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Natalie Matthews writes that a year ago, a friend of hers left her two roommates at a bar to walk the three blocks home to their apartment in a yuppie Boston neighborhood. "She wanted decent sleep before a Saturday morning exercise class; her friends wanted late night food. Instead, she was jumped by a stranger on the curb of her apartment building, brutally raped, and beaten in her living room while her roommates ate burritos, none the wiser," writes Matthews. " If she'd done something, anything, differently, would it have changed the outcome of her night? It's an unproductive exercise, both she and I know. And yet when I heard about Kitestring, she was the first thought that flashed in my mind, because maybe Kitestring would have helped her, had it existed then."
Kitestring is a new service that aims to make sure people get from point A to point B safely, notifying their emergency contacts if they don't. You tell Kitestring that you're in a dangerous place or situation, and give it a time frame of when to check in on you. If you don't reply back when it checks your status, it'll alert your emergency contacts with a custom message you set up. "Perfect for blind or online meet-up dates, walking home at night, or feeling safe in any dangerous situation, Kitestring is like the virtual mom I've always needed," writes Mary Rockcastle, "especially if your mom is like mine and is never awake past 8:30pm."
(Score: 1) by tftp on Monday April 28 2014, @09:07PM
the death sentence is also just treating symptoms, which as you said, is not productive. violent crimes are plentiful (and they really arent) because society is broken.
There is more than one cause of crime. A broken society is one such cause; however crime existed in all known societies, even in those that are not broken. Humans themselves are responsible for greed, lust, jealousy, and so on. Most are able to control those feelings. Some are not. Removal from the society is an effective way of reducing the number of criminals; perhaps one cannot hope to scare all criminals into obedience, but at least recidivism will be set to zero.
Barring that, what else can be done? Catch and release does not work. Slap on the wrist does not work. The society *is* broken, and that makes things worse because too many people are committing crimes. Even if we disregard made-up charges, still too many people are antisocial. They grew up in atmosphere of permissiveness and widespread disregard for the law. The lawmen were burning that candle from the other end, by painting themselves as jackbooted thugs with itchy trigger fingers. I understand that this is not the ideal situation. But what is the plan?
(Score: 2) by tathra on Monday April 28 2014, @10:17PM
i'm in no position to do anything to fix anything, so i have no real reason to do serious research into it, but a basic income [wikipedia.org], implemented with/as something like the nordic model [wikipedia.org] or rhine model [wikipedia.org] should remove all poverty-driven crime. there will always be psychopaths and sociopaths, but society would be significantly less broken if its primary economic system didnt reward those behaviors.
if you reward selfishness and greed, or worse yet make it practically essential to survival like we have now, it shouldnt be a surprise that nobody is interested in fixing anything except their own personal situation.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Monday April 28 2014, @11:21PM
a basic income, implemented with/as something like the nordic model or rhine model should remove all poverty-driven crime
Quoting Vysotsky [youtube.com], "Где деньги, Зин?" (Where would the money come from?)
It is, of course, a great idea to give everyone enough money to live so well that nobody feels a need to take something from someone else. But the government has only the tax money to work with. Does that mean that one worker has to feed ten idle people? What motivation would that worker have to continue to work? This is exactly the situation that was present in USSR from, say, 1960 and until the end. Everyone was paid more or less the same, no matter how well you work (уравниловка.) This resulted in best workers slowing down, as they were not idiots to break their backs while others are drinking tea and solving puzzles in newspapers. There were bonuses for better work, but they were not worth the advantage of relaxing at work instead of working hard.
I understand also that you are right about greed; it is not good. However it is the only known way to make people do what, on average, advances the society. It's because a man won't lift a finger unless it is beneficial to him. If you want to change the society you have to start right here. It is not too rare to find people who are willing to help others; the whole F/OSS movement is an example. But I haven't seen any ditch diggers who, in their free time, volunteer to dig ditches for their neighbors. Only highly intellectual, satisfying labor is done for free - because it rewards the author with pleasure of creation. Ditches reward no one.
