clawedjird

EDIT: Correction/clarification - The average American grocery clerk makes $22,646/year, gross, which comes out to about $1,532/month after taxes.

I agree that simply blaming the wealthy isn't the solution to these problems, but your perspective regarding the plight of the American poor seems a bit rosy to me.

We do provide housing for the poor

Waiting lists for both subsidized housing and homeless shelters are overflowing in many places. Have you ever tried to obtain housing as a person with limited resources?

short term homelessness outcomes are actually generally positive - we tend to get people who lose their home back into another house.

What do you mean by positive? That most people don't stay homeless forever? Sure, that's better than the alternative, but you're ignoring the consequences of becoming homeless in the first place (ex. losing a job because you don't have a place to shower, sleep, or are simply overwhelmed due to your position, eviction records that make it difficult to rent again, exposure to unsafe conditions, etc.), as well as the factors that contribute to that phenomenon.

community college in most areas is exceedingly affordable with massive scholarship opportunities available for ivy leagues.

Community college is not as cheap as many imagine it to be. Tuition typically runs $3 - 5,000/year, which doesn't include fees, course materials, or, most notably, living expenses. Financial aid isn't as generous as many would expect - as you'll see below, a grocery store clerk earning $22,646/year would receive less than $1,500 in grant aid (while being expected to contribute ~ $4,700/annually). Loans can help, but they can also become a considerable burden, especially for the 47% percent of college students who don't end up graduating within six years (or, ever, for the majority of those students). [10] Perhaps surprisingly, the typical community college graduate actually takes around 5.5 (calendar) years to earn their associate's degree (assuming no participation in "dual enrollment"). [11] If they continue on to earn their bachelor's degree, the overall process typically takes more than 8 (calendar) years. [11] That's a long time to be in a financially-tenuous position.

I may as well ignore your comment regarding the Ivy League, as the amount of poor Americans who will find it relevant is virtually zero.

You can walk into any hospital and it's illegal for them to refuse you treatment.

...for them to refuse you treatment for a life-threatening injury, not regular checkups, non-essential treatment or preventative medicine. And if you are treated for an emergency, you'll be billed for it later. Although the ACA has made things much better for Americans, you can't simply walk into a hospital and expect free healthcare without health insurance.

What's the difference between your local grocery store clerk, and a Hollywood actor?

They both likely have cars, homes and an iphone.

If your grocery-store clerk is a middle/upper-middle class teenager whose parents give them those things, sure. Otherwise, this assumption seems pretty unrealistic to me. Some quick googling seems to confirm my assessment...

According to Glassdoor, the average American grocery clerk makes $22,646/year ($1,532/month) after taxes. [1] Abodo says that rent for the median one-bedroom apartment in the US cost $1,078/month last year. [2] That doesn't include utilities, which average around $240/month for renters. [3] That leaves your grocery clerk with $214 to use for all additional expenses each month. Owning a (cheap) car costs around $486/month overall, according to Nerdwallet (including a $111 monthly car payment [4] and $118 for car insurance [5], plus misc. expenses). [6] Now this grocery clerk is going $272 further into debt each month. If they want an iPhone and a ("cheap") phone plan from a major carrier, that will cost an additional $90/month (assuming they buy the cheapest iPhone 11 and keep it for two years - $700 / 24 - and opt for the cheapest standard phone plan [7]). At that point, they're spending $362 more than they earn every month and they haven't even spent anything on food, household goods, clothing, entertainment, or education!

Assuming this person wanted to improve their financial situation by attending community college (average tuition: $3,660 for 2018/2019 year [8]), they'd be eligible to receive around $1400 in Federal Pell Grants (depending on their state) and up to $1,465 in Federal Work-study benefits (assuming their college participated in the program and that they could manage working two jobs while going to school full-time), plus up to $9,500 in Direct Stafford Loans (note: not dischargeable through bankruptcy). [9] However, they would still be expected to contribute around $4,700/year toward their education.

1. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/grocery-clerk-salary-SRCH...

2. https://www.abodo.com/blog/2019-annual-rent-report/

3. https://www.apartmentlist.com/renter-life/average-utility-bi...

4. Calculated using https://www.cars.com/car-loan-calculator/ (assuming $5,000 car price/$500 down payment/7% sales tax/4.67% interest rate/48 month term)

5. Assuming average American cost in 2020 https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/car-insurance/average-co...

6. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/loans/auto-loans/total-co...

7. https://www.consumerreports.org/cell-phone-service-providers...

8. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/12/tuition-at-community-college...

9. Calculated using above income info via https://fafsa.ed.gov/spa/fafsa4c/#/landing (Note: "Expected Family Contribution" (EFC) ended up being around $4,700/year)

10. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/freshman-year/just-over-half...

11. https://nscresearchcenter.org/signaturereport11/

However, nothing about its existence implies anything about police brutality.

As I read it, the article didn't seem to be implying that the existence of "excited delirium" itself implies something about police brutality. I took their argument to be that police departments' misapplication and/or overuse of the concept had led to increased instances police brutality. Not knowing anything else about this issue, it doesn't seem implausible to me that training police officers, who generally lack medical diagnostic skills, to constantly anticipate a human threat with superhuman strength and no sense of pain might lead to an increase in the use of excessive force.

Does the problem really lie in those people, themselves, or in the circumstances that led to their labor being worth so little?

This makes a lot of sense to me. Why do you need a gun to write someone a speeding ticket?

You should read the article. In short, she didn't actually ignore the court's order to meet her academic obligations.

A law could be harsh, but fair, sure. However, an excessively harsh law is not fair, nor is an inconsistently-enforced one. This situation ticks both of those boxes.

Being ordered to do her homework was a weak sanction, she ignored it, so she needs a stronger stimulus.

This simple-minded, old-fashioned line of thinking is out of touch with contemporary scholarship and a major contributor to the US criminal justice system's inefficacy.

There is no "Probably".

Either I'm missing something or you must be confused. It's extremely unlikely that a young teenager would be sent to "prison" in the US for the crimes that landed the girl in the article, "Grace," on probation. I used the word "probably" only to account for unlikely possibility that, given the variation in sentencing across US jurisdictions, a place exists where this might occur.

This is a statement of fact. The crimes were serious enough that they justified a prison sentence.

This is obviously untrue. Did you read the article or any of the related news coverage? Grace's crimes were not punishable by a prison term.

The criminal was trialed, found guilty by a jury, and sentenced.

Where are you getting this false information? Grace was not tried and found guilty by a jury. In fact, she wasn't even tried in a regular courtroom - this entire process took place in family court. [1] For reference - out of almost 24,000 2018 Michigan family court cases involving juvenile offenders, less than 0.01% went to trial (of those, only 12 - 0.0005% - were jury trials). [2]

Why are you making this stuff up?

1 - Family courts exist to solve legal problems involving youth and their parents.

2 - https://njdc.info/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-Assessment-Web...

the probation conditions are part of the sentence and the reason why she wasn't incarcerated in the first place.

In this case, I think that she wasn't incarcerated in the first place because her crimes weren't severe enough to warrant incarceration. A 15-yr-old girl stealing (then returning) a cell phone or pulling her mom's hair and biting her finger isn't going to jail in the 21st century.

They'll just revoke your probation and wash their hands of it.

In many states, violating probation can carry its own penalties in addition to those from the offense that led to probation. Therefore, probation being revoked doesn't have to mean restoring a prior term of incarceration (which may not exist), and punishment for probation violations can exceed that of the offense which led to probation in the first place.

Nobody in the criminal incarceration system wants to be the one who showed leniency to someone who later turned out to commit some headlining crime. So, nobody is incentivized to help you out even for the most minor of infractions.

