site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26781 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why America's social policy is not helping the poor

There's a section of Youtube lately that is focusing on the faces of poverty in America. Not in a predatory way like 'get rich quick' influences, crypto scammers, and redpill adjacent-sphere individuals like Andrew Tate who are looking to exploit the desperate poor to make profit, but rather to shine a light on the mindset of poverty in America.

One of the most recent videos is by Andrew Callaghan interview and documentary about the Kia Boys, a group of young teenagers around New Haven notorious for stealing and lifting Kia's and Hyundais who had a vulnerability in their system allowing easy theft. It's a fascinating watch, but what's most interesting is how they want to spend the money they earn from carjacking. Not to support their families, not to pay for college or to get a GED, but rather to consume the latest fashion trends and to aspire to selfish hedonism.

Another youtuber is tackling American consumer debt and looks at how consumer choices end them in significant, and often insurmountable debt without extreme lifestyle and person changes. Caleb Hammer interviews people (in a fairly obnoxious and click-baity style) in significant loan and credit card debt, breaks down their finances, and tries to get them on a budget with a varying amount of success. The most common factor of the guests he has on his show is eating out- for most of his guests, almost 33% of most of their monthly income is eating out at various establishments and other spending that does not significantly increase their quality of life. Many of his guests would have significant personal income if they could have some self-control in their consumptive habits.

The problem America is currently facing is not entirely related to HBD, which is a low hanging fruit for discussing antisocial behavior. Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime. It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals. The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.

This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.

Unfettered illegal immigration further strangles poverty-stricken America. The social resources are stretched thinner, to the point our politicians decided it's better to serve incoming illegals than their own constituents on the off-chance they're willing to work the menial jobs for well below livable wage for the area. Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.

So the question remains, what can be done? It's quite possible liberal policy is somewhat correct but doesn't go far enough. Instead of social security checks, benefits should be more tied between work programs and corporations. Imagine that individuals in section housing have to work at Amazon fulfilment centers. Perhaps the government and Amazon could strike up a deal that with enough workers, Amazon could lower the throughput per worker (to increase livability) in exchange for a tax subsidy to offset the cost of having to hire a non-optimum amount of workers. People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence and social workers more intimately involved in their lives along with people helping them understand budgeting. It would require insane amounts of manpower, but it would also be the first step in actually beginning to address the problems of the slums.

You've given us a picture of poverty. Is this painting social realism, a realistic and detailed study, or is it a cartoon collage of unrepresentative impressions?

Jumping straight from two YouTube videos to a diagnosis of social ills is, you'd think, a bad sign. What blows up on YouTube selects hard for being interesting, surprising, and generally stimulating. Youths stealing cars and livestreaming it, that's interesting! People who make decent money but waste it all embarrass themselves, pass the popcorn, not representative.

Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime.

Evidence? What policies, which people? The second youtube channel certainly isn't an example (the guests seem to make about average income and just spend poorly, hardly 'sucking endless resources'), and the former are just a particularly newsworthy example of teenage criminals.

Unfettered illegal immigration further strangles poverty-stricken America ... Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.

$350/day is not at all representative of the money the govt spends on illegal immigrants per day, you know about it specifically because it's shockingly high (and that's money spent on "services", not money transferred to them), so it's not really a useful way to understand how unfettered illegal immigration is "strangling poverty-stricken America", considering it's specifically in NYC.

So the question remains, what can be done? It's quite possible liberal policy is somewhat correct but doesn't go far enough. Instead of social security checks, benefits should be more tied between work programs and corporations

This is the idea behind things like the EITC and work incentives!

There's something to the idea that a strong state should directly attempt to change the culture in the culture of the criminal underclass, but there's little in the way of good diagnosis or treatment here, "make them go work at amazon" isn't enough, the youth already have plenty of financial incentive to do so.

Maybe I'll post about this sometime, but for now, in short: I don't think the problem is related to intelligence. "Willpower" is closer, but that's a folk egregore. "Short time horizons" is better, but I think that's one of the symptoms, not the root cause. If I had to put a name on it, I'd call it "despair", as in the opposite of "hope".

There's no hope. It hurts to think about the future. At night, dreams are only about the past, or fiction, or fantastic scenarios like winning the lottery or gaining magic powers, never about what might actually happen next in day to day life. Money gets spent fast, because it's ridiculous to think of it making a difference in the future. The hole is so deep that any realistic amount of money won't help dig you out. If you pay the credit card off, it'll just be cancelled, but as long as they think they can get money from you, they'll still let you use it. The choice between eating out and eating in is simple: you can do it, it will make you feel better than otherwise, it won't make your situation significantly worse, and there's no meaningful evidence that systematic deprivation will lead to long-term benefits. Life will still be shit tomorrow, but at least you'll have a few hours of happiness today. And as shocking as it may seem, all of this is compatible with scoring highly on IQ tests.

And then, over the years, it becomes habit.

And that's when lack of self-awareness, which might be correlated with low intelligence, can cause people to lock it in. To believe that there is no other way, that they can't help themselves, that it's not their fault, that they're fine and the rest of world is to blame. And it's not like there's much evidence against that hypothesis. And from there, it's just a short step to thinking that it's people Not Like You that are doing this to you and everyone else you know: the Other, the Man, whites, blacks, Jews, men, women, liberals, conservatives, whoever. Them.

Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.

Technically this is spending per household (despite the media rarely lying). That's only the 73rd percentile of household income in the US.

This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.

This is a feature, not a bug. The problem was that we tried to occupy Afghanistan in the first place.

The strength of our system is it's inherent antipathy towards totalitarian control or abuse of human rights in the service of some end, however well-intentioned we think that end may be. The fact that American fails at empire is a good thing, both for us and for the world. The fact that the American people doesn't have the stomach for re-education camps, massive censorship and generational occupations of foreign countries is again a strength rather than a weakness. We shouldn't try, and we should actively prevent other nations from trying where the realities on the ground allow.

The problem America is currently facing is not entirely related to HBD, which is a low hanging fruit for discussing antisocial behavior. Rather, it is the culmination of various American policies which have created an underclass which sucks endless resources and only returns crime. It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals. The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.

What you're describing seems unlikely to work without resorting to heavy-handed authoritarian policies like forced labor - what will you do when you offer subsidies to Amazon to hire people from low-income households, and nobody takes you up on the deal? Not to mention in some ways your program already exists considering that many low-wage workers are already heavily subsidized by the government.

I won't pretend to know the solution to poverty, but sacrificing the ideals the West was built on to become China-lite is not worth it.

The fact that American fails at empire is a good thing, both for us and for the world

Is it? It it good, for the millions of hungry and displaced Sudanese, that it's not administered by a western government? It's worth thinking carefully about. Sure, re-education camps and censorship are not great. But you named empire, more generally. Even given the authoritarianism, you'd probably rather live in China than in Sudan. It's easy to say you value freedom, but how many lives should be sacrificed on that altar? Africans would probably be closer to freedom, in a positive sense, if the transition to self-rule had happened in a more orderly fashion, or not happened at all. And those with power in Western countries like you do not find re-education camps appealing, and so probably wouldn't implement them.

The fact that American fails at empire is a good thing, both for us and for the world.

America didn't always fail at military occupation though.

If you're referencing the Indian Wars and the later...acquisition...of Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, etc., perhaps that just comes down to A: a slightly-different approach to government/nation-building and B: the natives of these places were just different somehow.

