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Comment by jonnybgood | Hacker News Reader

It’s not a knee jerk yes for the simple fact the police are not the lawmakers. If you have issues of corruption of the powers that be then the lawmakers/elected officials are your real problem. Are you making a case for a less efficient society based on hypotheticals?

> The most fundamental issue is that history has shown time and again that the corruption of the powers that be is not a question of if but a question of when.

History has also shown it goes the other way as well.

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I don't know. It seems that Police in the United States often tend to appear as a judge, jury and executioner all rolled in to one - and that's often in response to minor crimes (i.e. the fellow that was recently shot in a supermarket carpark by US police). Police officers are humans, and humans have a habit of making disastrous decisions at times.

Imagine the police had a device that could detect everyone's thoughts so they could detect people about to commit crimes, and teleporters so they could send police instantly to the scene, but currently they never abuse that power.

Would you still say everything's fine and we shouldn't make them less efficient because we're worried about hypotheticals?

I would not underestimate the significance of police in a vacuum. Though I'd agree at the most fundamental level the the lawmakers and elected officials are the real problem, but that is something that is probably intractable.

Most people are naturally not particularly well informed on most things. Expecting them to collectively vote on the people most likely to lead them in all things is bound to result in bad results more than occasionally. Even moreso when we're so easily manipulated by tribalism, charisma, and so on. A successful politician and a successful conman share mostly the same skill set! And restricting voting to some group deemed sufficiently informed is an even worse solution as you'd end up with something like gerrymandering ramped up exponentially.

Elaborate on "history has shown it goes the other way as well"?

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