Yeah, mobs are never violent. So which "individuals" were responsible for the guy's death? #1 that hit him first, or #50 that delivered the finishing blow? Or maybe #16--he had a break in the wave and could have turned. Or #31--she had heels on--extra damage! If you want to blame an individual, that individual is the Walmart corporation. Ya know, you're absolutely right. This isn't a difference of opinion, you're just completely and absolutely right, and I'm in self denial.
You do understand that in the eyes of the law, there are more ways to be responsible for someone else's crime than "putting a gun to their head?" Wal-Mart created the situation which lead to the stampede, excersied poor crowd and traffic control, didn't give its employees the resources to manage the crowd and didn't put a stop to the stampede once it was clear that someone had been injured. Just what degree of negligence they excercised is a matter of debate, but the fact the they were negligent is not.
I never made any such claim. The point of contention is who is responsible for the actions of the mob. And for me it's no different from who is responsible for the actions of an individual. Only the person making the choice to commit the bad act is responsible for the decision, whether he did so alone or in a group doing the same thing. Everyone who can be proven to have participated in the assault should be held liable. Every person connected to every foot print on the corpse. What size shoe does Wal Mart wear? Which of the victims did Wal Mart stomp? Some people were evidently able to participate in these sales without hurting anyone. Why could that not be the "reasonable expectation"? Why are we always expected to adjust for the lowest common denominator? Pragmatism? Preparing for the absolute worst humanity has to offer, just to run a damned Christmas sale? That's absurd. You assume everyone will behave themselves, and you punish those who don't.
And I'm sure you understand how highly I regard the law as an argument. If merely attracting a crowd is creating the situation that leads to a stampede, society has failed. There is nothing "reasonable" about expecting that to happen. Failure to babysit is not negligence. In order for that store to truly take control of this situation, it would have had to maintain a security force with enough physical presence to forcibly prevent a stampede. Since I'm sure a company like Wal Mart would attract the absolute cream of the crop for such a job, the only real alternative is law enforcement. Do you want to pay more cops for crowd control in fucking shopping centers? I sure as hell don't. We shouldn't need to run everything like a fucking police state.
I'd love to see UA go in front of a judge and argue "your honor, I don't recognize the validity of your laws, therefore I am guilty of no crime." Seriously, I'd pay a lot to watch that happen.
I'm on the UA side of this argument. How is Walmart "agitating" the crowd anyway? By trying to offer special deals just like a million other stores do on Black Friday? Do we just roll over and say "you know how people act in a crowd" and accept this type of behavior as typical? Do we give up on society and admit we need a foot up our ass (government, cops, security cameras) just to keep us from going batshit crazy? That we can't be responsible enough to go shopping in a crowded, comptetive situation? By this rationale, if a bunch of drivers start ramming each other during rush-hour traffic, it's not their fault! The town should make more roads - you know how drivers act in a crowd...it's basic psychology, right? The drivers were agitated beyond all self control!
You can either argue righteousness, or argue legality. They are not interchangeable. I know a judge isn't going to give a rat's ass about my reasoned objections, but I am equally unimpressed by the "I'm right because the law agrees with me" argument here.
Enticing a large crowd to develop without a plan in place to control that crowd = negligence. Open and shut.
Sorry to interrupt the , but I just saw some updated news reports: 1. The pregnant woman did NOT have a miscarriage, and the baby is fine. 2. The store has been closed all day. Maybe the loss of Black Friday revenue will wake up Wal-Mart's management so this doesn't happen again.
Yes, I am indeed a retard for believing in personal responsibility and not getting a pass just because you're in a large crowd of other idiots chomping at the bit to spend money they don't have in the first place. Yep, you got me pegged!
What obligates them to "control" a crowd of adults? Why can the adults not be expected to control themselves, or be held directly responsible when they don't? Because that would be too hard, you might never catch the actual guilty parties,and Wal Mart is a tempting target that's too easy to miss The standard for a reasonable assumption should not be the worst thing anyone could conceivably do to each other in any situation. It should be based on what a reasonable person might be expected to do.
Well, that's good, at least. Man, if I were in charge of that store after something like this, and I was dealing with the incessant, shrill cries of the "Failure of crowd control! Incited a mob!" douche-garglers, next year I'd have those motherfuckers single-filing through two miles of cattle fencing, with armed security guards borrowed from the nearest heavy metal titty bar and bondage dungeon placed at ten foot intervals, dragging anyone who even looked like they might try to push past someone into a barbed-wire internment pen to wait for processing by one overworked, underpaid meter maid with PMS while their car is towed to impound.
