Principled Perspectives: Law Enforcement

Showing posts with label Law Enforcement. Show all posts

Sunday, October 15, 2023

QUORA: ‘Isn't Capitalism evil simply due to the fact that a business can decide to make an area a food desert simply due to theft?’

Here is a Quora question related to stories we are seeing regularly in the news, the rampant, unrestricted looting of stores in some cities across the nation. Here is the full question:

Isn't Capitalism evil simply due to the fact that a business can decide to make an area a food desert simply due to theft? For example, black neighborhoods in America that become food deserts after corporations like Wal-Mart decide to abandon them.

I posted this answer:

Capitalism is about individual freedom. So the right of business people to decide where to open their stores, or when to close them, is certainly protected under Capitalism, just as the right of the consumer to decide whether or not to shop in a particular store is protected.

Hence, if Walmart decides to close a store because theft has gotten so bad in a particular neighborhood that it is no longer safe or profitable to keep it open, it is Walmart’s moral—and, under Capitalism, legal—right to do so. If all other supermarkets in the area close, it is their right as well. This does not make Capitalism evil. It shows that Capitalism is just.

America is a free society, not a slave society. Residents have no more right to have a neighborhood food store nearby than a food store has a right to the residents’ business. No one is anyone’s legal or moral servant.

The only servant in America is the government—to the people . . . all of them equally. The real villains for these so-called “food deserts” are the political authorities who are unwilling to control the rampant theft. It is the government’s foremost responsibility to protect the rights and safety of the individual; ALL individuals, including businessmen.* It is the political authorities who are to blame when businesses close due to the politicians’ failure to keep a neighborhood safe for their stores, their employees, and their customers. When Walmart closes up and “leaves,” Walmart is not abandoning the neighborhood, black or otherwise. It is the government that abandoned Walmart.

* [The Declaration of Independence, the philosophic blueprint for America and its Constitution, states that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”]

Tuesday, August 29, 2023

Seattle’s ‘Poverty Excuse’ Policy is Driven by Hatred of Achievement and Envy, Not ‘Good Intentions’

One of the side effects of the 2020 Covid Pandemic was to trigger a movement to untether crime from consequences in some Leftist-governed cities. Brad Polumbo writes about one such city, Seattle. In a FEE article Why Seattle’s Proposed ‘Poverty Excuse’ for Crimes Would Destroy the City’s Economy, Polumbo writes that “This policy would basically give anyone with a good sob story a green light to violate property rights at will.” Indeed. Polumbo sights just one victim of the proposed “poverty excuse” policy:

Matthew Humphrey recently lost $4,000 worth of goods in a theft of his Seattle barbershop. Under a new proposal the Seattle City Council is considering this month, what happened to him wouldn’t even be a crime—if the thieves claimed they were driven by poverty, that is.

“I think it’s insane,” the victimized barber told a local news outlet. “It’s one of these well-intended concepts (of) we want to take care of people that can't take care of themselves. But what you are really doing is hurting other people."

“Hurting other people” is the intention. This new “poverty excuse” policy lays bare the real motive behind the entire crusade against economic inequality—hatred of achievement and the individual virtues that lead to achievement. A policy like this is driven by that hatred. Destruction of people of virtue and achievement is the “intended concept.” They are the “other people” the barber speaks of. And it’s not “well-intended,” unless well-intended means nihilism.

First and foremost, this policy would obviously incentivize more crime and more theft.

First and foremost, it’s pointless to explain the consequences to the architects and supporters of this policy. They can’t fail to know where this must necessarily lead. Poverty is the natural state of man. Production and trade is the only way out. You can’t help “the poor” by destroying the non-poor—the producers and traders. If poverty justifies crime, it’s the end of production and trade, and man is reduced to a herd of predatory jungle animals. And that’s the whole point of a policy such as this. Karl Marx would approve. Civilized people will recognize this policy for the naked face of evil that it is, and fight this nihilism tooth and nail. And fighting back begins with not granting any benefit of the doubt to the perpetrators. The architects of the policy are not well-intentioned. They are not naive. They know full well what they are doing, and why. Mistakes of this magnitude are never made innocently.

The officially dubbed “poverty defense law,” which excuses the thieves and many other misdemeanor crimes from legal consequences if they claim poverty as their motive, never passed, to my knowledge. But just the fact that it was proposed and seriously debated in the city council of a major American city is an indication that we may be closer to chaos than we may have thought, at least in some cities.