EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 4035
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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets. Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source. If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States22991 Posts
On August 01 2023 03:56 Liquid`Drone wrote: Plenty to unpack there but I'll dig in a bitAnd I believe that a) taxes on the wealthy should be vastly increased and b) CEO pay should be capped at x amount the lowest paid worker in a company (where my ideal x is a pretty low number, like 3-5, but that's negotiable) and c) tax evasion should be policed much more consistently and, as this is one of the few crimes I believe people make in a calculated manner (x % chance of making y amount of money vs z % chance of having to pay w amount of money/do v amount of time), subject to harsher punishment, because I think this is an area where it would actually be a deterrence. That said I do think, ideally, the rule of law has some intrinsic value to it and that there is a difference between breaking a law and following the law, even if I also adhere to mlk's 'one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws'. (As far as I'm concerned, that quote does not justify stealing from an immoral and wealthy company, as I still consider laws against theft just laws.) First paragraph takes us to the standard US politics refrain of 1. There's a problem 2. Politicians won't fix it 3. Need to replace the politicians with ones that will 4. Can't replace the politicians because of how the system works 5. Need to fix the system 6. Politicians wont fix it (because it benefits them) 7. Repeat ad nauseam. As to the second, my point was that our feelings about theft are trapped in a terribly distorted context that has parallels to the ostensibly good and honest law abiding citizens of the US that have, genocided indigenous people, stolen their land, stole people from Africa, enslaved them, prosecuted their escapes, designated MLK the "most dangerous negro" and so on. I'm trying to show how the conceptualization of the relationships between people and the resources in the US is fundamentally flawed in such a way that makes the desire for prosecuting theft from Walgreens come at the cost of addressing the underlying structural issues. | ||
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On August 01 2023 05:45 JimmiC wrote: None of this helps with your points from above. Why? Mom was not in poverty, although she had a horrible habit of choosing abusive boyfriends. Which greatly supports the crime causes crime and poverty theory. On August 01 2023 05:50 Magic Powers wrote: The review is from 1986. Much of the research from back in those days is not up to par with modern standards. Heck even much of the research from just ten years ago can already be rejected today. And city journal is a far right outlet known for occasionally spreading misinformation. There's not a chance in hell they can be considered credible regarding crime rates by ethnic groups. You are welcome to present evidence for the poverty causes crime thesis. I've done a deep dive for a federal judge once before. It is incredibly difficult to find anything but a correlation (which makes sense because both crime and poverty are associated with more intrinsic traits like low intelligence and short time preferences). The poverty causes crime hypothesis consistently runs into two serious problems: 1) Recessions and their accompanying unemployment don't result in crime spikes. 2) Immigrants with lower household incomes and wealth (and the children thereof) from Asia, in particular, have very low crime rates. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3731 Posts
On August 01 2023 06:18 cLutZ wrote: Why? Mom was not in poverty, although she had a horrible habit of choosing abusive boyfriends. Which greatly supports the crime causes crime and poverty theory. You are welcome to present evidence for the poverty causes crime thesis. I've done a deep dive for a federal judge once before. It is incredibly difficult to find anything but a correlation (which makes sense because both crime and poverty are associated with more intrinsic traits like low intelligence and short time preferences). The poverty causes crime hypothesis consistently runs into two serious problems: 1) Recessions and their accompanying unemployment don't result in crime spikes. 2) Immigrants with lower household incomes and wealth (and the children thereof) from Asia, in particular, have very low crime rates. I don't believe poverty, just by itself without any other factors, drives crime. I haven't claimed it does and I probably never will. Likewise I don't believe crime drives poverty. It's the same correlation, only the other way around. I believe that, by and large, how poor people are doesn't tell us how likely they are, as a group, to commit crimes. In my opinion there are psychosocial factors at play that drive overall crime rates. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On August 01 2023 06:26 Magic Powers wrote: I don't believe poverty, just by itself without any other factors, drives crime. I haven't claimed it does and I probably never will. Likewise I don't believe crime drives poverty. It's the same correlation, only the other way around. I believe that, by and large, how poor people are doesn't tell us how likely they are, as a group, to commit crimes. In my opinion there are psychosocial factors at play that drive overall crime rates. Then were aren't too different here. My view is mostly like this: One an individual level (as in a single person or family) poverty and crime share the same root causes of low intelligence and high time preference (aka lack of long term planning). On a neighborhood/city level, however, I think crime does cause poverty because it causes people who can, to flee, and businesses to go out of business. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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ChristianS
