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This is the police policy we have in the Netherlands – and I believe in much of Europe – and last time I checked crime is not "skyrocketing" here. I am not cla

This is the police policy we have in the Netherlands – and I believe in much of Europe – and last time I checked crime is not "skyrocketing" here. I am not claiming the police should just give up once someone runs, but there is a cost/benefit ratio to these things, and endangering random people in a high-speed car chase to catch a shoplifter does not seem a good cost/benefit ratio. It's also hardly the case that you can just "run and you're home free". There is CCTV, license plates, the guy can be caught next time he shoplifts, etc. etc. There is more than one way to catch criminals than this kind of brute force.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
A lot of what is wrong with America seems to boil down to broken short-term thinking that places too high a value on "heroics" with a big emotional zing attached to it over actual solutions. We tend to want to "help the homeless" rather than designing a system that reduces the incidence of homelessness. We get all bent out of shape about "justice" and "righteousness" for some detail, like a stolen shirt, completely missing the big picture. America is a fairly religious country. That's probably related. We have this Puritan ethics thing going on, which is often about guilt and shame and being judgy rather than creating a civil environment. We're a young country, founded by misfits who so couldn't make life work in Europe that a very dangerous move to a new land made sense to them. I think this still impacts the culture here, a la the biblical phrase about "the sins of the father...unto the fifth and sixth generation." But I usually get a lot of negative reactions when I try to talk about that. Other people seem to see no connection between the details of how America was founded and the culture it fosters.
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  My own – perhaps controversial – take is that a lot is explained once you realize that the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. One example is The American Dream: the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough, which also implies that being poor is a personal failure: you didn't work hard enough. What this misses is that in the end, you're still going to need people to pick up the garbage, and serve McDonalds, and so forth. turns out not all of society can be composed of lawyers, doctors, and computer programmers. Who knew? There are many more examples, but I don't want to sideline this too much by various political issues. I'm not entirely sure what the source of this is, or if it's recent or more rooted in history. It's just my observations of the US as an adult.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. That doesn't really contradict what I said. Social misfits often do lack empathy. This is sometimes at least partly biologically based, but is frequently compounded by more "normal" types behaving monstrously towards them because they are different. I've raised two special needs sons. They don't intuitively get a lot of social stuff. I've had to carefully explain many things. But the reality is that a lot more social stuff is learned than most normal people want to admit. Needing to actively and intentionally teach it to some people who don't readily pick it up without instruction isn't as bizarre and alien as the world wants to pretend it is. Plus, the lesser emphasis on empathy in America does have positives. Differently wired people tend to have a higher tolerance for things more empathetic people can't cope with. High empathy is not a good thing for being a soldier or a surgeon, both important roles in the world. the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough The origin of that idea is that we had escaped entrenched class structure in Europe. America was conceived of as the land of opportunity. This was a positive thing, not a way to blame poor people for their poverty. For a lot of people, that proved to be true for a long time. Those ideas aren't fundamentally broken, but some things have changed and we aren't coping so well with some of those changes. I think we can resolve our problems. It's not hopeless. I'm just not entirely sure how we get there from here.
    - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
      I didn't intend to contradict your post, but rather add to it, or have a conversation. > A lot more social stuff is learned than most normal people want to admit People tend to have an innate ability to socialize with their immediate surroundings: family, friends, coworkers, and other people they personally know. Beyond that, things are harder, and more learned. Fiction probably plays a very large role in this by the way. > High empathy is not a good thing for being a soldier or a surgeon, both important roles in the world. I'm actually not so sure about this; empathy isn't some sort of binary toggle, or uninfluenced by intellect; we have some control and choice over it. All other things being equal, a surgeon empathic to a patient's concerns (rather than indifferent) would make for a better surgeon, and a soldier highly empathic towards their fellow comrades would probably be a better soldier. > The origin of that idea I that we had escaped entrenched class structure in Europe. America was conceived of as the land of opportunity. > >This was a positive thing, not a way to blame poor people for their poverty. I appreciate that, but that was almost 250 years ago and things have changed rather a lot since then. Especially in modern context, "it's your fault if you're poor" seems to be a natural (though often unspoken) consequence of "you can be rich if you work hard enough". > For a lot of people, that proved to be true for a long time. Those ideas aren't fundamentally broken, but we some things have changed and we aren't coping so well with some of those changes. I think they are, because at the end of the day what a society needs if a fairly small group of people doing knowledge work, and a fairly large group of people facilitating that. One reason we can work as computer programmers is because other people do our food growing and construction and cleaning etc. None of this is unique to the US, but in a lot of countries there seems to be more recognition of this in the form of worker protection, better social welfare, etc.

