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Comment by dbcurtis | Hacker News Reader

> One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else.

The correct term to use here is "powers". The people have "rights". The people delegate, through the constitution, certain "powers" to the government. The government, in turn, delegates some of those powers to the police. The police do not have "rights". The government does not have "rights". The government and police have "powers", and are supposed to exercise those powers within specified limits.

What is under discussion here is the limits of those powers.

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Police de facto have more rights because they can expect lenient punishment (or no punishment) for crimes they commit even when out of uniform. You can argue until you're blue in the face about de jure rights but those don't matter very much when a cop pulls you over and fears for his life.

Not by intention however, but I'd mostly agree they do in practice.

It is entirely intentional.

Where is this intention written down? Can you show me the relevant law?

Qualified immunity laws and case law is what you are looking for.

Not to mention being 'on the level'.

Linking cause and effect in the big picture is too slow to stop and worry about intent. History is replete with horrific injustices that didn't happen because anyone intended it to turn out that way.

Intent is a reasonable yardstick to assess who goes to jail and who doesn't. It is a terrible way to deal with systems and processes. There isn't time and it isn't productive to defend a system with bad incentives and outcomes because it wasn't intended to be that way.

>The people delegate, through the constitution, certain "powers" to the government.

Did the people vote to delegate those rights? Were the people ever asked?

Why yes, yes indeed they were asked, and yes indeed they did vote. Look up the voting procedures around the ratification of the US constitution. They are rather interesting. The vote was put directly to the people, intentionally bypassing the statehouses so that the vote would be directly by the people. (Where the definition of "people" is white, male, and I believe also had to be a landowner -- but still, considering the times, a radical level of democracy.)

>Where the definition of "people" is white, male, and I believe also had to be a landowner -- but still, considering the times, a radical level of democracy

So, at best the "people" of 3 centuries ago where asked. And not all the people, just the white, male, landowners (and rich -- poorer white male people only got to vote 1.5 centuries later or more in the US, even in general elections).

And why is this binding for people, including poor, non landowning, women, blacks, latinos, asians, etc, 3 centuries later?

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