Hacker News Reader

Comment by tmpz22 | Hacker News Reader

Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Small local police departments are also staffed by the 90%, though.

I find it difficult to imagine an uprising against the 1% in America any time soon, but if it did happen I can absolutely imagine the police siding against the 1%.

Police forces are ideologically selected to protect the 1%. In extreme cases what you say is possible, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

At this point in America, pretty much everyone who has weapons and authority to use force is pretty ideologically aligned with the 1%. There is a pretty strong narrative in that group that all of these problems that many would ascribe to poor income equality are actually caused by immigrants, welfare recipients, and government.

I think the chance of the police or military siding against the 1% is incredibly small.

From my experience, police officers generally don't like rich people. Also, I don't think that members of the police force or the military are as obedient or loyal as they used to be in the past.

They don't like "rich assholes" but they are very authoritarian and respect and obey "power."

If the 1% decided to lobby for police salaries > 400k per year, would the police be more obedient? If revolution was coming, you better believe pay for police would rise, and they'd definitely protect their own interests.

Considering the top 1% is ~$450K per year per household, I'd wager plenty of folks on HN are in the top 1% if they are a two income household.

The top 1% of income is very different than the top 1% in wealth.

hear, hear.

You might want to look up the history of for example the Republic Steel Strike in Chicago in the 1930s.

Studs Terkel on that:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/22485.m...

Except, if it looked like it was coming to that, guess who just got a major pay raise : Police... Now Police is the highest paid field in America...and they'll do anything the 1% tell them to.

> Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.

Successful uprisings by the masses against the elites almost always involve substantial fractions of the military, police, and other security services defecting, either abandoning their gear or taking it with them and turning it against the elites.

Until we get robots replacing guys with guns, that's going to be a recurring failure mode for narrow elite rule.

When you get robots replacing guys with guns, then you've got a whole second set of problems to deal with them. Namely, cybersecurity goes from being annoying to being potentially lethal.

Which, if you think about it, is a slight recasting of the same failure mode: formal control of the instruments of force can become detached from actual control.

It's the same failure mode, but it's a much worse problem. For the (human) police to join the insurrection, they have to be persuaded that the insurrection is either morally right or too big to fight (which may mean that it's too big for the police to consider arresting/killing them all to be an acceptable solution). For the robots with guns to join the revolution just takes one really good hacker.

Anytime US police are shown on TV it's staggering to see how many are of them are obese. How can these police officers function in their jobs being so large? There must be yearly fitness tests to weed out people like that. Surely someone 6 feet tall 300 or 400 pounds can barely walk let alone run after someone.

People on TV are the ones that are later in their career. A police sergeant is more of a middle manager and is often not out in the field. Fitness tests ensure new officers are not overweight.

US Police on TV look more obese (and in a top-heavy way) than they are because department policy very often includes wearing a bulletproof vest under their uniform shirt.

FWIW, strength is way more important for policing and combat than being thin. Obese people who move around on a daily basis are usually quite strong. They have to be.

But which side will they be on?

Protecting the private property of the state & corporations. Standing rock is a great example.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com