I think that understanding the incentives in play here is essential to understanding how the system works, and I also think those incentives go beyond not wanting to look soft on crime. In particular, both prosecutors and law enforcement officers can make themselves look better on paper by putting more people behind bars, regardless of the actual impact of their actions (or even their action's legality, in some cases). I'm reminded of a case in which a Florida police chief repeatedly framed innocent people in order to boost his department's clearance rate. [1] I don't see how we can make meaningful changes to the system without addressing that type of perverse incentive.

1 - https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/...

As well, a person is free not to agree to the terms, and just do their time.

In a case like this, there's no "time" to do. It's not as if this girl narrowly avoided incarceration on the condition that she agree to probation. Probation was the "time." Her offenses didn't qualify for a term of incarceration.

Really? Probably not, if you're talking about her actual offenses and not simply "assault" and "theft" in the abstract. Her age, coupled with the relatively minor nature of her specific offenses (taking a phone from a fellow student's locker, but ultimately returning it; taking a school iPad home without permission; pulling her mother's hair and biting a finger - i.e. not a premeditated attack using lethal force) point to the type of situation she was already in - probation. Plenty of kids have done much worse and never even enter the "system."

Unfortunately (or fortunately, I guess, if you're a sadist), an artifact of the American criminal justice system is the potential for probation violations to result in punishment which exceeds that of the original offense.

If I agreed with your assessment, I wouldn't have taken the time to write my comment in the first place.

If you've been put away for committing crimes, and the conditions for staying free...

Abstraction is often useful, but its application here seems reductionist to the point of being deceptive.

This 15-yr-old girl (Grace) was not "put away for committing crimes" - she didn't narrowly avoid incarceration, then violate the terms of her parole. She wasn't "put away," in the first place, because her "crimes" weren't worthy of incarceration.

She got in a fight (hair-pulling and biting a finger) with her mother - who's currently distraught that her daughter's not at home - and stole a cellphone (which was later returned) from a schoolmate's locker.

If ... the conditions for staying free are doing your homework, you _better_ do you homework.

Grace was allegedly locked up for not doing her schoolwork, however her caseworker later mentioned that they didn't actually know (or even attempt to check) whether or not her academic requirements were being met. Additionally, her teacher stated that her performance was in line with most of the other students in her class (despite her losing the extra academic support she received due to her ADHD when her school switched to online classes). In any case, she had definitely not failed to meet the academic requirements dictated by her school. I wonder how her studies are going now that she's locked up.

I don't think the title seems "clickbaity" - I think your comment seems like a callous and misleading apology for authoritarianism. It brings to mind the "Black Codes" [1] that were passed throughout the South, following the U.S. Civil War - specifically policies related to vagrancy laws [2] and convict leasing [3] - whereby many black Americans were legally kept in conditions similar to those of their prior enslavement. By making it illegal to exist without a proven means of support (frequently only attainable via employment on the plantations of former slaveholders), and instituting forced labor as a punishment for committing said crime, Southern states were able to partially perpetuate their antebellum social and economic structure.

Put differently, If you've been put away for not working the cotton fields, and the conditions for staying free are working the cotton fields, you_better_work the cotton fields.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Codes_(United_States)

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy#United_States

3 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing

I did read the article (I’m not sure what you mean by “it is terribly biased”). I don’t think anyone here is questioning the logical chain of events that led to this girl’s incarceration (I.e. arrest -> probation -> violation -> incarceration). Presumably, anyone participating in this forum is able to read.

The reason this is newsworthy is that the punishment seems completely out of proportion with the “crime.” That remains true whether you consider the crime to be not doing schoolwork (her teacher said, by the way, that her performance was similar to most of her other students) or fighting with her mother (pulling her hair and biting her finger) and stealing a fellow student’s cell phone.