Here we go with the fucking "what ifs". If you're determined to get them all, sit down with the security camera footage and put some names to the faces. The only way to guarantee it never happens again is to never let more than one person in the store at a time. It's an imposition to make it legally mandatory. So why are we imposing on Wal Mart to act as an unpaid police force? If "society" is so fucking concerned by the actions of free citizens, why isn't half of the local precinct standing there in riot gear? Because it's easier to sit on your ass and bitch while someone else shoulders the expense and inconvenience, and the shoppers would cry "fascism!". The people who were able to sprint through the door without hurting anyone want to retain the freedom to do it again, and Wal Mart wouldn't be able to maintain it's attractive prices if they had to keep a standing garrison of security guards on site. It's an impossible situation if you're hoping to make everyone happy.
My point isn't 'getting them all', my point is that they were not all equally guilty. My point was; how do you determine the level of guilt? Which is why I was taking a step back each time, to the point where there was the most control, and thus repsonsiblity. I never said anything about making it legally mandatory. I said they should be punished when they knowledgeably let in more people than are beyond their ability to control. At the very least, it's a fire hazard. So why are we imposing on Wal Mart to act as an unpaid police force? If "society" is so fucking concerned by the actions of free citizens, why isn't half of the local precinct standing there in riot gear? Because it's easier to sit on your ass and bitch while someone else shoulders the expense and inconvenience, and the shoppers would cry "fascism!".[/QUOTE] See above. I didn't say anything about legality, and I didn't see anyone else talk about implementing new laws. People have simply been saying that those at the greatest level of control over this incident are those that should be punished. And also, walmart enforcing it themselves would mean that THEY and THEIR CUSTOMERS paid for it. If the local precint was there, that would be paid by taxes, and people who didn't shop at walmart would be paying for it as well. So that argument doesn't make sense.
Essentially, yes. As has been said a number of times in this thread, Wal-Mart and the other stores try to drum up excitement by having special deals good for only a limited time. They know, or should know, that scarcity is going to lead to people acting crazy and possible injuries. Even if common sense didn't tell them that, the fact is that injuries have happened each Black Friday at some store somewhere. There are lots of ways they could minimize the possibility of injuries, as already talked about: additional security on hand, single-file lines, raffle off the best deals, and on and on. Now it could be that this Wal-Mart did everything it reasonably could and still the injuries took place. I'm guessing that's not true, though. [quote\Do we just roll over and say "you know how people act in a crowd" and accept this type of behavior as typical? Do we give up on society and admit we need a foot up our ass (government, cops, security cameras) just to keep us from going batshit crazy? That we can't be responsible enough to go shopping in a crowded, comptetive situation? [/quote] No one is absolving the people who actually did the trampling from the responsibility that rests with them. Some of us, though, think that responsibility for this doesn't end there. No one says it's not the stampeding shoppers' fault. The only question is whether the store is also at fault. The city in your analogy has a different level of responsibility than Wal-Mart. The city isn't looking to profit from the existence of rush hour. The city can't foresee the independent decision of people on a particular rush hour to get out of control. A more appropriate analogy would be if the city announced that the first drivers to make their way from downtown to a certain point in the city would get 10 percent off its taxes and didn't bother plowing the streets of snow. Yes, it would be the responsibility of everyone who participated in such a race and caused damage. But the city would also bear a measure of responsibility for artificially creating the conditions that cause people to race and for not meeting its basic duty of minimizing the possibility of accidents by keeping the streets clear. Nothing stops you from arguing both. I don't think I'm right because the law agrees with me. I know there are plenty of times when the law has gotten it wrong. Rather, I think that something can be caused by more than one factor, and that more than one party can bear different measures of responsibility. By the same token, what could or should a reasonable company be expected to do, knowing that on a regular basis Black Friday sales result in individuals getting out of control and in turn injuries, and lawsuits against the company? A. Nothing. It's the fault of those random individuals, and there's always the moral victory to be had even if we lose in court and the court of public opinion. B. Implement various precautions, like raffling off the best deals, having people come in single file, hiring additional security, etc.
Oh, and round the shops where I went to school, they have a policy of "no more than 2 school children in at a time". This is because they were overwhelmed by the amount of schoolkids leaving at hometime, and had countless thefts. These small newsagents knew they couldn't keep an eye on more than 2 school kids at a time, so they're asserting their right to put limitations in their shop. It's a pain when you're younger, but now I'm not a school kid, it doesn't bother me. I'm pretty sure they let in more school-kids if they know them, and there's not a queue outside, but otherwise, I don't see what they're doing wrong. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about.
