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Yet violence has dropped impressively in the west in the last 50 years, both in crime statistics and in the absence of wars between major powers. And the last

Yet violence has dropped impressively in the west in the last 50 years, both in crime statistics and in the absence of wars between major powers. And the last 50 years mark many incredible advancements in society: civil rights, gay rights, women's rights, the first attempts to take sexual violence seriously, etc. etc. etc. I'd much rather be a random American today than 50 years ago.

Kurtz79 12y ago
Agreed. I cringe when people say how things are going for the worse constantly.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  Sometimes it's because things are objectively worse. Cringing doesn't change the facts. The original claim that we're less violent is easy to debunk, and has been debunked by many people. See e.g. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-... But more than that, it's clear that economics and politics have become prime vectors for social violence in the 'developed' West: particularly economics, which has been used as an ideological excuse to destroy the possible future prospects and current living conditions of entire generations now. Unemployment in - say - Spain for the under-25s is more than 50%. The rate in the US is around 12%, but that disguises the fact that many 'jobs' barely pay a living wage now, where fifty years ago even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries. The destruction has been justified by a steady stream of clearly wrong 'economic theories' that don't stand up to even the most basic undergraduate-level scrutiny. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt So yes - things are objectively worse for many people. The fact that some people are doing okay and a tiny minority are doing really well doesn't change that. Getting this stuff wrong has very real long-term social and political consequences. It's irrational to ignore that.
  - tjradcliffe 12y ago
    That's hardly a debunking of the thesis that violence has decreased. It cites no data, but simply declares in vague terms that some parts of the world are still violent and the sum of those parts is non-negligible, which is completely unrelated to the claim that violence has decreased. The notion that fifty years ago "even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries" will come as a shock to people who lived then, barely getting by on piecework or similar marginal occupations. There were certainly classes of jobs where entry-level positions paid "comfortable salaries" but those jobs weren't much use to you if you were non-white, female, gay, or even from the wrong nominally-white ethnic group. Things aren't as good as they could be, but they are still a lot better than they were by many, many measures. They are worse by a few measures, and we should be concerned about that, but in general the trend is in the right direction.
  - Kurtz79 12y ago
    Thanks for making my point. I live in Spain. Fifty years ago there was a dictatorship here, people weren't even able to speak their minds freely, without fear for their personal safety. Castillan language and identity were forced upon Catalans, Galicians an Basques, that hold grudges for that even now. No longer than ten years ago there were still regular terrorist attacks by ETA, with dozens of innocent victims. Saying that things are worse now, regardless of the employment rate, it's just idiotic, sorry if I'm being blunt. In general, the EU, which is seen by some (especially far right and far left parties) as the cause of all evil, has given Europe 70 years of peace, in a continent that has been at war for all of its history. I'll gladly weather the occasional economic crisis for the privilege.
  - TulliusCicero 12y ago
    > even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries. Source?
    - 21echoes 12y ago
      one good metric: minimum wage used to be 40% higher http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-minimum-wage-falls-every-year--heres-how-to-fix-that-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-minimum-wage-falls-e...
gress 12y ago
The fallacy here is that you are acting as though these things are all fungible. Would you rather be a random American today who is unable to form satisfying emotional relationships because of the lack emotionally available parents during development or would you rather be a random American 50 years ago who has warm loving connections? That's what's being compared here. Why should we have to trade one for another? This should make us recognize that there is a problem. Otherwise the apparent celebration of progress is actually just a defeatist 'be grateful for what you have'.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  Well children were also being beaten and abused 50 years and previous to that. Let's not act like everything was homogenous in one regard or another in different time periods.
  - gress 12y ago
    Nobody is doing so except for the people who state "things are better now" based on their own set of metrics.
ThrustVectoring 12y ago
That drop may have more to do with removing lead from gasoline than any social changes. Biological factors are staggeringly huge.
- snowwrestler 12y ago
  Violence and civil rights in the U.S. are also much better than they were 150 years ago, well before we used gasoline widely at all.
  - ThrustVectoring 12y ago
    So is nutrition, preventative medicine, and FDA enforcement of various public health ordinances.

