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Comment by ElephantsMyAnus | Hacker News Reader

I'm arguing here that your views are fuelled by wishful thinking, if not nonsense.

You can't turn the world into utopia by sticking to a moral panic triggered by the civil rights movement.

There's no utopian thinking here, just a recounting of statistics. Crime is a lot lower now in the US an Europe than it was for most of the post war period. In so far as we have data, there's a lot less murder now than at any time for which we have records.

Again these are basic facts. I'm not drawing any conclusions here really.

But why do you need to cherry pick the data, if it's so clear cut?

https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/crime_statistic.htm...

The whole discussion is about the post war increase, peak, and then decrease in crime. It isn't cherrypicking to have a scope for a discussion. I'm well aware of the long term trend here and mentioned it elsewhere. This matters because the 1990-ish peak is on par with crime levels at the end of the 1800s since people have limited lifespans, a doubling of the homicide rate in a person's lifespan is alarming. It's worth exploring and unpacking the reasons for the increase and decline. Perhaps there are policy lessons to be learned, and moreover there was no guarantee that 1992 would be the peak.

You've simultaneously argued that there is no downward trend, it doesn't matter in the long term, it did happen but because of mass incarceration in the US, and you've just been tossing out contrarian bullshit. You're acting in bad faith, and that sucks.

Yes it is cherry picking. You picked the starting date to make it seem like there was a dramatic rise, while looking further shows a post war dip, and return to "normal".

I argued first with the incarceration, which suggests the opposite.

You also said it happened in all countries, while it in fact didn't.

You ignore the inconsistencies and keep pointing back to that single piece of data that seems to support your position.

There doesn't seem to be any general improvement in behavior, only a decrease in standards.

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