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"On the whole people commit crime because they are desperate" Great comment, but this line demands a response. When so many consensual acts are considered crim

"On the whole people commit crime because they are desperate" Great comment, but this line demands a response. When so many consensual acts are considered crimes, we end up with a situation where most people are commiting crimes because... they want to. They aren't "desperate" to snort coke, or pay for a blowjob, or play an illegal card game, but they want to do those things and will do so regardless of the criminal status of that act. The only way that changes is by using extreme state violence under an authoritarian regime or, my preferred option, by changing the laws so every Tom, Dick and Harry isn't committing a crime simply by living their lives.

ziddoap 3y ago
>but they want to do those things and will do so regardless of the criminal status of that act Isn't doing something regardless of potential consequences just another way to define desperate? Edit: was attempting to be pithy, but apparently would need to spend quite a bit more time to get my point across (and, in the end, doesn't change/add to the discussion), so consider me wrong
- standardUser 3y ago
  >Isn't doing something regardless of potential consequences just another way to define desperate? No, it is not. If you give a speech in front of a crowd you may embarrass yourself. Are you desperate to give that speech because there are potential consequences? If you go rock climbing you might fall and break your leg. Are you desperate to go rock climbing, simply because it involves risk? I don't see the logic at all.
  - bumby 3y ago
    You might be conflating the proximate and root causes of the act. I may not get in front of a crowd because I'm desperate to give a speech, but I may be desperate to keep my job, or desperate for status, or something else. Likewise, with rock-climbing, maybe I'm desperate for an adrenaline high or a novel experience. To be generous to the OP, I think "desperate" just means the gains from the experience outpace the perceived risks.
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      This is more aligned with what I poorly expressed, thanks.
    - saulpw 3y ago
      desperate: Having lost all hope; despairing. It's just the wrong word, then, by a huge margin.
      - ziddoap 3y ago
        desperate: needing or wanting something very much (Cambridge Dictionary) There's multiple definitions
      - bumby 3y ago
        In such discussions, its usually better to strive to understand what the commenter actually meant rather than being pedantically correct. The latter can border on bad-faith rather than adding to the discussion. The OP clarified their point. As already pointed out, there are more definitions. This one aligns just fine with the OP's point: 'desperate: driven by great need" (From the American Heritage Dictionary)
  - itishappy 3y ago
    I think you actually make a good point for rock climbing being a desperate act. Most humans don't climb rocks. Whether out of complacency or fear, that feels pretty rational! Some choose to ignore the risks. Desperate for adventure, perhaps? I don't give speeches to large crowds either, that sounds hella stressful. That won't stop me, but I'd have to be desperate for the respect or attention.
- louthy 3y ago
  Of course it isn’t. If a law is idiotic then breaking it can either be an act of rebellion or just outright contempt
tech_ken 3y ago
That’s a really good point, although I do think the desperation/desire line in the case of ex. snorting coke is somewhat blurry. Overall though yes, in my mind I was imagining “serious crimes” like theft or interpersonal violence, rather than vice crimes like sex work or gambling. Definitely in many cases desperation is not a factor, but in many other cases I believe that it is. Edit: I would also say that providing sex services is probably an act of desperation in many cases, even if paying for them isn’t.
- standardUser 3y ago
  Ok, I have to push back again. Having known many sex workers, while it is certainly an income option of last resort for many people, it is not always. I know some people who are very established in their careers and there is nothing desperate about it (even if the origin of the career path in some cases was). And others, like dominatrixes, often train specifically and purposefully to purse a career in sex work that they enjoy. There's a million variations, but this knee-jerk "all sex workers are desperate" nonsense is starting to sound really antiquated and ill-informed. And rude.
  - tech_ken 3y ago
    Sure I never said "all sex workers are desperate", I said "in many cases". There was a great book I read a while back "Revolting Prostitutes" which talks about this distinction between types of sex workers. There are many, many sex workers who are perfectly happy doing their work, and I believe that these are the people you know (the book gives this group the tongue-in-cheek name "happy hookers"). However on the whole these people tend to be affluent and well-connected (which could also be extrapolated from knowing an HN poster), and as such get over-represented in our current sex-work discourse IMO. Responses like this, which use these "happy" sex workers to push back on the negative aspects of sex work experienced by people who are acting out of desperation obscures a lot of important nuance at play. No doubt that the moralizing "all sex workers are abused and need saving" is equally if not more harmful, but I think it's really important that we acknowledge that for many people sex work is often just that: work (which is also the take of "Revolting Prostitutes"). Understanding it as a form of labor, subject to all the usual abuses of labor plus the extras unique to sex work is IMO a really important framing for thinking about sex work as a crime. This is where I'm coming from when I describe "many" sex workers as "desperate"; they are people who really need income doing the best work they can find (either best pay, most flexible hours, etc). Not trying to condemn anyone for their choice of career or side-hustle, but ignoring the reality that many sex workers are exploited by their employers and clients is IMO far more rude than my previous comment
bumby 3y ago
