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We in the west have surrendered with weak punishments and lax enforcement for anti social behaviour. In many cases even abolishing laws or putting in place publ

• UncleOxidant 1mo ago
  I'm just not sure that stronger punishment and enforcement is going to be the answer here. It seems like many of the Asian cultures have a much higher level of social cohesion even without the threat of punishment. How do we get (back) to higher social cohesion in the West? I recall seeing a film of a shanty town somewhere in the US during the Great Depression. It was very neat and tidy. What happened between then and now?
  • ipaddr 1mo ago
    America has a low social cohension because of global immigration instead of targeted immigration compare to China. America use to share a culture because people came from the same places and shared the same religion and had a common history going back to the Romans.
    • dripdry45 1mo ago
      ....sadly more true than anyone here would probably like to admit. I love having Indian coworkers and there’s a large Indian population where I am at, but they are just completely separated in every single way from everyone else. and they keep it that way. my Pakistani coworkers are absolutely wonderful. Sweet, hard-working, very enjoyable to talk to, but their families and lives are just a totally different universe and they don’t share it. The honestly very poor black community around the area? they fucking hate us white people. like actively, all the time, no what no matter what you have or haven’t done they don’t like your ass one bit. i’ve seen inside some of the homes, and they are filled with independent black power movie posters about shooting Whitey. No kidding. I know it takes a village, but when people are so very different and forced to be near each other, it doesn’t mean that they will socialize or help each other; it’s like living on two different planets. there’s all kinds of social research showing this now, and what you get is micro segregation along income lines, rather than everyone helping each other and lifting up the community together. I wanted for most of my life for people to get along and the world to be a better place, thinking that education and modern access to information could somehow make things better. It seems that was entirely and completely wrong. when people have any kind of discomfort at all about new culture or new person or new idea? They pretty much just run away. The people here on hacker news are probably an exception, because we are here searching for commentary and interesting ideas and new information.
      • worik 1mo ago
        What an awful society you live in. It is not like that where I live. The first generation of immigrants have trouble, natural enough. But are very keen that their children do better. As for racism: Most racism here is systemic, from the state. There is casual ignorant racism, of course, but little hate. What a mess has been made of your country. You should work to fix it. It took us a lot of work to get here, and we have a long way to go. But I cannot imagine living in a society such as you describe.
        • Gud 1mo ago
          Where I’m from, Sweden, typically it is the second and third generation immigrants who exhibit antisocial behaviour.
          • ipaddr 1mo ago
            Its true im many places. First generation hard working. Second generation lives in the inprint of the first generation. Third generation has no connection to the original homeland and tries to find connection or it turns to antisocial behaviour.
            • Gud 1mo ago
              The first generation could hardly be classified as “hard working”, the sad fact is many of them live on (generous) welfare.
              • defrost 1mo ago
                You only have to look at Trump; third generation immigrant. His grandfather made his fortune by operating a restaurant and a brothel for miners in Whitehorse during the Gold Rush years, his father compounded that with an actual real estate 'empire' and the grandson 'earnt' money via dodgy wealth transfer schemes and sank much of it into get rich quick scams and branding deals based on fraudulent representation and money laundering, now leading the country in historic levels of open corruption.
    • dolmen 1mo ago
      > a common history going back to the Romans. Native Americans are not related to Romans. Slaves brought by force from Africa neither.
      • Eueudhsbsj32 1mo ago
        Neither of those two groups were citizens of America historically.
      • redsocksfan45 1mo ago
        [dead]
  • mvdtnz 1mo ago
    Which Asian cultures are you speaking about which have high social cohesion without threat of punishment? Singapore will punish anti-social behaviour like vandalism with mandatory caning, or fine you heavily for jay walking. In Japan police will intervene much more readily in cases of public intoxication and even noise complaints. For more serious anti social behaviour like gun crimes, violent crimes and drug trafficking there are very strong mandatory penalties up to and including corporal punishment and execution. Conviction rates in these countries are upwards of 99%. So in cases of intervention a punishment is almost certain.
  • ajmurmann 1mo ago
    Is the problem social cohesion or mental illness and meth and fentanyl addiction?
  • joshuat 1mo ago
    Stronger punishments? Probably not, but better enforcement? I believe so. It has repeatedly been shown that the severity of punishment does not sway crime nearly as much as the certainty of punishment does [1]. This all feels like a byproduct of the hyper-individualism we have in the West and the US, especially. [1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/670398
    • podocarp 1mo ago
      Indeed. Wasn't there a study where a policeman stationed on a street corner decreased crime or something even if he was just standing there doing nothing? Like a scarecrow effect. Of course people will come out and scream Gestapo! And talk about their freedoms, but are the only two choices in life complete anarchy and a police state? Can't we live somewhere in the middle like a reasonable society? It's really just slippery slope fallacies all the time like either we don't police at all or do north korea style surveillance. Also the demonization of police, the need is to have better police, not no police! It's just absurd what people come up with, it's so unreasonable yet these ideas gain such a large following.
