Let's be real. For all their flaws, US cops are some of the least corrupt in the world. There are places where you better be ready to fork over cash every time you encounter the police.
> US cops are some of the least corrupt in the world
I don't think that's a good metric to judge them by (I also don't think it's true if you compare to first world countries).
Sure, third world countries have police forces that are more corrupt. But US cops are corrupt in a wide variety of ways and we should be very clear about how unacceptable that is. It doesn't matter if someone somewhere else in the world is worse.
I've never understood the "be happy you're not in authoritarian Russia" type of argument for papering over the shortcomings of circumstances here in the US. Like, ok? Why are we comparing ourselves to places that are worse? Shouldn't we be striving to make things better relative to our own ideals and standards?
It's like any economic discussion I have when visiting my parents. I'll advocate for something every other developed nation has, like paid paternity leave or a sane healthcare system, and they immediately start talking about communist East Germany like that's somehow relevant.
Yeah, we know cops in Mexico are corrupt. Our police force has a very different problem set that we need to solve. Pointing out a different problem in a different country contributes nothing.
> I'll advocate for something every other developed nation has, like paid paternity leave or a sane healthcare system
Paid parental leave creates both deadweight loss and moral hazard. It also tends to reduce labor inversely proportional to labor's cost, with the largest reduction in labor hitting highly skilled, sub middle-aged females. This should be obvious as it lowers the expected productivity of workers, moreso when you extend parental leave to family leave and allow for the care of ailing elders. The argument for it seems to hinge on the dollars allowing greater workforce participation, but I'm not sold that greater participation with lower expected productivity is greater than fewer productive workers.
Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?
Regarding healthcare, it's well known that decreasing prices increase demand. While some healthcare demand is totally inelastic (injuries, cancer, etc.), the front line pcp interactions are elastic. Compound in people's willingness to decrease self care since they don't have to pay for future healthcare, and you've increased the rate of inelastic demand instances in the future, increasing demand. Now consider that prices would no longer be dictated by free markets, and now we have trouble with price discovery, with the power seemingly going to the single consumer, so it's likely treatments will be underpaid, which may lead to fewer practicioners and fewer innovations. Maybe I'm wrong... I haven't thought about heath economics in a long while. My preference would be to see a forced decoupling of healthcare provided as work benefits such that everyone had to purchase it on the open market (even if that loss of negotiating freedom between private parties irks me).
>"Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?"
Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you. That's the foundation of socialization, everyone's resources - that they fork over from taxation - is shared for various activities and settlements that give as many individuals (past, present and emerging) as much of an acceptable baseline of living as it can.
To be sure, the goal of socialization is also not usually to make everyone rich or give immense quality of life, it's to make sure everyone has the same "lowest" bar for things that members of society deem as essential, and that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible.
>> "Why should I have to pay for Debbie across the country to have a kid? Or Fred across the state?"
> Because they pay for the same benefits you get, that they might not reap as often as you.
I'd set the reason as even more basic than that. Children are absolutely essential the future of society. There is literally no way to argue that is not true.
Since they are essential to society, we should be working on ways to support them; as a society. Now, this can be argued against. But I feel pretty strongly that "I do not think it is important for us, as a society, to works towards goals that beneficial to society" is a fairly brain-dead stance. You can argue about the best uses for _available_ money; but to argue that's a matter of priorities, not "is it a valid goal".
> that the bar set as "lowest" is as humane and efficient as possible
But by definition it is inefficient. Redistribution of money from Person A to Person B necessarily means Person A can't spend that money. If their optimal utility was to give that money to Person B, you wouldn't need such a policy governmentally.
Socialization makes sense for public goods, but healthcare and parental leave are both nonpublic.
As an annecdotal example, my state offers 12 weeks of parental leave. The maximum they are willing to pay is about $550/week. My company provides two weeks of paid leave. So for 10 weeks, I get the $550 from the state. But my w2 income is about 2k/week post tax, post 401k max. So I would forgo about $1400 a week to stay home. Daycare costs $550/week, so it's far better for me to work. But then I don't get the time off. And yet I still pay for others. This is an example of a terrible implementation of the already bad policy.