Yes, and also Japan and Germany post-1945, and Haiti between 1915-34.

I won't pretend to know the solution to poverty...

My proposed solution is to pick an absolute standard of what "poverty" is and try to solve that. When poverty is defined as a percentage of median household income and explicitly excludes food and housing aid, the problem simply cannot be solved. I believe this is intentional, but it doesn't really matter to the point whether this is just a mistake or not. If we can define "poverty" by absolute standards of access to the basic necessities of life, I think we will find that the United States has already solved poverty or needs to do very little to fill in the last couple gaps.

If, instead, "poverty" just refers to having less than the median, well, the poor we'll always have with us, I suppose.

When poverty is defined as a percentage of median household income and explicitly excludes food and housing aid, the problem simply cannot be solved

I'm confused; wasn't there a brouhaha about this specific point just in the last year? Where some folks on the right said the census bureau was cheating as they redefined poverty to include food and housing aid, to make it seem like we've made progress eliminating poverty when really all we've done is increase government handouts?

I remember a number of articles like this one:

In the late 1950s, the poverty rate in the U.S. was approximately 22%, with just shy of 40 million Americans living in poverty. The rate declined steadily, reaching a low of 11.1% in 1973 and rising to a high of nearly 15% three times – in 1983, 1993 and 2011 – before hitting the all-time low of 10.5% in 2019. However, the 46.7 million Americans in poverty in 2014 was the most ever recorded.

Also articles like this. Apparently there's also absolute and relative poverty. Oh well.

Regardless, the fact that definitionally 49% of people will be forced to earn sub-median incomes isn't necessarily a reason to shrug away poverty and/or the degree of income inequality in society. As evidenced by the last decade of politics. Do you think that the anger at elites is unfounded (given nobody falls below your definition of poverty anymore), more related to status than income (although definitionally 49% of people will also be sub-median statuswise...) or are you more sympathetic to discourse around income inequality than poverty?

Where some folks on the right said the census bureau was cheating as they redefined poverty to include food and housing aid, to make it seem like we've made progress eliminating poverty when really all we've done is increase government handouts?

Supplemental poverty is the alternative measure that includes transfers.

Conservatives and progressives both seem to vassilate on what exactly they mean by poverty when it's convenient to do so. Conservatives claim that transfers don't work because they haven't pulled everyone up to a middle-class earned income, but they also note that America's "poor" are housed, clothed, fed, and have entertainment budgets. Progressives claim that transfer programs work and we can tell because supplemental poverty figures tell us we've pulled people up, but then insist that tens of millions are "food insecure". To the extent that the concern is actual material impoverishment, welfare spending works and we do a lot of it.

I do try to be consistent - I occasionally get annoyed by the size of these programs, but the reality is that spending $183 billion per year for the hungry instead of for space has resulted in Americans having entirely too much to eat rather than any issues of "food insecurity".

Do you think that the anger at elites is unfounded (given nobody falls below your definition of poverty anymore), more related to status than income (although definitionally 49% of people will also be sub-median statuswise...) or are you more sympathetic to discourse around income inequality than poverty?

I am completely unsympathetic to inequality discourse. Part of the reason is that it's often couched in the language of poverty, insinuating that the relatively deprived are absolutely deprived. Really though, I just generally don't buy that inequality is a real problem. I'm fine with anger at specific elites for specific reasons, but some fuzzy claim that Jeff Bezos just has too much money because Amazon is wildly successful is just annoying to me.

The problem I have with the measures that don't include transfers is they're often used to justify more transfers. Which is a nice broken feedback loop since by definition more transfers won't reduce that measure of poverty.

It’s disgusting that the rich get richer each year while leaving 50% of people below median in wealth.

When poverty is defined as a percentage of median household income and explicitly excludes food and housing aid, t

Wow, that's worse than I thought. It doesn't just exclude food and housing aid, it also is before taxes. Public assistance is not taxable, so someone who gets $x in public assistance is considered poorer than someone who gets $x after taxes from wages.

This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around. It would probably need a full generation to be educated as well as an extreme prejudice to crackdown on Islamic extremism for Afganistan to actually significantly change, maybe 40-60 years.

Isn’t this is exactly what China is trying to do with their Uyghur population? Well I guess you’re suggesting a more gradual process. China is trying to speed run it. But I imagine this would be the charitable interpretation of their policy. And it seems like it’s working.

Yes. Amusingly if the US hadn’t funded their opposition and the Soviet Union wasn’t already in the process of collapsing it’s quite possible that the Soviets would have eventually achieved this in Afghanistan. It’s not impossible to forcibly secularize Muslim populations, it’s just extremely hard and they put up much more resistance than anyone else.

The soviets didn't even manage to secularize the chechens, so I am skeptical that they could secularize a foreign population.

I think that's pretty ahistorical. The Chechens were subject, as all historically Sunni societies were, to the vagaries of the global Islamist movement that affected every single Sunni society on earth from the 1980s onward, which also perfectly coincided with the slow collapse of the Soviet Union. In addition, Soviet attempts at forcible secularization of Chechens were extremely limited; they were much more concerned with forcing children to learn Russian and protecting the interests of the Russian settlers in Chechnya (especially after 1958) than they were in closing mosques. The Islamization of Chechen nationalist movements was a distinct process that occurred through the 1990s, and is in some cases both distinct from and not dissimilar to Islamization that occurred in far-flung regions of the Islamic world as distant as Malaysia and the Maldives.

Soviet attempts at forcible secularization of Chechens were extremely limited

This is indeed my point. Here's a population that Russia has been fighting with since the 18th century, they're right on the border (or even part of the country), and the Russians still didn't manage to secularize them. What hope did they have of secularizing the Afghans in a matter of years, even if it weren't for those meddling yanks?

You can claim it's because they didn't try hard enough, but that seems to me to be, as you say, cope, especially when the implication is that they would have tried hard enough in Afghanistan.

There's also the point that the US wasn't the biggest funder of the Afghan resistance- the Muslim world was. The US brought the state-of-the-art stingers that negated Russian aviation, but in terms of raw money to pay/feed/supply troops in aggregate, the US was a modest part.

The US brought the state-of-the-art stingers that negated Russian aviation

And even then, don't people say that the Mujahideen simply traded the Stingers for simpler, cheaper weaponry?

I've no doubt that people say that, but there's probably a considerable amount of category confusion (do Mujahideen trading Stingers with other Mujahideen count as trading away Stingers?) and self-serving narrative biases (various interests in downplaying the relevance of US military aid support in favor of other actors/other types of aid/denying US significance) and the point that there were only so many (the CIA reportedly only gave around 1000 total), and that once they did their primary role- making the Soviets cautious rather than aggressive with their use of gunships- there wasn't much use for them.

Some weapon systems are more about shifting the opponent's behavior rather than being prevalent. Stingers were an example of that.

There needs to be a stage in between prison and freedom

I’m unsure why this isn’t discussed more. Historically, there were many alternatives to jail that were used to control unruly people and populations. The death penalty was one, of course (we still have it in the US but it’s used so rarely that it doesn’t really impact anything, and most other developed countries have abolished it). But the others - exile, internal exile, population transfers more broadly, asylums (abolished since the 1980s) and so on have ceased.

