> The authoritarian regime of the locally elected government?
These are not in any way contradictory concepts. New york city is one of the most highly surveilled cities on the planet and has the highest police budget of any metro area in the world. The current mayor is a former cop who gets way too excited about working with the IDF and is super excited about using drones to spy on people even more invasively. Another recent former mayor campaigned on police harassing people on the street for literally no reason. They recently shot someone for fare skipping rather than simply removing fares, even though it's a massive loss to the city to staff the subway just to recoup a small percentage of lost revenue.
Look you can disagree with it being authoritarian, but maybe it'd be worth pointing out how people voted against clearly authoritarian policies. It seems to my eye that people just want a police-based society over a liberal one.
Your post is composed of outright lies and, charitably, ignorant analysis. It reads more like propaganda than an actual argument.
> They recently shot someone for fare skipping rather than simply removing fares, even though it's a massive loss to the city to staff the subway just to recoup a small percentage of lost revenue.
This is an outright lie as you likely know. They shot a man who charged at them with a knife. Don't believe me? Watch the body camera footage.
What's more, no major metro area in the entire world has fareless transit. Fares a key part of funding the operations of the public good and so is not something you "simply" do. NYC MTA prices are already extremely low (compare them against any other comparable Euro system) and have the option for low-income residents to pay half fares.
> has the highest police budget of any metro area in the world.
Simply taking a total budget and comparing it to other another total budget is at best a poor choice and at worst looks like more of a propaganda choice. Budgets would need to be scaled by population as well as local costs to make them remotely comparable. But what's more, to the extent that it's even true, it's quite marginal. The NYPD budget '25 is proposed at $5.75B[1] whereas, for example, the London MOPAC/MPS budget is 4.36B GBP[2] which converts to $5.5B. This was just the first major metro I checked!
What's more a _perhaps_ more reasonable way to look at this would be police officers per capita. Here we can see that NY is comparable to many other major metro areas [3] and significantly below some (eg Paris and Madrid).
But most importantly, the presence of police officers is not remotely authoritarianism. The enforcement of laws is not authoritarianism. The manner of restrictions, the immunity of the police and authorities above laws, the form of trial system, etc are what make up authoritarian systems and it is quite obvious that none of these characteristics remotely define NYC and it's a comedy to suggest so.
> The enforcement of laws is not authoritarianism. The manner of restrictions, the immunity of the police and authorities above laws, the form of trial system, etc are what make up authoritarian systems
I just don't agree at all—formal democracies and democratic institutions can be authoritarian, too. I certainly don't have the faith in our justice system you have.
Sorry that you don't agree that the enforcement of laws is not authoritarianism and you are currently living in a liberal society. The vast majority of people who have lived in liberal societies for ages unfortunately believe that enforcing the laws that are made by either direct democracy or through their democratically elected institutions is good and just and I expect that will continue for a long while. You will unfortunately have to live in such a world where people are not allowed to do crime.
> Sorry that you don't agree that the enforcement of laws is not authoritarianism
I never said this. Still, you can trivially pass authoritarian laws in an otherwise liberal society.
> The vast majority of people who have lived in liberal societies for ages
Only about 230 years, but sure.
> unfortunately believe that enforcing the laws that are made by either direct democracy or through their democratically elected institutions is good and just and I expect that will continue for a long while.
Sure, that doesn't make this not authoritarian. Sometimes people are just sick, scared, lonely people that are incapable of considering the impact of their actions. That's (collective) america to a T. If you knowingly sell someone snake oil you can't be shocked when they buy it.
> You will unfortunately have to live in such a world where people are not allowed to do crime.
I wouldn't really mind this if the crimes actually seems to correlate with encouraging a more livable society for the most of us.
