Is there anything you'd be willing to fight a war for?

[pbrower2a]

(10-23-2022, 12:49 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(10-22-2022, 10:30 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-22-2022, 08:34 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(10-21-2022, 03:50 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(10-20-2022, 06:04 PM)David Horn Wrote: You do realize that the gun lobby, especially the faction that represents the gun industry itself, successfully lobbied to keep the collection and retention of data on gun-related adccidents, suicides and homocides illegal in most places and aggregated data illegal at the national level.  That's why the CDC -- by law -- can't study the subject.  So your counter argument rings massively hollow.  Just as a single point: gun-related crimes in New Zealand and Switzerland are low because ownership requires a license and each weapon is registered.  Resales are formal and documented, just like the transfer of a automobile.  The unfit are weeded out and the others are fully tracked.  You OK with that?

When did this happen (asking out of genuine curiosity, I want to look it up). In either event, Thomas Sowell addresses much of the data we do have available (often going back over 200 years), and refutes some of the more commonly cited studies. For example, people often make hasty comparisons between the US and places like the UK or Australia, when New York had over 5x the murder rate of London as early as 200 years ago (ie, before either country had modern notions of gun laws).

The official ban was enacted in 1996, but the de facto ban is much older.  The original problem: the inability to acquire reliable data; the cause: the gun industry, among others, making data collection a local issue (sound familiar -- it's a common method to kill things).  So even in the 1950s, data in NYC would be quite good, data in Poughkeepsie, not so much. The South and the mid/mountain West were and remain data wastelands to this day.  Several members of the old forum (I'm one of them) tried to tear into John Lott's "research" when he published his famous tome: More Guns, Less Crime, was 99% conjecture.  In short, the "data" made any conclusion equally valid., because there was so little and they were of exceedingly poor quality (anecdotes more than data).  Actually doing real data analysis is impossible.

I am satisfied that criminality is a consequence of character and not of economic oppression. (Economic oppression is itself evil and deserves to be rooted out, but that is a different story). Crime relates closely to sociopathic and psychopathic personalities, and to a lesser extent to borderline personalities even more likely to become victims as victimizers (like prostitutes and people with mental illness). Sociopaths and psychopaths do crime... and they do lots of crime. Such is their character; they are predators upon fellow humans. The difference between lower-class street thugs and middle-class monsters is that middle-class monsters typically have the resources for concealing their crimes,  access to victims, richer rewards for their dishonesty, and stronger legal defenses if caught. Poor people often have their ways of dealing with oppression that do not involve crime. 

Even in the worst slums one finds more good people than bad. The most obvious connection between poverty and criminality is that people with criminal tendencies tend to not get ahead in life. Deal drugs or steal from an employer, and many opportunities for economic advancement vanish. That opportunity might "only" be a fast-food restaurant or some low-end retailer at which advancement in life typically requires finding some other employer, but such is how people often end up marking time until opportunities arise. Many such people used to go into factory work which paid much better. 

For all the incidents of a home-owner killing a burglar with his rifle or a potential victim of rape pulling a handgun out of a purse and fatally shooting a serial rapist one finds criminals turning guns against their owners, stealing guns and using them in crimes, shooting and missing the crook but killing an innocent person, or committing suicide with a firearm. The connection between firearms and human tragedy is far stronger than any putative deterrence. Episodic events are much of the documentation of cranks, much in contrast to statistical measurements that are more difficult to read (standard deviations, analysis of regression, and other such dry stuff). If you believe the personal stories then you might accept contentions of drunks that they are better drivers if inebriated; the stats show otherwise. (For people with severe anxiety one drink might make them better drivers... but one drink at the most).

Largely agreed. Two things I often have to explain to both left and right wingers are

1) The causality is often backwards from what they think. Most poor people are not violent criminals, but most violent criminals are poor, because they lack the impulse control, pro-social ethics and empathetic abilities to socialize and make a living in the modern era.

Criminality is one way, once one is exposed, to lose middle-class respectability once and for all. Criminality is often personal ruin especially if it puts one in the grasp of the criminal-justice system. People released from prison are expected to do low-paying. menial jobs as proof of acceptability at a certain level. 

Learning disabilities and poor impulse control can make one poor if one isn't already; these will keep one poor. They are not good for getting and holding jobs. They might be tolerable in a criminal milieu in which bourgeois virtues are objects of ridicule. Landscaping work may be physically-demanding drudgery, but it is one way to earn a sort-of-OK living. Crooks see people who make honest livings as schmucks. 

Poverty itself is often a result of marginal talent, lack of mobility and imagination, unwillingness to abandon a neighborhood and community, poor choices in life, and simple bad luck. Poor choices can be a failure to choose an appropriate course in life. So you think you can be the New Michael Jackson or the New Michael Jordan, but you fall short -- way short. You end up as unskilled labor, and unskilled labor usually pays badly over time: last hired and first fired. Maybe one would be better off committing oneself to being a schoolteacher. Middle-class kids are more likely to get more and better (if often contradicting) advice.      

Quote:2) Both the very poor and very rich are more varied in characteristics than the middle class. In the case of the first, they include such groupings as
- immigrants, ranging from the best and the worst of humanity, often on one of the extremes
- military vets with PTSD
- pimps and drug dealers
- gangsters, mindless goons
- college students
- widows
- start up entrepreneurs
- artists

Meanwhile, people in the middle class tend to be a little more conventional in both their views and their cognitive abilities, so people tend to assume this level of similarity among other income brackets.

The middle class is the realm of blandness. That is fine for an IRS agent, a high-school English teacher, a certified public accountant, someone who anchors Channel 14 News in Lansing, Michigan or who sells cars for the Pontiac-Oldsmobile-SAAB dealership. The middle class includes people who have changed their names from "Kowalski" to "Smithson" (translation) or "Donatelli" to "Donaldson". 

The rich can get away with the assertion of self (but so can genuinely creative people who are expected to show eccentricity.  But of the poor...

1. Start-up entrepreneurs, often immigrants, are likely to get ahead in life if at all successful. 

2. Immigrants are often consigned to low-paying jobs until they master English. Once they succeed at that (if they are not illegal immigrants), whatever virtues they have pay off if the opportunity arises. These people often encourage their kids to dedicate themselves to schooling and to getting trades. 

3. Military vets with PTSD... they are not the only people with PTSD. It hurts . Really, this could be extended into the mentally and physically disabled who might end up in the welfare system.

4. College students are often broke, but once one gets a job in which a college degree is an advantage, one will not remain poor for long. 

5. Widows and divorcees are a mixed bag depending on where they were before bereavement or divorce.  

6. Artists polarize in results. The best artistic career is commercial art for advertising if one is willing to subordinate ars gratia artis for something directed to money-making, like selling people on cigarettes or hard liquor or going deep in debt for some questionable luxury. 

7. Pimps and pushers, and prostitutes? Losers!

8. Gangsters fit patterns of the destitute: superstitious, unlearned, and addled on intense, ephemeral pleasures even if they are economically successful. Many are mindless goons; who better to do a contract killing or pull off a robbery? They don't go legit, and they always have to watch their backs.