>by changing the laws so every Tom, Dick and Harry isn't committing a crime simply by living their lives. I think your comment provides some necessary nuance to the discussion but it may also miss an important consideration. Most Western societies are also highly concerned with stability as well as personal freedom. Making all consensual acts legal may maximize personal freedom at the detriment of stability. It's a balancing act.
- standardUser 3y ago
  Sending people off to jail to lose their families and jobs because the drug they like is different than the one the state likes does absolutely nothing to improve social stability. Very much so the opposite.
  - bumby 3y ago
    Very much agreed. But to the original point, it's about finding a balance. Just like imprisoning people for long periods isn't always conducive to stability, neither is a society full of addicts who struggle to hold down a job or take care of their family. It shouldn't be characterized as an either/or but as finding a reasonable balance.
    - standardUser 3y ago
      I think the "balance" argument is a diversion because when you examine the actual policies and their outcomes, at no point does it appear that stability is the actual goal. Yes, the idea that we need a balanced approach to individual vs collective rights is valid and should be a guiding star for us. My argument is that it is not - that our policies instead cause greater instability - and the balance argument is nothing more than a rhetorically nice-sounding cover story for these destructive policies.
      - bumby 3y ago
        This might be confusing my point. The initial goal of drug laws may be in the vein of stabilizing society, while poor implementation strays from that goal. Both can be true at the same time. Poor implementation begs for better implementation, not the nullification of the goal. I am not defending current drug policies, I'm guarding against the notion that the "solution" is just to make consensual crime legal. This side-steps a relevant discussion about how you measure societal stability, but that would be a long digression to itself.
IIAOPSW 3y ago
I'll chime in. There's 4 things we call "crime" and the only thing they have in common is that the state sends in an agent to physically restrain you from doing it. 1) Rational crime. Someone looked at the payoff to getting away, the cost to getting caught, and the probability of each and concluded the expected payoff was positive. 2) Victimless crime. 3) Political crime. Crime where the point is to openly defy the law itself. From Rosa Parks sitting in front of the bus to the unknown man standing in front of the tank, we all know what this looks like. 4) Deranged crime. Actual anus-type personality disorder.
- gruez 3y ago
  Where does "use illegal substances" and "illegally camp in a city park" fall in the above classification?
  - throwaway837367 3y ago
    Victimless and rational.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - eastof 3y ago
    > use illegal substances victimless crime on it's own > illegally camp in a city park rational crime, you want payoff of not sleeping in the rain and probability of being swept out of the area is unlikely depending on where you set up
    - gruez 3y ago
      >victimless crime on it's own Seems reasonable for something like weed, but for "hard" drugs like meth there's clearly a negative externalitiy imposed on the community from your unstable behavior.
      - 3y ago
jojobas 3y ago
Yeah, let's change our laws so that Tom, Dick and Harry can pimp, deal drugs around schools, run underground gambling dives and protection rackets. Genius! Plenty of consensual acts are detrimental to the society.
- deadbeeves 3y ago
  1. What's wrong with pimping per se? Fundamentally, a pimp is an just an intermediary that finds clients for people who sell a service. How is it different from an agency? Yes, pimping can involve violence, but the reason why is that the victim is unlikely to report the violence, as it would require them to incriminate themselves. 2. Tobacco and alcohol are legal, yet you don't see people selling to kids. It happens from time to time to teenagers, but not to young children. The reason why is precisely that children don't have the mental faculties to understand the full scope of their decisions and therefore can't give informed consent. 3. If gambling is legal there's no need for it to be underground, it can just be out in the open. Where are you more likely to get scammed, in some clandestine gambling den, or in a licit casino? 4. A protection racket is clearly not consensual. "Give me money or I'll damage your property" doesn't require consent of the victim.
yterdy 3y ago
You've misunderstood the nature of desperation. People doing those things are absolutely desperate - for a dopamine hit, for love or intimacy or community, for something to do with their time that is meaningful (losing all your money is certainly meaningful). No one who has those things - and recognizes it - settles for bottom-barrel surrogates like the ones you've listed. Someone who is starved for them absolutely will.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  No more desperate than the person running to get the runner's high or volunteering in a soup kitchen because they get a kick out of it or someone seeing a scary movie because they enjoy the feeling of safe fear. Drugs are fun. That's the reason a lot of folks do them. It doesn't mean you are desperate in ways that other people aren't. You are just using your time differently. It isn't even that your comment isn't true some of the time. It does read like DARE propaganda.
  - yterdy 3y ago
    I disagree. If running or volunteering at a soup kitchen were viewed by the would-be criminal as options for fulfilling their needs, they wouldn't be. There is something - generally psychological or social - pushing them to self-destructive solutions rather than pro-social ones. As for reads, your flippancy indicates some combination of ignorance and apathy. I won't waste any more time trying to make you understand, because I'm unconvinced of your capability to do so.
lionkor 3y ago
I would be interested to see how "crime" rates are in, say, the Netherlands, considering normal human stuff like prostitution and weed are legal.
secretsatan 3y ago
I we change the laws, how can we selectively police? If the police wanted a big bust on coke use, they could just raid a financial district.
commandlinefan 3y ago
> most people are commiting crimes because... they want to Or because almost everything is a crime in some way.

