Not that I necessarily disagree, but just as I suspect that you’re pulling that out of your butt more than from any sort of study: Cite?
Will letting people wander homeless cause more crime than keeping a safety net? I could just as easily argue that homeless people haven’t the energy to do much harm, indeed they mostly seem to be either busy finding food (i.e. shifting through trash) or sleeping–with the converse side being that those who live off of the safety net tend to be much more the ones committing crime. Similarly, it could be argued that not having a safety net could be a greater stimulus to not fall out of the rat race.
So are you changing your criteria for whacking the lazy now? Malingering is not a capital crime, so long as you don’t actively harm anyone while sucking the public teat? Or do you still want to cap all the shiftless motherfuckers who offend your work ethic?
I don’t have a great cite for it, but I have something of a cite for it: in The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, the chapter on violence ends by referencing a study that drew the conclusions I discuss above. Note that this is my memory of part of this book; while I’m pretty sure I’ve got the fundamentals right, someone may want to pick up the book if handy and give specifics.
Does anything? Seriously, this is one of those Unanswerables. Either you take it on faith a human life is somehow Sacred, or you doubt and recognize sundry altruistic principles may amount to yet another strategy of self-interest that all selfish genes can employ, distinguished from any other only by effectiveness, which itself is largely dependent on context. It’s either valueless beyond concepts of adaptation, or it’s full of sacred meaning and impervious to scrutiny, by definition. Is it chocolate vs. vanilla, or the sacred vs. the profane? No one will ever know in this life, and if this life is all there is, no one will ever know, full stop.
On the other hand, I don’t like the idea that my entire value as a human being is based soley upon my ability to generate income. I’d rather we waste money on “parasites” than have a society soley based upon ruthless efficiency and the bottom line.
I wonder, in the alternate universe where Weirddave is dictator how long do I have to be out of work before I’m executed?
As far as the positive value of killing lazy people to save society money, I’m not sure whether this is the first approach we should be taking when considering how to save our precious tax dollars. What about the hundreds of billions we spend on defense every year that dwarfs the expenditures of our five nearest competitor nations combined? Compare the excess defense budget with what we spend on the homeless. I doubt the latter is even a miniscule fraction of the former.
There is a flaw in the argument here, and it’s my fault. The original post I was replying to said that just letting them die would have a cost to society. My question started out as “what exactly was that cost”. The concept of executing the homeless crept in because I used imprecise language when discussing the issue. Daniel actually pointed out a good one: If we cut people off from all support, they may literally have nothing to lose and begin to prey upon the rest of society, either in a desperate attempt to survive or out of a desire for revenge.
Other forms of life are not valued. A dog or pig is not valued as much as a human, an insect not as much as a dog or pig and a plant not as much as an insect. You can kill a plant or insect and not be punished, but a dog or pig could get you punished. Harming or killing a human is all but guaranteed to get you punished.
However, in my view, humans are the only ‘things’ that exist that can take control of their destiny. A dog will still be a dog and a plant will be a plant tomorrow. But humans are constantly improving themselves and each other. We have cut childhood mortality among each other by almost 90% in the last 100 years. The 20th century saw 1/2 the world convert to liberal democracy, the advent of endless medical advances, space travel, the internet and various other improvements. We are constantly learning more about ourselves, our existence and the nature of reality. In my lifetime (I expect to die in the 2090s or so) we will cure endless mental and physical diseases, explore the universe, promote animal and human rights, promote global human rights and animal rights, etc. Each human can contribute to that process in their own way, even if right now they aren’t considered to be worth much. Human life is totally different than the life of something like HIV, which has no emotions and is nothing but a destructive force in the universe. Humans, on the largest scale are extremely constructive and self determined.
Besides, the resources to support the so called worthless aren’t that high.
I see the logic there, but I don’t agree with the premise. I don’t presuppose that the species has any inherent value. This does not mean “no value”, I just see its value as “value to its members”, i.e. relative value. I’d bet we have no value (or negative value) to the whales or tubeworms. The only other species that would, relatively, see us as having value are our commensals and parasites.
Which brings me back to the OP. The freeloader mentioned has, IMO, only as much value as Society chooses to assign to him. At the moment, that’s quite a bit, seemingly, but again, it’s all relative, and subject to change without notice.
I am assumine that the Japanese figure for homeless people was the number that could be found on the street at any particular time, so I am using the “on any given day” figure for the US.
Of course we don’t have any value in the absolute. Nothing does.
That’s (I don’t mean to be rude) pat and clever, but isn’t interesting, and isn’t the debate.
In the OP,
Implicit in that value is measured by contribution to society. Implicit in that is that society has worth (assigned by the OP) - the human species has worth.
So that’s back to my basic argument. As a social animal, we have usually protected those who have no obvious benefit, and, at the risk of sounding a bit vain, humans kick ass! We’re easily one of the most successful species in this planet’s history - I think the most.
So our strategy of protecting those “worthless” individuals must be a successful strategy - because Darwin’s rules don’t allow for many bad bets. Protecting worthless stuff is a good route to extinction. Therefore they must not have been worthless after all.
The first is a cite on the amount of crime caused by foreigners in Asia…so given that we’re talking generally about citizens (i.e. people eligible for welfare) I’m not sure what your cite shows except that crimes caused by foreigners is on the rise.