The people who say they don't want the government to help pay for raising children are the same people who complain about low birth rates. You can't eat your cake and still have it. Would you like sustainable population or would you like low taxes? You can't have both.
Sensible government programs aren't deadweight loss - they are net gains - although a lot of what governments do, especially what the US government does, is not sensible. For example, you pay taxes to have property rights, and I don't think you think that is deadweight loss.
Meanwhile your concern about "why should I pay for someone else?" is literally just insurance but I bet you have insurance, and you only hate insurance when the government does it.
> is literally just insurance but I bet you have insurance, and you only hate insurance when the government does it.
Yes. This is exactly right. And that is because private insurance allows people to voluntarily consume it. Not everyone has the same appetite for risk. Allow people to maximize their individual utility!
I don't think it's reasonable to steal from some for the betterment of others. Clearly if those from which money is taken maximized their utility by charitably giving it away to familes with newborns, this policy wouldn't be necessary. To that end, this policy creates deadweight loss for those from whom the redistributive policy takes more than it returns.
What do you think your retirement savings represent? They are a claim on goods and services to be produced by a future generation. For that to work there has to be a future generation of sufficient productive capacity. If population declines faster then productivity increases the system will collapse.
That is part of the risk one must take into account when investing. The same happens regardless of population; you must invest where you expect there to still exist market demand in the future.
You're missing the elephant in the room that our society doesn't have enough distributed wealth to allow most people to pay for their own time off.
I too hate the top-down prescriptivism of narrow "benefit" policies administered by employers. But until we fix the economy so most people have the market power to tell their employer they're taking 3-6+ months off for $whatever, have the savings to pay for it, and be confident that that either their employer will want them back at the end or that they will be able to find a different employer, then it's what we're stuck with. So if you really want to reform this, then work towards fixing wealth inequality.
(The healthcare thing is a politically radioactive topic. It would be fantastic to prevent employers anticompetitively bundling healthcare with employment, but it would take a lot of political capital to rise above fearmongering to people with "good" employer plans and the desire of politicians to lean on the current system out of expedience)
I understand your point, but I am unable to reconcile the inefficiencies introduced by redistributive policies. I would instead prefer a charitable system whereby people voluntarily provide funds to be allocated to new parents to afford them the time off for caretaking.
I can't speak for other first world countries, but Canada has its share of police misconduct. The most recent example is the mishandling of the 22-person killing spree in Nova Scotia[1], and the Toronto police are so famously bad at investigating sex crimes and protecting victims that an entire book was written on the subject[2].
If you define “corrupt” as not asking for bribes on duty, perhaps. If you use the common definition of the term to include things like being bound by the law the same as the average person, however, that’s tragically untrue. Officers routinely cover up the misconduct of their fellows and force rehiring of the few officers who are held accountable even for serious crimes.
But I'd prefer not to interact in their official capacity with them if possible because there is a non-zero chance that the specific officer I'm talking to is not one of the good ones.
I recently had a run in where I was photographing a duck on the roof of a house. A cop literally ran up to me and asked what I was doing with his hand on his gun, holster released. I was fortunate that he realized how nuts his behavior was when I pointed out that I was taking a picture of a crazy duck sitting on a chimney. I also realized that I probably would have been shot had I not been calm and polite.
i'm not a cop super fan or anything but i did make it a point to wave at and get to know the officers that patrol my neighborhood. I've had them stop by when walking my dogs to let me know that they got a call about a suspicious person and to keep an eye out. Maybe it comes from working in consulting but that level of relationship with police officers is very useful to me as an individual.
Not being injured or worse is always a good thing. I find the amount of violence in law enforcement is a little out of control. Too many news stories about an 89 year old lady being beat over a turn signal traffic stop, wanting to know why they are being detained or for having an opinion contrary to Officer Pepper Spray.
This has been down-voted a lot, but I actually kinda agree, at least with the second assertion. I've been going down to Baja, Mexico frequently for years, and, as an American (white dude), you quickly learn that you're a target for local police - you're basically their ATM. And there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. You just do your best to avoid them, like agents in The Matrix.
>> For all their flaws, US cops are some of the least corrupt
> I actually kinda agree,
It is my long and consistent experience (MI spouse) that the quality of police officers depends on the quality of the police chief.