What’s worse, although she was supposedly incarcerated for not doing her schoolwork, her caseworker filed a probation violation after she went back to sleep after checking in for the day - not even bothering to check whether she was keeping up with her academic requirements. Her caseworker also admitted that they knew nothing about the her educational disability or the accommodations she received because of it. Further, in response to Covid—19, the court that decided to lock her up was supposed to be hearing only “essential emergency matters,” and the governor of her state had encouraged courts to send children home. Despite this, her case (based on a misunderstanding) was apparently deemed an “essential emergency matter” and her presence in the outside world considered risky enough to defy the governor’s recommendation.

To me, this seems like an incredibly callous miscarriage of justice facilitated by ignorance, incompetence, and negligence at multiple levels. The fact that some authority has the power to exercise their authority in a certain way has no bearing on whether that exercise of power is morally justified, else we’d consider the actions of history’s most oppressive regimes just.

at what point do you just let youth engage in certain behavior without consequences?

Uh, what? That's what you have to say about incarcerating a teenager with ADHD amidst an unprecedented global pandemic???

Edit: I got so worked up, I for got to add the punch line: ...for not doing their homework?!?!

I certainly don’t think that. What “ideas” that Bari Weiss presents in this essay does your conversational counterpoint here fail to engage? And why is the context of her hypocrisy not relevant?

Unless the response to, or impact of, Covid-19 leads to exogenous circumstances (e.g. massive global economic depression, unprecedented levels of global political coordination resulting in aggressive carbon emissions reduction targets, etc.) that somehow transform the travel landscape, I would expect existing trends to resume once the Covid-19 situation resolves.

Assuming we get back to “normal” in the next year or so, it seems to me that, with regard to business travel specifically, there’s a tension at play between technology that increasingly enables asynchronous, location-independent collaboration and increasing global economic integration as new markets enter the fray.

I was trying to be as even-handed as possible, but I'm not sure the cynical reaction isn't the right one. The reliance on rhetoric, as you point out, seems unnecessary for a topic that should be dealt with through relatively uncontroversial facts and figures. Whatever the case, the 'article' left a weird taste in my mouth.

I mean, just look at the massive variety of human cultures that have existed since the dawn of civilization.

I just found my mostly typed-out comment from yesterday in a forgotten tab and figured that I might as well finish and submit it, but it looks like you already made a lot of the same points.

I'm left wondering if the 'article'/excerpt is just not that compelling or if I'm simply not in its target audience. In the latter scenario, what might characterize those who would find it convincing?

This is an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger's latest book, which I haven't read and can't assess based on the linked content alone.

As for that content...

Shellenberger's central claim rings true - no, we're not all going to spontaneously combust (or something) in 2030 if we haven't met emissions reduction goals by that time. Taken at face value, though, it seems like any obvious, even unnecessary point - who actually thinks the world will end in a decade? He cites AOC (the US politician) being recorded as saying, "The world is going to end in twelve years if we don't address climate change" and the existence of Extinction Rebellion movement as proof that some people really do believe the apocalypse is nigh. The problems with this argument are that:

  * a.) AOC is a politician who employed hyperbole for the sake of political rhetoric; she doesn't actually think the world is 'ending.'
  
  * b.) Notwithstanding the anecdote, featuring an Extinction Rebellion member, included in the article, the Extinction Rebellion (so named in response to the so-called sixth mass extinction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)) doesn't exist because its members think they will be dead in ten years.

Along those lines, he makes some reasonable points:

  * Those living in wealthy, stable nations have less to fear from climate change than the less fortunate

  * Increased levels of population and development make present-day natural disasters more costly than past disasters, regardless of any changes in the frequency or intensity of natural disasters (he denies any such changes, FWIW)

  * The global poor are more concerned with just getting by than the long-term implications of climate change (he uses the example of Bernadette, a Congolese subsistence farmer, to make this point)

  * Despite the fact that climate dynamics are nonlinear, he implies that current impacts (or lack thereof) show that projections of future impacts are exaggerated (here he's contradicted by the same IPCC reports he cites throughout the piece)

  * He seems to claim, without context or justification, that economic growth is *the* solution to Bernadette's problems, but fails to elaborate in any way (Why hasn't the status quo produced an outcome where she has economic stability, what in the DRC does he expect to change, how does economic growth relate to climate change and/or the environment, could the earth support 8 billion people with American levels of consumption, why is he pushing economic growth in an article about the climate (non)apocalypse?)

