Continue Reading Below Advertisement

For one, of course they're using eminent domain laws to force people out of their homes. At one point, they were demolishing homes at such a rate that they'd taken to just marking them with spray paint when their time to be destroyed had arrived, even if the homeowners weren't present. You might recognize that as being exactly what the Nazis did to Jews who were sent to concentration camps -- as did a whole lot of people in Brazil. If there's anything that country doesn't need, it's to be more associated with Nazis than it already is, so they did put a stop to that. But I'm assuming that means they just arrive and start tearing shit up and skip the formality of a spray paint warning.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Tearing down unattractive buildings and replacing them with prettier ones only addresses one problem. There's also the crime. It really is a problem there, and you can only move people so many places. So what happens when you still have countless neighborhoods run by drug cartels and local militias, but you want tourists to feel comfortable moving through them? You dress your police up like the military, and send them in to cut crime by force.

Mario Tama/Getty Images News/Getty Images

This cannot possibly go wrong.

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

Which they totally have! Crime is indeed down. But the people who live in those areas now have a constant military-like presence looming over them, which is basically a 50/50 bet when it comes to being an improvement over living in a neighborhood controlled by drug dealers. Also, the criminal element isn't just going to flee because police show up. Not with that many guns on the streets. At some point, the police simply become another another gang to have a shootout with; it's just that their killings don't count toward the murder rate.