Worldbuilding Realism Consultation Thread Mk. 4

[Korva]

Why not use regular soldiers with standard combat loadout as police?

Looking at the militarization of police in most countries nowadays, why not just go straight for full military as cops? People getting 7.62mm of lead for stealing would be a pretty good deterrent, and it would also save on prison and justice costs.

If the penalty for every crime is death then criminals don't have an incentive to give up. Enjoy shoot outs for expired tags and jaywalking.

[Tule]

Why not use regular soldiers with standard combat loadout as police?

Looking at the militarization of police in most countries nowadays, why not just go straight for full military as cops? People getting 7.62mm of lead for stealing would be a pretty good deterrent, and it would also save on prison and justice costs.

If the penalty for every crime is death then criminals don't have an incentive to give up. Enjoy shoot outs for expired tags and jaywalking.

Hell, ordinary citizens will have the incentive to overthrow the government. They practically live under the same level of tyranny as people in Nazi concentration camps.

[Spirit of Hope]

Why not use regular soldiers with standard combat loadout as police?

Looking at the militarization of police in most countries nowadays, why not just go straight for full military as cops? People getting 7.62mm of lead for stealing would be a pretty good deterrent, and it would also save on prison and justice costs.

All kinds of issues.
1) 99% of police work doesn't need that level of equipment, and in many cases it would just get in the way. You only see cops loaded up like soldiers in very specific circumstances, generally riot control and when facing an armed suspect. The rest of the time it's dead weight they don't need.
2) Just shooting people, as has already been noted, doesn't give them much of an incentive to surrender. It also creates the issue of hitting bystanders, damaging property and otherwise doing the opposite job of what you want the police to be doing.
3) It will make it harder to get information on crimes as people will be unwilling to give out info that can lead to a friend or family members death. Even the victims of a crime may not wish death on the person that stole from them and may mislead you.
4) It's hard to train people to kill, armed forces put a lot of effort into it and still have issues. You would almost certainly have issues with your police either shooting to much, and thus shooting people who have committed no crime, or shooting to little and wasting their equipment.
5) Morality. It is hard to have the support of the population when they think your behavior is immoral, let alone the support or acceptance of the international community.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Why not use regular soldiers with standard combat loadout as police?

Looking at the militarization of police in most countries nowadays, why not just go straight for full military as cops? People getting 7.62mm of lead for stealing would be a pretty good deterrent, and it would also save on prison and justice costs.

YES COMRADE

KILL THIEF MAKE GREAT SAVINGS

FOR GLORY OF NATION

[Allanea]

Police militarization is a bit of an overhyped subject.

Giving police M16s and armored personnel carriers doesn't turn them into soldiers. Soldiers can't do the job of cops simply because they spend lots of time training to kill people and assault fortified positions and fire anti-tank weapons, while police officers spend this time training how to interact with the community, disarm suspects, and so forth. The reason that so many US police are bad shots is simply because most of their training is not shooting and killing their fellow man, and so unless they also shoot guns as a hobby they're unlikely to have much training in this subject (unless they're actually on the SWAT team).

99% of the problems police face aren't problems that are going to be solved by having them be better marksmen or giving them BMP-3s. Some of these problems are going to actually be made worse.

The only point when you need to replace regular policing with raw armed force is when you are already a third-world country and need to pacify the slums by going room to room.

[Gallia-]

Sounds like the future of USA.

[Hyggemata]

I've been so far disgusted with Trump and his antics that I have developed a dislike for the word "truth". Whenever the word "truth" appears, it is more likely than not that what it follows or what follows it is not the truth. When something is true, you don't need to say that it's the "truth"; only when something is blatantly untrue does one liberally use the word "truth" to fortify it.

[Tule]

I've been so far disgusted with Trump and his antics that I have developed a dislike for the word "truth". Whenever the word "truth" appears, it is more likely than not that what it follows or what follows it is not the truth. When something is true, you don't need to say that it's the "truth"; only when something is blatantly untrue does one liberally use the word "truth" to fortify it.

Politicians have always lied, Trump is just bad at hiding the fact that he's lying and knowing when to lie.

Trump could have the same policies and be vastly more popular if he only thought a bit harder before acting and saying stuff.