Jail sucks, especially American jail, and I don’t think that people who - through no fault of their own - have high time preference and impulsivity deserve to spend their whole lives there in a small cell, no nature, no greenery, no alcohol or drugs (other than what can be smuggled in or made locally), no real employment at normal wages, no privacy, no exposure to sex or romance for straight people and so on. That does sound terrible, and it’s a shame we condemn so many to it.

At the same time, that doesn’t mean I want to be exposed to the problems of the criminal, drug addicted or homeless underclass. They should be allowed some joy but separated, in every crucial sense, from the edifice of civilized society and from people who Follow The Rules. A kind of sealed reservation for people who aren’t the worst of the worst violent criminals (who should remain in jail or in the noose) but who are manifestly incapable of living among law-abiding people with some propriety. An American Siberia.

…there is one?

About 4 million Americans are on parole or probation, compared to something like 1 million in prison and another million in jail. They’re being monitored specifically to reduce the chance of recidivism. In the meantime, sure, they still get to ride your subway.

What’s your threshold for “manifestly incapable,” anyway? How should we decide when someone has crossed the line and gets (permanent?) exile instead of prison? I think it looks a lot like sentencing guidelines, probation, counseling, all these other interventions we already do—except at the last resort we boot them to the Montana Gulag instead of the chair.

Internal exile still exists in America. Chances are, if you live in America, your municipal government will happily buy you a one-way greyhound ticket to anywhere else in the country- how else did you think so many homeless got to California?

There’s also probation, where poor rule followers have essential liberty under many restrictions.

Exile usually implies you can't come back.

You don't see the monkey's paw in your proposal? You now have divided the country, 1984 style, into the criminals, the proles -- the people living on these reservations -- the Outer Party (the people living in the regular part of the country), and the Inner Party (the people who decide who goes where). Life in the regular part of country becomes extremely regimented, with everyone constantly in fear of being sent to the reservation for the most minor (or imagined) of offenses if they happen to get on the wrong side of the Inner Party.

To some extent Pygonyangification is a risk, but the current elite already has the power to ruin your life, strip you of your livelihood and take your money (something that effectively means you're going to have to move out of Manhattan anyway), so what's the difference?

Just allow people freedom of association and this problem disappears entirely. It should be legal to create an HoA that doesn't allow felons, for example.

Freedom of association is impossible in an 'equity' focused social order. What you're describing is exactly what Redlining was, and the modern incarnation of crime map overlays on Zillow was axed precisely because it was 'disequitable'.

Absolutely. Many other things--such as competence tests, and as we've seen recently background checks--are impossible too, but they're boiling the frog slowly.

Thankfully humans aren't frogs, and people can literally move away when things get too bad. Once excess wealth is no longer free for the taking, market forces force a rationalization either by failure or by reform. Plenty of housing projects and suburban neighbourhoods became failures once black people moved in and the property values collapsed due to the rise in crime, with no amount of cajoling or 'rejuvenation' actually moving the needle on the prices. Barring mandatory state-facilitated wealth transfers, which also presumes both full state capture and maintenance of state capability, I don't see these trends sustaining long term to reach a denouement for either the Equity or the Libertarian viewpoints.

It's like letting the police use stun guns. If you give the authorities "less severe" options, they can get away with using them more without being raked over the coals by the general public, or at least with being treated more leniently by the courts. So the more lenient punishment is not going to be just used as a replacement for a more severe one, it will also be used against more people, more often. Having a sort of half-jail makes it a lot easier for people who haven't done any real harm, but are easy to catch and punish under anarcho-tyranny, to be punished. (You can even argue that probation works like this already. Caning, as suggested by someone below, would be in danger of ending up like this this too.)

What do you mean by exile? Communities, insofar as they still exist, definitely do still ban and excommunicate people. But that just means those people end up in different communities.

I can think of several people who were banned from rat community spaces of the top of my head. Brent Dill for instance.

Have you heard any interviews with the guy that does the soft white underbelly series on YouTube? He basically says by the time he gets to these people they are so far gone they are beyond any kind of reintegration with society at large and can at best only be warehoused.

When asked about success stories, "basically none" is the answer, once you're on the street with multiple addictions and brain rot that is it for you. He has seen millions of medical resources spent on one patient over their lifetime etc... and that anything but warehousing is a resource suck without end. When asked about solutions to "fix" these people I believe the only one he offered was a time machine to go back and intervene in early early childhood.

I think the guy performs a useful journalistic service but I'm not sure he's necessarily best-placed to comment on whether these people are fixable, since almost definitionally he's seem them at their worst.

To see if they could be treated you'd need a combination prison, asylum and rehab. They'd need to be forcibly weaned off any drugs, have medical treatment for any wounds/sores/etc. That first part is hard because eg. fentanyl is widely available in most American prisons. I'd want to see what these addicts look like after 5 years forcibly sober with not a single illegal substance. Perform some IQ and other tests, see if they've truly destroyed themselves for life.

These people have no willpower, they can't fix themselves, so I don't think approaches (including the hospital one) that are largely self-directed and rely on personal motivation are viable. That doesn't mean nothing is viable.

They really can't be fixed though, the same personality and mental flaws that lead them down that path in the first place are not going to be fixed by being 5 years sober in a forced environment. You need to keep them in that environment forever because as soon as they are out they are back at it soon enough. Maybe in the future if we have some miracle drugs that can repair brain damage and rewire...at this point in time there is no real solution except prevention and then containment. My spouse worked for a city homeless center as a mental health counselor at the start of her carrier, she saw the same thing. A zero zero percent long term recovery rate for people that far gone and leaking bile on the floor etc...

So. Just keep them in a forced environment forever then. 24/7 Culture drone surveillance and support.

I mean if you really think there's no cure then it sounds like its that or killing them or leaving them on the streets.

I mean it isn't what I think, it is borne out by statistics that no one wants to aggerate. I don't want it to be true. But yeah you would need that, basically a Culture drone missile on assignment to deal with every human deviant. Otherwise, just toss 'em in the warehouse. I don't see that as a worse solution than letting people burn to death in winter tents or die from an overdose. I think we are shirking our duty to our fellow humans by letting them run wild.

But the others - exile, internal exile, ... have ceased.

Isn't that basically what homelessness is? Maybe it's not a legal sentence, but it amounts to the same thing. You're cast out of normal society, forced to wander the outskirts and live a very tough life.

You might be metaphysically on the outskirts, but physically you are at the very center of the city.

In a sense, but homelessness has two crucial distinctions, it can be a temporary state for people who are very much "polite society material" but have hit a rough patch, and it also interacts a bit too much with said polite society, being a nuisance to its members and that chafing is encouraging them to be tougher on it. It's harder to feel compassionate towards the homeless if you have to endure their litteral excrement everywhere in your city.

If you were exiled to Siberia in 1880 you couldn’t just be a homeless bum in Moscow or St Petersburg, presumably.

Wait, aren’t those both things that happened to Raskolnikov?

No, Raskolnikov had a shoebox apartment in st Petersburg until he got shipped off to Siberia.

Relatedly, eliminating corporal punishment in favor of just modulating the length of prison sentences is one of those things that strikes me as a solution someone could only like if they're basing their policies on squeamishness rather than genuine care. There is simply no way that most people would prefer years of incarceration to caning or similar physical punishments.

