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Emerg Services Spin Off Thread For Observations On Protests Against Law Enforcement

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but I've still to see a remotely plausible example.
I think our military have a good rep for this.

I lived in Darwin 20 years after the city had been flattened by Cyclone Tracy, and people still talked about how the military came in with basic supplies, cleared the rubble, essentially saved the day.

When half of Indonesia got wiped out by a tsunami a few years back - there they were with their big planes and machines and organised aid in all sorts of forms.

Our military gets the call when natural disasters like that hit. Including surrounding island nations. In those situations, they're the only ones with the logistics and equipment to really help.

Surely that stuff counts as a good thing?
 
@Anarchy - ooh! I feel like I can participate in this debate again!

Casting the net wider for good stuff our military does?

The peeps bringing in the ships with big cargos of cocaine from off the north east coast? Our navy:) Hurray!!

When the Malaysian Airlines plane went down over the ocean and they had no idea where? Our navy got called in because they had the best equipment in the region to locate the wreckage so that the bodies could be returned to loved ones.

Humanitarian. Big expensive operations. No one else with the means or inclination to do it.

Good thing!
 
the people who actually want the war would have to pay for it and recruit the people to do it themselves, out of their own pockets.
You don't think they will?
All this is good for is turning large wars into small but equally deadly tribal feuds. Many will still die over stupid shit like money or dirt.
Nor will it protect the innocent people caught in the crossfire. You know why war crimes happen?
Because some people like killing for fun. What stops them making some money and running amok? Nothing.

and when it does occur, it has very clearly defined aims and clear objectives, For example the taking of a manor or an estate in a dispute over an inheritance.
A bunch of wood held together with nails. What a stupid f*cking thing to kill and die for.

There is also a clear case for claims for damages against the disputants if they cause any damage or expense to other parties
If Bill Gates was willing to spend millions of dollars to buy a decomissioned battleship because he thought it was cool. What stops a gangster from killing a bunch of people to sell drugs, or booze, or electronic gizmos, or food, or to keep food away from "undesirables"?

That system also contains a very dangerous blurring and obfuscation of interpersonal boundaries and personal responsibility for actions.
Large scale or small scale. Makes no difference.

and do the murderers who obey them get transformed into heroes?
If you have ever been a situation that forced you to make a decision that caused someone to die. You would never ask such a insulting question.

I've been called this. "Hero". I'd rather be called a monster. I feel like one. I carried a med-kit, not a rifle. I made a decision, people died. Technically I made the right choice. I feel like a murderer, and probably always will.

No one I've ever known, that qualifies as "hero" wants to be told that to their face. If they do, their either lying, or crazy.
 
@Anarchy I was thinking that was what happened.

I did indeed mean that it was morally wrong to stack people into pyramids and piss on them. Unfortunately it really did happen.

Just as it's wrong for anyone to use their children as human shields while they're alive, then as PR stunts after they get them killed. Which unfortunately also happens.
 
My example was not to show the "wise" but the stupidity that LBJ used
But that is a centralised system.
a central few who claim to be cleverer, wiser, nicer or whatever than the rest of us get to force their whims onto us.

Instead of us owning our own mistakes we get forced to act on the basis of the rulers idiocy as well, and to own the outcomes of that idiocy.

but as long as this world produces Hitlers, then someone will have to stand against them, and that takes a military.
A hitler is the end product of ever increasing state sector involvement. I set a very simplified analysis of that out in the trump thread
Back in the 19th century, Bismark (certainly no soft fluffy humanitarian) had headed off the socialists by adopting several of the socialist policies, including old age pensions, state sector schooling and healthcare. In terms of the state pensions, Bismark created a Ponzi scheme, decades before Carlo Ponzi created his, and [ponzi] went to prison for it when it collapsed.