[Costa Fierro]

The only point when you need to replace regular policing with raw armed force is when you are already a third-world country and need to pacify the slums by going room to room.

Costa Fiero doesn't bother pacifying it's slums. It just shoots the criminals when they come out of them and into the areas where rich people live.

[Gallia-]

I've been so far disgusted with Trump and his antics that I have developed a dislike for the word "truth". Whenever the word "truth" appears, it is more likely than not that what it follows or what follows it is not the truth. When something is true, you don't need to say that it's the "truth"; only when something is blatantly untrue does one liberally use the word "truth" to fortify it.

Politicians have always lied, Trump is just bad at hiding the fact that he's lying and knowing when to lie.

Trump could have the same policies and be vastly more popular if he only thought a bit harder before acting and saying stuff.

He is saying the right things. He's hugely popular among Americans in the industrial Midwest.

His policies are just typical "run the nation into the ground" deficit spending rather than increasing tax revenue to sustain the American welfare state that makes the USA a powerful country.

[Hyggemata]

Politicians have always lied, Trump is just bad at hiding the fact that he's lying and knowing when to lie.

Trump could have the same policies and be vastly more popular if he only thought a bit harder before acting and saying stuff.

He is saying the right things. He's hugely popular among Americans in the industrial Midwest.

He just seems like an American version of Mobutu Sese Seko to me.

[Gallia-]

He is saying the right things. He's hugely popular among Americans in the industrial Midwest.

He just seems like an American version of Mobutu Sese Seko to me.

Completely false. People said the same things about Reagan that they do about Trump.

"He's a neo-fascist,"
"He'll ruin democracy in America,"
"This man is a buffoon who has no experience in real politics,"

etc.

Only one of those seems to be true in Trump's case. Trump is more akin to Jimmy Carter than Reagan, though, minus about 15 IQ points. Carter is probably a 2-sigma IQ given he was a nuclear engineer (while Trump is likely a 1-sigma), but he still wanted to suck Brezhnev's dick and bomb the Islamists. He was also a dark horse outsider who promised to "drain the swamp," etc. during his campaign and generally appeared to the Industrial Midwest. He was also an alright president.

In general, you can describe Trump as a idealist who has an infatuation with the Ford-to-Reagan era of the United States presidencies, but is in general less informed on the matters of politics that these people were. Let's hope that he's a quick learner I guess, or else we'll have to rely on the civil service to run the country while the Executive blunders around aimlessly like they did in Bush 2's reign.

[The Soodean Imperium]

The problem with doing a metro map for Jesselton is that it has something like six million people and a ridonkulous amount of stations. I'm thinking of doign a detailed map but style, scale and what info to include are constant problems.

Donggyŏng is a city of 14.23 million, has 308 metro stations as of Feb. 2017, and plans to reach a total of 20 metro lines by 2020 (all of which will be shown on the map). A city that size shouldn't be insurmountable.

OTOH though I have spent at least a month working on Donggyŏng, and I'm still maybe a week away from posting the city's completed iiWiki entry.

[Rook Islands-]

What would a good way to reach and supply isolated towns with food and such in a thick, isolated jungle nation with bad infastructure?

[Tule]

What would a good way to reach and supply isolated towns with food and such in a thick, isolated jungle nation with bad infastructure?

Boats if you have river access, mule trains or even air drops.

[Hyggemata]

He just seems like an American version of Mobutu Sese Seko to me.

Completely false. People said the same things about Reagan that they do about Trump.

"He's a neo-fascist,"
"He'll ruin democracy in America,"
"This man is a buffoon who has no experience in real politics,"

etc.

Only one of those seems to be true in Trump's case. Trump is more akin to Jimmy Carter than Reagan, though, minus about 15 IQ points. Carter is probably a 2-sigma IQ given he was a nuclear engineer (while Trump is likely a 1-sigma), but he still wanted to suck Brezhnev's dick and bomb the Islamists. He was also a dark horse outsider who promised to "drain the swamp," etc. during his campaign and generally appeared to the Industrial Midwest. He was also an alright president.

