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Thanks for sharing your story. > Poverty may encourage crime, but crime always creates poverty. It seems like you're using two different meanings for the word

Thanks for sharing your story. > Poverty may encourage crime, but crime always creates poverty. It seems like you're using two different meanings for the word 'poverty'. In "poverty may encourage crime", the word 'poverty' means a lot of people not earning enough money to live comfortably. And in "crime always creates poverty", it seems like the word 'poverty' means places being less welcoming, businesses spending extra resources, and public processes being less efficient. By using different meanings of the word in the same sentence, the sentence becomes difficult to understand correctly, easy to misunderstand. Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty.

quacked 5y ago
> Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty. Yes, if you move into a nice neighborhood and start sticking up the local residents and stores for material resources, you will increase your own material wealth and thus reduce your own poverty. Two decades from the start of you and your friends raiding the other town residents, you and your children will live in an economic dead zone. Smart and enteprising people will leave as soon as they can, and the peaceful majority that used to inhabit the area will never enter if they can help it. This exact pattern has happened in every major American city, in Eastern Europe, in Russia, in China, in Central and South America, and in many African countries. Prosperity comes from people, and if people are threatened by crime, they will leave and create prosperity elsewhere. > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty. This is not true in the slightest. Don't rich people commit crime up one wall and down the other? Instead of sticking up gas stations, they're sticking up markets and foreign countries. Did having enough money to live comfortably stop them from committing crime? Of course it didn't. Transfer six hundred thousand US dollars to every member of a drug cartel. Will they become peaceful, moral, upstanding, and desirous of participantion in a pleasant middle-class lifestyle? Of course not.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  > Prosperity comes from people, and if people are threatened by crime, they will leave and create prosperity elsewhere. This is true. Local economics are a large factor in poverty. It's a difficult issue with no simple solutions. The popular strategy of "punish crime more" has not been effective in solving crime or poverty in most places. > > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty. > This is not true in the slightest. When someone gets a criminal conviction, their future job options get reduced, lowering their income and increasing poverty. When a person is arrested, they sit in jail waiting for arraignment, cannot go to work, and often lose their job. Later, they must take time off work to go to court. Many employers will just fire an unskilled worker rather than give them time off. When a person is in prison, they cannot work and cannot gain work experience. Many people get assaulted in prison and struggle with debilitating PTSD after they get out. This is how convictions and imprisonment increase poverty. > Don't rich people commit crime up one wall and down the other? Instead of sticking up gas stations, they're sticking up markets and foreign countries. So far, this discussion has been about theft, robbery, and poverty. White-collar crime is very different. Please don't pretend that they are the same. Please discuss with intellectual honesty. > Transfer six hundred thousand US dollars to every member of a drug cartel. Will they become peaceful, moral, upstanding, and desirous of participantion in a pleasant middle-class lifestyle? Of course not. This is a straw man argument. Go back and read what I actually wrote.
  - quacked 5y ago
    I should have been more specific: > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. This is the part that I think is unequivocally false. If you live in poverty and you steal property, you do not then become "less poor" unless you subsequently use the property you stole to better yourself in other ways unrelated to the crime. It is not the transfer of wealth that made you less poor, it is your use of the wealth that you took, be it material or financial. As an example, street gangs often "own" enough asset value in weapons, drugs, cash, and real estate to live in a better, less violent, and less poor life, but they and their families still suffer all of the symptoms of "poverty", because they do not use the assets they take to reduce their own "poverty" but rather to perpetuate the methods by which they acquired their property. There are some edge cases, but for the most part, property crime does not reduce "poverty" any more than caffeine pills reduce "chronic sleepiness". I do not disagree that convicting and imprisonment increase poverty; I am openly in favor of prison reform and am aware that any criminal charges can seriousy impact lifetime earning potential. > So far, this discussion has been about theft, robbery, and poverty. White-collar crime is very different. No, it is not. Rich criminals have the same instincts to win, dominate, hurt, steal, lie, and otherwise oppress other people that poor criminals do. "White-collar" crime is blue-collar crime committed by more intelligent, well-connected people. Blue-collar crime in the case of theft and robbery uses the threat of personal violence to extract wealth from a person or a person's business; the white-collar crime in the way I mentioned it uses the threat of state violence to extract cash from an institution. Both are lawless--one is below the law, the other above the law. Your and other people's inability to understand this principle is the source of a massive road block in societal reform. > This is a straw man argument. Go back and read what I actually wrote. This I concede; you did not say this. However, your belief that white-collar crime and blue-collar crime are fundamentally different and your statement that "property crime...makes them less poor and reduces poverty" make me suspicious that you actually do think that a simple transfer of wealth from rich to poor is enough to reduce both poverty and crime to a degree where it does not bother the rest of society.

