So we're hearing a lot of talk about defunding police and putting that money into social services instead. The idea, presumably, is that if these "social services" could somehow address every other possible motive for committing crime in the first place, we wouldn't need as much policing.
Here's the problem with that proposal... since when was anyone any good at predicting anyone else's motives for what they do?
No, really. I recall 2016, when the notion that respondents who claimed they'd vote Clinton if she were the candidate were lying through their teeth were met with "why would they lie"? Doesn't matter. They did. People do what they do for reasons neither you nor I nor the so-called "experts" who got it wrong could ever hope to comperehend. The delusion that if you do not anticipate their motives, such motives cannot exist, feels like a false dichotomy fit to rival "God of the gaps."
So now proposals to defund the police invoke the delusion that they have every possible motive for crime figured out; and they want us to, based on this tenuous reasoning, weaken the one institution known to hold crime back.
My question to them is; what if you're wrong? What is your plan B, if people have reasons for committing crimes that you fail to anticipate, predict, or comprehend, and these reasons are all unleashed? Is a return to policing as it was before possible, or would the change, or at least some of the effects thereof, be permanent? Is there a third option you could jump to from there, that might be relatively safer? If so, what is it?
My alternative? If we think we know why crime happens, then rather than defunding the police, why not address those supposed motives first, and then weaken police presence very slowly and gradually so if it works out badly we can reverse the trend before it's too late?
