RoR: Forum

Marotta wrote:

It is an axiom of criminology that "crime knows no neighborhood." In other words, no place, no population is especially criminogenic. Crimes are committed by individuals who make bad choices.

Anyone who isn't aware of the vastly different crime statistics from one neighborhood to another is ignorant of the facts. It is very true that crimes are committed by individuals, and that they are making bad choices. It is also true that some neighborhoods have much higher densities of bad choice makers.

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That is why Dr. Martin Luther King's dream was a world where a person is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.

What Martin Luther King said had nothing to do with neighborhoods.

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The basic error, the fundamental fallacy, in dealing with the current influx of refugees is considering masses of people as collectives. Including or excluding groups, tribes, ethnicities, etc., is the wrong way to analyze the question. In point of fact, US immigration policy requires each legal immigrant to prove their case on their own merits.

Wrong. The basic problem is that some of the refugees are probably going to be people who make really bad choices, and, in fact, US immigration policy is inadequate to the task for sorting the good from the bad.

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A million years will not be enough time for the terrorists to kill everyone they dislike.

1. Tell that to those already dead (they probably don't care that they are a small part of some larger number.) It would take far, far longer for a single, mass murderer to kill everyone in their country, but that isn't considered a reason for letting him go on killing.

2. Terrorists can be expected to get better at what they do. They will adopt new and more effective technology for killing.

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Meanwhile, immigrants to Europe and the USA bring valuable human capital away from ISIL. Immigrants bring enterprise, ingenuity, and initiative.

Some immigrants bring value, some are terrorists or rapists or welfare parasites.

They need actual vetting.

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...actual harm is harder to prove

Sometimes it isn't that hard to prove. Look at the Boston bombers.

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Civilization will survive ISIL, but only if and to the extent that we embrace a full, consistent liberty....

And defend ourselves. A civilization that doesn't defend itself isn't likely to survive. And liberty is a meaningless term without the defense of individual rights. And actual defense, not just lip-service.

Post 1

Friday, February 19, 2016 - 5:58pm

"So, too, is ISIL's program ultimately unworkable."

ISIL's program is Turkey's program - or at least Erdogan's - and partly the Saudi's program. The program was to remove Bashar Assad and divvy up Syria. Elements of the US military/foreign policy establishment have known this since 2012. The Russians have put a stop to it although Erdogan is threatening to invade Syria and tangle with them. Hopefully, he's bluffing. But, if he's not, you're right about minding our own business.

Post 2

Sunday, March 6, 2016 - 6:20am

The crimes are ssomewhat different in their expression, but essentially the same. To speak in symbols, in the inner city, a kid robs a liquor store and shoots the owner, while in the suburbs, one adult embezzles from a firm or agency while another adult decides that it is more cost-effective to pay off the injured than to re-engineer the production line.

Steve Wolfer wrote:

Marotta wrote:
It is an axiom of criminology that "crime knows no neighborhood." In other words, no place, no population is especially criminogenic. Crimes are committed by individuals who make bad choices.

Anyone who isn't aware of the vastly different crime statistics from one neighborhood to another is ignorant of the facts. It is very true that crimes are committed by individuals, and that they are making bad choices. It is also true that some neighborhoods have much higher densities of bad choice makers.

The densities are the same. Twenty percent of scientists are crooks. (See here: http://retractionwatch.com/) That same number (20%) is cited as evidence of the inherent racism of the criminal justice system because 20% of Black youth have primary contact: in prison, in jail, under arrest and pending, on parole, on probation, or in diversion. But 80% are not... And 80% of scientists are honest.

Myself, I reject collectivism. But in terms of broad numbers, the history of immigration is the history of the United States. Without a constant influx of people who are willing to leave everything behind for a chance to start over, we will regress to the norm and become like every other place on Earth.

Post 3

Sunday, March 6, 2016 - 10:55am

Marotta seriously believes that no areas, no neighborhoods, are different in their crime statistics. The huge degree of mental gymnastics needed to twist the facts and make that appear so.... well, it's astonishing. I have a hard time imagining the kind of mind that sees the number of criminals in the inner city matched by an equal number of suburban embezzlers. I think that this is the sort of intellectual pablum fed to the far left as reverse racism. If one group happens to be mostly black then it would be wrong to imagine that group as having more criminals in it and the job becomes making up sociological silliness to hold that position.

We live in a time where many people choose cultural values to match a skin color. This was what we saw with the racism of the KKK. This is also what we see in claims of "White Privilige" in academia, or in beliefs that "Whitey is the problem," in the inner city. Whenever a popular subculture hooks moral ideas to skin color it is a form of racism. And that isn't countered by pretending that a group or a neighborhood couldn't have more crime because they are a mostly black neighborhood. Political correctness, the father of this nonsense, in this instance is really just a kind political blindness. In this instance we have an example of magical numbers... ethics must have been distributed in accordance with Paretos principle. 20% of us are going to be criminals or dishonest. No matter where we live, or what ideas we have accepted. Is that silly on its face, or what?

I spent five years working child abuse calls and investigations in Los Angeles County. Each neighborhood identified with a given subculture or two, and subcultures are made of ideas, attitudes, and beliefs. And each neighborhood had very differing crime rates accordingly.

Marotta can pretend, for reasons one can't even guess, that the densities of crimes are the same between scientists, doctors, engineers, and... gang members? Give me a break! Some of the neighborhoods in LA County were so bad that the police wouldn't go in to them until they stopped outside the area, put on their body armor and waited for the required backup car. I got to go into those area with my supervisor who had been an LAPD Sergent. He pointed out the things a civilian wouldn't notice. The crime rate in many of those neighborhoods far exceeds the statistics. Huge numbers of crimes are not reported, and huge numbers of reported crimes in these neighborhoods are not solved. The percentage of criminals and criminal acts comitted in some areas is much, much higher than in other areas. That is a simple fact.

If you believe that people make choices, and if you believe that peoples choices are informed by their ideas, and if you are awake enough to observe that neighborhoods are often marked by a dominate subculture, then you have to know that crime varies from neighborhood to neighborhood.

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Notice the way Marotta mentally wanders. We are speaking of crimes (the violation of criminal statutes) and neighborhoods (fixed geographical areas in a city), then he conflates these with professions and honesty. Then never content to not let an abstract float as far as it can, he goes on to tell us that without immigration we will become like every other place on earth. (I'll leave the many, many jumbled up and misaligned notions in that statment for others to ponder.)

Post 4

Monday, March 7, 2016 - 8:03pm