There is simply no way that most people would prefer years of incarceration to caning or similar physical punishments.

Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment. The tradeoff is more caning vs weeks. I'm not actually sure it's on the pareto frontier. Time in jail sucks in a way you can't shrug off, it's burning time you never get back, whereas pain is just pain, it goes away.I think a most people would just shrug off the pain and do it again, unless the pain was bad enough it corresponded to a lasting injury. (And then you get into things that aren't just 'not-progressive' they're just 'obviously evil' from the usual perspective like using medical science to create a drug that causes extreme pain without permanent damage!)

I think swiftness and consistency of enforcement is much more important than the kind of enforcement, anyway. Even if organized retail theft had no punishment at all, cops just grabbed you, returned the stuff, and dropped you off an hour away, it'd quickly stop because there'd be no benefit.

Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment.

The physical pain is a part of it, sure. But it's not the whole thing. These punishments are generally done in public (or in the modern day, probably televised/put on youtube). The embarrassment and/or loss of social status is a big part of it.

But if you think about a 'criminal underclass', are going to see it as a loss of social status?

Then do something that will lower their social status. Dress them up in a baby bonnet and spank them instead or something.

Sure, but anyone who's getting a sentence of a year is unlikely to be deterred by a single physical punishment.

There are two types of crimes really. Crimes made impulsively, and crimes that are planned. We can use corporal punishment to deter planned crimes, especially planned crimes that are so minor that sentencing someone to even a day of prison would be overkill but hitting them once with a cane is appropriate, like shoplifting. For crimes made impulsively, like a person having their mother insulted then committing assault against the insulter, we use prison to keep them off the streets because we just can't have them as part of society.

There is simply no way that most people would prefer years of incarceration to caning or similar physical punishments.

I think more important than whether we've properly calibrated the amount of punishment is whether we've optimized the effects of punishment.

Why do we punish people? For incapacitation, for denunciation, for retribution, for a deterrent, for reparation, for rehabilitation, and for expiation. The further you go down that list in that order, the worse prison looks.

Incapacitation is probably what prison is best at, better than any punishment short of the death penalty (and a lot more flexible than that...). Every year you keep an offender away from potential victims is a year likely to have fewer actual victims. I suspect no amount of caning or stockades or whatever else we might bring back would be enough to completely eliminate the need for prison as a "backup" for repeat offenders.

You'd think calibrating any sort of punishment would make it reasonably effective for denunciation and retribution, right? We have The System tell the offender that they did a horrible thing, it prescribes a certain level of suffering for the offender, and this gives us a shared ethical code and some feeling it's being enforced (at least if the police and the prosecutors are doing their jobs, but that's a requirement with any form of punishment). Thinking about incarceration from this perspective, already it's possible to see cracks in the system. Is it even possible to calibrate the suffering we prescribe to different offenders? If you're accosted by some thug and have to fight back before the police arrive, do you think his prison sentence would deliver as much suffering as yours would, if a jury doesn't think your self-defense was justified or proportional and convicts you in addition to or instead of him? If you're very upper class you may have the social/financial/cultural capital to recover (respect, Martha Stewart!), or if you're very lower class you may be okay with a little free room and board, but if you're middle class your career may never recover. Other forms of punishment have similar flaws here, though, so it's hard to fault incarceration specifically.

As a deterrent, incarceration is probably specifically much less effective than the same level of suffering would be if delivered as corporal punishment. The sort of high-time-preference offender who thinks crime is a good idea in the first place is not going to be nearly as deterred by suffering which is scheduled years into the future, and because the suffering from prison is so more gradual than the suffering from corporal punishment there's no way to avoid letting it stretch long into the future for serious crimes.

For reparation (aside from "the victim feels better to see the offender suffer"; I'm counting that with retribution), incarceration is basically useless (it doesn't transfer any value to the victims) or worse (it conflicts with possibilities like wage garnishment that could transfer some value to victims).

For rehabilitation, in theory prison could be helpful, but in practice it seems to be worse than useless. Criminals are not being isolated from the bad influences that led them to crime, they're being put into a community full of them. Depending on what connections a prisoner makes, they may end up more disposed to a life of crime when they leave than they were when they came in.

And for expiation, incarceration is probably grossly counterproductive! In theory The System has told everyone that "they've paid their debt to society" upon release; in practice any significant sentence length makes it difficult to maintain relationships with non-fellow-criminals (and nearly impossible to continue providing friends/family/dependents any support) and difficult to find a (legal) job when the punishment is over. Arguably these are the most punishing aspects of prison, but they're also precisely the aspects of an offender's life we want to encourage, not punish!

Yeah, very good point. Corporal punishment is a great example of a penalty that still works in Singapore and some Arab countries but was abolished in the West.

One of the most recent videos is by Andrew Callaghan interview

I heard he was MeToo'd awhile back, did anything come of that?

He had a recent interview with Lex, apparently it was a false allegation because he was coming into some HBO $$ for a documentary film he created with Jonah Hill and others.

YouTubers can only be MeToo’d if they actually go to jail, it’s not like YouTube has a ban on accounts owned by people who may have engaged in unethical behavior.

They can get dropped by their sponsors and the like though

I think a lot of this could be somewhat curbed if there were reasonable requirements to get various helps from the government. If you want assistance, it should be assistance and therefore you should have a job. That doesn’t seem controversial to me. And it would work. If having sec 8 housing required having a full time job, then people would be much more likely to find and keep a job. Add in a requirement that nobody living at that house commit a felony and a lot of these sorts of problems get handled.

Like Welfare to Work? The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA)

The Federal government prosecutes groups that perform criminal background checks in employment for racial discrimination, there's no way they're going to do some themselves for housing.

Section 8 is privately owned and in practice does a lot of discrimination on the basis of finding a spot on the sliding scale of better tenants to being able to get away with crappier maintenance. There’s nice-but-poor section 8, which in my area generally advertises only in Spanish, requires full time employment, etc. And there’s crappy section 8 which keeps the water on and does no other maintenance but is also forgiving of late payments of the tenant’s 30% of rent.

These things exist because section 8 is ordinary apartments and houses owned by people who, for whatever reason, prefer to have the government underwriting a large portion of the rent in exchange for a cap on rent. Reasons vary from the genuinely pro-social to the extremely cynical.

That's news to me, I've had a background check done for every job I've ever worked.

Yeah, I've also been criminal background checked for professional employment. Including at major companies. That's standard practice.

The test case was announced Thursday.

The EEOC charges that Sheetz’s hiring practices disproportionately screened out Black, Native American/Alaska Native and multiracial applicants. Sheetz’s companywide hiring practices violated provisions of Title VII that prohibit disparate impact discrimination, the EEOC says. The lawsuit does not allege that Sheetz was motivated by race when making hiring decisions.

It's longstanding policy interpretation, due to disparate impact, but there was a new lawsuit last week.

According to the lawsuit, Sheetz has maintained a longstanding practice of screening all job applicants for records of criminal conviction and then denying them employment based on those records.

The EEOC charges that Sheetz’s hiring practices disproportionately screened out Black, Native American/Alaska Native and multiracial applicants. Sheetz’s companywide hiring practices violated provisions of Title VII that prohibit disparate impact discrimination, the EEOC says. The lawsuit does not allege that Sheetz was motivated by race when making hiring decisions.

