I hope you don’t find yourself in one of the out groups in the fascist state you seem so eager for. There’s a reason you don’t turn the military on the citizenry. They’re for fighting the enemies of the nation and the police are for maintaining order. When the military become the police, the citizenry become the enemy of the nation.
Costa Rica (a country my wife and I are seriously looking at moving to in retirement and planning to spend a couple of months there every year starting next year) famously doesn’t have a military to prevent military coups and to put more money into their excellent universal health care system among other things.
Costa Rica's homicide rate is 17 per 100,000 people. You probably won't notice it living in whatever expatriate enclave you and your wife are looking at, but that's a crushing burden on the average person in the country.
You’re conflating two different things. The number of guns in absolute terms doesn’t matter as much as availability to people who are inclined to commit crimes: a collector / prepper going from 10 to 11 guns affects the total count but doesn’t impact the crime stats the way an angry teenager going from 0 to 1 gun does.
This is why it’s misleading to talk about state-level stats without accounting for density: Idaho has a lower crime rate because it is mostly rural and has a single large city, which isn’t that big. Crime is a function of population, not land.
> Idaho has a lower crime rate because it is mostly rural and has a single large city, which isn’t that big. Crime is a function of population, not land.
The comparative lack of people in Idaho is accurately accounted for in its crime rate.
Are you suggesting that density causes crime? Some of the world's most densely populated cities don't have anywhere near the crime rate of American cities, which aren't all that densely packed by world standards.
>This is why it’s misleading to talk about state-level stats without accounting for density: Idaho has a lower crime rate because it is mostly rural and has a single large city, which isn’t that big. Crime is a function of population, not land.
Don't you mean function of density or was that a slight of hand rather than a typo? Like compare Wyoming to 1/16 of NYC or 16x Wyoming and compare it to all of NYC. They're about equal in population but the rates per capita are per capita so they're unchanged whether you multiply one or divide the other.
Yes, density would have been a better choice - what I was trying to get at is that when you have a lot of people in close proximity you have more social interactions which can turn negative. For example, here in DC violent crime is largely limited to a few areas where drunk people get out of bars late at night and various crews are fighting over territory, so the numbers go up but most people in the neighborhood aren't affected. The crime rate always goes up in the summer because people are out on the street where they can get into arguments, and everyone's a bit touchy during a heat wave.
You certainly have things like rural gangs, too, but if things are spread out you just don't have that critical mass to ramp the numbers up. This also plays out in other types of crimes – cars get stolen anywhere there are cars, but thieves are playing the odds and it's easier not to attract in a dense population while they'd stick out if they started going up some stranger's driveway in a place where there's no other traffic. When that Kia lock exploit was in the news, there were bored teenagers basically treating street parking as a shopping mall because the supply was huge and until they actually touched a car there was no crime in walking down a sidewalk.
Household ownership doesn't matter if the people who own them aren't likely to be involved in crimes - if a 50 year old farmer has a hunting rifle, their risk profile to society is really different than an angry 19 year old with a handgun.
While crime rates are per 100,000 people, population density makes a big difference because a low density, homogeneous population is going to have fewer interactions which turn negative. That's why people comparing crime stats usually compare cities or regions to avoid falsely reporting a correlation which is nothing more than a function of urban vs. rural density.
And considering that the US has the highest murder rate among first world countries, highest incarceration rate and spends the most on the military. Obvious the US is doing something wrong.
Costa Rica is also turning into the new haven for the drug cartels to run ops, after they were evicted from El Salvador, and the lack of a military certainly does not help here.
Let's not look at overmilitarized countries like the US. And yes, for most countries in Latin America such as Mexico and Colombia, direct conflict with cartels is handled by the military, while internally handled by the police and justice branches.
The city I spent all of my childhood and went to college in had a murder rate in the 20s per 100,000 the year I graduated. It wasn’t a large city.
Retirement is a long way away. But next year, we have an Airbnb in Escazu, a suburb of San Jose that is safe. It’s a high rise condo 2/2 with a gym and a pool.
The murder rate in “Atlanta” is also still around 20 per 100,000 and I lived in various suburbs of metro Atlanta until 2022 and was never in fear of my life going into the city. But I also lived in a suburban enclaves there.
For what it’s worth, I’m not going to be one of these ignorant entitled Americans who refuse to learn Spanish. I am close to A2 level Spanish now and should be there by the time we go next year. I can hold simple conversations.
Are we working from your private dictionary, or from the history books? My recollection is that Italian industrialists got along just fine with with Mussolini, and that he did not much tamper with private property.
Mussolini forced businesses to join fascist-controlled employer groups, and workers to join fascist-controlled labour unions - Trump appears completely disinterested in doing such a thing.
Hitler banned all youth groups except for the Nazi Party’s Hitler Youth. Mussolini tried to do the same; but the entrenched power of the Catholic Church meant he was forced to tolerate its youth groups competing with the fascist ones. I haven’t heard of any “Trump Youth” and Trumpism appears to lack the fascist focus on banning all civil society groups except those formally affiliated with the ruling party.