ziddoap 3y ago

>but they want to do those things and will do so regardless of the criminal status of that act Isn't doing something regardless of potential consequences just another way to define desperate? Edit: was attempting to be pithy, but apparently would need to spend quite a bit more time to get my point across (and, in the end, doesn't change/add to the discussion), so consider me wrong

standardUser 3y ago
>Isn't doing something regardless of potential consequences just another way to define desperate? No, it is not. If you give a speech in front of a crowd you may embarrass yourself. Are you desperate to give that speech because there are potential consequences? If you go rock climbing you might fall and break your leg. Are you desperate to go rock climbing, simply because it involves risk? I don't see the logic at all.
- bumby 3y ago
  You might be conflating the proximate and root causes of the act. I may not get in front of a crowd because I'm desperate to give a speech, but I may be desperate to keep my job, or desperate for status, or something else. Likewise, with rock-climbing, maybe I'm desperate for an adrenaline high or a novel experience. To be generous to the OP, I think "desperate" just means the gains from the experience outpace the perceived risks.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    This is more aligned with what I poorly expressed, thanks.
  - saulpw 3y ago
    desperate: Having lost all hope; despairing. It's just the wrong word, then, by a huge margin.
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      desperate: needing or wanting something very much (Cambridge Dictionary) There's multiple definitions
    - bumby 3y ago
      In such discussions, its usually better to strive to understand what the commenter actually meant rather than being pedantically correct. The latter can border on bad-faith rather than adding to the discussion. The OP clarified their point. As already pointed out, there are more definitions. This one aligns just fine with the OP's point: 'desperate: driven by great need" (From the American Heritage Dictionary)
- itishappy 3y ago
  I think you actually make a good point for rock climbing being a desperate act. Most humans don't climb rocks. Whether out of complacency or fear, that feels pretty rational! Some choose to ignore the risks. Desperate for adventure, perhaps? I don't give speeches to large crowds either, that sounds hella stressful. That won't stop me, but I'd have to be desperate for the respect or attention.
louthy 3y ago
Of course it isn’t. If a law is idiotic then breaking it can either be an act of rebellion or just outright contempt