Kurtz79 12y ago

Agreed. I cringe when people say how things are going for the worse constantly.

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
Sometimes it's because things are objectively worse. Cringing doesn't change the facts. The original claim that we're less violent is easy to debunk, and has been debunked by many people. See e.g. http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-pinker-violence-review http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/john-gray-steven-... But more than that, it's clear that economics and politics have become prime vectors for social violence in the 'developed' West: particularly economics, which has been used as an ideological excuse to destroy the possible future prospects and current living conditions of entire generations now. Unemployment in - say - Spain for the under-25s is more than 50%. The rate in the US is around 12%, but that disguises the fact that many 'jobs' barely pay a living wage now, where fifty years ago even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries. The destruction has been justified by a steady stream of clearly wrong 'economic theories' that don't stand up to even the most basic undergraduate-level scrutiny. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_in_a_Time_of_Debt So yes - things are objectively worse for many people. The fact that some people are doing okay and a tiny minority are doing really well doesn't change that. Getting this stuff wrong has very real long-term social and political consequences. It's irrational to ignore that.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  That's hardly a debunking of the thesis that violence has decreased. It cites no data, but simply declares in vague terms that some parts of the world are still violent and the sum of those parts is non-negligible, which is completely unrelated to the claim that violence has decreased. The notion that fifty years ago "even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries" will come as a shock to people who lived then, barely getting by on piecework or similar marginal occupations. There were certainly classes of jobs where entry-level positions paid "comfortable salaries" but those jobs weren't much use to you if you were non-white, female, gay, or even from the wrong nominally-white ethnic group. Things aren't as good as they could be, but they are still a lot better than they were by many, many measures. They are worse by a few measures, and we should be concerned about that, but in general the trend is in the right direction.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  Thanks for making my point. I live in Spain. Fifty years ago there was a dictatorship here, people weren't even able to speak their minds freely, without fear for their personal safety. Castillan language and identity were forced upon Catalans, Galicians an Basques, that hold grudges for that even now. No longer than ten years ago there were still regular terrorist attacks by ETA, with dozens of innocent victims. Saying that things are worse now, regardless of the employment rate, it's just idiotic, sorry if I'm being blunt. In general, the EU, which is seen by some (especially far right and far left parties) as the cause of all evil, has given Europe 70 years of peace, in a continent that has been at war for all of its history. I'll gladly weather the occasional economic crisis for the privilege.
- TulliusCicero 12y ago
  > even starter jobs offered comfortable salaries. Source?
  - 21echoes 12y ago
    one good metric: minimum wage used to be 40% higher http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-minimum-wage-falls-every-year--heres-how-to-fix-that-2013-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-minimum-wage-falls-e...

gress 12y ago

The fallacy here is that you are acting as though these things are all fungible. Would you rather be a random American today who is unable to form satisfying emotional relationships because of the lack emotionally available parents during development or would you rather be a random American 50 years ago who has warm loving connections? That's what's being compared here. Why should we have to trade one for another? This should make us recognize that there is a problem. Otherwise the apparent celebration of progress is actually just a defeatist 'be grateful for what you have'.

wavefunction 12y ago
Well children were also being beaten and abused 50 years and previous to that. Let's not act like everything was homogenous in one regard or another in different time periods.
- gress 12y ago
  Nobody is doing so except for the people who state "things are better now" based on their own set of metrics.

ThrustVectoring 12y ago

That drop may have more to do with removing lead from gasoline than any social changes. Biological factors are staggeringly huge.

snowwrestler 12y ago
Violence and civil rights in the U.S. are also much better than they were 150 years ago, well before we used gasoline widely at all.
- ThrustVectoring 12y ago
  So is nutrition, preventative medicine, and FDA enforcement of various public health ordinances.