." I think that is the reason police brutality issues are so hard to solve.
That's a good point; I can see and understand people rationalizing like that. It's unfortunate that many will never experience the reality of being a minority in police situations.
Ah, the radical majority of Americans can't control their likelihood of getting diabetes? That's obviously false, easily proven by countless other nations that don't have the same problems the US does with diabetes (or by going back in time a few decades, when Americans also did not).
Let's you and I both smoke six packs of cigarettes per day for 20 years as an experiment and see whether we can control getting lung cancer and or emphysema to a very large degree.
Is it complete control? No, it's very near that.
Obesity? (which causes numerous other diseases) Yep, we can control that too.
If you mean control as in choice between "little less likely" and "little more likely" then yes, everyone can control diabetes and obesity. But in fact, you can control your risk of dying in a terror attack much more than risk of getting diabetes! Just never visit big malls, never attend mass events, never use public transport. Better yet, move to a village far away from city and always travel by your car. There, you've reduced your risk of dying in a terror attack to pretty much zero.
> Is it complete control? No, it's very near that.
It's definitely nowhere near that, especially in terms of things like diabetes (partially genetically determined) or heart attacks. You'd have to go to absurd lengths to control those near-completely. For instance, we know of one good way of controlling obesity, and that is to lock everyone in Nazi-style death camps. You won't get obese if you're fed 1500 kcal a day. You also won't be very happy.
The widespread belief that we have so much personal control over those diseases is probably one of the biggest reasons why they haven't been solved yet.
Man your last comment blows my mind. The idea that obesity is a disease people are afflicted by and is not, largely, a function of their eating choices, that widespread delusion (thankfully fading), is actually why obesity and diabetes are so widespread.
I personally know several obese people with diabetes who still regularly drink coke (not diet! 40g of sugar per can!) and their doctor has never told them to stop because they've been told it is genetics and their only option is to cut fat intake which does not work.
Everyone dies of something one day but the number of people in the US who die young of heart disease or suffer from diabetes is completely absurd and definitely (for the most part) avoidable.
I think you're putting way too much faith in "free will".
The idea isn't that obesity is 100% caused by bacteria, or genes, or unicorns. Of course it's a function of your eating choices - you can choose not to eat and you won't die a fat man. The problem is that people arguing obesity is "just a choice" and overweight people are "just lazy" are missing the point that some "choices" aren't practical. If obesity was "just a choice", we wouldn't have this problem after decades of massive shaming of overweight people and massive push for fitness and everything-fit. Instead, the more we shame people for being obese, the more population stays obese. Interesting, isn't it?
Anyway, Yvain discusses this and related topics better than I ever could:
guys, are you aware there are 2 types of diabetes, to simplify it one is genetic and you can get it even if you are doing marathons regularly and have a healthy life, and the other is self-caused by bad eating/lifestyle habits? With first you are screwed, with second you can get out of it if you go into very strict diet, probably for rest of your life.
Comparing it to Cancer is not really fair. Compare it to other violent murders for a fair comparison. Do the police kill more or less than regular criminals who aren't wearing uniforms?
Wow, wonder what cops think about this page and if ever tried to shut it down.
Someone is doing extensive work organizing all this on a daily basis. Too bad we don't know how many were bad guys and how many innocent, but that would be hard to followup and monitor.
If you scroll through and read the stories, most of them seem to be either terrible car crashes or violent criminals.
Presuming that officers work 2080 hours a year and there are 765,000 with arresting power, you are 1755 times more likely to interface with a not-a-cop than a cop on the job. Therefore, you are 160 times more likely to be killed X minutes with a police officer than X minutes with some stranger. 15 seconds with 1 cop is as dangerous as 15 seconds with 160 random people.
My friends in south LA from different backgrounds have a mantra to never call the cops under any condition. The idea is that however bad a situation can get, introduction of the police will incontrovertibly make it a de facto worse situation. Whether true or not, this seems to be a gut intuition to many (search google for "never call the police" to see people express this view).
The crux of the question is two-fold:
1. Does bringing police into any situation generally lead to worse consequences than avoiding them?
2. If we believe that violence is always an inferior solution that lacks efficacy, then why should we invite state-sanctioned violence into our lives voluntarily? Stated another way, why is the government provided service to someone with psychological distress two people with firearms locking them in a cage? Shouldn't we provide a more appropriate government service for this?
Yeah, but the rest are predominantly either a) disease we're trying to control, or b) tradeoffs we make ourselves (e.g. car accidents because we individually accept the risk of driving). Governments are there to protect citizens -- the burden of proof is on them as to whether the use of force is necessary, and ours in the US doesn't default to protecting citizens at all.
The overall gist of it was that police are one of the top threats to civilians in the U.S. whether innocent or guilty. I didn't even bring up eminent domain although someone suggested I should. All these discussions around surveillance are tied to how increases in their power protect us. Yet, that can't be true if they consistently use their power to abuse, rob, or murder us without cause. And what they get away with now suggests we should be extra skeptical of adding security or immunity.
That is very true and you might think that my next point is off-topic but too much surveillance power (or lack of privacy) is also a treat to democracy.
It's definitely not everything, but I don't know of a better data source...