  * He appears to view climate change as if it exists in a vacuum, not as one component of a complex system that's linked to other complex systems (while many people concerned with climate change are also concerned with related environmental issues such as biodiversity loss, resource depletion, pollution, water scarcity, etc., the article only seems to address the increase in global temperature due to the buildup of greenhouse gases)

This is literally true though.

It's true that black Americans are overrepresented among violent criminals, but it's not true that the reason this isn't widely reported (at least without any other context) isn't because "media figures are simply too afraid to acknowledge it" - that was a tongue-in-cheek characterization meant to illuminate the baseless conspiratorial orientation frequently demonstrated by those who consider themselves 'victimized' by political correctness (in other words, those who might consider themselves oppressed when pressured to respect the rights of oppressed minority groups). "You can't handle the truth" is literally a super-popular meme.

The reason media figures aren't going around proclaiming that black Americans are disproportionately likely to be violent criminals is, for one, because that would be irresponsible reporting. While that simple statistic is music to the ears of simple-minded racists everywhere, you're not likely to hear them stating other, equally-relevant statistics such as black Americans are disproportionately likely to be poor, unemployed, high-school dropouts, subject to housing instability and poor nutrition, and so forth - all factors that correlate highly with future criminal activity. They're not committing crimes because they're black, they're committing crimes because they're in situations that produce criminals (and they're statistically more likely to be in those situations than other major American racial groups). Academics and (old-fashioned) reporters are accustomed to thinking and communicating in nuance. The average internet racist probably is not, so it's a good thing that media figures aren't adding fuel to their fire by regularly spouting context-free data likely to create confusion and animosity.

You are so dishonest, differences in crime rates are based on victim studies, not arrests and prosecutions, to account for specifically the issue you cite. Most of the stats about black violent crime...

Do you actually think I'm making this up? I ask because it seems indecent enough to boldly claim that a random human you're interacting with is lying to your (virtual) face, but it seems even more egregious when you don't have your own facts straight. First of all, you're not being thorough at all - what do you mean by "differences in crime rates?" Which crime rates? According to who? Secondly, while victimization surveys are one source of information regarding criminal activity, "Uniform Crime Reports represent the primary source of data used in the calculation of official statistics regarding serious crimes such as murder and homicide" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...). Victimization survey data is used for generating statistics regarding lesser crimes. UCR statistics are periodically collected from state and local law enforcement agencies and compiled by the FBI.

Aside from the slanderous implications, none of that really matters - I wasn't directly calling into question to veracity of our crime statistics, i.e. claiming that the numbers are wrong, I was implying that the numbers themselves present a muddled picture that presents few obvious conclusions for researchers.

...come from reports by THEIR BLACK VICTIMS

What's the name of this rhetorical device? The one where you seemingly feign concern for someone while apparently arguing against that persons interests? This is another one of those statistics that racists and the generally-uninformed frequently riff on without realizing that it's actually irrelevant. It's not beneficial to black Americans, victims of crime included, to repeat irrelevant claims that reinforce historically-held racist stereotypes and do nothing to enhance their security.

The fact is that most violent crime occurs on an intraracial basis, so most violent crime is white-on-white, black-on-black, or Hispanic-on-Hispanic. Have you ever heard anyone talk about white-on-white crime or Hispanic-on-Hispanic crime? No, well that might be because the American people didn't spend the past few centuries socially-conditioning themselves to the concept that white or Hispanic Americans are uniquely predisposed to criminal activity (or generally inferior, for that matter).

