Discussion
I tried to search for the old thread on this book, but the search facility seems broken.
I found it a very good book, well written and thought provoking.
Perhaps the biggest message that I took from it is the question, how is 'conventional' wisdom formed?. A prime example it gave was the recent sharp fall in the American crime rate since the early nineties.
Conventional wisdom often attributes this to more innovative policing methods, in particular in New York-He found no statistical evidence that this had any effect.
What caused the fall in crime in America?, a large part attributable to a rise in police numbers and toughing sentencing, but most of the fall caused by legalised abortion.
I found it a very good book, well written and thought provoking.
Perhaps the biggest message that I took from it is the question, how is 'conventional' wisdom formed?. A prime example it gave was the recent sharp fall in the American crime rate since the early nineties.
Conventional wisdom often attributes this to more innovative policing methods, in particular in New York-He found no statistical evidence that this had any effect.
What caused the fall in crime in America?, a large part attributable to a rise in police numbers and toughing sentencing, but most of the fall caused by legalised abortion.
You know what this means?
KILL THE CHAVS
Simple, radical and yet strangely....not going to happen.
Here's my innovative solution.
1% of the prison population to be executed each year. Long termers obviously at more risk. And a big disincentive for all to being caught doing something criminal. The really dense will not take it into account...even better for darwinian selection.
Bet you didn't know that I am such a nazi
KILL THE CHAVS
Simple, radical and yet strangely....not going to happen.
Here's my innovative solution.
1% of the prison population to be executed each year. Long termers obviously at more risk. And a big disincentive for all to being caught doing something criminal. The really dense will not take it into account...even better for darwinian selection.
Bet you didn't know that I am such a nazi
JagLover said:
I tried to search for the old thread on this book, but the search facility seems broken.
I found it a very good book, well written and thought provoking.
Perhaps the biggest message that I took from it is the question, how is 'conventional' wisdom formed?. A prime example it gave was the recent sharp fall in the American crime rate since the early nineties.
Conventional wisdom often attributes this to more innovative policing methods, in particular in New York-He found no statistical evidence that this had any effect.
What caused the fall in crime in America?, a large part attributable to a rise in police numbers and toughing sentencing, but most of the fall caused by legalised abortion.
I've read it too, very good book.
What has caused the drop is actually a rather contentious issue, but I'll tell you what caused the biggest spike in crime within living memory; drugs prohibition, which led to the development of crack cocaine. If you look at murder rates from many US inner cities around the '87-89 period, there was a frightening increase which coincided with the release of crack onto the market. Without the drug lords desire to avoid interdiction whilst smuggling drugs into the country, they would most likely never have tried to synthesize it, leading to the most addictive drug of all time.
The book also says that the death penalty as currently practised in the USA has no effect on crime rates, though I imagine executing 1% of the prison population would 
The book affirms what I have long believed; the explosion in crime rates was the product of the breakdown of the traditional family combined with lax sentencing.
All other things remaining equal (ie using regression analysis) the child of a one parent household is twice as likely to become a criminal and also the child of a teenage mother is twice as likely to become a criminal.
The crime wave that has swept across both the USA and
the UK had it's root cause in these fudamental facts.
The book affirms what I have long believed; the explosion in crime rates was the product of the breakdown of the traditional family combined with lax sentencing.
All other things remaining equal (ie using regression analysis) the child of a one parent household is twice as likely to become a criminal and also the child of a teenage mother is twice as likely to become a criminal.
The crime wave that has swept across both the USA and
the UK had it's root cause in these fudamental facts.
Seems to me that socialists tend to achieve the wrong result for the right reasons. And free-marketeers tend to achieve the right result for the wrong reasons.
I.e. the welfare state in the UK to my mind has debased an entire section of the population and created/ maintains a persistant underclass be actively discouraging achievement. And yet it was conceived to achieve the opposite.
I.e. the welfare state in the UK to my mind has debased an entire section of the population and created/ maintains a persistant underclass be actively discouraging achievement. And yet it was conceived to achieve the opposite.
