[ajmurmann]

> If we are optimizing against the #1 all time cause of non natural death in the world - Democide - an armed populace does wonders.

This sounds intuitively correct, but I wonder if we have seen any evidence of this. If I think of the Holocaust would have happened if the Jews in Germany had been armed I'm not convinced either way. I can see arguments that it might have prevented it but also that it might have accelerated it, especially if everyone in 1930s Germany had been heavily armed

[zmgsabst]

I think we’ve seen the policy play out:

US policy during COVID vs Australian policy during COVID.

Afghanistan and Iraq insurrections; Ukrainian militias.

Black Panthers; US labor riots; US revolution.

I think we’ve seen consistently throughout history that the first step to abusing a population is disarming them.

And there are more murders by hammer or fist than by rifle.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[Emma_Goldman]

Do you really think that the US has oppressed its population less than comparably well established European democracies? Given its history of slavery, Jim Crow and mass incarceration? Given the militarisation if its police, the war in drugs and it's all-watching surveillance state? Given McCarthyism and the Patriot Act? And you're citing COVID?

I am frankly astonished by your claim. It's so obviously wrong.

[_carbyau_]

Hang on... you think the US handled COVID better than Australia?

[zmgsabst]

I think the US had less authoritarian measures than Australia — I didn’t say “better”.

But yes, I personally think the difference in rates isn’t due to Australia being more authoritarian and that leading to success.

[ungamedplayer]

You'd be personally wrong.

Edit: I cant reply to your thread. If you compare the rates of two like-minded Australian cities. (To be fair melbourne people pretend to be more cultured)

Queensland was known for its "immediate knee jerk reactions", if you want i can find sources for this.

Melbourne was known for its "reactive stance" if you want i can find sources for this.

Melbournes infection rate and inability to 'follow lock down procedures' was the root cause for their infection rate going through the roof. This further compounded because not following lockdowns created more infections which furthered more lockdowns.

Anyways, you'll take what you want from it.. Most of the links with values that I had have been removed. If I can dig up more I'll relink them here.

[makomk]

It's entirely likely that Australia's Covid rates had nothing to do with any particular action they took. Every Covid success story had exactly one thing in common: they're all in the same area of the globe, on the other side of the planet from Europe (where all the major outbreaks after Wuhan seem to have come from). It's about the only thing they had in common; there were vast differences in culture, political system, measures taken, and so on. Also, the main thing which seemed to determine whether a country or region was known for their "immediate knee jerk reactions" or their "inability to follow lock down procedures" was whether Covid remained under control or not, rather than the actual specific actions they took...

[ungamedplayer]

Massive outbreaks in philipines, PNG and christmas islands .. are they somehow outside this model you speak of ?

[_carbyau_]

"(To be fair melbourne people pretend to be more cultured)"

As a currently residing Melbournian - I totally agree...

During the statewide lockdowns it was also interesting to see how the infections spread. At one stage Melbourne had near nothing. Then a removalist from NSW comes travelling and you could see the trail of COVID in the following media reports.

Maybe lack of guns meant less resistance to the authoritarian lockdown. But for ALL the people I know, education meant there was noone even wanting to resist.

Everyone knew that one person could wander around and wreck the lives of many completely unintentionally. And lockdown was the only decent tool society had until vaccines happened.

It sucked. For some more than others as you'd expect. Maybe it was because I was less affected, but in the same scenario I'd do it again no question. I'd be grumpy about the situation, but not the response.

[ungamedplayer]

Thank you for reading my post at face value, This was not about the 'Melbourne people suck' angle (as clearly Melbourne people do not suck), but the topic of government handling.

[zmgsabst]

Do you have a source for that?

I’d like to learn more.

[calvinmorrison]

It's not a catch all against government, but a tool that equalizes each man for each man. In fact, each individual, shown by these attacks on schools, show how one person can have an outsized effect.

But more to your point -- I'll steal this quote:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If we didn’t love freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

[Emma_Goldman]

Yeah just imagine "mass arrests" of an armed population in the United States...

Meanwhile 1 in 3 black men are imprisoned over the course of their lives.

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/sp.2011.58.2.257?uid=3...