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Comment by TameAntelope | Hacker News Reader

It's just easier and less risky to not commit crimes, the people who do commit crimes are almost always doing so as a result of some fundamental failure by society to give them tools to earn a living some other way.

If you were in their situation, you'd do exactly as they would, you just had a better situation in your life. We owe it to them to give them that shot.

I know it's easier to blame these people for their choices, but in a lot of cases, there never really was any other choice for them. "Just don't do crime" isn't really a choice you can make when nobody explains to you what else there is to do that gives you any real shot in this world.

I'll repeat, because it's important: you'd do exactly the same thing these people have done, if you had their set of experiences.

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It’s a sad fact of life there will always be injustices. People can still make good choices and have positive outcomes in bad environments.

We need to stop trying to be devoid of personal responsibility as a society.

The fact that you think this has anything to do with personal responsibility makes it clear you don’t understand the circumstances these people find themselves in.

Is there anybody in the world under your philosophy that bears personal responsibility for anything immoral that they have done?

This has nothing to do with my personal philosophy and everything to do with what motivates people. Some people are bad yes, but the vast majority of people are not, and would not do bad things if they felt they had alternatives.

Why is it important to you to focus on the bad people, when there are many, many more people who aren't bad?

It has everything to do with your personal philosophy. I haven’t met a good person in my life. Here’s your philosophy: “Some people are bad yes, but the vast majority of people are not”

You’re telling me the vast majority of people wouldn’t take advantage of others if they ended up with serious power.

History and personal experience tell me otherwise. People are not basically good.

That's not a philosophy, that's rigorous observational results from a plethora of psychology studies.[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7] (and so on)

This isn't opinion, and these are just easily accessible sources. There are a lot more, and a lot more rigorous sources, if you're actually interested.

The alignment of incentives and the perception (or lack thereof) of choice does a lot more work than you apparently are aware of.

At this point, it seems like I'm trying to reason you out of an opinion you didn't reason yourself into, which is both sad and futile, so I'm going to stop.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-probe-...

[1] https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_science_he...

[2] https://www.zmescience.com/science/humans-are-good-in-nature...

[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-animals/20191...

[4] https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/5/23/15516752/science...

[5] https://www.nbcnews.com/better/health/good-company-why-we-ne...

[6] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/14/selfis...

[7] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20130114-are-we-naturally...

| you'd do exactly the same thing these people have done, if you had their set of experiences.

Nonsense! It's possible you learned everything you know about people by reading it from a book.

This is a report from the real world: everyone (at least in the US) these days get a "shot" and while some are lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon, most people who are below middle class get lots of extra attention and resources paid for by everyone else (who work for a living). Opportunity is there and is often just left on the table in favor of anti-social (more entertaining) behaviors. Sorry, but it's true. If you want to "owe" other people something, go ahead, I'm tired of paying the bills for other people's sentimentalism.

> most people who are below middle class get lots of extra attention and resources paid for by everyone else (who work for a living).

No, the people that work for a living are the people below middle class, hence why the class below the (petit bourgeois) niddle class in capitalism is known as the “working class”.

sorry my bad. I just meant that there are lots of social programs which are generously paid for by tax payers. Didn't mean misquote Marx...

What I find interesting is that, even here on HN, someone still confuses an anecdote with a representative study.

It may surprise you to learn how many people in my life have not gotten a "shot", how many have, and how many have gotten vastly more than their fair of a "shot" in life. Those are the circumstances, and when you find yourself in similar circumstances, with a similar set of life experiences as someone else, you tend to make similar choices as they would. Humans, generally, act similarly, all else being equal.

To quote MLK, "It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps." [0]

The people who are stealing from these trains are, by and large, men without boots.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xsbt3a7K-8

What's curious to me is the absence of women. If it were people in penury and dire straights, you'd see more women doing it. But we don't. It's guys doing it.

> most people who are below middle class get lots of extra attention and resources paid for by everyone else (who work for a living).

Most of those people are working and paying taxes, as many benefits programs are stipulated on first having a job. Those benefits are also laughably terrible to non-existent, as well, and vary heavily from state to state.

Also, many people who are "below middle class" are not eligible for the programs, anyway. The federal poverty level is something like $12k a year for an individual, and benefits are cut off if you earn more than that.

~12k is the federal level for eligibility, but the actual threshold depends on state definition as most states increase the baseline.

> If you were in their situation, you'd do exactly as they would, you just had a better situation in your life.

You don't know my situation or my past. I can say that you clearly don't understand criminals, criminality or even destitution.

We have daily examples of white collar crime. These are people with well enough paying jobs.

Most people will not embezzle from their company —but some will despite not needing to and being aware of the risks. They just have the opportunity to. The same behavior happens in other spheres.

Most theft is not due to impending dire straights. It’s opportunity for quick cash of loot without needing to go through the tribulations of getting a paying gig.

Do you have any evidence for your claims?

Anyway, the question under discussion is whether maybe we should change their experiences, so they don’t do this sort of thing anymore.

I know it’s popular to say that we only need positive reinforcement, that we can accomplish everything good just by saying “yes.”

That is false.

If you need a citation to tell you that it's easier and less risky to not commit crimes, you're not engaging honestly in this conversation.

As for the claim that you'd behave as they would, were you in their situation, that's basic Situational Action Theory [0], a well studied theory in criminology that attempts to explain crimes as moral actions.

The irrational focus on the relatively small number of "because I wanted to" type crimes is very popular in conservative circles, but isn't an accurate or helpful view of why crime is committed, and it's not shared by the plurality of experts who study this topic academically.

[0] https://www.cac.crim.cam.ac.uk/resou/sat

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