Such alleged conduct violates Title VII, which prohibits facially neutral employment practices that cause a discriminatory impact because of race when those practices are not job-related and consistent with business necessity or where alternative practices with less discriminatory impact are available. The EEOC filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Northern Division (U.S. EEOC v. Sheetz, Inc., et al., Civil Action No. 1:24-cv-01123-JKB, after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process.

“Federal law mandates that employment practices causing a disparate impact because of race or other protected classifications must be shown by the employer to be necessary to ensure the safe and efficient performance of the particular jobs at issue,” said EEOC Regional Attorney Debra M. Lawrence. “Even when such necessity is proven, the practice remains unlawful if there is an alternative practice available that is comparably effective in achieving the employer’s goals but causes less discriminatory effect.”

The federal government believes that you can't choose not to hire criminals, because blacks are more criminal, and therefore not hiring criminals is really not hiring blacks.

A point towards @Capital_Room's interpretation of what racism is in the eyes of the people who matter.

We should have communist-style social housing tiers, so if you’re an ex-con in social housing and you stay on the right side of the law for 5/10/15 years you get a nicer house or apartment.

It is totally unnecessary to get the state involved in that, the market handles it fine. Stay on the right side of the law, do a good job at work and get a few raises, save some money, and boom you find yourself in nicer housing. Prosocial behavior is already well rewarded.

Isn't that what parole is supposed to be?

Of course it helps the government are subsidizing migrants to the tune of $350 per day, or $127,750 per year per migrant which would launch them almost into the top 10% of earners in the United States.

I recommend you go to prison in New York City. They make 4 times as much per day.

Comparing government spending and personal income is not meaningful at all. The government's ability to burn money without increasing social welfare is legendary, so unless you want to argue that the government is actually giving $350 of value to each migrant per day, it's dishonest to pretend like that's $350/day of subsidy.

Also as per the article the figure they are giving is per migrant household not per migrant.

While it doesn't cash out to legible living standards outcomes, the waste and fraud in government spending is meaningful. The illegal alien might not be who receives that $350 per day, but someone is getting $350 per day and they like it that way. This should cause some hesitance in proposing government spending as solutions to problems more broadly.

If @SomethingMusic had only said it was a waste of government spending I wouldn't have made my comment.

Instead he said the government was subsidizing migrant labor by $350/day, so I did make my comment.

It is a good point, I don't know the breakdown of the money spent on immigration in a place like NY if it's simply housing/food or if it includes translators, lawyers, social workers, etc. I'm sure someone knows, but articles are largely rage bait or too sympathetic to really dig into how these dollars are being spent.

Perhaps the government and Amazon could strike up a deal that with enough workers, Amazon could lower the throughput per worker (to increase livability) in exchange for a tax subsidy to offset the cost of having to hire a non-optimum amount of workers.

Let's say that the government sets an annual wage of $31200.01 (just above the poverty line for a family of four). How much would they need to subsidize Amazon to make it worthwhile?

I'm guessing substantially more than $31200 per worker.

A worker that doesn't get any wages (or benefits, or payroll taxes, or etc.) from the company still requires a locker, parking lot space (or rather a bus seat), HR paperwork to keep them organized, training, supervision, and an assigned task in the workflow. Once they show up and start working, they have the opportunity to work unsafely, make mistakes, steal, fight, or otherwise do worse than nothing.

Since your proposal is scraping the bottom of the barrel of people who aren't employed, I suspect that a significant fraction can't be gainfully employed as they are.

Imagine that individuals in section housing have to work at Amazon fulfilment centers. Perhaps the government and Amazon could strike up a deal that with enough workers, Amazon could lower the throughput per worker (to increase livability) in exchange for a tax subsidy to offset the cost of having to hire a non-optimum amount of workers. People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence and social workers more intimately involved in their lives along with people helping them understand budgeting. It would require insane amounts of manpower, but it would also be the first step in actually beginning to address the problems of the slums.

Was this modest proposal made in jest? I want to reply seriously but can't help shake the feeling that I'm just missing the joke.

It was a spitball idea, not one that I think should be implemented verbatim into government policy. There needs to be a way for at risk and poor people to have constructive outlets and understand the importance and value of gainful employment. If you think its so juvenile, can you think of something better?

If you think its so juvenile, can you think of something better?

Sure - nothing. Just doing absolutely nothing and not even bothering with enforcement is a better suggestion than giving a company like Amazon this insane amount of power over the lives of their employees and the incredible competitive advantage of a workforce who are unable to leave their jobs without losing their homes. Amazon already treats their workers incredibly poorly and pays them so bad that a huge proportion of them receive government welfare on top of their earned income - are they going to be included in this program too and forced to do a bunch of extra free shifts for the existing employer in order to get those benefits? They were even projected to exhaust the US labour pool this year because their churn rate is so atrocious! Amazon is a company that has repeatedly gone out of their way to ensure that they get concessions and exemptions from government policies in the pursuit of profit, and I can't imagine that they'd change their spots for this.

The potential for abuse here is just staggering - do you think a woman who is on welfare is going to risk reporting their boss for sexual harassment/abuse when that all but guarantees they'll be homeless for the next 90 days? Your proposal only even makes sense if you're talking about a very specific subsection of welfare recipients. If I'm a university graduate who failed to find a job in six months because the economy just entered a recession, what exactly would I be learning from my new role as a serf for Amazon? Having that experience on my resume would make me less likely to get a real job (to say nothing of the opportunity costs, where I could be using that time to upskill or expand my resume) and more likely to stay dependent upon the system for life. If a hard-working coal-miner with two decades of experience finds themselves struggling to find a job after their mine got closed and all the jobs in their town got shipped off to China, what are they going to be getting out of this? If a housewife whose husband died due to COVID ends up applying for welfare, what greater purpose is served by taking her away from her children for eight hours a day to do menial labour so degrading and demanding that she has to piss in a bottle to avoid taking bathroom breaks? And of course on the flipside, if a hulking 7 foot tall gangster with violent tendencies and substance abuse issues shows up on the welfare rolls, you're actively putting the people who they work with at risk.

I'm sure there's some small subset of people (other than Jeff Bezos) who would benefit from this insanely expensive and demanding program, but the juice just isn't worth the squeeze. My answer might have been glib, but I'm under no real obligation to provide a functional alternative because I think your proposal is seriously flawed.

You're missing the forest for the trees. You're focusing on Amazon as a company rather than the issue of finding undereducated, isolated, an unemployed young men/women an attempt to integrate into society proper as a successful alternative to violence, drugs, and petty crime. It doesn't have to be Amazon, just any job that doesn't require a high level of previous training and education.

The other aforementioned people you created to dismiss my idea don't necessarily need the program I'm proposing, it's not like those people are about to resort to criminal behavior or aren't going to be assisted by other government programs or are incapable of finding work themselves.

Having that experience on my resume would make me less likely to get a real job (to say nothing of the opportunity costs, where I could be using that time to upskill or expand my resume) and more likely to stay dependent upon the system for life.

Could you expand on this? I feel like this is just rageposting instead of an actual example. Also, you don't necessarily need to put work on your resume if it's something temporary while looking for a permanent position.

Of course you're under no obligation to provide an alternative, but poopooing something just because you don't like my general idea doesn't really disprove what I'm getting at, either.

Apologies for the delayed response - life's been rather busy lately. Feel free to just ignore this post, but I didn't want to leave your reply abandoned.

