but in some cases that’s literally banditery, so giving them money is giving in to bullying; even if there exist cases that are not, it is A) foolish to generalise like this and B) very hard to convince people to give their money away like that when they know that this is inclusive of bandits.
The difference between someone choosing to give to beggers and not wanting to give money to muggers.
Post also seems to be suffering under the childish simplifcation that criminals are just disgruntled poor people.
In reality, being poor isn’t actually a predisposition to crime.
Two reasons why society chooses “to give police more money rather than poor people” are:
A) we don’t, because policee are actually just one manifestation of State monopoly on violence, so nobody is actively “voting” for them to get a pay rise and they will get pay rises regardless if it’s necessary to enforce state violence, and
B) it’s more important to people to see those who act-out in society to be hidden away or killed rather than to receive news that random strangers they never met are no longer poor and they used their own money to make it happen
Really holding back on saying some inflammatory stuff with you here, but try to look at it this way:
People don’t want to give away their money individually to poor people because that doesn’t work and it’s costs them A LOT individually to support a single person with low success rate. But collectively we can pay very little to solve the problem on a mass scale. No one is expecting crime to drop to zero, but a big reduction in it for a relatively low cost is an INCREDIBLE value.
I want to agree, and i mean i usually will vote for a party that promises to enact programs like this, but i think the framing of it just being about the money or “getting them back above the poverty line” is deeply misguided and sets us up for disappointment.
There exist some people who are career criminals... they do it because they love it.
[Now, a successful criminal isn’t “poor” but they tend to live as if they are, because it allows them to enlist desperate people or sell drugs to desperate people by appearing as one of them.]
Those people aren’t going to be like “huh, looks like society loves me! So i should stop being a criminal!” They’re going to go "great, more venture capital for my hijacking next thursday!
So why the government, police and voters in general don’t advocate for blindly distributing wealth in the hopes it cures crime - they see it as rewarding bad behaviour. They perhaps know that criminals themselves see it as a reward for their bad behaviour (if you listen to organised criminals, this is exactly how they see it)
Tl;dr i think crime is more down to culture and specific contextual problems (like access to guns and increased opportunity from lack of safeguarding) than poverty.
Sure. I don’t think anything you said is necessarily wrong. But I think that improving the lives of many is worth the risk of some criminals getting a bit more at the expense of everyone. Plus, law enforcement isn’t something I think should go away, but it’s disproportionately funded compared to things that actually help many people.
but in some cases that’s literally banditery, so giving them money is giving in to bullying; even if there exist cases that are not, it is A) foolish to generalise like this and B) very hard to convince people to give their money away like that when they know that this is inclusive of bandits.
The difference between someone choosing to give to beggers and not wanting to give money to muggers.
Post also seems to be suffering under the childish simplifcation that criminals are just disgruntled poor people. In reality, being poor isn’t actually a predisposition to crime.
Two reasons why society chooses “to give police more money rather than poor people” are: A) we don’t, because policee are actually just one manifestation of State monopoly on violence, so nobody is actively “voting” for them to get a pay rise and they will get pay rises regardless if it’s necessary to enforce state violence, and B) it’s more important to people to see those who act-out in society to be hidden away or killed rather than to receive news that random strangers they never met are no longer poor and they used their own money to make it happen
Wrong.
Then go out and give your money to people poorer than yourself
Really holding back on saying some inflammatory stuff with you here, but try to look at it this way:
People don’t want to give away their money individually to poor people because that doesn’t work and it’s costs them A LOT individually to support a single person with low success rate. But collectively we can pay very little to solve the problem on a mass scale. No one is expecting crime to drop to zero, but a big reduction in it for a relatively low cost is an INCREDIBLE value.
I want to agree, and i mean i usually will vote for a party that promises to enact programs like this, but i think the framing of it just being about the money or “getting them back above the poverty line” is deeply misguided and sets us up for disappointment.
There exist some people who are career criminals... they do it because they love it.
[Now, a successful criminal isn’t “poor” but they tend to live as if they are, because it allows them to enlist desperate people or sell drugs to desperate people by appearing as one of them.]
Those people aren’t going to be like “huh, looks like society loves me! So i should stop being a criminal!” They’re going to go "great, more venture capital for my hijacking next thursday!
So why the government, police and voters in general don’t advocate for blindly distributing wealth in the hopes it cures crime - they see it as rewarding bad behaviour. They perhaps know that criminals themselves see it as a reward for their bad behaviour (if you listen to organised criminals, this is exactly how they see it)
Tl;dr i think crime is more down to culture and specific contextual problems (like access to guns and increased opportunity from lack of safeguarding) than poverty.
Sure. I don’t think anything you said is necessarily wrong. But I think that improving the lives of many is worth the risk of some criminals getting a bit more at the expense of everyone. Plus, law enforcement isn’t something I think should go away, but it’s disproportionately funded compared to things that actually help many people.
How do you think this works? “Hello, Mr. Criminal, I’m Government Man, here from the government! Please take this check and don’t do any more crimes.”
Yep that’s how it works.