I agree that being locked up once surely makes going straight harder (because employers are wary) and going crooked easier (as you now have more contacts).

It's not just a question of "going straight" - most "criminals" aren't professionals who have to make a discrete decision to stop their hypothetical "life of crime." Even if we ignore the types of "crime" that essentially involve engaging in normal behavior and being unlucky enough to get caught (ex. jaywalking, driving after having a few drinks at happy hour, or smoking marijuana) and look at violent crime, you'll find that a significant percentage of that is the result of social/psychological/economic instability and is directed at those within the social network of the individual involved. Many of these crimes are so-called "crimes of passion" or the result of some form of mental illness - in neither case is an individual likely to stop, think carefully, and rationally conclude that committing a violent crime is in their best interest.

You can lock someone like that up to prevent them from repeating actions that harm those around them, but you can only do that retroactively (which does little in material terms for victims). Given that less than half of crimes committed each year (including violent crime) are even reported to the police, and that a majority of crimes which are reported to the police aren't solved, it seems much more proactive to work towards a solution that prevents people from ending up in the type of situation that produces criminals to begin with. Proactive policing can easily be at odds with that goal if it throws petty criminals into unmanageable situations that preclude them from having a "normal" life. We can't forget that poverty itself is hugely correlated with crime.

But I'm not convinced that looking the other way at violent crime is at all the right approach.

I don't think anyone is proposing "looking the other way" with regard to violent crime. I'm certainly not. I think it would be beneficial to make prisons more humane, in that it would increase the chance of rehabilitating them, but I don't think enacting some real-life version of "The Purge" is a reasonable course of action.

However, there is no way this is the main causal link between policing & crime.

Oh, I definitely agree. My intention was to point out an edge case, not imply that police are the main source of crime.

Save yourself a click - the author (Heather MacDonald) appears to be trying to create controversy by playing dumb.

To summarize - MacDonald cited, in speech and writing, a 2019 study on fatal police shootings by two academic psychologists. Apparently, a backlash to the study's findings then developed at one of the researchers' institutions (Michigan State University) and the study was ultimately retracted by its authors. You can read the statement they issued at that time here: https://retractionwatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PNAS_... (MacDonald's 'misuse' of their research is explicitly mentioned as contributing to the retraction). MacDonald goes on to imply that the administrator responsible for approving funding for the study was fired as a result of this, but this claim is not corroborated by local news coverage (https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/15/mi...), which pointed to a history of pro-eugenics, racist, and sexist comments as the cause of his dismissal and didn't mention MacDonald or the study she cited.

The supposedly controversial finding MacDonald cited in her writing (presumably without the sort of context that would likely have accompanied it in an academic setting, since that's how it appears in the above WSJ op-ed) is that race didn't serve as a factor in predicting fatal police shootings within a sample of 917 shootings from 2015 after accounting for "race-specific rates of violent crime" (emphasis mine). Downplaying the fact that black Americans are disproportionately subject to police violence, with regard to population, MacDonald's op-ed repeatedly makes variations of what she seems to think (or at least insists) are identical claims, namely "that racial disparities in policing reflect differences in violent crime rates," and "that civilian behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior."

While it might seem like she's saying that your behavior will influence how police officers might treat you, what she's actually saying is that the behavior of people who look like you will influence how you're treated by police. Put another way, it's OK for police to shoot unarmed black men with no history of violence if they seem threatening because of their superficial resemblance to violent criminals (i.e. race). The incredulity she expresses at the prospect that this viewpoint might provoke controversy seems to belie her lack of perspective (or, if I'm being cynical, her willingness to engage in rhetorical manipulation of her audience).

