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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 10, 2024

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Maybe.

Alternately, the problem is that civilization is unravelling. The systems in place that work when incidents of crime similar are to Japan break down quickly when the incidents of crime approach that of Haiti. You can't scale a system of public defenders in response to exponential increases in criminality.

I looked up the county I grew up in old FBI statistics. There were 0 to 1 murders a year. These days it's over 100. Per capita it probably hasn't changed as much as that might imply as the population grew a lot. Even so, it began having some serious issues with crime that didn't come out in the wash of "per capita" hand waving.

It would be nice if we got a Bukele that would re-civilize our cities, but I'm pretty sure the felon, aspiring felon, and felon sympathetic demographic has just grown too strong. Can't think of any other reason so many cities have adopted policies of "decriminalizing" theft and lesser assaults.

I looked up the county I grew up in old FBI statistics. There were 0 to 1 murders a year. These days it's over 100. Per capita it probably hasn't changed as much as that might imply as the population grew a lot.

I don't understand the problem. If your population grows by a factor of 100, you will need to raise the number of policemen and lawyers also by a factor of 100, which you should be able to do because the number of taxpayers also increased by a factor of 100.

The population did not grow by a factor of 100.

Also, the pipeline of qualified candidates to maintain civilization does not grow as fast as unchecked 3rd world immigration, even if the bureaucracy could grow at that pace. 3rd world behavior fills the gaps.

Can't think of any other reason so many cities have adopted policies of "decriminalizing" theft and lesser assaults.

Welfare state + ageing population -> reduced resources for anything else, including law & order and defence (ironically, what a classical liberal would regard as close to the entire purposes of the state).

It would be nice if we got a Bukele that would re-civilize our cities

Many of our criminals aren't so dumb as to tattoo their criminal status on their skin.

A whole lot of them are dumb enough to make their membership in criminal gangs public in other ways, like social media posts and rap songs.

But we can't even criminalize gang loitering, see Chicago v. Morales. Mere membership is likely going to be a protected First Amendment right to association. Bukele doesn't have this problem.