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xp84yesterday at 9:43 PM0 repliesview on HN

> tax the ever loving fuck out of anyone worth more than a million, dump those taxes into public services like education and healthcare

Have you met California? That's literally the exact thing we do here. Yet our crime is terrible. And if you think throwing money at schools will translate automatically into better outcomes, it really isn't that simple. Schools with 50% more money hire more administrators and consultants and build way nicer facilities, but they don't just automatically turn out kids who are 50% more moral.

Healthcare is a similar joke. We spend more on healthcare than any nation! Yet we're not the most healthy. Why should we run up the score even more on how much tax money we spend on that when we've already proven it to be inefficient?

> people aren't forced into deviance

With respect, I do not believe that anyone is forced into deviance. People will always come from a diversity of levels of privilege (unless we convert to an economy like North Korea where the leader and their friends live well and everyone else is in poverty). Those who start out with the least will always have a choice to try to get ahead through crime or by honest means, just like everyone else does.

Wouldn't you say the rich aren't any more likely to actually follow the law as the poor? Why do they have agency, but poor criminals were predestined for crime?

[Edited to add the following: I believe that denying people's agency and treating them as helpless victims drawn irresistibly to crime, does a disservice to the disadvantaged. It tells those who are tempted, or those who have made mistakes, that they may as well do crime, since society expects them to anyway and says they are 'forced to.' And it erases/ignores those from poor backgrounds who did make something of themselves.]

> licensure and insurance

This doesn't seem like a serious idea to me. Licensure is no magic wand. The effect of malpractice insurance in medicine has arguably brought most of society very little benefit (other than attorneys).

A nationwide standard on censuring officers proportionally (up to and including suspension or ban from serving as a peace officer anywhere) for offenses of misuse of power makes sense and could be good policy. Most of the rest of this just sounds like unserious wishing that will never go anywhere.