And while your second cite may be relative to a lack of gun-related crimes in the country, I can say with some certainty that the overall lack of crime (among the natives) has to do with the lack of poverty, and the 95% confession rate of those arrested, and 99.9% conviction rate.[sup]*[/sup]
Whoops. I should have said go to that cite and then search on the phrase “The Japanese crime rate is 0.340%” - you’re right that the thrust of the page is about foreign crime, but the point I made - Japan’s crime rate is like most of Asia’s - is there.
From your cite:
“Japan – Citizens have fewer protections of the right to privacy, and fewer rights for criminal suspects, than in America. Every person is the subject of a police dossier. Japanese police routinely search citizens at will and twice a year pay “home visits” to citizens residences.** Suspect confession rate is 95% and trial conviction rate is more than 99.9%. **The Tokyo Bar Assn. has said that the Japanese police routinely engage in torture or illegal treatment. Even in cases where suspects claimed to have been tortured and their bodies bore the physical traces to back their claims, courts have still accepted their confessions. Amnesty International calls Japans police custody system “a flagrant violation of United Nations human rights principles.” Suspects can be held and interrogated for 28 days without being brought before a judge, compared with no more than two days in many other nations. They aren`t allowed legal counsel during interrogation, when in custody may be visited by only criminal defense lawyers, are not allowed to read confessions before they sign them, and have no right to trial by jury. (Kopel, 1991, pp. 23-26.)”
(emphases mine)
Let’s compromise and say the low crime rate is due to limiting all sorts of freedoms - whether gun ownership or privacy.
But I don’t see how it supports your contention that LHoD is wrong. If you want to eliminate welfare, you may very well make society a more dangerous place - unless you institute Draconian police measures. But absent that, LHoD’s assertion may still be correct.
I saw that, and I am suspecting that that table isn’t showing National Crime Rates, but rather the National Crime Rate As Caused by Foreigners. Anything which shows Japan (a country where you can walk any street safely at any time anywhere) as having ten times the amount of crime as the US is either wrong or mislabelled unless I am really missing something. Here are some more believable figures:
Murders per 100,000.
Russia Federation 18.07
United States 6.32
Malaysia 2.73
Taiwan 1.17
Spain 1.08
Japan 0.58
Rape per 100,000.
United States 34.20
England and Wales 14.69
France 13.38
Taiwan 8.82
South Korea 4.38
Spain 3.23
Japan 1.48
Serious Assault per 100,000.
Australia 713.68
England & Wales 405.20
United States 357.94
Taiwan 37.30
Spain 23.94
Japan 15.40
Robbery/Violent Theft per 100,000.
Spain 169.85
United States 169.02
France 144.10
Taiwan 14.35
South Korea 11.74
Japan 2.71
Ain’t no one said I had to give him the ammo he needs to counter my argument. You just forced the issue unsuspectingly.
Even so, his argument was that a safety net will prevent crime while as the lack of one will increase it. That isn’t true. People in a safety net, and particularly ones there for a longer period of time are, from looking at the US, quite obviously the most likely to commit crime. Homeless people aren’t behind most crimes, while as people living in government housing quite often are. And Japan does show that forcing people to not fall behind (or else) may very well work. There is no reason to believe that more kindness actually prevents crime. Most things I know show that the reverse is much more true.
Universal medical care and comprehensive child day-care goes a long way toward providing a safety net (especially the former); if you’re calling government housing to be welfare, i don’t see how you can exclude universal health care.
At any rate, the police-state system goes to show what I’m talking about: in order to give folks without food a disincentive for committing crimes, Japan tortures prisoners. It makes sure that they’ve got somewhere lower to go.
I think it’s an irrelevant example, given the many differences between Japan and the US, unless you’re saying we should adopt their model in toto. If that’s your claim, it’d be best in a new thread, I think.
Doesn’t seem very logically sound. I haven’t read the book it comes from, but looking at the real world having a safety net seems to have more to do with creating crime than preventing it. No country I can think of proves your assertion, and every one that I do know goes in the face of it if it goes in any way. That not having the net is “mean” or Draconian is certainly true, and indeed I am for welfare. But to prevent crime isn’t my reason, and that’s because just factually greater welfare creates greater crime.*
I’m not arguing for the Japanese situation. I’m just saying that your second point is false, and Japan is one example which shows it. That it’s not a nice a friendly example doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.
I would hope for something that did an international study. But eh, when the entire first page of a google for “welfare crime” has links to only things which equate them as a negative pairing, searching further loses some urgency. :eek:
Assuming the populace is predisposed to such of course.
The evidence you offer–two links without drawing out specific claims–does little to convince me. May I offer up Canada as a counter-example, a society with a tremendous social safety net and a crime rate much lower than the US’s? That seems at least as valid as your Japan cite.
The CATO testimony, as much of it as I read, falls prey to the “correlation equals causation” fallacy. I did not read the whole thing, admittedly–if there’s some passage of it that you feel supports your claim, please pull that out. The Jes Beard guy? Not sure what you think is significant about that link.
Finally, keep in mind that a social safety net does not begin and end with AFDC. It also includes homeless shelters, soup kitchens, emergency rooms, detox centers, SSI/disability, and more. If the question is, “why not let the shiftless die?” we need to be looking at taking all these services away, not simply at taking away services designed to feed poor kids.
