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> A surveillance society could eliminate almost all crime, or at least serious crimes. Even just reducing them significantly would have enormous economic and so
by yoo1I 10y ago
> A surveillance society could eliminate almost all crime, or at least serious crimes. Even just reducing them significantly would have enormous economic and social impact.
The problem with your assertion that once crime is reduced significantly children will be allowed to go play on the streets again does not match reality, as evidenced by this randomly googled graph[0].
Crime's been down for a long time, yet fear is way up.
This fear is easily but not correctly explained by direct factor such as crime or terrorism. So any reductions in crime or terrorism will not induce a reduction in fear, it will just shift so to something else.
Why all the fear though, I don't have a good answer to...
[0] http://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-crime-rate-in-the-usa-since-1990/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/191219/reported-violent-c...
- zo1 10y agoMy theory about that is that once crime starts going down, people become even more "averse" to it. I.e. it ceases to become a day to day thing, and consequently people want to avoid it even more. Sort of the inverse of desensitizing. Though, to be fair, I'd posit that it should balance out after a while. Once people start noticing that their fear is unwarranted, they'll start becoming more comfortable.
- ctdonath 10y agoHumans have an innate need for stress & conflict. Crime has gone way down, to the point that most fears are unwarranted, yet people invent even more fears to be uncomfortable about.