When anything is "free" at the point of use, price cannot act as a method of rationing demand (Check out the supply and demand curves in economics 101)
Demand for these services will therefore always outstrip supply (think of the fighting that breaks out when the january sales begin - people fighting over stuff that sat on the shelves all season at a slightly higher price).
and, due to the well known problems with monopolies, quality of service is likely to deteriorate and price increase over time.
For the pensions, all Ponzi schemes will collapse, it's only a question of when? not, if?

Now add in the problem of paper money being printed in ever increasing amounts to pay for those services. That reached its end point in Germany with the hyper inflation, wiping out any personal savings. In America, the collapse of the paper money is still to come. the dollar has already lost an estimated 98% of its purchasing power since the Fe'ral Reserve was established.

Most of the population is pretty ignorant about economics, and I'll include most people with economics degrees in that.

without that basic knowledge of real world economics, people who want to get things like state sector healthcare systems, state old age pensions and state sector schooling to work are left with what appear to be several options.

1) The people in charge are either bad or ineffective - replace them with someone good/strong who will make the policies work.

2) Some group is sabotaging the working or the delivery of the policies - identify and purge that group.

3) The provision is being wasted on undeserving recipients rather than deserving ones - get rid of the undeserving.

In Germany in 1933, a sizeable minority thought that Hitler was the answer to 1), but not enough of them to make him chancellor. The faked "terrorist attacks" including the burning of the German parliament building (Reichstag Fire) soon convinced sufficeint people that there was an imminent threat to them, and that Hitler was the man to protect them, when in fact it was his thugs who were orchestrating the terrorism.

In Germany, the subsequent answers to 2) and 3) were:

2) Joooooz (especially communist ones)
3) Disabled people, Joooooooz, and other "inferior" races.

The present day "issues" are very very similar in both America, Britain Canada or Oz.
Try filling in 2) & 3) for the present united state 'residential candidates.

A Hitler emerges through a centralised system
and can only be dangerous outside of his turf if the area he emerges in has both a well developed economy* AND the lists of who has what, so that the resources can be stolen and put to the Hitler's purposes.

Without a centralised system to gain control over, a Hitler is just a nutcase on a soapbox or in the corner of a beer hall, ranting his twisted hatred and grandiose schemes to passers by.

If we look at Europe during the period of national socialism in Germany; it was the centralised states which fell.

De-centralised Switzerland did not fall, and even though access through Switzerland would have greatly aided the Axis powers communication and cooperation, invasion or coercion of the Swiss never happened - Switzerland, with no central government (it is a confederation of "cantons" (counties)) has every male military trained and with a rifle at home.

There was no central state to aim for and that would surrender, and there were no central lists (levers of power) to take over, to know who had guns and other resources. Switzerland was too tough and too difficult to mess with.

Switzerland's little brother, Lichtenstein, also went un molested by Hitler, even though it would only have taken half a day to invade.

What does a Hitler matter if you are too tough for him to be a threat to you?

Anyone arguing about the holocaust at this point, should remember that it only began and could only have operated once war had started. The war enabled the holocaust.

Incidentally, Switzerland and Lictenstein, both have poor mountainous land and stony soils, both are land locked with no sea coast, neither has much in the way of minerals, coal or oil - but they are incredibly prosperous - When I argue that our current state of development is inspite of, rather than as a result of centralised states - look at Switzerland, and ask how much more prosperous somewhere with flat land and sea coast could be, if it had the decentralised and minimal government that Switzerland has.
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*This is the paradox of Liberalism
There has to have been economic liberalism for an area to amass the capital necessary to fund the imperial ambitions of a dictator
Britain became an oppressive imperial power overseas, only because [classical] liberal policies at home had allowed the technological and economic development to support it, the same is true of the united state.

That is also the argument that I am advancing against the idea that Putin is an huge international threat. The interventionist policies of the Soviets and more recently of Putin have resulted in Russian GDP being smaller than that of Spain. Russia does not have the economic resources to be able to support large imperial exploits.
 
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