      • deadfoxygrandpa 1mo ago
        there are police booths on many street corners in urban areas of china. they're very common, and people don't act afraid of them. the most common interaction you see is people asking them for directions
        • podocarp 1mo ago
          Sorry I don't understand your reply. Are you agreeing with me? The police booth is not to make you afraid. The idea is that it would deter pickpockets and other petty crime just by being there, regardless of whether the booth was meant to do so or not. Yes it could just be a almost retired security guard inside giving out directions but that would still work better than nothing at all.
• cortesoft 1mo ago
  The United States is certainly part of the west, and we incarcerate people at a higher rate than any other advanced nation, BY FAR. The idea that we are soft on crime is insane. Harsher punishments do not lead to lower crime.
  • giardini 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    • cortesoft 1mo ago
      It would not stop crimes committed by the people in charge of enforcing the draconian punishments.
    • SamoyedFurFluff 1mo ago
      Do you have evidence that harsher punishments have a causal effect on crime rates?
    • andrepd 1mo ago
      People _2000 years_ ago were writing books about why this is not true, but in the year 2026 there's still people saying "just give them the death penalty bro"....
  • gottorf 1mo ago
    > we incarcerate people at a higher rate than any other advanced nation, BY FAR Crime is committed at a higher rate than in any other advanced nation, though some of the others are catching up. > The idea that we are soft on crime is insane Not even a little bit insane. There are a million criminal laws on the books that do not get enforced at all. For example, I live in a state that is stereotypically conservative and "tough on crime" and any marijuana-related products are strictly illegal, most often at the felony level; yet I constantly smell it while driving on the road, no less! People are smoking while driving all the time. This cannot be described as anything but soft on crime. The US system was overall built by and for people who are largely self-governing. This philosophy gets in the way of a true hard-on-crime pivot.
• ajmurmann 1mo ago
  As others have pointed out the US has a massive prison population. Our problem isn't insufficiently harsh punishment. Our problem is unlikely punishment. The US spends more on incarceration and less on policing and the justice system. You are less likely to get caught and punished in the US but if you get punished it's harsher. Yet studies have shown that a milder punishment that happens more swiftly and with higher certainty is much better for preventing crime. Not sure that helps with mentally ill homeless but it's at least an improvement we could aim for
  • SchemaLoad 1mo ago
    This is what China has done. Aside from drug crimes it doesn't seem like they punish any harsher than the rest of the world, they just have an incredibly good ability to follow up. If you smash the window of a store, they will find you and you'll have to pay for it. Just the knowledge that there is an almost 100% chance of having to pay to restore anything you break seems all that's needed to stop the destruction of public spaces.
    • ajmurmann 1mo ago
      On the less extreme end, Europe also has much higher rates of catching criminals and punishes then less. I understand the US is really the outlier. I read an interesting article that laid out how that's ultimately rooted in what level of government pays for what. It's easier for local politicians to call for harsher punishment because prisons are run by state or federal but police is funded locally.
      • vintermann 1mo ago
        I don't think the police is underfunded in the US though?
        • zhivota 1mo ago
          It simultaneously is and isn't. It's overfunded on things that don't matter for the problem at hand - traffic enforcement using full fledged officers in expensive vehicles, militarized SWAT teams, regulations requiring huge officer presence at all events, etc. But it's underfunded on what would change things for the better - foot patrols, investigation, etc. This is why you can get pulled over for a broken taillight in the US and have 3 police cars behind you complete with a K9 unit, but if that same car gets stolen, you'll probably get asked to make a report and never hear a peep from the police again.
• crote 1mo ago
  So how come the weak-on-crime Western European countries are not drowning in homeless drug addicts?
  • soco 1mo ago
    It's probably the difference you can also notice between Switzerland and Germany for example. Take rough sleeping: in Germany it's there (no, not LA-style but still noticeable). In Switzerland they get immediately rounded up and taken to a shelter, no "muh freedom" discussion just housed. Add warm meals and a community and the light at the end of the tunnel starts to be be noticed. Of course mentally ill will come out again, so at some point they will have to be institutionalized. Nobody belongs on the streets, no matter what the gop is telling.
  • modo_mario 1mo ago
    There's a growing amount of visible homlessness near here in Brussels and the other big cities in Belgium and a lot of other western european cities Influences related to migration have overwhelmed whatever support systems there are to tackle this.