6 ms·

If you're excluding the most violent areas in the US in your comparison, shouldn't you do the same for Canada as well?

by kmm 5y ago

adventured 5y ago
I'm not excluding. There's no point in attempting to do that here on HN, I seriously doubt anybody here fails to at least vaguely understand the condition of US inner cities: they're war zones. The point is obvious: highly elevated rates of murder in the US are particularly hyper concentrated to a small number of urban zones, to a very abnormal degree. The high US murder rate isn't a comprehensive problem spanning all national population centers. You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though, they shout you down and or run away from it. You want proof of that? Normalize the murder rate for cities like Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis, Memphis, etc. to that of NYC or San Diego or Seattle or Austin TX circa 2019. Watch how the US murder rate dramatically plunges overall. St Louis had a 65 per 100k murder rate in 2019. Baltimore was 58. Birmingham was 50. Detroit was 41. Those are war zones. Kansas City and Memphis were 29. A city like eg Pittsburgh also has serious problems, but it's at least down at 12 (still high by any sane standard). If you reduce the high US murder cities down to just that (ridiculous) ceiling, you'd drop the US murder rate by a lot. Again, concentration is the obvious point, and it's very easy to prove. The obvious question is: what's being done to improve those high murder concentration areas? Not much is the answer. You can also see this concentration fact in action easily by comparing sections of Chicago or Baltimore, to the overall city murder rates, or the overall state murder rates (for IL or MD). It's not subtle, it's an extreme variance, far beyond what you see in eg Amsterdam vs the Netherlands or Toronto vs Ontario or Canada. It's not normal at all. The way people try to live in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago or Baltimore, is by entirely avoiding the extraordinarily dangerous areas. If it can be avoided people simply never go to those neighborhoods, they don't drive through there. They're de facto war zones, occupied territory owned by gangs, and everybody knows it (including the police). And this is the point that absolutely nobody at a high political level in the US wants to discuss, even though to fix the US murder problem you have to start talking about it. How to fix the US inner cities, which are in terrifying condition. You only ultimately fix the inner cities in the US through dramatic concentrated economic improvement, and looking back over the past several decades, neither party has done much of anything about it (the results of that are right there staring at us every day).
- EForEndeavour 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, what makes you say "You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though, they shout you down and or run away from it"? Has that been your experience among your friends and family, or on certain web platforms? You write "absolutely nobody at a high political level in the US wants to discuss." But the pinned tweet on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's Twitter account (https://twitter.com/chicagosmayor https://twitter.com/chicagosmayor) lays out resources and tactics targeted toward specific high-need areas of Chicago to make the city safer (and links to the city's violence reduction strategy which goes into an impressive amount of detail: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/public-safety-and-violence-reduction/home/summer-safety.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/public-safety-and-viol...) And going a bit further back and higher up in level of government, didn't Trump delight in blaming democrats for murdery inner cities, specifically calling out Chicago and Detroit? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/25/trump-keeps-claiming-that-most-dangerous-cities-america-are-all-run-by-democrats-they-arent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/25/trump-kee... A quick Google search convinced me that this fact has been intensely covered in mainstream news sources, all of which focus on the same problematic cities that you mention, and explores the many contributing factors that make these cities hotspots of violent crime. Just three examples from the first page of Google results for the unquoted query `homicide rate us cities`: 1. April 3, 2021. "The US saw significant crime rise across major cities in 2020. And it's not letting up" https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/03/us/us-crime-rate-rise-2020/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/03/us/us-crime-rate-rise-2020/in... 2. April 19, 2021. "Murder map: Deadliest U.S. cities" https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/ https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-ci... 3. June 1, 2021. "With Homicides Rising, Cities Brace for a Violent Summer." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/shootings-in-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/shootings-in-us.html The reality I'm seeing is that lots of people are talking about urban violent crime hotspots, and that at least some local governments and communities are demonstrably working to address it.
  - bsdetector 5y ago
    > Out of curiosity, what makes you say "You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though Turn on showdead and read the things that you can't get anybody to talk about. The content of the dead comments are the core issues here and how and why that came to be and what to do about it is what this discussion should be about, but until those issues can be discussed openly they can never be addressed productively.