Both leaders enacted explicitly antisemitic legislation - Hitler with enthusiasm; Mussolini possibly more due to pressure from Hitler and a desire to please his Nazi allies than genuine antisemitic conviction. I’m not sure what Trump’s answer to Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws and Mussolini’s Leggi Razziali (Racial Laws) is meant to be
Calling Trump a fascist requires ignoring many things which Hitler and Mussolini had in common but which Trump lacks
In Italy under Mussolini's fascist regime, private property was generally respected, but with significant state intervention and control. While private ownership wasn't abolished, the state exerted considerable influence over the economy through the corporate system, regulating industries and labor.
Private Property: The fascist regime in Italy did not abolish private property. Mussolini's economic policy, known as corporatism, aimed to organize the economy through corporations representing various sectors (e.g., agriculture, industry).
State Intervention: While private ownership remained, the state played a central role in economic decision-making. The regime established a Ministry of Corporations to oversee the economy and regulated labor relations through the Charter of Labour.
Corporatism: The fascist regime organized the Italian economy into 22 sectoral corporations. These corporations were intended to represent the interests of both employers and employees within each sector, but in practice, they were largely controlled by the fascist state and party members.
Limited Independence: The corporations and labor organizations had limited independence, and the state played a significant role in regulating their activities and resolving disputes.
Influence on Production: The fascist state influenced production and economic activity through various agencies and institutions, such as the Instituto per la Ricosstruzione Industriale (IRI), which held shares in key industries, and the Instituto Mobiliare Italiano (IMI), which controlled credit.
As in more regulation (leftist), not less (current admin)
Fascism is the expansion of the state, anti-small-government.
Again, you don't know what you're talking about.
Propaganda isn't something that only happens to poor brown people in 3rd world countries. Its foolish to think that the people who do this overseas would never do it to you.
Doubling down on this when you're wrong is like someone in an abusive relationship that keeps running back and defending their abuser.
Centralizing power and removing obstructions yet being against censorship and wanting to arm the public?
Again, its incompatible with your warped view and understanding b/c you've heard the word again and again that has no meaning.
"A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, a capitalist economy subject to stringent governmental controls, violent suppression of the opposition, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism"
Straight from the dictionary, I'm going to stand by my words here.
Which doesn't apply to the current administration, just fantasyland.
A small government regime, that wants to arm the public, is against censorship, wants to de-regulate industries, pro-capitalist, etc.. is not compatible with fascism.
How the hell is your fantasy a reality when you're literally wanting to arm the public and expand free speech?
The last guy wanted to get people fired from their jobs over an experimental jab (Nuremberg trials, anybody?), while his supporters were in favor of taking their kids and imprisoning parents into camps - expanding the government, increasing regulations, and literally forming a Ministry of Truth (DHS Disinformation Governance Board).
We've normalized bad behavior (ie: immigration law, Disinformation Governance Board, etc..) in this country for years and ignore laws governing that, so when we have to correct that behavior people tend to forget how we got here. I saw more systemic racism and discrimination under Obama & Biden than I have under Trump or Bush. I saw race and antisemitism heavily weaponized to divide and conquer under liberal administrations more than I ever have under centrist or right leaning administrations.
Its not fascism. Its just fools cherry picking things to live out some weird good guy/bad guy fantasy of theirs.
If this were a tech document, I'm sure the understanding would be far greater - but somehow that type of thinking and understanding goes out the window when it comes to this.
At various points, several western European nations have been "democratic socialist", with varying degrees of success. Not so much of those since the end of the Cold War, but they were generally on the liberal side when it came to personal freedom. For example, the UK — and sure, the UK had The Troubles and all the associated awfulness, and the Empire for some of that period, ditto — the police forces in England, Scotland, and Wales were not (and still are not) routinely armed.
Well, yes, but the next problem to talk about is definitions. Democratic socialism is a name that's not really socialist. Socialism is state control of the economy. That's fundamentally different to creaming the top off a capitalist economy.
Now if the UK enlarges the state to the point where the NHS owns everything and all resource allocation is directed by some bureaucrats, then, sure it's actual socialism. Until then it's capitalism with a giant all-powerful anchor attached called the state.
When the police are already militarized, and can utilize military-grade vehicles and weapons on those who don’t have the right height of grass, does it really matter much anymore?
I’m not sure if I’m misinterpreting what you’re saying but I think it does matter. First of all, the police shouldn’t be militarized, so the fact that they already are doesn’t make it any better. Second of all, the military is fundamentally different from the police, who are at least nominally controlled by the city (yes, I know the President can and has taken control of the D.C. police). The people of D.C. shouldn’t be policed by a force that doesn’t answer to them, especially since the vast majority of them didn’t vote for the federal administration that’s currently seizing control of municipal law enforcement.
>When the police are already militarized, and can utilize military-grade vehicles and weapons on those who don’t have the right height of grass, does it really matter much anymore?
Why is grass height any of the government's business? Who voted for the people who did that? Who came up with the legal theories under which those laws exist? Why were these ever a justifiable pretense for the government to threaten people with force in the first place?
We all know the argument. It's some mumbo jumbo about mice and pests and public health, about blight and property values, and government interest in those things. But now the people (demographically, if not literally the same individuals in some cases) who were the ones peddling it are the ones threatened by it and it's made immediately clear to them how bullshit their justification was.
I feel like I'm the fucking goose chasing the guy in the down coat and I don't want to be.