There is yet another problem with your train of thought. Human history does not know a man, be it a peasant or a King of Kings, who ever said "I have enough." It is never enough. As long as Bob has something that Alice doesn't have, she wants it. Humans would have to be downgraded to the level of always-content robots to eliminate that trait. But if the trait remains, it leads to competition - and it is not always done with better, harder work. How would two men compete for one woman? By singing a better song? Domestic violence represents a significant portion of all crimes, and that is because humans are inherently violent, and not always rational.
This, essentially, leads to one simple question: what portion of all crimes is caused by poverty? Say, a man who has five children and no income to buy food decides, out of despreation, to steal a loaf of bread from 7-11. But hold on, this doesn't happen in the USA, does it? Anyone who can't feed his children will be on social security already. Then who is robbing convenience stores, and why? The answer is quite different: they are robbed by willfully unemployed people because they want free money. What has basic income to do with *this* problem? Are you carjacked because the carjacker needs to drive his son to a hospital?
As I said above, the root of the problem is simply in human nature. Humans have evolved a curious set of priorities. They want to get as much as possible by doing as little as possible. This leads to the tragedy of commons, and to everything that follows. The crime is just an inevitable echo of that original flaw; criminals believe (often correctly) that they can gain a lot by doing very little by the way of robbing people and stealing their belongings.
But there is yet another aspect of human nature: desire to control others. Not everyone has this trait, but those who do form the ranks of leaders, dictators, and sadists. Nearly all violent crime is done by such people. They enjoy having power over their victims. They cannot be paid enough to give up that feeling. The "knock-out game" violence is exactly this thing; it can be practiced only by sociopatic, sadistic individuals. There are many of those. In part, they are formed by the society - but in the other part this desire is built into humans. Humans are born predators; today we call them criminals. But a teenager who holds up a convenience store is simply a good hunter. That is the problem.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday April 29 2014, @02:31AM
you clearly didnt even attempt to skim the links to see what i was proposing, because thats nothing like a basic income. a basic income only provides enough for food; the motivation to work is to have more than the bare minimum.
and there's a lot of people who say, "i have enough"; something like 500 million to 1 billion people, often known as "buddhists". beyond that, there's an uncountable number of people who are content with having just enough to be comfortable.
you seem to be saying, "it'll never work, so there's no point in even trying". why ask for potential solutions if you wouldnt ever consider them because you dont think they'd ever work? thats starting with a conclusion and working backwards, which is the kind of thing we see from geocentists, creationists, and often from conservatives in general. even if it doesnt work perfectly, it'd still be far better than our current situation; ensuring everybody has enough to survive would be far cheaper than what goes to for-profit prisons every year (between $24,000 - $200,000 each year per prisoner, totaling over $60 billion annually according to wikipedia, which doesnt include the economic cost of having those people removed from the workforce); similarly, its far cheaper to ensure that everyone has healthcare than to foot the bill for the inevitable ER visits like we currently do.
its not possible to come up with a solution that will fix everything perfectly all at once, but that doesnt mean it isnt worth trying. the only real way to address problems is one at a time. so lets fix one thing we know for a fact drives people to crime - poverty (which also drives revolutions if it gets too bad) - at a fraction of the cost we're paying to keep those same people incarcerated, and then move on to the next problem, if its known and its possible to do something about it. besides, why wouldnt you want to be sure that your fellow citizens arent starving to death? what kind of sick sociopath are you? ;)
even if it doesnt work out, it would provide lots of valuable data that could be used to refine the program or come up with a better one. doing nothing is the worst possible thing we can do.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Tuesday April 29 2014, @03:45AM
I have a second-hand knowledge of the Nordic model, as I work with a few Swedes who escaped Sweden just in time. I heard many horror stories from them, but if hearsay is not good enough, then here is something [wordpress.com] from a well known writer [wikipedia.org]. Since then taxes in excess of 100% have been cancelled; but still Sweden has taxes above 50%. In other words, each working Swede toils for half a day to feed someone else who, most likely, does not work. This would be at least understandable if those people are ill; but that is not the case.