Oh, totally. However, I think that if these events continue, they're going to get a lawsuit they're actually going to regret, and I think that it's only a few Black Fridays away. How do you establish individual guilt in a mob? Hmm? How do you do it, UA? It's exponential overreaction, and the simple fact is, you can't point to any evidence that might be remaining from the incident and say, "Well, this guy's foot was the one that killed him" or "The baby miscarried after this woman shoved the pregnant woman bodily." You can't. Period. Well, the answer was in the very post. The doorbuster deals? You get tickets for them. You go through a line and distribute them. When they're done, they're done. Best Buy, one of the most inept retailers on the planet, has figured this out. You don't just swing open the doors and say, "HEY, COME GET THIS SHITTY-ASS LAPTOP!" That's because it isn't truly a causal link. Some of it was Wal-Mart's fault. Some of it wasn't. Don't get what's hard about that to understand. You're so desperate to be able to point to specific people and lay blame, when the issue is that the blame lies in 'the mob' as an amorphous whole, and 'Wal-Mart' as an amorphous whole. And that's why this incident truly sucks - everyone's to blame, and nobody's guilty. Nope. In the many criminal incidents Wal-Mart has faced, they've had a responsible plan in place to handle them with local law enforcement. There are policies in place. The issue here is that not only were the painfully few policies in place for Black Friday woefully inadequate, they have been so for years. They have consistantly showed that they, as a company, cannot actually responsibly handle the situations they create. As has been demonstrated over and over in the thread, other retail outlets have figured out solutions to this problem. It's not insurmountable. I think, unfortunately, that it has been shown that the collective 'we' does, in fact, need that shit to keep them from going batshit crazy. That the collective 'we' is not responsible enough to shop in such situations. And hell, it ain't just Black Friday. It's wedding dress sales and the entire Christmas season and the last can of fucking cranberry sauce at the Safeway on Thanksgiving Day. The collective 'we' acts like total assholes. The collective 'we' is different from each of the individuals that make it up. Individually, the vast majority of them are probably, at the very least, reasonable people. Should we roll over and take it? No. Should it just be 'the way it is'? No. But it is demonstrated every 365 fucking days that the crowd isn't responsible enough to change. That the stores (especially Wal-Mart) isn't responsible enough to change. So now what? What do we do to stop this? Seriously, I'd love to hear a solution, rather than a bunch of idealistic statements about what 'should' be and how people 'should' act. I don't think anyone reasonable is saying that the crowd is not, in some way, responsible. Good. Good. If that's what it takes to make these 'responsible adults' actually behave responsibly, and they want to have their little sale, and they don't want to be liable for the actions of a crowd they create, then it's what needs to be done. That's just fucking reality, UA. And it's perfectly fair to every party involved.
I used to work for Ames years and years ago. I was 16 at the time. We were told by the manager that as long as we had one item in stock that was listed in the flyer, we were legally covered, and that when the customer arrived and the product was gone, offer them something else, preferably more expensive. J.
I agree with that statement on the surface, until you reveal the suggestion that the crowd was under Wal Mart's control, that grown fucking adults require forcible, physical control to prevent them from hurting each other. Then you lose me. People who weren't there are crying for drastic intervention. Regardless, riot control is a duty of law enforcement, not Wal Mart greeters.
Tickets count as forcible, physical control? It's not to prevent the individual adult from hurting each other, it's to prevent scenes that have been seen before. Looking at what happened, and how it might have been prevented, and then implementing appropriate measures to prevent it. Something Walmart has failed to do. People who weren't there are crying for drastic intervention. Regardless, riot control is a duty of law enforcement, not Wal Mart greeters.[/QUOTE] It's not about riot control. It's about not inciting a riot in the first place.
Worse than that: walmart's the Y in X->Y->???->Z, where we know for certain that walmart caused a stampede, and that something/someones in that stampede got someone killed, but we'll almost certainly never know specifically what that something/who those someones were.
I apply one standard to all adults who haven't been institutionalized. One. I get the "mob mentality" thing. I just don't care. A group is not a seperate entity from the individual. Treating adults like little kids, due to the actions of a few. I don't agree with that, but if a store chose to do it I'd have no problem. It's this implication that they have a responsibility to protect adults from their own bad behavior that I oppose.
So in Albertopia, there's no need for security at rock concerts, football games, strip clubs or anywhere else. No need for law enforcement of any kind. No need for a military. People will just be reasonable because UA is reasonable and he doesn't acknowledge or accept that anyone can or will act in a way that he doesn't condone.