You're focusing on Amazon as a company

They're the company presented and they're the only operation with enough size and reach for this to be a viable option apart from maybe Walmart or McDonalds. Want to increase the amount of corporations involved? That's another layer of bureaucracy, investigation and opportunity for scams (you ever hear about the fake businesses created to harvest COVID relief benefits?).

It doesn't have to be Amazon, just any job that doesn't require a high level of previous training and education.

The job in question has to be one where you don't give a shit about the quality of the output (people don't tend to produce their best work when they aren't getting paid) and with no real importance to it, because there's going to be vast amounts of malicious compliance. What exactly is the big task that needs all this incredibly shithouse and actively hostile labour? You can't trust these people, they have no incentive to perform and every incentive to be so bad at their job they get fired. If getting fired for incompetence means they just get kicked off welfare, I hope you're ready for the political fallout of constant media interviews with single mothers and their starving children who lost their job and all welfare because the Amazon algorithm noticed them taking too many piss breaks.

The other aforementioned people you created to dismiss my idea don't necessarily need the program I'm proposing, it's not like those people are about to resort to criminal behavior or aren't going to be assisted by other government programs or are incapable of finding work themselves.

The other aforementioned people are the ones who are going to be included in the category of "incapable of finding work themselves" - you can't get away with using "about to resort to criminal behavior" as testable criteria without demonstrating precognition and accurate divination. You're going to have to come up with a dividing line between those people and the ones you want to target with your program - sometimes people, through no fault of their own, graduate in years like 2007 and your system needs to be able to account for things like that.

Could you expand on this? I feel like this is just rageposting instead of an actual example. Also, you don't necessarily need to put work on your resume if it's something temporary while looking for a permanent position.

I'm not sure if you've gone looking for a job recently, but having a big gap on your resume is something that hampers the average person's ability to get hired. If you're a hiring manager who's picking up some programmers, are you going to look at the resume of the person who was well off enough that they got to contribute to open source projects for a semester after graduating, or the person who was forced to go be a delivery driver and can't even make the interview on time due to their welfare requirements? (Of course if you allow people to quit their fake Amazon job to go take a job interview without sacrificing their welfare then they're going to be taking a LOT of job interviews with FreeMoneyFromCovid LLC). Having onerous work requirements for someone on welfare means they aren't improving their skills, can't travel for work and are going to have problems going to job interviews.

Of course you're under no obligation to provide an alternative, but poopooing something just because you don't like my general idea doesn't really disprove what I'm getting at, either.

More than just poopooing, this is pointing out serious structural issues with your proposal that I think play a large part in why this hasn't already been done. You just haven't thought through the consequences of a system like this, or put yourself in the shoes of a person who is entering the system at the bottom, and at the same time you haven't looked at the system from an adversarial point of view - and given that you're trying to turn these people into a source of free and easily exploitable labour, you have to be extremely careful that they don't have the ability to fuck things up and make your corporate partners go "These people are not worth employing even if we don't have to pay for them."

There's a reason that companies don't go drag a 20 dollar bill through the trailer park to pick up a bunch of cheap workers for the day. The "workforce" you're proposing to create with this idea is not just incredibly incompetent, but the few parts of it that are competent are heavily incentivised to fuck with the system in order to either escape it or fuck it up. No company is going to want to have to work with a bunch of gang-bangers that are forced to be in their office by law, and the actual "work" that these people generate is in many cases going to be actively harmful to the company's bottom line (though I'm sure some people will appreciate being able to pick up some meth from their Amazon delivery driver).

This is the actual main thrust of my argument against your proposal: the juice isn't worth the squeeze. Your program requires vast amounts of administrative overhead, has massive costs, potential for serious and egregious abuse, hampers the ability of good people to get real jobs and funnels taxpayer money into private hands that are already incredibly wealthy - and to top it all off, the workforce that results is so terrible that you will have to pay others to compensate for the costs of actually putting them to use.

This is the same problem America had in the occupation of Afganistan. A true occupation and social change would need significant more support and time than what the American politics around.

Occupation is hard and bloody work. One of the many things that went wrong in Afghanistan were the methods. There were stories about US soldiers gritting their teeth to nubs at their Afghan 'allies' raping children in the barracks and how they couldn't do anything about it. The soldiers on the ground knew the whole campaign was a massive farce a decade before withdrawal.

https://www.thejournal.ie/afghanistan-sexual-abuse-us-soldiers-2343921-Sep2015/

The locals would do everything they could to cheat and rip off Western forces, launching attacks to get us to pay them for protection money, blowing up bridges so they could get lucrative contracts to rebuild them. If you're trying to do imperialism you have to have the right political/social methods. You need to credibly threaten enormous violence against those who displease you, you have to make it clear that you're not a pinata that can be extorted for money, you have to project fear and power. Consider what Israel does 'to make their presence felt':

Many roads are “sterile,” and the nearer they are to the settlement, the less access Palestinians are allowed. They cannot drive, they cannot open a store, and, closest to the settlers, they are not allowed to walk the streets. If a Palestinian family has a home fronting one of these streets, the army will seal the front entrance and the Palestinians will only have access over the roof and through the back door.

Our main job was to “make our presence felt.” The conscious policy was to give the people the sense that the IDF was everywhere, all the time. We patrolled the streets 24/7, picking houses at random, waking up the families at night and separating them into men and women, and searching, loudly and publicly. It fell to me as a commander to pick the houses, a selection that was made unrelated to military intelligence.

As an occupying force in a territory, you have to act like this. It’s a simple equation, as surely as one plus one equals two; this is what an occupation will result in. You can’t serve as a soldier in the Occupied Territories and treat a Palestinian as an equal human being, as the only way to control a civilian population against their will is to make them feel chased, harried, and afraid. And when they get used to that level of fear, you have to increase it.

Or:

In some army units, making one’s presence felt is referred to as “creating a sense of being chased.” That means instilling fear into the entire Palestinian population, a mission that by definition makes no distinction between suspects and innocent civilians, or between “involved persons” and “uninvolved persons,” as it is called in IDF parlance. Sometimes soldiers invade homes in the middle of the night just for training purposes. I raided homes in Jenin or Nablus simply to seize more optimal observation positions. According to one former soldier who gave testimony to Breaking the Silence, they would invade homes to test a new door-breaching device. Another witness said they went into a Palestinian home to be filmed eating sufganiyot (Hanukkah donuts) for a feel-good news story to be broadcasted that night on Israeli television.

That's what imperialism is about, stuff that would immediately put you in the 'glowing red eyes baddy' camp according to our norms. This is why we can't do imperialism proficiently. I don't mean it in the leftist frame that everything about imperialism is evil. It's a method all states have used to achieve objectives. In Afghanistan we were too lax, the Israelis seem too harsh (though they're still here). It's difficult to navigate between ineffectual rule and backlash, yet can be done. The Malayan Emergency and suppression of the Mau Maus show it's possible. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was very proficient as suppressing! Technology is not a factor - the Assyrians did imperialism in the Bronze Age, the Arabs did it, the Mongols did it, the Romans did it, the Spanish did it, the British did it, the Russians did it. There are gradations in repression, different kinds of institutions and administrative techniques. But you cannot do this stuff and keep your hands clean, it's just not possible. I know you mentioned will and stability but the proposals are standard progressive-frame economic/social-worker interventions.