This is why I started my reply with the most basic question: where the money is coming from? Bureaucrats do not create wealth; only the working man can do that. The few working people cannot feed the rest; nor they are happy to do so. The Rhine capitalism tries to sit on two chairs at once - to allow free enterprise, and at the same time tax that enterprise in order to feed those who do not work. Both models are based on spending someone else's money. They do not increase the wealth of the society. At best they can keep it constant, but in practice they lower it because older workers, with their own understanding of responsibility, retire and die, and younger people - who are invariably focused on anything else but work - are in no hurry to step into the shoes of their parents. (People like them were the OWS movement - "anything but work.") The problem of those systems is that they do not create sufficiently strong motivation for hard work. As you point out, many say "The social assistance is enough." But you cannot grow the society this way. At some point the number of eaters exceeds the number of feeders. The USA is facing the Social Security crisis [alternet.org] already; it is delayed only by printing of money and borrowing from abroad.
You mention Buddhists. Sure, those may be less demanding. But they do not matter as long as other people on Earth are interested in unlimited consumption. If "the good people" do not interfere, they might just as well not exist, as they do not change the equation.
you seem to be saying, "it'll never work, so there's no point in even trying"
Then I'm lucky that I never said that. What I did is I simply spelled out some of the natural reasons why humans do what they do. It's possible to change humanity; as a simplest example, all people with undesirable traits should be exiled or killed. It will result in evolutionary pressure to be more peaceful, less demanding, more honest, etc. (I do not propose this approach; this is only to show that it can be done.)
ensuring everybody has enough to survive would be far cheaper than what goes to for-profit prisons every year (between $24,000 - $200,000 each year per prisoner, totaling over $60 billion annually according to wikipedia, which doesnt include the economic cost of having those people removed from the workforce)
Yes, but you are arguing something that we never discussed. I am not in favor of the prison industry. I agree that we do not need so many prisons and so many laws. We do not need militarized police. I think what we need instead is a swift and severe punishment for a few simple crimes. The punishment must be sufficient to ensure that the convicted person will not want to break the law ever again. (The prison industry facilitates recidivism.) At the same time, if the convict survives the punishment, he should have all his rights restored, and ideally his crime should be forgotten. Debts to the society should be paid only once.
similarly, its far cheaper to ensure that everyone has healthcare than to foot the bill for the inevitable ER visits like we currently do.
Healthcare in the West is very expensive. If "everyone" has healthcare then that "everyone" has to buy Obamacare plans for $5,000/yr per person that are nearly useless. But your wish is reality today, with Obamacare. Everyone has access to healthcare, even if they don't have access to healthy food anymore. Is this a solution?
so lets fix one thing we know for a fact drives people to crime - poverty (which also drives revolutions if it gets too bad)
I agree that it is wise to fix things one at a time; however, as I demonstrated, there is hardly any evidence that financial poverty is responsible for a significant part of crimes. I would rather say that spiritual poverty is the culprit. Not in a religious sense, of course. But what difference is there between two teenagers who find a chick on the ground that fell from the nest, if one picks up the bird and puts it back into the nest, and another intentionally and cruelly steps onto it? That's the difference that matters. This is what is responsible for crimes. Poverty is not a deciding factor; poverty was widespread for most of human existence, but the percentage of crime and criminals was approximately the same at all times.
I want to reiterate that I do not oppose the idea of a society where everyone is fed and clothed. Perhaps one day robots will do that for us. However focusing on it today could be explained only by one reason: this is the only thing governments know how to do - to collect taxes and divide them. They do not know how to grow a newborn into a solid professional instead of a gangbanger. It's too hard; one has to fix the society in many ways before traditional, full families are restored, honored and cherished for their role in growing the new generation. It's much easier to pick an easier, or shinier, target - and it's much more interesting to collect money on behalf of someone else who will never ask for a financial report.
If you fix the family, if you fix the society, poverty will disappear on its own, simply because it would be shameful to be poor. And if we approach the problem from another end, dropping cash from helicopters will not eliminate poverty because poverty is primarily a state of mind. You mentioned Buddhists. A Buddhist who owns only his robe can tell you "I have all that I need." A typical Westerner could own a billion dollar business, and he'd be still working to expand it. We'd be fine with Buddhists. But what to do with the rest of the planet?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 01 2014, @02:44AM
It is precisely because many people want more than what is subsistenly enough that many people would still work in a guaranteed minimum income society. The problem in the Soviet Union was not establishing a mimimum income, it was establishing a maximum income. People didn't slack off because others' needs were met, but because their own wants weren't meant. Read Milton Friedman on the subject of Negative Income Tax.