[astrange]

These comics (and the ones suggesting "defunding police" will lead to school funding) are essentially a trick because 1. reducing police funding won't lead to money going to those other places 2. half those things are done under the police department 3. the other half are much more expensive than police funding.

Affordable housing is a notable case of the last one, it's very very expensive to build in SF and nobody actually wants it. The reason people dislike "luxury housing" is that it actually exists, so they want "affordable housing" because they know it won't happen. When it actually shows up, they oppose it too.

It does demonstrate that anything presented in cartoon form is probably false, because the people drawing cartoons are not specialists in whatever the topic is. Basically Gell-Mann Amnesia.

[techrat]

> These comics (and the ones suggesting "defunding police" will lead to school funding) are essentially a trick because 1. reducing police funding won't lead to money going to those other places 2. half those things are done under the police department 3. the other half are much more expensive than police funding.

Evidence does not support your claims.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/19/alexandria-k...

Social workers, in conjunction with police, have resulted in a drop of repeat calls and cost less than hiring another officer.

[astrange]

This is "half those things are done under the police department". Defunding the police department would prevent this.

If you want to hire social workers, which is a good idea, say that instead.

[ceejayoz]

You should look in to the defund proposals, then, because that's what they're typically advocating; moving these responsibilities (and their funding) out of the police department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defund_the_police

> "Defund the police" is a slogan that supports divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, healthcare and other community resources.

[astrange]

I have, which is why I already responded to this with "reducing police funding won't lead to money going to those other places".

"Education" is a trick because the same taxes don't fund police (cities) and education (school districts). Making one go down wouldn't cause the other to go up, or even increase voter support for it.

[ceejayoz]

Can you clarify: Are you asserting it's literally impossible, along the lines of being actively unconstitutional or impossible in some fashion, or that "well voters won't want to"?

[astrange]

Some things, like housing, are so expensive that canceling other projects wouldn't actually get them done. The solution is to find ways to make them cheaper.

Other things, like education, are actually unrelated because they're literally different tax districts (eg property vs sales tax) applied to different people. In that case you can't vote on defund + fund at the same time. But also, some people just don't like taxes, so if you put the defund one first they'll take it but not use it to fund anything new.