tech_ken 3y ago

That’s a really good point, although I do think the desperation/desire line in the case of ex. snorting coke is somewhat blurry. Overall though yes, in my mind I was imagining “serious crimes” like theft or interpersonal violence, rather than vice crimes like sex work or gambling. Definitely in many cases desperation is not a factor, but in many other cases I believe that it is. Edit: I would also say that providing sex services is probably an act of desperation in many cases, even if paying for them isn’t.

standardUser 3y ago
Ok, I have to push back again. Having known many sex workers, while it is certainly an income option of last resort for many people, it is not always. I know some people who are very established in their careers and there is nothing desperate about it (even if the origin of the career path in some cases was). And others, like dominatrixes, often train specifically and purposefully to purse a career in sex work that they enjoy. There's a million variations, but this knee-jerk "all sex workers are desperate" nonsense is starting to sound really antiquated and ill-informed. And rude.
- tech_ken 3y ago
  Sure I never said "all sex workers are desperate", I said "in many cases". There was a great book I read a while back "Revolting Prostitutes" which talks about this distinction between types of sex workers. There are many, many sex workers who are perfectly happy doing their work, and I believe that these are the people you know (the book gives this group the tongue-in-cheek name "happy hookers"). However on the whole these people tend to be affluent and well-connected (which could also be extrapolated from knowing an HN poster), and as such get over-represented in our current sex-work discourse IMO. Responses like this, which use these "happy" sex workers to push back on the negative aspects of sex work experienced by people who are acting out of desperation obscures a lot of important nuance at play. No doubt that the moralizing "all sex workers are abused and need saving" is equally if not more harmful, but I think it's really important that we acknowledge that for many people sex work is often just that: work (which is also the take of "Revolting Prostitutes"). Understanding it as a form of labor, subject to all the usual abuses of labor plus the extras unique to sex work is IMO a really important framing for thinking about sex work as a crime. This is where I'm coming from when I describe "many" sex workers as "desperate"; they are people who really need income doing the best work they can find (either best pay, most flexible hours, etc). Not trying to condemn anyone for their choice of career or side-hustle, but ignoring the reality that many sex workers are exploited by their employers and clients is IMO far more rude than my previous comment

bumby 3y ago

>by changing the laws so every Tom, Dick and Harry isn't committing a crime simply by living their lives. I think your comment provides some necessary nuance to the discussion but it may also miss an important consideration. Most Western societies are also highly concerned with stability as well as personal freedom. Making all consensual acts legal may maximize personal freedom at the detriment of stability. It's a balancing act.

standardUser 3y ago
Sending people off to jail to lose their families and jobs because the drug they like is different than the one the state likes does absolutely nothing to improve social stability. Very much so the opposite.
- bumby 3y ago
  Very much agreed. But to the original point, it's about finding a balance. Just like imprisoning people for long periods isn't always conducive to stability, neither is a society full of addicts who struggle to hold down a job or take care of their family. It shouldn't be characterized as an either/or but as finding a reasonable balance.
  - standardUser 3y ago
    I think the "balance" argument is a diversion because when you examine the actual policies and their outcomes, at no point does it appear that stability is the actual goal. Yes, the idea that we need a balanced approach to individual vs collective rights is valid and should be a guiding star for us. My argument is that it is not - that our policies instead cause greater instability - and the balance argument is nothing more than a rhetorically nice-sounding cover story for these destructive policies.
    - bumby 3y ago
      This might be confusing my point. The initial goal of drug laws may be in the vein of stabilizing society, while poor implementation strays from that goal. Both can be true at the same time. Poor implementation begs for better implementation, not the nullification of the goal. I am not defending current drug policies, I'm guarding against the notion that the "solution" is just to make consensual crime legal. This side-steps a relevant discussion about how you measure societal stability, but that would be a long digression to itself.

