This is a useful thread that does a good job of explicating the big picture conceptual stakes in some of these policing debates.

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1293538832638529536

And it is definitely true that when I say de-policing leads to more crime, I mean it in a “breaking into a restaurant and stealing the food is crime” sense whereas if your view is “the real crime is the existence of property itself” you may have a different take.

I’m a boring meliorist, so one question I ask about this kind of thing is “what would happen if your city tried to unilaterally implement this vision?”

I think capital flight, job losses, and collapse of the tax base. Affluent people go elsewhere, poor people suffer.

But if you want to completely separate yourself from a question about the here & now of municipal politics and ask, like, “in the utopia society of tomorrow when we have eliminated all scarcity and want, will we also eliminate police?” that is also interesting.