JagLover said:
What has caused the drop is actually a rather contentious issue,
It is indeed, but rather than rely on newspaper articles and conventional 'wisdom', the author of the book has examined the data to try and reach a conclusion.
I haven't actually read that book, but I did read Criminology at Uni, and about the most important I thing I learned about social sciences is no matter much detail and data someone goes into, there will always be someone attacking their methodology or statistical analysis or something else. I'm tempted to give this book a look though.
I do however find the abortion theory very interesting.
The problem with all this stuff is 'datasnooping' i.e. that looking at historic data you can find evidence suggesting pretty much any pattern you are looking for. There is a good paper on the problem, and how it relates to finance (where people spend a lot of time looking at historic data). IIRC they give an example where you can correlate the price of US bonds to some hair product in the netherlands...
It makes a lot of research where people try to determine cause and effect rather hard to validate.
timmy30 said:
Seems to me that socialists tend to achieve the wrong result for the right reasons. And free-marketeers tend to achieve the right result for the wrong reasons.
Interesting conclusion. I would add that 'free-market' is simply an extension of evolution, whilst 'socialism' is contra-evolution and that's why it always fails in the long run. No more do only the fit survive, the weak, the genetically impaired and the downright stupid survive and breed - and the long term effect is that the species goes down the plughole. 4 million years going up, how many years to go back down? Yoofs are already walking like apes
DanH said:
The problem with all this stuff is 'datasnooping' i.e. that looking at historic data you can find evidence suggesting pretty much any pattern you are looking for. There is a good paper on the problem, and how it relates to finance (where people spend a lot of time looking at historic data). IIRC they give an example where you can correlate the price of US bonds to some hair product in the netherlands...
It makes a lot of research where people try to determine cause and effect rather hard to validate.
I am no statistics expert(I studied it a bit as part of my Economics degree) but the book does discus the difference between causation and correlation in some depth.
All well and good spouting about free market this that and the other.
Our real problem is that the young adult male has had his place in society usurped. Society used to need muscly young men to do the donkey work and they were respected for it. There are no good wars anymore and subsistance farming and heavy industry are but a memory. So now we have a bunch of stroppy gits who have more energy and attitude then they know what to do with. As a society we have nothing for them to do. It's not their fault that society has moved faster than evolution and now you get people saying (including my first post) that we would be better off without them. Well unless you will contemplate the nearly unthinkable ie controlled breeding then we are going to be stuck with the problem.
A democracy is never going to be so radical. Will we have to wait until chaos overtakes us before we change our minds?
Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
Our real problem is that the young adult male has had his place in society usurped. Society used to need muscly young men to do the donkey work and they were respected for it. There are no good wars anymore and subsistance farming and heavy industry are but a memory. So now we have a bunch of stroppy gits who have more energy and attitude then they know what to do with. As a society we have nothing for them to do. It's not their fault that society has moved faster than evolution and now you get people saying (including my first post) that we would be better off without them. Well unless you will contemplate the nearly unthinkable ie controlled breeding then we are going to be stuck with the problem.
A democracy is never going to be so radical. Will we have to wait until chaos overtakes us before we change our minds?
Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
planetdave said:
Well unless you will contemplate the nearly unthinkable ie controlled breeding then we are going to be stuck with the problem.
A democracy is never going to be so radical. Will we have to wait until chaos overtakes us before we change our minds?
Not neccessarily
The American welfare reforms of the mid nineties have produced big falls in the numbers of one parent households and never married mothers.
Interesting looing at some of the posts.
The US is seen as the most free market.
And has historically had bad crime figures.
Social reform has impacted on crime figures.
Which is socialism at work and which is capitalist?
We have one of the worlds more open markets and our crime figures (esp violent) are not good. We need to do something with our young men. Employ/exterminate, it doesn't matter...as long as we have a plan to take them off the streets.
The US is seen as the most free market.
And has historically had bad crime figures.
Social reform has impacted on crime figures.
Which is socialism at work and which is capitalist?
We have one of the worlds more open markets and our crime figures (esp violent) are not good. We need to do something with our young men. Employ/exterminate, it doesn't matter...as long as we have a plan to take them off the streets.
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