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Comment by indymike | Hacker News Reader

> The police forces were created to protect property and 'the system'

If that is the case, why is civil asset forfeiture a thing? It seems to undermine property rights and is a glaring failure in the system.

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Not your property, the aristocracy's property. Cops don't work for peasants.

The "aristocracy" has their property seized all the time, for unpaid taxes and a litany of other crimes.

Those aren't the true aristocracy.

Nor true Scotsman, apparently.

I mean the definition of aristocracy is basically the people who get to make the rules. It’s the core point.

Without making a falsifiable claim about who this “aristocracy” is whose assets are the only assets protected by the police, it’s hard to test your statement or see how it provides value.

They’re the ones the police don’t fuck with.

Do you live in the US? It’s pretty trivial to figure out who is and isn’t allowed to drive around with large sums of money, or carry a loaded weapon, as an actual practical matter.

A good way of thinking about this is to understand that there’s an in-group that the law protects but does not bind. And an out-group that the law binds but does not protect.

It’s a dark vision of the world but there are many in the in-group who seek to preserve it.

"No true Scotsman is not Scottish" seems true, definitionally. Same applies for aristocracy: they are the ones who are served by special interests, by definition.

> Same applies for aristocracy: they are the ones who are served by special interests, by definition

I'm not sure I follow. Homeless military veterans are served by extremely well funded special interests, but are not aristocrats.

Clearly they are not being served. That is the difference.

replace "Aristocracy" with "political class"

In the US, they don't work for aristocrats, ether. Sometimes, it's really unclear who the boss is, but it is clear that they get paid by the public.

No policing system is perfect, in any complicated enough system there will always be rules that undermine that system slightly. It's like asking "why is cancer a thing, it undermines living organisms".

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