In general, you can describe Trump as a idealist who has an infatuation with the Ford-to-Reagan era of the United States presidencies, but is in general less informed on the matters of politics that these people were. Let's hope that he's a quick learner I guess, or else we'll have to rely on the civil service to run the country while the Executive blunders around aimlessly like they did in Bush 2's reign.

But Reagan is buffoonish. Even at the end of his presidency, he has yet to convince me otherwise.

[Crookfur]

What would a good way to reach and supply isolated towns with food and such in a thick, isolated jungle nation with bad infastructure?

There is no good way, well other than "git gud infrastructure".

The locals will just make do as they always have using whatever routes they have available be it water ways or jungle tracks. Maybe you could incentivise logging companies to cut and clear "roads" but if that was particularly worthwhile they would likely have done it themselves anyway.

[Tule]

Completely false. People said the same things about Reagan that they do about Trump.

"He's a neo-fascist,"
"He'll ruin democracy in America,"
"This man is a buffoon who has no experience in real politics,"

etc.

Only one of those seems to be true in Trump's case. Trump is more akin to Jimmy Carter than Reagan, though, minus about 15 IQ points. Carter is probably a 2-sigma IQ given he was a nuclear engineer (while Trump is likely a 1-sigma), but he still wanted to suck Brezhnev's dick and bomb the Islamists. He was also a dark horse outsider who promised to "drain the swamp," etc. during his campaign and generally appeared to the Industrial Midwest. He was also an alright president.

In general, you can describe Trump as a idealist who has an infatuation with the Ford-to-Reagan era of the United States presidencies, but is in general less informed on the matters of politics that these people were. Let's hope that he's a quick learner I guess, or else we'll have to rely on the civil service to run the country while the Executive blunders around aimlessly like they did in Bush 2's reign.

But Reagan is buffoonish. Even at the end of his presidency, he has yet to convince me otherwise.

Reagan was eloquent, charming as fuck and had experience with politics as the former governor of California.
His economic policies were pretty horrible in the long term though, and his foreign policy was very risky (though it was fortunately a success in many areas).

Trump seems to me like a more stupid, more narcissistic and more impulsive Nixon. Though he does have a certain type of charisma which appeals to much of the right.

[The Soodean Imperium]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned "pay China to build your roads."

e: the above was referring to Rook Islands, not Trump and US infrastructure, but I guess it could be read either way?

What would a good way to reach and supply isolated towns with food and such in a thick, isolated jungle nation with bad infastructure?

If these isolated towns and villages already exist and have people living in them, chances are the locals are already relying on the surrounding jungle or local land plots for most of their needs, and have been for a while. They might occasionally get mail, generator parts, or medical supplies by river or air-drop, but even then we're talking something more like a local's motorboat and a Piper Cub, rather than than container barges and C-130s.

If the town has grown large enough that it needs frequent, regularly scheduled, centrally organized shipments of food and other supplies to survive, chances are it's already connected to the road network anyway, even just to a set of tire tracks running through the jungle. If it's completely isolated from anything larger than a mule path, nobody is going to move there (nor would they have a reason to, unless they're a foreign ethnographer doing field research) and any new generation above replacement levels is going to take the next boat or mule train out of there to find better opportunities.

[Gallia-]

Completely false. People said the same things about Reagan that they do about Trump.

"He's a neo-fascist,"
"He'll ruin democracy in America,"
"This man is a buffoon who has no experience in real politics,"

etc.

Only one of those seems to be true in Trump's case. Trump is more akin to Jimmy Carter than Reagan, though, minus about 15 IQ points. Carter is probably a 2-sigma IQ given he was a nuclear engineer (while Trump is likely a 1-sigma), but he still wanted to suck Brezhnev's dick and bomb the Islamists. He was also a dark horse outsider who promised to "drain the swamp," etc. during his campaign and generally appeared to the Industrial Midwest. He was also an alright president.

In general, you can describe Trump as a idealist who has an infatuation with the Ford-to-Reagan era of the United States presidencies, but is in general less informed on the matters of politics that these people were. Let's hope that he's a quick learner I guess, or else we'll have to rely on the civil service to run the country while the Executive blunders around aimlessly like they did in Bush 2's reign.

But Reagan is buffoonish. Even at the end of his presidency, he has yet to convince me otherwise.