United States3187 Posts
On August 01 2023 05:46 BlackJack wrote: You're strawmanning my position. I said this to you in a previous post "I don't blame just liberal DAs for the predicament SF is in. I think there are many variables, but I do think stupid woke policies are the common theme among those variables." Your insistence that I think this is a single variable problem - how severely we punish criminals - is actually not at all what I said. How is studying the root causes of crime contingent on allowing people to steal tide pods? I think you should be the one that is obliged to defend the theory “as a crime becomes more of a problem you reduce punishment." Because that's what's being done. Not trying to strawman you, although I’m not sure what I’m supposed to interpret from your references to operant conditioning besides “more punishment -> less crime.” You’re welcome to enumerate other variables you think are important, otherwise I don’t know how I’m supposed to intuit what you think should be done about crime besides increase punishment. I should be obliged? Personally I think if someone wants to inflict draconian punishments on their fellow citizens, the burden of proof should be on *them* to show that it will actually do some good. I mean, that’s the whole concept of punishment, right? Hurt people to affect some positive change in behavior down the line? Ryzel is better equipped than me to describe why the behavioral psychology doesn’t actually support the current policy. Personally, I’d look at the massive disparity between the US and other countries (without a corresponding lower crime rate), or historical examples of draconian policies failing to tame crime waves (e.g. the crack epidemic), and consider that ample reason to doubt that all this punishment is producing some downstream positive effect. In the direction of “other variables”: perhaps now is as good a time as any to raise the question of whether this criminal justice apparatus we have is actually effective at reducing crime. Maybe other institutions would be better-equipped to implement a behavior-changing program like Ryzel prescribed than the cops are. Is that worth exploring? Or will I be immediately dismissed as “woke”? | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On August 01 2023 09:37 JimmiC wrote: Poor people are dumb is a myth people with money tell themselves to feel better. Nope. Also IQ highly predictive of job performance. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
On August 01 2023 11:00 cLutZ wrote: Its not. Poverty does reduce intelligence but not by the amounts necessary to describe the gap between top 20% earners and bottom 20% earners. What this means for race relations is of no moment to intellectually honest people. It's been a while since I've seen someone so willing to barge into any discussion and just share one insane opinion after another. Bravo for that. | ||
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On August 01 2023 11:52 NewSunshine wrote: It's been a while since I've seen someone so willing to barge into any discussion and just share one insane opinion after another. Bravo for that. When it comes to social science there are two coherent positions: 1) I don't believe anything regarding social science, it is all crap. 2) IQ is the best metric in social science and everything revolves around that metric and the better we can make IQ measurements the better we can predict outcomes. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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BlackJack
United States10340 Posts
On August 01 2023 10:03 ChristianS wrote: Not trying to strawman you, although I’m not sure what I’m supposed to interpret from your references to operant conditioning besides “more punishment -> less crime.” You’re welcome to enumerate other variables you think are important, otherwise I don’t know how I’m supposed to intuit what you think should be done about crime besides increase punishment. I should be obliged? Personally I think if someone wants to inflict draconian punishments on their fellow citizens, the burden of proof should be on *them* to show that it will actually do some good. I mean, that’s the whole concept of punishment, right? Hurt people to affect some positive change in behavior down the line? Ryzel is better equipped than me to describe why the behavioral psychology doesn’t actually support the current policy. Personally, I’d look at the massive disparity between the US and other countries (without a corresponding lower crime rate), or historical examples of draconian policies failing to tame crime waves (e.g. the crack epidemic), and consider that ample reason to doubt that all this punishment is producing some downstream positive effect. In the direction of “other variables”: perhaps now is as good a time as any to raise the question of whether this criminal justice apparatus we have is actually effective at reducing crime. Maybe other institutions would be better-equipped to implement a behavior-changing program like Ryzel prescribed than the cops are. Is that worth exploring? Or will I be immediately dismissed as “woke”? So here's some other variables that I think put San Francisco into the dire straits that it's in... COVID policies I think this