We had good, experienced officers here a generation ago. A funding-addicted sheriff was elected. He fired cops w/ decades of exp and replaced them with just-graduated kids. The remaining cops were subject to some kind of dept environment that left them half-unhinged.
Addicted sheriff quit after a few terms and his replacement was pretty good for a while. Now he's average, so kind of crappy.
Germany, Finland, France, Sweden, Canada ... when you compare them to most corrupt states, you are not proving they are best. You are peoving they are not absolute bottom.
That being said, America is unique in officially allowing cops to kill people just because of how they feel, with no objective reason for it.
Speaking of Germany, can you think of other points in history where the public banded together to subvert police authority and hide their neighbors from the cops?
It's not that they're corrupt in the literal sense. It's that they have discretion of enforcement of laws so expansive with so many precedents in their favor that they basically have de-facto power to arrest anyone and that when they do want to do something stupid they're not "corrupt" so you can't just pay them off to be reasonable.
LA Police are a literal gang. There are places with police that are corrupt in more obvious ways such as places in Africa but to say US cops are some of the least corrupt is ridiculous.
This is a very sheltered take. Go south of the border to Mexico (you don't need to go anywhere as far as Africa) and you can experience getting pulled over for no reason by a cop looking for a payout. That's not to mention that cartels are allowed to run rampant and collect "protection" in Mexican cities because the cops either don't care, are in the cartel themselves, or are being paid off.
As I said to another commenter, "some of the least corrupt" != "not corrupt". I'm sure some countries are better, but there are not that many.
You don't need to go south of the border. You can get pulled over for no reason in the US and have drugs planted on you by a cop simply having a bad day. I'm not interpreting least corrupt as no corruption. I think least corrupt is still a ridiculous statement.
Credit where credit is due, American cops are considerably less corrupt than American politicians. Most people in America would never even dream of trying to pay off a cop to get out of a speeding ticket, that sort of thing just doesn't work and everybody knows it. On the other hand, bribing local politicians to get some land rezoned for your business, or some other similar crap? That's just standard operating procedure in small towns everywhere.
Funny story about the Pinkertons if you don't already know... if you skateboard or do similar shenanigans involving parking structures or industrial wasteland, you've probably been chased by their direct descendants.
> Dude, I paid to have stickers and "sheriff cards" to make it less likely cops are going to stop me cos i'm a "friend of the police".
In many states the FOP stickers and cards are almost like "registration". You get the sticker to put on your card and just like vehicle registration, a year to show you're current. The FOP will say that's just to "show your ongoing support", but it's rather hard not to see it as "are you paid up? you don't get to get a sticker ten years ago...".
Various FOPs have also sued or done eBay take downs of people selling the "year sticker".
You could try searching "police corruption in the US" before saying they're not literally corrupt.
They will literally grab a cop that was prosecuted and found guilty, hide the records and have them hired in some other police force in a nearby town. There's a whole mafia setup going on, organized by their unions, we're not far from having "police controlled neighborhoods" like in many LATAM countries.
Yeah, corruption happens but it's not endemic nor is it accessible to the everyman.
Yeah they'll bend the law for their buddies but we cannot just shove money in their face to make them be reasonable when they bother us like you can in Mexico. Instead we have to shove 10x as much into all manner of rent seeking systems to maintain an air of legitimacy (this last part is a gripe I have with most government stuff here, not just law enforcement related).
Corruption just doesn't have much to do with the kind of misconduct that comes up in the US. It's true, yes, that an American officer who's decided to mistreat you won't usually accept a bribe to stop.
If we're limiting 'corruption' to just be about bribes, then sure. Of course, in reality it also encompasses racism, nepotism, etc (i.e. anything that is a "corruption" of the impartial execution of their jobs).
I suspect many Black people would prefer paying a bribe to being killed by police at an outsize ratio, or paying a bribe to being charged more aggressively and sentenced more harshly.
Police brutality and incarceration is worse than bribes, my dude.
I don't think that's a good metric to judge them by (I also don't think it's true if you compare to first world countries).
Sure, third world countries have police forces that are more corrupt. But US cops are corrupt in a wide variety of ways and we should be very clear about how unacceptable that is. It doesn't matter if someone somewhere else in the world is worse.