Reagan was the ultimate post-modern politician, being a literal actor who listened to his advisors who knew more than him. His advisors were just, in general, wrong about a lot of things. Starve the Beast being the number one thing, but also the guns-for-hostages bullshit that Carter wouldn't have put up with.

Reagan gave the IRGC TOW missiles and pretended he had nothing to do with what his staffers advised him would work, then he left Lebanon when a car bomb blew up the barracks. GG. Jimmy Carter would send in the Rapid Deployment Force to rescue the hostages in Lebanon and Ford would have done Operation Fluid Fist with the Navy and Marines like it's 1958.

But Reagan is buffoonish. Even at the end of his presidency, he has yet to convince me otherwise.

Reagan was eloquent, charming as fuck and had experience with politics as the former governor of California.
His economic policies were pretty horrible in the long term though, and his foreign policy was very risky (though it was fortunately a success in many areas).

Trump seems to me like a more stupid, more narcissistic and more impulsive Nixon. Though he does have a certain type of charisma which appeals to much of the right.

Reagan's experiences as governor of Commiefornia include suppressing student protests with double ought buckshot, which was the big reason he was accused of neo-fascism during the presidential campaign.

Trump is closer to U.S. Grant than Nixon anyway.

[Hyggemata]

But Reagan is buffoonish. Even at the end of his presidency, he has yet to convince me otherwise.

Reagan was eloquent, charming as fuck and had experience with politics as the former governor of California.

In politics, there is no lack of eloquent, charming, and experienced buffoons. These characteristics can co-exist quite easily.

His economic policies were pretty horrible in the long term though, and his foreign policy was very risky (though it was fortunately a success in many areas).

Trump seems to me like a more stupid, more narcissistic and more impulsive Nixon. Though he does have a certain type of charisma which appeals to much of the right.

Trump is all the buffoon but lacks bigly the eloquence and charm. His style of attraction is akin to printing pornography on a newspaper to attract more readers.

[Gallia-]

That's great except Trump's statements are highly calculated for the Twitter sized attention spans and post-industrial angst of the Internet and Austerity Ages. It's not like the President needs to be terribly well informed on matters of foreign policy anyway, he has advisors and bureaucrats who act as institutional memory.

It's just that his institutional memory is the same people who did Iraq and created stuff like ISIS.

[Allanea]

That's great except Trump's statements are highly calculated for the Twitter sized attention spans and post-industrial angst of the Internet and Austerity Ages. It's not like the President needs to be terribly well informed on matters of foreign policy anyway, he has advisors and bureaucrats who act as institutional memory.

It's just that his institutional memory is the same people who did Iraq and created stuff like ISIS.

You mean, Saddam Hussein?

[Austrasien]

Trump is all the buffoon but lacks bigly the eloquence and charm. His style of attraction is akin to printing pornography on a newspaper to attract more readers.

People have wised up the fact the "eloquent" politicians are focus-group tested, PR managed, image coached, micro-targeted cutouts who all bought the same personas from the same expert consultants. There is no living American (or western really) politician of note who has mastered both oration and rhetoric. If there was Trump probably would not be President.

[The Soodean Imperium]

That's great except Trump's statements are highly calculated for the Twitter sized attention spans and post-industrial angst of the Internet and Austerity Ages. It's not like the President needs to be terribly well informed on matters of foreign policy anyway, he has advisors and bureaucrats who act as institutional memory.

It's just that his institutional memory is the same people who did Iraq and created stuff like ISIS.

Trump's overall messaging style is a remarkably smooth fit for short attention spans, 140-characeter sound bytes, and people who take pride in political incorrectness, to say nothing of lingering rural and industrial unrest, but I'm not sure I'd call it "highly calculated" - any more than I'd call a lab rat pressing a lever to get water a plumbing engineer. He found a messaging strategy that got him applause, and continued repeating it again and again until people chanted his name. The only difference is that rather than caving in the face of establishment criticism, like any number of politicians before him, he laughed it off and made that part of his persona.

I guess one can argue though that this is the most required of any American politician today?

e:

Trump is closer to U.S. Grant than Nixon anyway.

This is actually a really interesting comparison the more I think about it.