IIAOPSW 3y ago

I'll chime in. There's 4 things we call "crime" and the only thing they have in common is that the state sends in an agent to physically restrain you from doing it. 1) Rational crime. Someone looked at the payoff to getting away, the cost to getting caught, and the probability of each and concluded the expected payoff was positive. 2) Victimless crime. 3) Political crime. Crime where the point is to openly defy the law itself. From Rosa Parks sitting in front of the bus to the unknown man standing in front of the tank, we all know what this looks like. 4) Deranged crime. Actual anus-type personality disorder.

gruez 3y ago
Where does "use illegal substances" and "illegally camp in a city park" fall in the above classification?
- throwaway837367 3y ago
  Victimless and rational.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- eastof 3y ago
  > use illegal substances victimless crime on it's own > illegally camp in a city park rational crime, you want payoff of not sleeping in the rain and probability of being swept out of the area is unlikely depending on where you set up
  - gruez 3y ago
    >victimless crime on it's own Seems reasonable for something like weed, but for "hard" drugs like meth there's clearly a negative externalitiy imposed on the community from your unstable behavior.
    - 3y ago

jojobas 3y ago

Yeah, let's change our laws so that Tom, Dick and Harry can pimp, deal drugs around schools, run underground gambling dives and protection rackets. Genius! Plenty of consensual acts are detrimental to the society.

deadbeeves 3y ago
1. What's wrong with pimping per se? Fundamentally, a pimp is an just an intermediary that finds clients for people who sell a service. How is it different from an agency? Yes, pimping can involve violence, but the reason why is that the victim is unlikely to report the violence, as it would require them to incriminate themselves. 2. Tobacco and alcohol are legal, yet you don't see people selling to kids. It happens from time to time to teenagers, but not to young children. The reason why is precisely that children don't have the mental faculties to understand the full scope of their decisions and therefore can't give informed consent. 3. If gambling is legal there's no need for it to be underground, it can just be out in the open. Where are you more likely to get scammed, in some clandestine gambling den, or in a licit casino? 4. A protection racket is clearly not consensual. "Give me money or I'll damage your property" doesn't require consent of the victim.

yterdy 3y ago

You've misunderstood the nature of desperation. People doing those things are absolutely desperate - for a dopamine hit, for love or intimacy or community, for something to do with their time that is meaningful (losing all your money is certainly meaningful). No one who has those things - and recognizes it - settles for bottom-barrel surrogates like the ones you've listed. Someone who is starved for them absolutely will.

Broken_Hippo 3y ago
No more desperate than the person running to get the runner's high or volunteering in a soup kitchen because they get a kick out of it or someone seeing a scary movie because they enjoy the feeling of safe fear. Drugs are fun. That's the reason a lot of folks do them. It doesn't mean you are desperate in ways that other people aren't. You are just using your time differently. It isn't even that your comment isn't true some of the time. It does read like DARE propaganda.
- yterdy 3y ago
  I disagree. If running or volunteering at a soup kitchen were viewed by the would-be criminal as options for fulfilling their needs, they wouldn't be. There is something - generally psychological or social - pushing them to self-destructive solutions rather than pro-social ones. As for reads, your flippancy indicates some combination of ignorance and apathy. I won't waste any more time trying to make you understand, because I'm unconvinced of your capability to do so.

lionkor 3y ago

I would be interested to see how "crime" rates are in, say, the Netherlands, considering normal human stuff like prostitution and weed are legal.

secretsatan 3y ago

I we change the laws, how can we selectively police? If the police wanted a big bust on coke use, they could just raid a financial district.

commandlinefan 3y ago

> most people are commiting crimes because... they want to Or because almost everything is a crime in some way.