Comment by moldbug | Hacker News Reader

Comment by moldbug | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Perhaps someone else can parse this better than me.

I can make sense of one of these lines: "Criminals break laws; laws are often injust. The War on Drugs, and mandatory sentencing." I think behind this line is lurking the belief that America's prisons are full of Humboldt County potheads, or something like that.

The typical American in jail for drug offenses isn't a system administrator who made the mistake of toking up one night. It's a gang member whose real offense is being a worthless thug. The prosecutors and LEOs who busted him are experts in the technical details of putting worthless thugs in jail, to the extent that this remains possible.

Nonetheless, all major American cities retain a very substantial population of worthless thugs. If you're unaware of this reality, I strongly recommend this Chicago cop blog: http://secondcitycop.blogspot.com/. Or you could watch "The Wire" - I hear it's available on DVD.

Last month, my wife and daughter were leaving a child's birthday party in the outer Mission, SF, when bullets flew down the street past them, followed by a worthless thug who ran past them gun in hand. You can argue that Bayshore Blvd. is a lousy place to put a space that hosts children's birthday parties, and I'd agree. Still, it's my country - why shouldn't I feel safe in it, anywhere, day or night?

Yes.

And the interesting thing is, all of that violence is directly related to overly harsh laws relating to narcotics. The problem comes down to economics:

There is an immense demand for narcotics. Since narcotics are illegal, they are risky to trade, which pushes up prices. Through a combination of the preceding two points, trading in narcotics is extremely profitable. Since the different trade groups engaging in the trade of narcotics have no legal means through which they can resolve their differences, they will instead turn to violence.

The gang member's real offense is being born in a crappy part of town lacking in institutions and resources, and where engaging in the drug trade is a normative experience and one of the few sources of jobs. That at least The Wire really goes on about.

By eliminating mandatory sentencing, you will significantly reduce the amount of years people serve in prisons because the mandatory sentence lengths were established capriciously in an attempt to out grandstand political opponents (see http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/s... ).

The world isn't quite as black and white. Eliminate the War on Drugs and overnight all of these problems will disappear as the underlying incentives vanish.

How about that gang members next door neighbor that he grew up with and used to be best friends with until junior high when that next door neighbor who made a choice to stay away from narcotics, went on to city college then on to a university and today is a somebody. Your saying "The gang member's real offense is being born in a crappy part of town lacking in institutions and resources..." does nothing but enable this type of behavior. Why would you not demand that someone no matter what neighborhood they were born in has to accept personal responsibility for their actions and choices. You give them a pass like they have no choice. Well they clearly do. Some of them make the right choice while this fellow you are giving a free pass too clearly did not.

Do you think that there would be more prisoners in Africa if all of the rapists and murderers were somehow instantly apprehended tried and convicted? This article making the USA look like it has the most criminals is a bit misleading.

You're ignoring the will power it takes to overcome these situations. Yes, people do. They're called "exceptions". Why do you think it's always celebrated when someone breaks out of this cycle?

And no one is talking about giving dangerous people a free pass. Prohibition never works. How can something that grows in the ground naturally be illegal?

I loved your comment at the end that seems to hint that it's not that the US has too many people locked up but rather that everyone else isn't strict enough!

Yes, it's their personal responsibility. No, it's not about absolving it. It's about recognizing trends that condition people (including those who haven't even been born yet) and finding a pragmatical solution that benefits both you and them.

Your argument is that of a designer of a nuclear missile control panel who puts the "disarm" and the "launch" buttons both side by side with the same size and color and without labels and then excuses himself that it's the operator's responsibility to learn which is which. And the really stupid part, is that in this case the designer is in the missile's impact zone.

Doing exactly that has led to the US being in exactly the position it's in. Clearly it's not working.

Anyway, what's missing from your self-righteous spiel is that not everyone has access to a mentor who can show them the way out of poverty - and the first part of the battle is even knowing it's possible. Overall, it's a far more complex issue than you paint it to be.

Do you think that there would be more prisoners in Africa if all of the rapists and murderers were somehow instantly apprehended tried and convicted? This article making the USA look like it has the most criminals is a bit misleading.

Africa is a big place, much, much bigger than the US and with far more people and varied cultures. But it doesn't really matter, because you're bottom-feeding. The US should be compared to its contemporaries, rather than the worst possible example that can be found.

Reminds me of this recent submission: http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic

HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3633985

Personal responsibility is an illusion afforded to those who grew up in certain environments.

The social structure of gangs is such that, when you grow up in a tough neighbourhood and you have crappy parents it's safer to join a gang.

When everyone around you considers the drug trade to be normative behaviour, you don't really see the downside.

It's not that we can't make choices for ourselves. It's that what we consider to be a good choice changes with our environments (and, frankly, our cognitive ability to make good choices also varies given your parent's income at birth - here's another TAL for a source on that last statement http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/364/g... )

> This article making the USA look like it has the most criminals is a bit misleading.

Well… a criminal is an invented category. A criminal is someone who broke a law, and we write new laws every day. The US just has more laws that put you in jail than any other country.

No offense, phillmv, but you strike me as a serious person with an open mind.

