How would that work? Assume that I'm willing to bribe the underclass with welfare to prevent crime (hell, assume I'm only worried about the worst types of crime)... how much bribery for how much reduction?
Flock won't prevent you from being stabbed by a homeless junkie. It might help catch the guy and prevent him from stabbing someone else (until he's released three months later).
Knowing this, wouldn't you prefer that we spend the money on crime prevention programs that "bribes" the underclass, instead of in a system that won't prevent crime at all but will rob all of us of privacy?
The single best resolution to crime is to dramatically reduce poverty.
The single best way to reduce poverty is to pay (bribe) the poor to stop having children, which ends the cycle of poverty (which is extraordinarily difficult to break and tends to trap generations). That should go hand-in-hand with free birth control, free day-after pills, free abortions, comprehensive sexual education, etc.
A large share of the bottom 1/3 in the US will never step foot outside of poverty, most of them will never hold a job on a sustained basis. Pay them to not have children, which simultaneously benefits their lives in the here and now, while preventing the mistake of bringing children into poverty. It's one of the most humane things the US could do as a society. It would very rapidly improve poverty (and reduce crime) in the US.
Barring any massive mental illness, humans are great optimizers. Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than leading your life normally and doing things by the book.
Its not hard to inject money in the right places to either decrease the reward, or increase the risk.
>Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than
An interesting theory. But there exists a class of criminals who commit crimes not because the tradeoffs come out with the crime ahead of the lawfulness, but because they are impulsive, malicious, bored, and apathetic. Some of them continue to commit crime even after they are well out of poverty, even when the tradeoffs have shifted in the other direction. And this isn't some tiny fraction of crime, I suspect it is the majority of it. Crime has become their culture, and no one casually gives up culture and adopts a new one. More importantly, while one single person might do that, an entire group does not do this because they reinforce each other's continuation of that culture.
This makes it difficult or impossible to inject money anywhere and have measurable results. It makes it difficult or impossible to do anything at all about it. And for that reason, I'd prefer we not pursue a trillion dollar boondoggle.
How would that work? Assume that I'm willing to bribe the underclass with welfare to prevent crime (hell, assume I'm only worried about the worst types of crime)... how much bribery for how much reduction?
Flock won't prevent you from being stabbed by a homeless junkie. It might help catch the guy and prevent him from stabbing someone else (until he's released three months later).
Knowing this, wouldn't you prefer that we spend the money on crime prevention programs that "bribes" the underclass, instead of in a system that won't prevent crime at all but will rob all of us of privacy?
The single best resolution to crime is to dramatically reduce poverty.
The single best way to reduce poverty is to pay (bribe) the poor to stop having children, which ends the cycle of poverty (which is extraordinarily difficult to break and tends to trap generations). That should go hand-in-hand with free birth control, free day-after pills, free abortions, comprehensive sexual education, etc.
A large share of the bottom 1/3 in the US will never step foot outside of poverty, most of them will never hold a job on a sustained basis. Pay them to not have children, which simultaneously benefits their lives in the here and now, while preventing the mistake of bringing children into poverty. It's one of the most humane things the US could do as a society. It would very rapidly improve poverty (and reduce crime) in the US.
3 replies →
Barring any massive mental illness, humans are great optimizers. Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than leading your life normally and doing things by the book.
Its not hard to inject money in the right places to either decrease the reward, or increase the risk.
>Crime is basically the optimal policy within environmentm where illegal activites with their added risk have a potential much greater reward than
An interesting theory. But there exists a class of criminals who commit crimes not because the tradeoffs come out with the crime ahead of the lawfulness, but because they are impulsive, malicious, bored, and apathetic. Some of them continue to commit crime even after they are well out of poverty, even when the tradeoffs have shifted in the other direction. And this isn't some tiny fraction of crime, I suspect it is the majority of it. Crime has become their culture, and no one casually gives up culture and adopts a new one. More importantly, while one single person might do that, an entire group does not do this because they reinforce each other's continuation of that culture.
This makes it difficult or impossible to inject money anywhere and have measurable results. It makes it difficult or impossible to do anything at all about it. And for that reason, I'd prefer we not pursue a trillion dollar boondoggle.
2 replies →