was the accelerant to the fire. SF treated COVID more seriously than probably anywhere and they still haven't recovered. Extended lockdowns that permanently shuttered many small businesses along with tech being a main industry in the region which allowed work from home, and the result was disastrous. Foot traffic never returned to baseline, especially in the downtown area. If you own a cafe that serves workers on their lunch break and there are no more workers taking lunch breaks, game over. Defund the Police Not specifically funding but the prevailing attitudes that resulted from this movement. SF/Oakland have been failing at at hitting their recruiting goals, and these are good careers with $150,000+ salaries (im guesstimating). Morale is low from being called bastards every day and seeing the people you arrest end up right back on the street. Fortunately even the most woke politicians has realized what a disaster the idea of defunding the police was and have tried to distance themselves from it. e.g. I mentioned London Breed that initially talked about defunding SFPD by $120 million at the height of defund to come back the next year and ask to increase the police budget instead. This is mostly conjecture on my part but I think there are fewer police that will go above and beyond to serve their community and catch the bad guys if they are just labeled bastards either way. SJW's conflate law and order with white supremacy For some reason it became an idea that if you criticize criminality you're attacking black people. People are afraid to speak up for law and order because they don't want to be labeled a racist. Ironically the idea that targeting criminality is akin to targeting black people is itself pretty racist, at least that's how it seems to me. There's a reason why the NAACP Oakland branch included this paragraph in their statement calling out the bullshit. We urge African Americans to speak out and demand improved public safety. We also encourage Oakland’s White, Asian, and Latino communities to speak out against crime and stop allowing themselves to be shamed into silence. There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city. How do you solve a problem you're afraid to talk about? High cost of living Heavily attributable to NIMBYism and burdensome regulations to build new housing. I mentioned earlier the owner of the laundromat that had to commission a report to investigate whether his laundromat was a "historically significant" laundromat, lol. There are many examples of this, e.g. A developer in Berkeley that had to go to the Supreme Court to get permission for high-density housing on a parking lot because it was contested that the parking lot was "Sacred Land" of the Ohlone people. The parking lot was even named one of the U.S.'s 11 most endangered historic places. Is building housing for people to live in somehow more of a desecration of this "sacred site" than allowing people to park their gas guzzling cars on top of it? There's a reason why this is one of the all-time top posts on the SF Bay Area subreddit City bureaucracy destroying opportunity and entrepreneurship This article tells the story of a man that spent $200,000 trying to open an S.F. ice cream shop, but was no match for city bureaucracy It's really hard to believe this is not an Onion article. Excerpt in the spoilers + Show Spoiler + Yu submitted plans to the Department of Building Inspection in November 2019. Then the Planning Department required him to notify neighbors within 150 feet, allowing any one of them to object. And one of them did — a competing ice cream shop. That meant Yu had to hire a lawyer and brave a hearing at the Planning Commission. The June 11 hearing featured 64 people — mostly friends of both ice cream shop owners — offering their opinions on the great ice cream face-off. Because apparently everybody in San Francisco has way too much time on their hands. Yu won approval, but then got stuck in the city’s never-ending web of securing permits. The Department of Building Inspection’s online permit tracker shows Yu faced 15 hurdles to secure his permits including getting the sign-off from a host of departments. The last to weigh in was the Department of Public Health, which said in December its review was complete, but that Yu owed more money in permit fees before the department could give the OK. People just tolerate it more This is more of a personal theory than something I have examples for. Whenever you see someone getting mugged or robbed on the news the police always say the same thing, "Just hand over your property, it's not worth someone getting hurt over." It's absolutely good advice on an individual level. But the more everyone makes themselves a willing victim the more it emboldens the bad behavior. You can see countless videos of the Bay Area of people robbing stores or breaking into cars in broad daylight with many bystanders and you can always hear them saying the same thing "Don't get involved, just let them go." I think this is far more likely to be the case in the Bay Area than in say Lubbock, Texas. I absolutely wouldn't get involved because I value my life more than someone else's property, so I'm not trying to talk shit. I think there's a lot to be said when a community stands up for itself and rejects bad behaviors from their own instead of playing bystander and expecting the police to handle it. Crime begets crime I'm a big believer in Broken Windows theory. I think when you allow disorder and antisocial behavior to fester it contributes to more. Why should I stand in line and pay for my items like an idiot when others just walks out the door? Obviously people