quacked 5y ago

> Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty. Yes, if you move into a nice neighborhood and start sticking up the local residents and stores for material resources, you will increase your own material wealth and thus reduce your own poverty. Two decades from the start of you and your friends raiding the other town residents, you and your children will live in an economic dead zone. Smart and enteprising people will leave as soon as they can, and the peaceful majority that used to inhabit the area will never enter if they can help it. This exact pattern has happened in every major American city, in Eastern Europe, in Russia, in China, in Central and South America, and in many African countries. Prosperity comes from people, and if people are threatened by crime, they will leave and create prosperity elsewhere. > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty. This is not true in the slightest. Don't rich people commit crime up one wall and down the other? Instead of sticking up gas stations, they're sticking up markets and foreign countries. Did having enough money to live comfortably stop them from committing crime? Of course it didn't. Transfer six hundred thousand US dollars to every member of a drug cartel. Will they become peaceful, moral, upstanding, and desirous of participantion in a pleasant middle-class lifestyle? Of course not.

mleonhard 5y ago
> Prosperity comes from people, and if people are threatened by crime, they will leave and create prosperity elsewhere. This is true. Local economics are a large factor in poverty. It's a difficult issue with no simple solutions. The popular strategy of "punish crime more" has not been effective in solving crime or poverty in most places. > > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. Convicting and imprisoning criminals increases poverty. > This is not true in the slightest. When someone gets a criminal conviction, their future job options get reduced, lowering their income and increasing poverty. When a person is arrested, they sit in jail waiting for arraignment, cannot go to work, and often lose their job. Later, they must take time off work to go to court. Many employers will just fire an unskilled worker rather than give them time off. When a person is in prison, they cannot work and cannot gain work experience. Many people get assaulted in prison and struggle with debilitating PTSD after they get out. This is how convictions and imprisonment increase poverty. > Don't rich people commit crime up one wall and down the other? Instead of sticking up gas stations, they're sticking up markets and foreign countries. So far, this discussion has been about theft, robbery, and poverty. White-collar crime is very different. Please don't pretend that they are the same. Please discuss with intellectual honesty. > Transfer six hundred thousand US dollars to every member of a drug cartel. Will they become peaceful, moral, upstanding, and desirous of participantion in a pleasant middle-class lifestyle? Of course not. This is a straw man argument. Go back and read what I actually wrote.
- quacked 5y ago
  I should have been more specific: > Most property crime transfers wealth to poorer people, making them less poor and reducing poverty. This is the part that I think is unequivocally false. If you live in poverty and you steal property, you do not then become "less poor" unless you subsequently use the property you stole to better yourself in other ways unrelated to the crime. It is not the transfer of wealth that made you less poor, it is your use of the wealth that you took, be it material or financial. As an example, street gangs often "own" enough asset value in weapons, drugs, cash, and real estate to live in a better, less violent, and less poor life, but they and their families still suffer all of the symptoms of "poverty", because they do not use the assets they take to reduce their own "poverty" but rather to perpetuate the methods by which they acquired their property. There are some edge cases, but for the most part, property crime does not reduce "poverty" any more than caffeine pills reduce "chronic sleepiness". I do not disagree that convicting and imprisonment increase poverty; I am openly in favor of prison reform and am aware that any criminal charges can seriousy impact lifetime earning potential. > So far, this discussion has been about theft, robbery, and poverty. White-collar crime is very different. No, it is not. Rich criminals have the same instincts to win, dominate, hurt, steal, lie, and otherwise oppress other people that poor criminals do. "White-collar" crime is blue-collar crime committed by more intelligent, well-connected people. Blue-collar crime in the case of theft and robbery uses the threat of personal violence to extract wealth from a person or a person's business; the white-collar crime in the way I mentioned it uses the threat of state violence to extract cash from an institution. Both are lawless--one is below the law, the other above the law. Your and other people's inability to understand this principle is the source of a massive road block in societal reform. > This is a straw man argument. Go back and read what I actually wrote. This I concede; you did not say this. However, your belief that white-collar crime and blue-collar crime are fundamentally different and your statement that "property crime...makes them less poor and reduces poverty" make me suspicious that you actually do think that a simple transfer of wealth from rich to poor is enough to reduce both poverty and crime to a degree where it does not bother the rest of society.