Abolish police

   I was walking my sister's dog this morning out on the icy streets, and even icyer sidewalks ,of suburban New Jersey while listening to NPR's Morning Edition. David Greene was interviewing Tanya Faison ,head of the Sacramento chapter of Black Lives Matter. Her group has been active over the last year leading protests over what they view as the murder of Stephon Clark by police. Stephon was black. On March 2,2019 ,when the Sacramento district attorney announced the results of her investigation into the incident, she exonerated the police involved resulting in a resurgence of public outrage and large scale protests organized by BLM. NPR likes to talk about " driveway moments " . This was my " icey sidewalk moment ", especially when Faison said " Our chapter is more of an abolitionist chapter. You can't just reform the law... we need to rely more on each other. " She was talking about policing, not slavery. When it comes to police and policing, she's against them. She believes civilians will pick up the slack once the police are abolished. This remark got my attention. It made little impression on the radio host. Maybe the time allotted for the interview didn't allow a follow-up question. I'd like to have heard more. For me this was a bomb shell.
    Up till today I'd never heard anyone advocate abolishing police, I.C.E. yes, but not all police. Once back to my tablet I could do a quick search of the internet and discover Faison' s remarks on NPR were not an aberration or a one off. They're fairly mainstream in the Black Lives Matter movement. They even make an appearance in their manifesto and platform which call for a " defunding of the systems and institutions that criminalize and cage us. " Calls for the abolition of police forces, prisons, and the entire structure of the justice system  have shown up in numerous statements by prominent BLM activists going back to at least 2016, and probably earlier. As I said ,this was a quick search.
      It's not hard to imagine what our world would look like without police ;without a justice system to investigate, arrest, convict, and incarcerate people like Stephon Clark . For a while I'd enjoy the difference. My run ins with the law are infrequent. Now and then I'm stopped for riding my bike where the law says I shouldn't. It would be nice to go my way without looking over my shoulder wondering if I'll be stopped. My glee would be short lived. The people I'm sharing the road with will  feel similarly liberated and begin using my piece of the highway as a passing lane. Darwinism would rule. The largest truck gets right of way. Mad Max here we come! 
      The chaos of the roads would hardly compare to the mass disruption in neighborhoods like Stephon Clark's. Police became aware of him when a neighbor called 911 to report that someone was outside breaking car windows. In Faison's world the call would have gone out to the neighborhood vigilance committee or something. No telling how that confrontation would have gone down. I suspect little better, assuming their patrolman are armed, or arrived on time, or Stephon reacted in the same erratic way, ignoring their orders to stop and show his hands, and holding his girlfriend's cellphone out in front of him as if it were a weapon. We can guess how abolishing police would look in poorer neighborhoods. Things would get pretty ugly pretty fast. Nights would be unbearable. In the better neighborhoods there would be privately funded security patrols, more gaited communities, concertina wire everywhere, and walled in homes. The better parts of town already look this way in parts of the world where police departments are corrupt and ineffective, and crime is rampant. I saw this for myself in Bogota Columbia in the seventies and have heard hair raising tales from South African refugees.
      In a way I can admire Faison's anarcho- libertarian approach to bureaucracies. I'm all for reducing the scope of government. I love the idea of holding every program and bureaucracy up to scrutiny and asking is this something we can reduce, reform ,or do without, but this is a discussion for adults. By adults I mean people who are capable of honestly considering  the results of their proposals.  Tanya Faison is not. Let's not forget that her central idea is that the justice system ought to be abolished. " We can't just reform the law. " ,she reminds us. Thats a childish approach. She's disqualified herself from the discussion. BLM is out of touch with reality. It assumes the worst about existing structures it opposes and arranges false narratives to suit faulty assumptions. On the slippery streets of public policy reform Black Lives Matter always takes a spill.

Upside down

       On Thursday, February 14, Amazon announced that it would not be building a second headquarters in Queens New York as it had earlier announced. The company cited recent moves by Queens city council to block construction. Supporting Amazon's plans to create offices in Long Island City, Queens were New York's governor, New York City's mayor, most New Yorkers, and the union of construction workers who would have built the office complex and related public and private works. Opposing construction were  rather fringey anti- corporate, anti- capitalist community activists and members of city council elected from their ranks.
     Newly elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was ecstatic, announcing on Twitter " Anything is possible: today was a day a group of dedicated New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon's greed, it's worker exploitation , and the power of the richest man in the world. "
      Amazon has spent the last few years searching for a new location from which to administrator it's growing business empire in addition to its original headquarters in Seattle. Many cities, including Denver vied for the honor. Their enthusiasm is easily understood. A business the size and wealth of Amazon in your backyard brings in billions in local and state taxes, high paying jobs, along with the taxes they provide, and a generous donor for local projects . Ultimately ,Amazon decided to divide it's proposed headquarters , creating one in New York and the other in Northern Virginia outside of Washington DC. Amazon planned to employ 25,000 at the New York office. Wages would be at around $ 150,000 for most office workers, which I understand is enough money to live even in New York. A business that size doesn't exist in a vacuum. The knock on effect of all those people working there is estimated to include an additional 67,000 jobs in the vicinity ( not including those construction workers mentioned earlier ). Over a twenty- five year period Amazon would have paid out an estimated $27 billion in taxes to the state and city. On a more immediate basis they had agreed to funding $ 600 ,000,000 worth of infrastructure improvements . The city would accept those improvements in lieu of that amount in taxation. Other tax breaks would equal an additional $2.4 billion over twenty-five years. The resulting $3 billion in projected tax breaks to Amazon became a rallying cry for the opposition, although in principle this is pretty standard in corporate - municipality agreements. The only difference is scale.
       In an interview with a television reporter Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said " if we are willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to. " . Her misunderstanding of basic economics is phenomenal. It's as if she were relying on her ideology rather than facts and logic to do her thinking for her. Of course there is no $3 billion lying around for the city to spend on whatever the city believes would be a it's best use. That $3 billion was not a " gift" from New Yorkers to Amazon. It would be money created by Amazon and left to their use. That's a distinction she is unable to appreciate or acknowledge.
    I've never heard anyone say that all the wealth of America belongs to everyone. I have heard a lot of people make remarks that seem to be based on this assumption.  If you believe that it is the duty of government to redistribute wealth to promote the greater good then you have bought into this way of thinking. There's no school of economic or political theory compatible with this principle outside of Socialism. Marx would have recognized it.
       Cortez goes a step further by claiming that even the wealth you ( or Amazon) may produce in the future is properly the people's wealth.  In her mind the taxes New York agreed to release Amazon from paying in lieu of services amount to theft from the people. Nevermind the enormous wealth Amazon would have brought to the city, or the tens of billions in taxes the corporation and it's employees  would have added to it's coffers, the only relevant fact for her was the $3 billion exemption. Prominent Democrats often rail against  companies taking advantage of legal tax exemptions, and refer to this as corporate welfare. For them all the money businesses produce is not wealth that would not otherwise exist. It is stolen money. It is greed that fuels their empires. They are takers, not givers, and government, which produces nothing but vast stacks of paperwork is the only true giver. Keep in mind that government can not give anything to anyone until after it has taken it from someone else. It's all a zero sum gain, which is exactly the way the fans of unlimited government imagine businesses operating. It's the world seen upside down.