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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

If you wouldn't come back with a gun yourself to resolve the issue, it's a dick move to call someone else (a cop) to come over with a gun.

If you're making phone calls for armed response because someone is playing music, the problem might be with you.

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This is one of the most insane comments I've seen on hacker news. Police are there to enforce the law. The only reason they have guns is to defend themselves or the lives of others. If I ask you to turn down your music at night, and you refuse, it's not legal for me to enforce noise ordinances myself, so I call the people who do such things for a living.

> Police are there to enforce the law.

When I see statements like this I wonder if we experienced the same 2020.

I still haven't seen what your suggested course of action is?

Alright, let's say I have a neighbor playing loud music at 2am. I walk down, ask nicely if they'd turn it down. They ignore me. What then? What am I supposed to do from that point?

You seem to feel your options are escalate to violence (or the implied threat of same) by calling the cops, or just deal with the loud music.

I personally am with Asimov: violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. It has little to do with whether you employ the violence/threat yourself, or call a man with a gun over to do it for you.

The correct course of action in almost all circumstances is "do nothing".

There are some good reasons to escalate a situation. I'm not of the belief that a noise disturbance is one of them.

You start by saying "you feel your options are limited to X or Y" and then go on to say "X is the last refuge of the incompetent, do nothing" implying there is some other option besides Y when you do nothing?

So your real response is: when confronted with someone who refuses to engage with you on the level of a decent human being, just take it. This doesn't seem like the way civilization works to me.

You've edited in a nice little tidbit about "well sometimes you've got to escalate" but failed to provide where that delineation is for you. Loud music isn't it. What about gunshots? What about children screaming loudly? What about someone breaking in to your neighbor's? When is it OK to escalate?

I didn't say to do nothing, or to just take it.

Correct. You simply avoided answering the question, which implies you'd 'do nothing, and take it'

> There are some good reasons to escalate a situation. I'm not of the belief that a noise disturbance is one of them.

This mislocates the point of escalation. The first point of escalation occurs when you arrive and the resident doesn't say the words "I'm sorry about that" followed immediately by turning the music down. The second more serious point of escalation (if there happens to be one) occurs when the police arrive and the same thing happens. In both cases the epicenter of escalation is within the person who won't turn their music down when lawfully required.

Everyone else has behaved reasonably and within the law and so can't meaningfully be said to have escalated the situation.

No, having armed people show up to force them to turn down the music (by first threatening violence with their armed presence, and then applying actual violence if that doesn't work) is the point of escalation. Armed law enforcement is not a reasonable response to loud music, full stop.

I've actually written about this very issue before:

https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...

I actually do think people should take your point seriously, even as I disagree with your conclusions. When you make a law you are always doing it with the implied violence you highlight. The law itself is an escalation, in a sense. If someone refuses to follow the law, then society has to ask itself what it's willing to do about it. If nothing, then the law is meaningless. To make the law is to decide that you're willing to enforce consequences for violating the law. And furthermore (and probably much more important, in the long run) you're willing to enforce even harsher punishments on those who refuse to accept sanctions for violating the law.

A society should be careful not to have too many laws; on an individual level one should understand clearly what it means to want something to be illegal (and what it means to refuse to obey the law, should you find yourself in a situation where you might be tempted to do that).

I'm pretty sure they called the cops on their neighbor because they were getting assaulted ("having to block punches"), not because of the music.

It depends on the context. If someone lives in multi unit housing and repeatedly blasts music or does it at odd hours in the middle of the night, I would assume the probability of them being anti social and not conforming to expected behavior to be very high, such that I might feel more comfortable with police dealing with them.

If it’s a once in a while thing where they’re celebrating or whatnot and it sounds like they’re unintentionally disturbing others, then it’s probably worth talking to them.

Saying "be prepared to pull a gun, or don't ask your neighbor for anything" seems like a false dichotomy. Isn't that the very reason societies develop laws and governments? To not have people using violence to get their way? Instead agree to follow a code, and standards, and to not adjudicate transgressions of those codes with individual-on-individual violence?

I didn't say anything about pulling a gun, just that if you aren't willing to arm yourself and re-engage, it is a dick move to call someone else armed to come over and do it for you.

It has nothing to do with violence. The correct move is obviously to not re-engage, personally or by proxy.

> Isn't that the very reason societies develop laws and governments? To not have people using violence to get their way?

Quite the opposite. Laws are enforced exclusively via threat of violence, and the only thing that distinguishes the government from any other leadership organization is a claim to legitimate use of violence.

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