Friday, June 30, 2006

Behind the badge, does the heart of a revenuer beat?

Filthy Lucre

A long time ago, I studied the monetary and cultural cost of certain aspects of the Imperial-era British penal system.  I learned alot about how graft, social forces, governmental pressure, and random circumstance can shape not only the process of the justice system, but its punishment as well.  And it didn’t stop there.  Oh, no.  European legal thought and tradition are fundamental in many ways to our own, even as late as the development of our penitentiary system.  And while I answered the questions I set out to adequately, I would have liked to take the work deeper.  Perhaps, in the best tradition of scholars past, I ended my work feeling like I had posed still more questions, and opened doors on lines of inquiry I could pursue to make a lasting contribution to my wallet.  Daah, my field.  Lasting contribution to my field. 

One topic that I wish I had thought of then but is on my mind lately is: what did cops do before there were drivers to ticket?

Seriously.

Because, over time, the police have become a guaranteed revenue stream into their city and state.  An awful lot of them appear to be running radar; in certain regions of my domain, ensuring the safety of the larger commonweal one ticket at a time is the apparent raison detre of the State Police.  Yes, they have other missions- they are the 911 for remote areas of the state; they have a kick-ass crime lab; they have really cool dogs- but really, they’re primary mission seems to be to write tickets.  I don’t know the percentages of how many officers are out pulling people over, as opposed to the total number of officers on duty, but by casual observation it seems somewhere in the neighborhood of all of them.

So as a historically-minded cat, I have to ask myself how long that’s been going on.  Does the growth of the police force mirror the growth of the population, or more closely the growth of car ownership (if indeed the two are even distinguishable)?  What was the pre-automobile analogue of police-generated revenue?  Was pre-industrial society safer, since more police ought to have been available to fight crime?  When did we decide it was ok for agents of the state to generate income for the government?

And no, I didn’t recently get a ticket- I actually drive like an old lady.  Well, an old lady who knows where she’s going and how to drive.  But in my daily travels I see folks bagged by the state cops hand over fist, and just have to ask whether that’s really the best use of their time for the mission of maintaining peace and order for the citizenry, or the best use of their time for a rapacious state government?



Posted by GeekLethal on 06/30/06 at 04:44 PM
Filthy Lucre • Permalink

Here’s one for Mapgirl

Filthy Lucre

Mapgirl is on a quest to become more frugal, save lots of money, learn about finance and take over the world.  To help her (and any other frugal wannabes amongst our readership) become more frugal, I offer this tutorial on dumpster diving. 

[Wik] Added note for Mapgirl: knit sweaters are not appropriate for dumpster diving.  Nor are open-toed sandals.  Dive away!


Posted by Buckethead on 06/30/06 at 04:02 PM
Filthy Lucre • Permalink

Asteroid 2006-Mustafah

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Meanwhile, other scientists fear the asteroids.  NASA is attempting to come up with some sort of scheme to defend us against rogue asteroids with unstable, likely Islamic orbits.  The French, in a preemptive move, have already surrendered to asteroid 2004 XP14, which will make a close approach to the earth next monday.  NASA insists that it is a global problem, and that other nations should really get off their asses and help out. 


Posted by Buckethead on 06/30/06 at 11:56 AM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • Permalink

SPF 5,000,000

That Buck Rogers Stuff

Seth Shostak, SETI researcher and man-about-town, has a nice bit explaining why a sphere is such a inadequate shape for a homeworld.  It is not exactly a new idea that we really ought to move off the planet and into the great void, but recently Stephen Hawking’s comments have made the news.  Hawking recommends new space colonies on the basis of the eggs in a basket rationale - that with life sequestered on just one world, we are vulnerable to a single point of failure - one asteroid, comet, disaster or alien invasion would put paid to the entire species.  Fair enough, but Shostak argues that if we look at the tonnage to terrans ratio, the numbers are rather startling.  For each of us, there is a trillion tons of earth.  That’s a lot of mostly inaccessible mantle and red hot magma for each of us.  Moving into a more frothy or fractal living space would bring the ration down significantly.  The asteroids have about the mass of the earth, but nearly all of it is easily accessible mass (assuming, of course, you have the capability to get to the asteroid belt.  That mass could be readily converted to a living space ten thousand times that of earth - just assuming that you built domes on the surface of the rocks.  If you actually cut them all up and made habitats out of them, the habitable volume could be millions bigger.  Getting the ttt ration down to the order of a thousand or a hundred tons per person would be vastly more efficient.  And therefore, we’d be better prepared to fight the giant fighting robots when they inevitably make their bid for domination. 


Posted by Buckethead on 06/30/06 at 11:48 AM
That Buck Rogers Stuff • Permalink