If this is true, for only 62 cents you can get a copy of this book (http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Slum-Salford-Quarter-Century/d...), which describes a (low-crime) Edwardian slum from the perspective of someone who grew up there and later became a sociologist (author: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Roberts_(author)). You'll have to shell out $5 for prison psychologist Theodore Dalrymple's view (http://www.amazon.com/Life-Bottom-Worldview-Makes-Underclass...) of their great-grandchildren.

If you think the difference between these societies can be reduced to the availability and/or legality of intoxicants, you have a very one-track mind. Take another hit on the bong and perhaps your perspective will expand. Oh, and the subjects of both studies are predominantly white. So in case you're a racist, that's not an option.

Thanks! That's the nicest thing someone has said to me in an internet forum.

I'll take a gander at your books.

I offer in return http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational . I haven't finished http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Nature but it's somewhat related. I'm not a huge fan of Freakonomics but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortio... is an interesting one. Finally, the TAL episodes I've linked elsewhere in this thread:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/143/s... and http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/364/g...

If you look at any of the above, the TAL episodes are probably the most easy to consume.

A very easy way to expand your perspective beyond the ken of the average NPR intellectual is to read old (pre-1923) books. You know that feeling the medieval scholastics got when they realized they could actually read Virgil, Cicero, Homer, etc, in the original? Pretty much spoiled them on Church Latin.

That's not to say there aren't good or interesting writers in the present era. The range of discourse is much narrower, however. You won't find a lot of present-day perspectives that did not exist before 1923, but you will find an enormous quantity of pre-1923 perspectives which are completely alien to you - and in many cases quite distasteful. Also, the price is right!

As for Pinker, though, _The Blank Slate_ is pretty good...

Sure. Just can the silly paternalism next time.

It's jading, and it really detracts from the rest of your argument.

It's hard to keep posting when polite, helpful posts like this only gets you references to Pinker and Gladwell, but please do.

"And to the C students, I say, you too can be president of the United States." This was admittedly addressed to a graduating class at Yale, but certainly circumstances matter. Doing poorly in school and experimenting with drugs generally ends much worse if you're in a terrible environment than in a safe, secure environment where lots of second chances are available.

Being a "worthless thug" is not a crime in itself. Running down a street while firing a gun and endangering bystanders is (or, at the very least, should be).

Unless you're a cop.

If what you took from "The Wire" is that many gang members are "worthless thugs," then you sort of missed the point of the show.

"The Wire" is as much a commentary about the social conditions leading to crime (broken education system, blighted cities, etc.) as it is a commentary about criminals and law enforcement.

David Simon, the show's creator, has gone on record as stating that the show is really about three things: 1) the pointlessness of the drug war; 2) the social conditions of the underclass in America; 3) society's misguided obsession with simple, reductionist statistics (i.e., judging police effectiveness by "clearance rates," judging teachers by student test scores, etc.) at the expense of more complex and nuanced systems analysis.

It's funny that you mention "The Wire". Did you miss the episodes where a captain made a section of Baltimore a drug-free-for-all zone and crime dropped to almost nothing?

I also like how you judge people you don't know to be "worthless".

I'm sorry to hear what happened to your family, that's really awful. Still, I wonder what your reaction would have been if that "worthless thug" had been wearing a police uniform.

Yeah, Hampsterdam, that was a big success. Did we watch the same show?

Here's another movie you might enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRsj-RPoFaI. Try to make it through all 5 minutes without thinking the phrase "worthless thug."

Cops, you'll be surprised to know, generally know how to use their weapons. Still, shit happens. For every innocent American whacked by a cop, there are probably a hundred whacked by a "worthless thug." What kind of defender of the innocent worries more about the former than the latter?

Hampsterdam was a huge success. Until politics got involved and caused the whole thing to be shut down. In fact it worked so well that a Governor lost job because he wasn't willing to shut it down when he found out about it.

>For every innocent American whacked by a cop, there are probably a hundred whacked by a "worthless thug." What kind of defender of the innocent worries more about the former than the latter?

You do realize that cops have no obligation to protect you right? That was a supreme court ruling. Being between a cop trying to shoot someone is exactly as dangerous as being between a "worthless thug" trying to shoot someone.

Drop me a line via gmail if you get the chance.

"worthless thug" has some pretty racist overtones. I'll make to watch more of The Wire to get real info on the causes of crime in America.

Huh? Racist?!

Do you mean racist by reference to the etymology of the word 'thug' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee)?

That's a pretty obscure use of the 'race card'...

Are you feigning ignorance here or did you actually think the original comment's repeated pejorative of 'worthless thugs' was talking about white people?

Not in San Francisco, but there are plenty of white "worthless thugs." See under: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav. The American equivalent starts around 80 miles east of here and doesn't let up until Westchester County - I exaggerate, slightly. See under: "Winter's Bone."

Except people don't casually malign them as "thugs". "Rednecks", maybe. In the context of the original comment, there was definitely a racial component and liberal use of the word "worthless".

You can dispute whether that's racist, maybe, but being shocked at the suggestion? It quite clearly has a racial element.

I don't know if your being sarcastic or not but "The Wire" is so good it's being used in criminal science classes now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com