Enforcing laws is so much easier than real imperialism! And the US can't even do that, there are open-air drug markets when Xi isn't in town. There are blatant robberies, out in the open. In San Fran police have given up on traffic infractions.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sfpd-traffic-tickets-17355651.php

In Canada you see the most cucked advice from police:

“To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your fobs at your front door,” Const. Marco Ricciardi said at the meeting. “ Because they're breaking into your home to steal your car. They don't want anything else.”

This wimpy attitude is the problem, not a shortage of education or bussing or needing higher wages. It's not hard to whisk the problem people away, Bukele did it in El Salvedor with limited resources and opposition from the US. China does not have high wages yet people do not go around stealing and murdering like in America or Canada - they know the state will crush them. This is a lesser kind of imperialism in my mind, yet it's still of the same essence. Using force to create order but on internal rather than external entities - that's what police do.

What happens if people made to work in Amazon do a really bad job (many won't want to be there and some are innately bad workers)? What if they show up late? Are they fired, lose their welfare and are left to starve? Are they beaten? What do we do about protests - ignore them and crush rioters?

Or do we pay Amazon to have better workers cover for the bad workers in their make-work jobs? Do we fire the worst workers and give their welfare back, accepting the obvious incentive? Do we capitulate at the first riot because it's 'a bad look', it makes people think of Nazis? Do we capitulate at the first time somebody is unjustly mistreated by our policy, reshaping the whole policy because we're not yet adept at the techniques?

It's the same in education. What if the students are beating each other, thoroughly ignoring the teacher, making a circus of the whole thing? Are they actually punished or are they 'suspended' and given a holiday? Nobody would dare to behave in a British school 100 years ago like they behave today, there were real consequences. We don't need to cane students who aren't good enough at Latin, nor should we build a huge surveillance state like China. But we do need to accept that not everything is going to be resolved amicably, sometimes we need to punish and punish severely.

Great post. It’s an extreme loss of state capacity for internal violence. Look at Mao’s China, successful eradication of a centuries-long opioid epidemic (in which as many as 1/4 to 1/3 of urban young men were heavy addicts) in fifteen years. And it wasn’t because he killed everyone; he killed the more obvious dealers, sure, but you actually don’t need to kill that many people to trigger prosocial change. If the US army rolls into the South Side of Chicago, or Baltimore, or St Louis, and starts blasting, you could quite possibly limit the death toll to three or low four figures in each city (ie barely above the actual homicide rate) and still seriously dissuade violent crime. And as you note, the Malayan Emergency, Mau Mau and really the entire history of British India show that you don’t actually need that many people or that much violence to accomplish this. 15,000 British ruled over 400,000,000 Indians. In 2003, 130,000 NATO forces ruled over 20,000,000 Afghans, a vastly more favorable ratio. And yet they lost, because they were too afraid to do the needful.

We were discussing South Africa earlier in the thread, and there are parallels to that situation (even though I disagree with apartheid and think the Boers are largely responsible for their presently poor condition). Even with the whole world against them, there is no way that 5 million Dutch and English in a country with a huge resource bounty and extensive arable land armed with literal nuclear weapons and modern technology, and bordered by countries that (unlike Israel’s foes) had no capable armed forces and definitely did not want a war with them, could not have held out indefinitely - even at a relatively high standard of living. But there was no will for it. The situation in American cities, as I noted in my post on Seattle a couple of months ago, is the same. It’s not a resource question, a few armed police could clear out the homeless permanently in a few hours. It’s a will question, like a hoarder who lives in filth because they just can’t throw anything away for psychological reasons even though there’s a dumpster right outside.

South Africa did feel quite threatened, they were trying to develop their own modern fighter jets to counter the Mig-29s they expected Angola and nearby Soviet allies to receive. At any point the Border War might flare up. Unlike Israel they had no superpower backer to get advanced weapons from, nor did they have access to world markets due to the weapons embargo. They tried developing their own Atlas Carver but the cost of developing advanced fighters was too high.

A shortage of will sure but South Africa also had a less fortunate position than Israel. Though the critical error was probably letting so many blacks into the country, rather than any military issue.

The Angolans weren’t capable of mounting an invasion of South Africa proper and had no intention of doing so, plus by the mid-80s when the Mig-29 was entering service as an export product the Cold War was winding down. More generally, I don’t think it’s possible to believe in HBD and think any of the Southern African countries could present a serious military threat to South Africa, especially when most of SA’s neighbors relied utterly on South Africa for economic reasons and had no interest in participating. Angola’s annoyance with South Africa extended to South Africa’s involvement in Namibia and the Angolan Civil War (where it was in practice on the American side). The US only passed anti-apartheid legislation in 1986 and frankly I suspect that had the Soviet Union not collapsed the CIA would have found other ways to ensure the Angolan communists continued to be contained. In addition, both the Soviet Union and China traded extensively with South Africa behind the scenes, including in arms, as has only more recently become fully clear. The decline of American power since 2001 and the growth of China, not to mention new opportunities for trading relationships with the Arabs and others who wouldn’t care about apartheid would have further made the system more tenable for longer. The economy had stabilized even under American sanctions by 1989 as, like Russia today, the South Africans figured out how to obtain what they wanted anyway.

a centuries-long opioid epidemic (in which as many as 1/4 to 1/3 of urban young men were heavy addicts)

This is not the first time I got the impression that the Chinese Communists have had great success even in the West in greatly exaggerating the long-term consequences of the Opium Wars waged by Western imperialist devils. It makes sense on their part, as it's an integral part of their narrative on the so-called "century of humiliation". As far as I know, though, opium addiction was never anywhere near as widespread in China as the Communists later claimed. Opium dens obviously existed in urban areas, but the great majority of guests weren't addicts; in fact, addicts weren't tolerated there, as nobody was permitted to occupy tables for long. It's true that lots of peasants consumed opium as a painkiller, but considering their usual workload, this wasn't surprising. The claim that as many as 1/4 to 1/3 of urban young men were heavy addicts is, to me, highly suspect.

Even with the whole world against them, there is no way that 5 million Dutch and English in a country with a huge resource bounty and extensive arable land armed with literal nuclear weapons and modern technology, and bordered by countries that (unlike Israel’s foes) had no capable armed forces and definitely did not want a war with them, could not have held out indefinitely - even at a relatively high standard of living. But there was no will for it.

It's worth adding that, I guess, living in place that is basically a fortress surrounded by barbed wire, in a state of constant vigilance and paranoia, might seem entirely tolerable to some aging Boomer who's living in fear and thinking only in terms of security and certainty anyway, as long as the standard of living is sort of good, but for their children it's a vastly different story, especially if they're educated. Which is what you alluded to in an earlier comment of yours earlier in the thread indeed.

15,000 British ruled over 400,000,000 Indians. In 2003, 130,000 NATO forces ruled over 20,000,000 Afghans, a vastly more favorable ratio. And yet they lost, because they were too afraid to do the needful.

I don't think it explains it. 5 centuries ago Babur the conqueror captured Delhi using Afganistan as his base. India is probably easier to conquer.

It’s a will question, like a hoarder who lives in filth because they just can’t throw anything away for psychological reasons even though there’s a dumpster right outside.