As if that's not disgusting enough, this op-ed's undercurrent seems to be that black Americans are disproportionately engaged in violent crime, and that media figures are simply too afraid of appearing politically incorrect to acknowledge the "truth." What seems apparent from her writing is that MacDonald is actually afraid to openly state her views, which - fairly construed - seem to represent the basic idea that, just a couple of generations removed from legal segregation, black America has already reached the point where it's unburdened by any racially-derived disadvantage and, thus, deserves what it gets. Since "what it gets," as of 2020, is a heap of disadvantages, as portrayed by available socioeconomic data, the only logical conclusion one can reach is that inferior performance must reflect inferior potential. Luckily for the world, MacDonald's ridiculous perspective is the product of a bevy of equally ridiculous assumptions - she's just not a very astute social scientist (assuming she actually believes what she writes).

Before the odds of anyone getting to the end of this approach zero, I'll close by briefly revisiting some of the nuances MacDonald completely glosses over when discussing crime rates. As a result of decades of policies like broken windows policing, whereby some neighborhoods receive disproportionate levels of police attention and minor offenses are heavily enforced, the reliability of crime rates, as an objective research measure, can be called into question. In short, we now know that the efficacy of broken windows policies is inconclusive, that there is a relationship between poverty and crime that can be strong enough to obfuscate the influence of other factors (and it can run both ways), and that increasing the amount of police presence in a neighborhood can produce more "criminals" (i.e. more arrests, people with criminal records, etc.) without improving the safety of that neighborhood (in some cases, it can actually reduce public perception of safety). We also know that the likelihood of being arrested for committing a given offense differs among races (ex. black and white Americans consume marijuana at similar rates, yet black Americans are 3-4x as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession). Together, these various conclusions (or lack thereof) paint a muddled, complex portrait that completely contradicts the tidy (and completely wrong) landscape that presumably hangs above the desk in MacDonald's home office - what determines how police treat you is not your own behavior, but a complex web of factors, some of which began to exist well before you did.

What makes you think that? I haven’t read the book, but the Wikipedia article didn’t really elaborate on its economic content.

What percentage of people in solitary confinement do you think this describes? In any case, it sounds like your hypothetical prisoner should be in a psych unit.

I’m not the person you responded to but, yes, I’m sure of it. In what sick alternate reality is an indefinite period of constant torture to be considered a reasonable sentence for anything?

I agree that this is a difficult position for Wikipedia to be in, but I don’t think the solution is to simply scrub posts of most of their content. The reality is, for better or worse, that Wikipedia will be the first (or perhaps only) stop for many voters researching political candidates. If a voter can’t even determine the basic characteristics of a candidate’s political identity (there’s a pretty wide gulf between the profile of a “tough-on-crime” prosecutor or AG and a “progressive reformer,” for ex.) from Wikipedia’s entry on that candidate, Wikipedia will provide very limited utility to them.

And I still don’t have an invite!

I’m not who you responded to, FYI.

That said, crimes are simply whatever those in power deem them to be. Not only does this imply an obvious disconnect between legality and morality, but for groups not adequately represented by those in power, it can make living within the law virtually impossible. Take the gay community, for example. It was only in 2003 that the US Supreme Court struck down state laws banning sex between same-sex partners. At the time, 14 states still had such laws on the books - 11 still do today (even though they’re now unenforceable, they’ve resulted in multiple arrests since the 2003 ruling).

A few decades earlier, gay sex was essentially illegal throughout the entire US. Do you have any interest in accommodating the viewpoint that gay Americans being gay Americans before the past 20-50 years (depending on the state they resides in) were morally acceptable, despite habitually engaging in criminal activity? Or would that be considered abhorrent?

This is somewhat tangential to your point, but I think catching more “criminals” (I.e. people who break laws, which is virtually everyone at some point - though many won’t even realize it and are unlikely to face consequences) can certainly lead to an increase in crime. In the US, at least, contact with the criminal justice system can significantly reduce social and economic opportunities and increase the likelihood that an individual will engage in future criminal activity.