Defunding police cannot address root causes that a welfare state would.

Evidence

Against this politico-economic backdrop, demands to resolve systemic problems simply by defunding the police will appear painfully limited. To adapt Weber’s apothegm, the conception of politics they disclose more closely resembles a laser cutting through Styrofoam than a drill biting into resistant timber. As they note, US criminal justice system is in urgent need of reform-more humane prison conditions, shorter sentences, and the decriminalization of minor offenses. But if the situation is to be fundamentally altered, as Clegg and Usmani argue, what is required is the construction of a mature welfare state and its concomitant set of social rights, and the first step in that direction is to force the ruling elites to accept a redistribution of resources: If we are right that the overdevelopment of the American penal state is a symptom of the underdevelopment of the American social policy, meaningful reform is in large part the task of winning redistribution from ruling elites. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 236

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s own analysis of political saturation: reformist demands fail when they stop at symptoms rather than building organized capacity. This is Jäger’s method of critiquing antipolitical quick fixes from within.