If you're excluding the most violent areas in the US in your comparison, shouldn't you do the same for Canada as well?

by kmm 5y ago

If you're excluding the most violent areas in the US in your comparison, shouldn't you do the same for Canada as well?

I'm not excluding. There's no point in attempting to do that here on HN, I seriously doubt anybody here fails to at least vaguely understand the condition of US inner cities: they're war zones. The point is obvious: highly elevated rates of murder in the US are particularly hyper concentrated to a small number of urban zones, to a very abnormal degree. The high US murder rate isn't a comprehensive problem spanning all national population centers. You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though, they shout you down and or run away from it. You want proof of that? Normalize the murder rate for cities like Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis, Memphis, etc. to that of NYC or San Diego or Seattle or Austin TX circa 2019. Watch how the US murder rate dramatically plunges overall. St Louis had a 65 per 100k murder rate in 2019. Baltimore was 58. Birmingham was 50. Detroit was 41. Those are war zones. Kansas City and Memphis were 29. A city like eg Pittsburgh also has serious problems, but it's at least down at 12 (still high by any sane standard). If you reduce the high US murder cities down to just that (ridiculous) ceiling, you'd drop the US murder rate by a lot. Again, concentration is the obvious point, and it's very easy to prove. The obvious question is: what's being done to improve those high murder concentration areas? Not much is the answer. You can also see this concentration fact in action easily by comparing sections of Chicago or Baltimore, to the overall city murder rates, or the overall state murder rates (for IL or MD). It's not subtle, it's an extreme variance, far beyond what you see in eg Amsterdam vs the Netherlands or Toronto vs Ontario or Canada. It's not normal at all. The way people try to live in cities like Los Angeles or Chicago or Baltimore, is by entirely avoiding the extraordinarily dangerous areas. If it can be avoided people simply never go to those neighborhoods, they don't drive through there. They're de facto war zones, occupied territory owned by gangs, and everybody knows it (including the police). And this is the point that absolutely nobody at a high political level in the US wants to discuss, even though to fix the US murder problem you have to start talking about it. How to fix the US inner cities, which are in terrifying condition. You only ultimately fix the inner cities in the US through dramatic concentrated economic improvement, and looking back over the past several decades, neither party has done much of anything about it (the results of that are right there staring at us every day).

EForEndeavour 5y ago
Out of curiosity, what makes you say "You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though, they shout you down and or run away from it"? Has that been your experience among your friends and family, or on certain web platforms? You write "absolutely nobody at a high political level in the US wants to discuss." But the pinned tweet on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot's Twitter account (https://twitter.com/chicagosmayor https://twitter.com/chicagosmayor) lays out resources and tactics targeted toward specific high-need areas of Chicago to make the city safer (and links to the city's violence reduction strategy which goes into an impressive amount of detail: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/public-safety-and-violence-reduction/home/summer-safety.html https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/public-safety-and-viol...) And going a bit further back and higher up in level of government, didn't Trump delight in blaming democrats for murdery inner cities, specifically calling out Chicago and Detroit? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/25/trump-keeps-claiming-that-most-dangerous-cities-america-are-all-run-by-democrats-they-arent/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/25/trump-kee... A quick Google search convinced me that this fact has been intensely covered in mainstream news sources, all of which focus on the same problematic cities that you mention, and explores the many contributing factors that make these cities hotspots of violent crime. Just three examples from the first page of Google results for the unquoted query `homicide rate us cities`: 1. April 3, 2021. "The US saw significant crime rise across major cities in 2020. And it's not letting up" https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/03/us/us-crime-rate-rise-2020/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/03/us/us-crime-rate-rise-2020/in... 2. April 19, 2021. "Murder map: Deadliest U.S. cities" https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-cities/ https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/murder-map-deadliest-u-s-ci... 3. June 1, 2021. "With Homicides Rising, Cities Brace for a Violent Summer." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/shootings-in-us.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/01/us/shootings-in-us.html The reality I'm seeing is that lots of people are talking about urban violent crime hotspots, and that at least some local governments and communities are demonstrably working to address it.
- bsdetector 5y ago
  > Out of curiosity, what makes you say "You can't get anybody to talk about this fact though Turn on showdead and read the things that you can't get anybody to talk about. The content of the dead comments are the core issues here and how and why that came to be and what to do about it is what this discussion should be about, but until those issues can be discussed openly they can never be addressed productively.