DoreenMichele 7y ago

A lot of what is wrong with America seems to boil down to broken short-term thinking that places too high a value on "heroics" with a big emotional zing attached to it over actual solutions. We tend to want to "help the homeless" rather than designing a system that reduces the incidence of homelessness. We get all bent out of shape about "justice" and "righteousness" for some detail, like a stolen shirt, completely missing the big picture. America is a fairly religious country. That's probably related. We have this Puritan ethics thing going on, which is often about guilt and shame and being judgy rather than creating a civil environment. We're a young country, founded by misfits who so couldn't make life work in Europe that a very dangerous move to a new land made sense to them. I think this still impacts the culture here, a la the biblical phrase about "the sins of the father...unto the fifth and sixth generation." But I usually get a lot of negative reactions when I try to talk about that. Other people seem to see no connection between the details of how America was founded and the culture it fosters.

Carpetsmoker 7y ago
My own – perhaps controversial – take is that a lot is explained once you realize that the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. One example is The American Dream: the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough, which also implies that being poor is a personal failure: you didn't work hard enough. What this misses is that in the end, you're still going to need people to pick up the garbage, and serve McDonalds, and so forth. turns out not all of society can be composed of lawyers, doctors, and computer programmers. Who knew? There are many more examples, but I don't want to sideline this too much by various political issues. I'm not entirely sure what the source of this is, or if it's recent or more rooted in history. It's just my observations of the US as an adult.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  the United States, as a country, is deficient in empathy. That doesn't really contradict what I said. Social misfits often do lack empathy. This is sometimes at least partly biologically based, but is frequently compounded by more "normal" types behaving monstrously towards them because they are different. I've raised two special needs sons. They don't intuitively get a lot of social stuff. I've had to carefully explain many things. But the reality is that a lot more social stuff is learned than most normal people want to admit. Needing to actively and intentionally teach it to some people who don't readily pick it up without instruction isn't as bizarre and alien as the world wants to pretend it is. Plus, the lesser emphasis on empathy in America does have positives. Differently wired people tend to have a higher tolerance for things more empathetic people can't cope with. High empathy is not a good thing for being a soldier or a surgeon, both important roles in the world. the idea that anyone can be rich if they just work hard enough The origin of that idea is that we had escaped entrenched class structure in Europe. America was conceived of as the land of opportunity. This was a positive thing, not a way to blame poor people for their poverty. For a lot of people, that proved to be true for a long time. Those ideas aren't fundamentally broken, but some things have changed and we aren't coping so well with some of those changes. I think we can resolve our problems. It's not hopeless. I'm just not entirely sure how we get there from here.
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    I didn't intend to contradict your post, but rather add to it, or have a conversation. > A lot more social stuff is learned than most normal people want to admit People tend to have an innate ability to socialize with their immediate surroundings: family, friends, coworkers, and other people they personally know. Beyond that, things are harder, and more learned. Fiction probably plays a very large role in this by the way. > High empathy is not a good thing for being a soldier or a surgeon, both important roles in the world. I'm actually not so sure about this; empathy isn't some sort of binary toggle, or uninfluenced by intellect; we have some control and choice over it. All other things being equal, a surgeon empathic to a patient's concerns (rather than indifferent) would make for a better surgeon, and a soldier highly empathic towards their fellow comrades would probably be a better soldier. > The origin of that idea I that we had escaped entrenched class structure in Europe. America was conceived of as the land of opportunity. > >This was a positive thing, not a way to blame poor people for their poverty. I appreciate that, but that was almost 250 years ago and things have changed rather a lot since then. Especially in modern context, "it's your fault if you're poor" seems to be a natural (though often unspoken) consequence of "you can be rich if you work hard enough". > For a lot of people, that proved to be true for a long time. Those ideas aren't fundamentally broken, but we some things have changed and we aren't coping so well with some of those changes. I think they are, because at the end of the day what a society needs if a fairly small group of people doing knowledge work, and a fairly large group of people facilitating that. One reason we can work as computer programmers is because other people do our food growing and construction and cleaning etc. None of this is unique to the US, but in a lot of countries there seems to be more recognition of this in the form of worker protection, better social welfare, etc.