Sooo...Why Aren't We Talking About Heaven Sutton?

[cegman]

Is it helping?

Nope we should go back to the good ole days of just finding a piece of rope and hanging the bank robber with our posse. Or even better we'll start Crucifying people again. Those worked well too.

Now I agree that if you criminalize something it makes more criminals but there are times that is necessary. I'm not a huge fan of any drug criminalization. I think stronger punishment (maybe double sentence) for any criminal act committed under the influence might be a better way to handle it. It is pretty much what is going on with alcohol now anyway.

But the real question is if no one is allowed to be punished for behavior deemed unacceptable by society how are people to learn boundaries. Not sure if you realize this but that is how children learn is by pushing boundaries and receiving the consequences of those actions. A lot of people don't learn without trial and error.

Oh and there is a group of people out there that just enjoy doing things that we would consider wrong. They are irredeemable. How do we handle them?

 

[LucyDuke]

We don't need to get into drug policy, the point I was getting at is that "jail them" has proven itself to be an ineffective method of countering poverty-driven crime. I don't think "execute them" has helped with anything either. I wouldn't argue that there's no use at all for prison, but the threat of punishment is pretty obviously not deterring those living in poverty.

 

[cegman]

Ok that is fine. I'll debate that. We've had thousands of years on handling poverty driven crime. Whether it is revolutions forcibly put down by an army, jail, or slavery there really has not been a good way to handle poverty.

What's the best way to handle poverty is an interesting question. I don't think entitlement programs are the best way to handle that. It seems to lead to bread and circus'. Now my point about irredeemable people also stands for a group of people in poverty. What can we do about them? This small group is a problem that we can't fix with programs. What do we do about them.

 

[Dachs]

I don't think entitlement programs are the best way to handle that. It seems to lead to bread and circus'.

You should make it clearer to other people why you think this is a bad thing.

Disclaimer: Poster knows more about Roman history than you do.

 

[Hygro]

Ok that is fine. I'll debate that. We've had thousands of years on handling poverty driven crime. Whether it is revolutions forcibly put down by an army, jail, or slavery there really has not been a good way to handle poverty.

What's the best way to handle poverty is an interesting question. I don't think entitlement programs are the best way to handle that. It seems to lead to bread and circus'. Now my point about irredeemable people also stands for a group of people in poverty. What can we do about them? This small group is a problem that we can't fix with programs. What do we do about them.

Poverty is a couple of things:
A lack of secure physical necessities.
A lack of social-participatory necessities.

The first is obvious, clothes, shelter, food, health..

The second is very societally dependent. It dictates how accepted you are, and therefore how much agency you have beyond fighting for survival. The levels of education, the amount of wealth needed to display, your amount of leisure time, so forth. You can't show up to a job interview "clothed" in filthy medieval garb, even if that was enough at the time to work 20 hours a week for your survival with a hundred festival days a year. You need to have appropriate, clean attire, a clean body, facilities to do that, the education to find that job, the ability to travel there, and so forth.

The problem with American poverty right now is that as the wealth gap widens, the cost of the participation necessities increases. And the more than increases while other rates of wealth and income fall below that, even if real wages are going up (which they aren't), the more people become disenfranchised, and the more the fire of this trend gets fueled.

The best way to end poverty is to end poverty. Real poverty, and participatory poverty can rip societies asunder. If we give people foundations under them, and then afford them the real tools to better themselves, such that everyone is taken care of, and there is equal social mobility across all strata, then you've eliminated the problem even if some people are rich and some people are just getting by.

If I'm not being clear, it's this:
You can't beat the big problems of poverty unless people are physically taken care of, and their social environment is fair. And fair doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be fair enough.

 

[Formaldehyde]

@ cegman In other words, you might start by no longer supporting those who create it due to their own extreme greed, while typically being opposed to any sort of governmental assistance to the inevitable victims.

 

[luiz]

We don't need to get into drug policy, the point I was getting at is that "jail them" has proven itself to be an ineffective method of countering poverty-driven crime. I don't think "execute them" has helped with anything either. I wouldn't argue that there's no use at all for prison, but the threat of punishment is pretty obviously not deterring those living in poverty.

It does seem to be working, though. Murder rates have been falling quite a bit in the US, and most of the lives saved are of black people. So the "jail them" approach has been a success, at least by this measure.

 

[Save_Ferris]

What happened in 1994?

 

[Formaldehyde]

It does seem to be working, though. Murder rates have been falling quite a bit in the US, and most of the lives saved are of black people. So the "jail them" approach has been a success, at least by this measure.

Again, it has nothing to do with it given that the same sorts of decline have been experienced by all modern countries without the ludicrous incarceration rates which have turned the US into an international joke.

Again, this is largely much of the real reason for the widespread decline:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11713267&postcount=47

What happened in 1994?

There were two major factors. The crack cocaine "war" finally came to an end when Clinton took office, and less unwanted babies due to legalized abortion resulted in less criminality in later years.

 

[dutchfire]

How much media attention will the Sikhs get?

 

[Flying Pig]

Ok that is fine. I'll debate that. We've had thousands of years on handling poverty driven crime. Whether it is revolutions forcibly put down by an army, jail, or slavery there really has not been a good way to handle poverty.

What's the best way to handle poverty is an interesting question. I don't think entitlement programs are the best way to handle that. It seems to lead to bread and circus'. Now my point about irredeemable people also stands for a group of people in poverty. What can we do about them? This small group is a problem that we can't fix with programs. What do we do about them.

I think it was Cutlass who made the very good point a couple of weeks ago that there are always going to be people out of work, and that actually it's cheaper just to pay them a subsistence wage than it is to try and filter the 'deserving poor' from the 'idle poor'. If it really is a subsistence wage, it won't be pleasant to live on, and yes, it will inevitably encourage a few people on the borderline to apply for it instead of working as hard as they could to find a job, but in terms of the cost to the taxpayer it's still the cheapest option.