with established careers aren't considering this but the idea that some people aren't persuaded to steal when they see others doing it with little consequence seems crazy. I also elaborated in a few pages back exactly how I think allowing crime to fester contributes to more crime down the road: + Show Spoiler + Rampant shoplifting causes businesses to close down and people to lose their jobs. Meanwhile rampant car break-ins and open-air drug markets cause tourists and other locals to not want to travel into the city to spend their money. The closed down businesses and fewer tourists causes less foot traffic for the remaining businesses and they find it difficult to stay profitable. Ultimately they have to close down as well, again laying off more people and again making the situation more dire for the remaining businesses. Now fewer people are employed which means more poverty and more idle hands which leads to more crime. Around and around we go. | ||
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Acrofales
Spain17919 Posts
Haven't looked into the second yet, but the first is quite shoddy. It is fairly well known that IQ correlates with a whole bunch of stuff that isn't intelligence. Here is a good overview of a variety of issues with using IQ as the method to measure intelligence: https://explorable.com/intelligence-testing-criticisms#:~:text=Many critics have argued that,skills, motivation or even morality. So I reject your measurement of intelligence. Second, correlation isn't causation my man. It seems to be a running issue, because it was *also* at the base of your crime causes poverty. We know poverty in and of itself doesn't cause crime. We also know poverty and crime are correlated. But those two things together don't give you license to flip the script and claim crime causes poverty. I'll agree that poor areas stay poor and that crime contributes to that. I'll even agree that removing all the criminals from the poor neighborhoods might help reduce poverty. It's the approach Rio de Janeiro took to pacifying favelas after all. It was effective at a neighborhood level. It was horribly ineffective at a city level, where the organized crime just moved to other, previously less criminal, neighborhoods. Anyway, back from the aside about your previous point: correlation is not causation. We can talk about grades instead of IQ, because as we established above, IQ is horribly flawed (and I say this as someone who aced both school grades and IQ tests). Grades are correlated with poverty, but do you think poor people are inherently (and therefore irredeemably) bad at school? Or do you think poverty has a whole bunch of effects that cause people to do badly at school? If the former, I don't think we have much more to discuss, as the only way I see the future you're working toward is as a Brave New World. If the latter, then don't you think poverty itself might be the cause for the lack of mobility? And just to help you, we were talking about school lunches and the impact of not worrying about your next meal on school performance just a few pages ago. The evidence was quite overwhelmingly: children who are fed properly do better at school than children who aren't... | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3731 Posts
On August 01 2023 11:00 cLutZ wrote: Its not. Poverty does reduce intelligence but not by the amounts necessary to describe the gap between top 20% earners and bottom 20% earners. What this means for race relations is of no moment to intellectually honest people. Impoverished neighborhoods are far more likely to be targets of discrimination. I posted the footage of the mentally challenged man. If he had been born into a wealthy family, he would not face such discrimination from people and the police because he'd be well taken care of and he wouldn't have to operate a cashier. If he were to face discrimination, his wealthy parents could bail him out. This makes the wealthy challenged man unseen and therefore he can't be picked up on a "poor = dumb" sensor. But since the man in the footage is on the impoverished end, he gets picked up by the "poor = dumb" sensor and becomes a statistic. This is a classic example of selection bias and it easily explains why there's this myth out there that poor people are less intelligent. It's most likely the result of this bias. Poor people face more discrimination. This leads to a higher incarceration rate. This higher incarceration rate leads to more poverty. | ||
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Magic Powers
Austria3731 Posts
I think you should be the one that is obliged to defend the theory “as a crime becomes more of a problem you reduce punishment." Because that's what's being done. That is not at all what we're saying. Our argument is that the incarceration rate is too high and the prisons are overloaded. This has a negative impact on individual lives and the neighborhoods where these individuals get picked up. Our argument is that, as incarceration rates explode, we have to take a very close look at people's hard-on for punishment and scrutinize it to death. You're conflating our argument against arrest, persecution and incarceration with acts of crime. We're making a clear distinction. And this distinction is very important, because arrests, persecution and incarceration are all self-perpetuating. This is something that people need to understand. The very thing that we're doing against crime is driving the thing that we're doing against crime. We think we're attacking crime, but instead we're perpetuating the thing that we're using to attack crime. | ||
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