Your core point is correct, but it's worth noting that there are principle-agent problems within this. Plenty of people do have the will to simply remove vagrants, but the United States is home to people that will take it all the way to the Supreme Court insisting that bums have a right to camp in your parks if you don't just give them housing. The threat of litigation and the fact that there are lunatic judges that will rule in favor of the bums means that it takes a lot of will to proceed with something as simple as telling bums not to camp in your park. Some of the hoarders don't want to live in filth, but there is a powerful federal government forcing them to at gunpoint.

No sure, I’m not saying everyone’s aligned with this at all. But broadly the American public is pretty squeamish about a lot of things. Support for extreme authoritarian measures is probably pretty low across the board, although perhaps I could be positively surprised.

Not to support their families, not to pay for college or to get a GED, but rather to consume the latest fashion trends and to aspire to selfish hedonism.

The age old technique of blaming social factors. Yet even if they wanted to support their families, seems like these Scholars would have done the crime anyways. The enemy is deliberately blocking out this reality.

It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near.

Commies (which all of the enemy are) would disagree. See "manna" as a rat-adjacent example of the fully automated luxury space communism pov. But even if the low iq can be worked around, HBD includes a built-in criminality component that's the true elephant in the room.

The problem is that we have created a society in which there is not enough incentive or will to create the stability necessary to turn around these neighborhoods and communities.

Wealthy/high IQ Youths and Scholars end up in prison more then whitey does in dead end towns and abject poverty. HBD explains this far better than socioeconomic factors.

So the question remains, what can be done?

Concentration camps?

People in section housing could be bussed to the job, and also have regular police presence ... It would require insane amounts of manpower ...

I see we're in agreement on concentration camps. Work will make them free.

In your 30 comments so far, you’ve got quite the ratio of lazy, edgy takes, for which you’ve been warned twice. This particular one runs afoul of the booing and antagonism rules.

Three day ban.

HBD explains this far better than socioeconomic factors.

HBD doesn't, in fact, explain why high IQ black people do worse than high/mid IQ white people. To my knowledge most HBD theory proposes that IQ is fully general, and higher average IQ should correlate with more pro-social, civilized behaviour in general - I've seen no theory for a separate "criminality gene" being fleshed out.

"Identifying with a criminal culture", on the other hand, does explain rather well why high-IQ black people are disproportionately likely to go to prison, for me at least. (I know that criminal culture exists. I know that if you act according to criminal culture, you're more likely to go to prison than if you acted according to prosocial culture, IQ being the same. I do not, however, know if there is a criminality gene orthogonal to IQ.) This is without going into the anti-black racism theory.

To my knowledge most HBD theory proposes that IQ is fully general, and higher average IQ should correlate with more pro-social, civilized behaviour in general - I've seen no theory for a separate "criminality gene" being fleshed out.

No. Most HBD theories posit that 'g' is positively correlated with everything good including non-criminality, but not that it is the only factor.

why high IQ black people do worse than high/mid IQ white people

Regression to mean: children of rich high IQ blacks regress to mean and thus end having lower IQs that children of rich high IQ whites. If you correlate this with individual's IQ instead of parents' IQ or SES, you get much smaller racial gap.

and higher average IQ should correlate with more pro-social,

Consider than men are more criminal than women even if they have equal or slightly higher IQs than women, Among dog breeds, Huskies are stupid but rarely kill people, Pitbulls are smarter but kill people on regular basis.

I've seen no theory for a separate "criminality gene" being fleshed out.

congratulations on anti-HBD people running successful campaign on obfuscation

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-013-9287-x https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10802-013-9791-3

"Identifying with a criminal culture",

It definitely exists and it's partly downstream of genetics.

orthogonal to IQ.

nobody suggesting it's orthogonal

Among dog breeds, Huskies are stupid but rarely kill people, Pitbulls are smarter but kill people on regular basis.

I’m pretty sure huskies are smarter than pit bulls.

Hhhhm i would like a good source on this

Your argument doesn’t really make sense. Young men in poor urban black communities in the US have higher rates of violent criminal behavior than any black population on earth other than maybe Haitians. West African nations, even many black Caribbean countries, have much lower violent crime rates than these communities in St Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore, despite the fact that they have higher birthrates than African Americans, meaning they have more young men as a proportion of the population. Saying “well it’s HBD, nothing we can do about it [except become wignat separatists, presumably]” just isn’t true.

It isn’t a denial of HBD to suggest that these communities have specific dysfunctions, likely enabled by legal and social changes that were predominantly enacted by non-black politicians, entertainers and businessmen, that are not the natural destiny of their inhabitants per se.

Your argument doesn’t really make sense.

Really? Do you object to that part that MAOA & DRD4 genes associated with climinality too?

specific dysfunctions, likely enabled by legal and social changes that were predominantly enacted by non-black politicians, entertainers and businessmen, that are not the natural destiny of their inhabitants per se.

I agree about this, but even if this this get fixed, we won't see B-W gap in USA disappear.

Why South Africa, Botswana and Nigeria officially report higher homicide rates (and by large margin) than less functional African countries? Low crime in African countries is suspect.

Homicide rates are relatively hard to obfuscate and I suspect that rates in cities like Accra and Windhoek are broadly accurate. Again, these rates are still much higher than in Western Europe, but well below rates in St Louis, New Orleans and Baltimore. Lagos reported 350 murders in 2022 in a city of 15 million (of whom practically all are African), that year St Louis reported 200 murders in a city of 300,000 (of whom only 150k are black). While it's likely more homicides slipped under the radar in Lagos than in St Louis, West African cities would have to miss the vast majority of homicides to come close to the US' most violent cities. Having spent a lot of time in Africa, even poorer people in big cities would report these kinds of deaths, even if they have little belief in the competence of the police to solve them.

I agree that the gap closing appears unlikely, but reducing homicide rates in these cities to West African levels would still be a big improvement.

You answered neither of 2 my questions!

that year St Louis reported 200 murders in a city of 300,000 (of whom only 150k are black).

looks like you're showing number of murders for greater St. Louis (which is 3 million) with figure of population of St. Louis city.

why Nigeria reports more 10x homicide rate than Ghana, which it shares border with? Is 0.3 homicide rate per 100k for Senegal in 2015 close to truth?

Nigeria has ongoing sectarian conflict with Islamist terrorists in the North and Northeast and between Fulani pastoralists and settled people that involve hundreds of murders on a very regular basis (all of which are recorded by the military). The US murder rate also spiked in 2001 for obvious reasons.

Do you believe the true homicide rate in West Africa is on the order of 50-90 per 100k as in these high crime American cities? What do you think the ballpark figure is?

More comments

It is plenty possible to gainfully employ low intelligence people into socially acceptable positions even as technology improves and our AI overlords come near. In fact, it would probably significantly increase the quality of life of many jobs having lower intelligence people working menial tasks to the best of their ability alongside more trained and capable individuals.

You seem very sure about this but haven't substantiated it at all. As it happens I disagree entirely and would be interested to know why you think so.

The critical point here is the meaning of "lower intelligence". Having IQ 90-100 servants with a good attitude is life-enriching because they do the crapwork so you don't have to. Having IQ 80-90 people in your space is just a problem because they can't even operate a washing machine correctly.

The other problem is that your servants won't retain a good attitude if they are going home to a place dominated by a violent oppositional culture where displaying any sign of servility is putting a target on you.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats