[HN Gopher] America's incarceration rate is in decline
___________________________________________________________________
America's incarceration rate is in decline
Author : paulpauper
Score : 254 points
Date : 2025-06-25 17:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| gjdoslhx wrote:
| https://archive.is/pe7eH
| pengaru wrote:
| Does that mean we can stop keeping mouth wash and deodorant
| behind lock and key on store shelves and resume locking up the
| criminals making messes of our cities?
| outside1234 wrote:
| This turned out to not actually be a thing:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli...
| arduanika wrote:
| pengaru did not say anything about organized shoplifting. The
| lock and key were definitely a thing, and still are. Please
| read comments before responding to them.
| pengaru wrote:
| Come visit SF and let's go shopping downtown.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| It's unclear if the decline in prisoners stems from a decline
| in crime. While I generally believe the statistics that
| _violent_ crime has decreased, it may be the case that the
| judicial system and even the government in general just have no
| enthusiasm for prosecuting or punishing it.
|
| In short, no, they won't stop locking it up. They wouldn't even
| if there was a decline in petty crime... those locks are so
| that they can staff the store with 2 people instead of 5.
| pengaru wrote:
| > those locks are so that they can staff the store with 2
| people instead of 5.
|
| Maybe in some cases that's true, but it's definitely not true
| for the few big box stores I frequent in SF where this
| practice occurs. The Target on 4th street has significantly
| more staff running around constantly unlocking things and
| tending to this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise. I'm
| not sure who pays for the tactical gear wearing security
| guards at the entrance looking ready for Iraq, but it can't
| be cheap.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > The Target on 4th street has significantly more staff
| running around constantly unlocking things and tending to
| this sort of b.s. than they would otherwise.
|
| Are you certain, or were they running 3 people ragged who
| will burn out in a month and quit? Constant motion can make
| it seem like there are more people, but I also remember the
| 1990s and seeing at least one person per department in a
| Kmart, some just monitoring their area. A bigbox store like
| Target would've had 2 people for the cash registers up
| front, at least one in customer service, and one per
| department during off-peak hours. If you're telling me
| you're seeing a dozen people for certain, I'll believe you,
| but I am wondering if it wasn't actually fewer.
|
| And besides all that, I was thinking more along the lines
| of CVS and Walgreens, which are the stores I know of
| locking everything behind glass.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I live in a deep Red Bible thumping, back the blue, law and
| order county / state.
|
| About 7 years ago a former schoolmate of mine shot a man 6
| times over a bad drug deal, fled the state to California. He
| was captured by the US Marshal and brought back to the county
| jail where he bonded out after 3 month.
|
| After his bonding out, he drove over to the victim's parent's
| house and performed a drive-by shooting, injuring none but
| did kill livestock.
|
| He was arrested again, taken to the county jail, and bonded
| out after several months.
|
| The issue finally reached a plea bargain, they dropped all
| charges related to both shooting, had him plead guilty to
| felony firearms charge, and gave him time served and 5 years
| probation.
|
| This man is a grown adult with felony priors, and got a
| proverbial slap on the wrist. Never saw a day of state
| prison, likely never will.
|
| If this is how we treat serious violent crime, I'm not
| surprised in TFA at all.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| There should be statutory limitations for prosecutors
| concerning the use of plea deals. No more than 1% of cases
| in any calendar year should be permitted to even offer plea
| deals, so that they use that tool sparingly and only when
| appropriate. If they waste it out of laziness or apathy,
| then the subsequent cases that year would have to be
| brought to trial.
|
| This would cut down on alot of the bullshit (and not just
| for cases like the one you describe, but where plea
| bargaining is used to bully people into pleading guilty
| where they are not).
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Most convictions are due to plea deals. If you limit that
| tool, people would simply have charges dropped due to
| Sixth Amendment violations and people languishing in
| prison awaiting trials. It would be gridlock.
|
| "Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of
| federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions
| in the United States."
|
| https://legalknowledgebase.com/what-percentage-of-
| criminal-c...
| analog31 wrote:
| I think a public trial serves as a form of oversight.
| Widespread plea bargaining means we'll never know how
| many of these people even committed crimes, much less how
| the justice system operates.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > Most convictions are due to plea deals.
|
| Probably, but why should that matter?
|
| >If you limit that tool, people would simply have charges
| dropped
|
| So you mean that charges that don't matter are often
| pressed anyway, because prosecutors have a cheat code to
| short circuit the long and arduous process of trial which
| is _supposed_ to be long and arduous? No thanks.
|
| If they could prosecute fewer cases, then they would pick
| the ones that mattered. Last time I did grand jury duty,
| it was 40 cases every day, most of them bullshit drug
| possession charges.
|
| Or maybe, maybe they really do have so many important
| cases that this would become a problem. Then it should
| become a problem, so the public is forced to realize it
| must fund a more robust judicial system that can handle
| that high load. Either way, I do not want prosecutors
| using plea deals. And you shouldn't either.
|
| >"Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of
| federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions
| in the United States."
|
| There was a slow day at the grand jury, and the assistant
| DA was talking to us jurors. Claimed that our small city
| had about 4000 cases per year, and only 30 or so ever
| went to trial. How can justice be served if that's the
| case? He certainly thought that he was doing justice, but
| some of those people were just pleading out so that they
| could put an end to the nonsense, and not out of any true
| guilt. Whether they were forced to go to trial so that
| they would be then compelled to assert their (true)
| innocence, or whether the prosecutor would just stop
| making up bullshit charges, we'd all be better off. He
| genuinely thought of trials as some sort of fun
| distraction instead of what it really was... the entire
| point of his job. It was fucked up.
|
| The trouble with our world isn't that there aren't
| solutions, it's that when someone proposes them, they
| sound outlandish to people who subconsciously want the
| problems to persist.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Sixth Amendment is the right to a speedy trial. They
| would have to expand the courts to thousands of more
| courts to get that done. And then there are appeals, and
| appeals of appeals, etc.
|
| Not to mention lawyer fees would go up 10x or 100x for
| any simple thing.
|
| Want to get charged $10k for a speeding ticket? This is
| how it happens.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >They would have to expand the courts to thousands of
| more courts to get that done.
|
| Possibly. But if they're denying justice because "it
| would cost too much to do it correctly", then maybe the
| taxpayers just have to pony up more cash.
|
| But it's also possibly the case that they don't need more
| courts, they just have to stop focusing on bullshit drug
| charges that absolutely no one gives a shit about. If
| drug addicts want to commit slow suicide doing the stuff,
| let them. If you want to instead focus on the drug
| dealers, there are simple policies that would put street
| dealers out of business instantly.
|
| Your objections don't really line up with your goals, no
| matter what your goals happen to be. Think about it all a
| bit more carefully.
| dh2022 wrote:
| The problem is not the judge that approved a plea deal -
| the problem is the prosecutor who gave (negotiated maybe
| is a better term) such a lousy plea deal. After fleeing
| the state and being brought by US Marshal service I would
| think the prosecutor should have pushed for some state
| jail time.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I live in super liberal Illinois, which recently ended cash
| bail. It was a rough transition period but now it is fully
| implemented and every judge and prosecutor knows how
| everything works.
|
| Cook County Jail (Chicago and close-in suburbs) population
| is higher than it has been in over a decade. They had to
| reopen a section of the jail to deal with it. Because
| people who do what that guy did no longer get to bond out.
| If someone fled to California and got brought back by the
| Marshal's service, he's sitting in jail until trial. And
| _he_ is the one that needs to negotiate and offer
| concessions.
|
| Note: crime is now dropping a lot [1]. Trying setting the
| date range to "last 28 days"
|
| [1] https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/vrd/home.html
| qingcharles wrote:
| The end of cash bail was the right idea, though. At the
| time it ended there were ~100 homicide defendants out on
| bail (usually $150K+), yet there were hundreds of people
| held for months or years on petty offenses for want of
| under $250 to bail out.
|
| Wouldn't wish my worst enemy to be held in the CCJ,
| though. Easily one of the worst detention facilities in
| the USA.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I disagree. Cash bail is about holding someone's money
| hostage to secure their presence at court... the problem
| always was the violation of 8th amendment rights. By
| demanding _excessive_ bail, the person couldn 't possibly
| cough up the amount, which forced them to utilize bail
| bondsmen instead. Except that turns bail into a fine,
| because unlike true bail which is returned when they
| appear at court, bonds are retained by the bail bondsman.
|
| Simply obeying the 8th amendment would have fixed
| everything, and so much better too.
|
| In some cases, high bail was used because judges were
| pussies who refused to deny bail to those who were actual
| threats to the public (see this alot whenever you hear
| bullshit about some killer whose bail is set at $5
| million or whatever). Other times, it was just the status
| quo, and judges were giving no real consideration to the
| problem.
| qingcharles wrote:
| The whole concept of pretrial detention is fraught with
| problems.
|
| At least in Illinois, the theory is that now most
| defendants should be able to be free, or on house arrest,
| until their trial.
|
| Illinois doesn't allow bondsmen, which, while it meant
| you got your bond back+ it also meant that, unlike other
| states, you couldn't pay a smaller amount to a bondsman
| for him to get you out. So I imagine in Illinois at
| least, more people were stuck in pretrial due to (as you
| say) _excessive_ bail.
|
| One issue is that a lot of defendants have zero cash, or
| zero access to their cash. _You can 't pay your own
| bond_. Someone has to pay your bond for you. You can't go
| to an ATM and get the money out. You can't access the
| Internet to sell your shares or take a loan against your
| real estate. These people are stuck in pretrial until
| their case is resolved, which can take over a decade in
| some instances.
|
| I had a cellmate who was wrongfully arrested and had a
| $20K bond set. He was homeless. I proved the case was
| frivolous and sent him to court with the paperwork. The
| judge agreed, but gave the prosecution 60 days to
| respond. He reset the bail at $200. I offered to pay it,
| but instead he just asked to use my phone credit. He
| spent all day calling his homeless friends and over the
| next three days over a dozen of them walked to the jail
| and dropped off $10 and $20 bills until he had enough to
| leave.
|
| If a judge sets excessive bail, which the vast majority
| do, then you can appeal it. It's usually immediately
| appealable. In most states this would be a 6-stage
| appellate process to exhaust your rights. Each level
| taking usually one to two years.
|
| The conditions in county jails are vastly more punitive
| than even the harshest supermax prisons, generally.
| Absolutely abominable conditions. I remember one recent
| case where a homeless person was grabbed off the street
| for having a bag of white powder. He was put in pretrial
| detention. He pled guilty to possession of cocaine and
| took (IIRC) a 5-year prison sentence. Just before he was
| shipped out the lab results came back as negative for
| cocaine. The bag was powdered milk he had obtained from a
| food bank. The judge asked why he pled guilty and he
| simply pointed out the conditions of the jail were so
| harsh that he couldn't take it. Pretrial detention vastly
| increases both the conviction rate (you're more likely to
| plead guilty even if the charges are wrong) and also the
| length of sentence (people dressed in suits coming from
| the street just look less criminal and are sentenced a
| lot lighter, compared to people in Hamburgler outfits
| coming from jail).
|
| I think the writing is on the wall, though. There has
| been an absolute ton of hardcore litigation in the last
| decade on the legality of bail, and the intermediate
| appellate courts are striking it down. I think if SCOTUS
| had a slightly different makeup, then we'd see bail
| abolished at the federal constitutional level right now.
| The reason for the new statutes in Illinois and other
| states, counties and cities is that they are getting
| ahead of the problem. Better to fix it now than get sued
| down the road.
|
| + You'd rarely get it back. Often the judge would impose
| a fine, if you were sentenced, that would swallow your
| bond. One bonus, though, is that you could usually make
| your bond do "double-duty" by using it to bail out, but
| at the same time signing it over to an attorney to pay
| his costs. When the case reaches disposition the bond
| would go directly to the lawyer.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I think the writing is on the wall, though. There has
| been an absolute ton of hardcore litigation in the last
| decade on the legality of bail, and the intermediate
| appellate courts are striking it down.
|
| I think this bodes ill, myself. I expect a slowly-but-
| steadily rising culture that just skips out on trials
| altogether, because there are no immediate (or even
| longterm) costs to doing so. Though you might argue that
| in such cases judges will just issue bench warrants, this
| too will stop when everyone involved becomes too
| apathetic and demoralized to do so.
|
| Bail would be fine if it were carefully set such that the
| person can always scrape and afford it, enough that they
| wouldn't risk losing it but still low enough that they
| can gather it. Is there any reason at all that your
| anecdote had the judge set it to $20k? That's ridiculous.
| And for a homeless man as well... that's constructive
| bail denial. That judge should be censured and forced to
| retire.
|
| Just once I would like to see a policy adjustment that
| wasn't absurd overcompensation. I turn 51 in a few months
| so I've got maybe 2 decades left but I don't think it's
| going to happen.
| techjamie wrote:
| Asset Protection manager here. Our protection decisions are
| based on theft trends independent from our staffing. And
| generally, the theft scales with how much business a store
| receives, rather than how many staff they employ.
|
| More staff won't solve theft significantly because thieves
| carry the target merchandise to a less securely monitored
| area of the store. If they see an employee in an aisle,
| they'll move down another aisle where there isn't. And you
| can't have a person everywhere.
|
| If anything, putting something behind glass increases staff
| because we have to keep that area covered as much as possible
| so we get those sales.
| energywut wrote:
| Putting poor, desperate people in jail isn't going to solve the
| systemic issues that create poor, desperate people.
|
| Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR more
| expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen. It costs
| tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to house
| an inmate every year, to say nothing of the damage it causes
| that inmate. Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime
| in the future.
|
| A person would have to be stealing like 40 bottles of mouthwash
| _every single day_ for it to be cheaper to jail an inmate
| rather than just replace the mouthwash for the business. Cases
| like that also clog the justice system and prevent solving more
| serious crimes, deplete shared resources like police and public
| defenders, and overcrowd prisons.
|
| Even if you aren't a prison abolitionist like me, surely the
| rational approach here isn't "Pay more and increase the
| likelyhood the petty criminal becomes a serious criminal". It
| just makes zero rational sense to try and solve the issue that
| way.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| This article claims that the inmate costs per state range
| from $23k/year (Arkansas) to $307k/year (Massachusetts).
|
| https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cost-per-prisoner-in-us-
| sta...
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Locking up people for petty theft is almost certainly FAR
| more expensive than the cost of the materials being stolen
|
| Who pays matters.
| energywut wrote:
| We pay. We pay to house inmates. It costs us a TON of money
| to house prison populations.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Prisons make criminals more likely to commit crime in the
| future.
|
| Prisons make people less likely to become criminals.
|
| Your comment focuses on prison and the impact it has on a
| single criminal who is caught, convicted, and put in prison.
| Sometimes this is a useful way to look at things.
|
| I think it's far more useful to consider prison's impact on
| all the people who are _not_ in prison. It serves as a crime
| deterrent.
| energywut wrote:
| > Prisons make people less likely to become criminals.
|
| Here is a study supporting the assertion that prisons
| increase (or do not reduce) the likelihood of someone
| reoffending in the future.
| https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/715100
|
| Your claim that prisons reduce the likelihood of the
| population at large is not obvious on its face, as the US
| has very high rate of incarceration, but still has
| moderately high crime rates. Can you supply some data?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Your claim that prisons reduce the likelihood of the
| population at large is not obvious on its face
|
| Are you saying that, irrespective of the chance of being
| caught and convicted, and of the severity of the likely
| punishment, the likelihood of someone committing a crime
| is constant? Here is a study supporting
| the assertion that prisons increase (or do not reduce)
| the likelihood of someone reoffending in the future
|
| That has nothing to do with the point I made, which was
| about people _becoming_ criminals. I said nothing about
| the behaviour of existing criminals.
| energywut wrote:
| > Are you saying that, irrespective of the chance of
| being caught and convicted, and of the severity of the
| likely punishment, the likelihood of someone committing a
| crime is constant?
|
| I'm saying that prison sentences are not a deterrent to
| crime, and, in fact, increase the amount of crime done.
| Research has consistently shown that the threat of being
| caught is considerably higher deterrent than prison time,
| and that harsh sentences don't influence behavior:
|
| https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-
| deterr...
|
| > That has nothing to do with the point I made, which was
| about people becoming criminals.
|
| We are discussing crime. Which has a total sum. You can
| reduce that sum by preventing people from being criminals
| or you can reduce that sum by reforming criminals. I
| believe you need both. So it is important to remember
| that prisons negatively contribute to reforming people,
| increasing total crime, while research shows they don't
| contribute to preventing people from being criminals.
|
| We need other systems, systems that prevent people from
| becoming criminals AND reduce the likelihood of re-
| offending if they do.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I'm saying that prison sentences are not a deterrent to
| crime, and, in fact, increase the amount of crime done.
| Research has consistently shown that the threat of being
| caught is considerably higher deterrent than prison time,
| and that harsh sentences don't influence behavior:
|
| Would the threat of being caught be a deterrent if the
| sentence were 1 day?
| qingcharles wrote:
| Depends on the area. The area I lived in last year, it was rare
| to enter a Walgreens that wasn't actively being pillaged by
| shoplifters. I remember when they announced they were closing
| the only local Wal-mart (due to excessive shoplifting,
| allegedly) -- that same day the shoplifters went in like a
| swarm of locusts and stripped it bare. They had police at both
| exits, but they were powerless.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| From the end of World War II until the mid-1970s, the proportion
| of Americans in prison each year never exceeded 120 per 100,000
|
| That's a funny way of saying 0.12%. Is there a reason for this?
| It sure doesn't make it easy to compare the numbers they're
| giving with other numbers given as percentages.
|
| I guess if you're considering a sufficiently small population you
| could go from ~600,000 people in Vermont * 120/100,000 -> ~720
| imprisoned people in Vermont trivially, but we're the second
| smallest state. This certainly doesn't scale to cities over a
| million. At least I'd start having to think harder about it.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| > 120 per 100,000 ... Is there a reason for this?
|
| Crime statistics (e.g. homicides) are often quoted as 'n per
| 100,000 population'.
|
| It's probably also easier for mental math, e.g. here's a city
| with 1 million population, that's 10 100Ks, so 1200 people in
| prison.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It also lets you abstract away or compare to stats that are
| scaled to population but might not be 1:1 with a person, e.g.
| "thefts per 100,000 population per year" where one person
| might either commit or be the victim of multiple thefts in a
| year.
| everforward wrote:
| 120 per 100,000 includes significant digits. 0.12% could be
| anywhere from 120-124 per 100,000. You'd really want 0.120%,
| but that's confusing for different reasons.
|
| Worse would be 1,000 per 100,000, which is 1% but there's no
| way to tell that it's not rounded or truncated.
| ninthcat wrote:
| "120" and "0.12%" both have 2 significant digits. "120." and
| "0.120%" have 3 significant digits.
| everforward wrote:
| I would presume, perhaps incorrectly, that "120 per
| 100,000" has 3 significant digits and "12 per 10,000" has
| 2.
|
| I've never seen a period used like that in census data. It
| seems like a conscious choice because the period is
| confusing when used in the middle of a phrase. 12E1 makes
| more sense but is abnormal notation for many people.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures
|
| > Trailing zeros in an integer may or may not be
| significant, depending on the measurement or reporting
| resolution.
|
| 120 is either two or three significant figures, and you
| can't know which without knowing how the number was
| arrived at.
| outside1234 wrote:
| Crime is also way down over the last 20 years:
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/04/24/what-the-...
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Because of those tough on crime republicans.
|
| Lets see if cutting education has any impact over the next 20
| years.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Crime reduction is strongly correlated with an aging
| population. Crime is largely a young man's game.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Young and hungry, without opportunity. Also something being
| cut with reduced food aid and education.
| electriclove wrote:
| Education? Free Food Aid? In the US, people are not
| starving
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Just because a lot of people are fat, doesn't mean it is
| evenly distributed.
|
| That is just a right talking point about how we are so
| spoiled. Plenty of kids need food. Kids learn better when
| not hungry. And Republicans are cutting school food
| programs.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| 13% of American households experienced food insecurity in
| 2023, which means "these households were uncertain of
| having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs
| of all their members because they had insufficient money
| or other resources for food."
|
| 5% (6.8 million _households_ ) experienced "very low food
| security" which is "normal eating patterns of one or more
| household members were disrupted and food intake was
| reduced at times during the year because they had
| insufficient money or other resources for food"
|
| American food security is so bad in plenty of places that
| we can still get notable increases in academic
| performance _just by giving people food_
|
| Lack of access to food is literally holding the US back.
| WalterBright wrote:
| At least in Seattle, crime is "way down" because many
| businesses have stopped reporting it, because the police don't
| respond to less serious crimes anymore.
|
| A shopkeeper friend of mine closed his business in Seattle
| after multiple lootings of his place and the police never
| showing up. He relocated to a bedroom community.
|
| Crime statistics are not necessarily accurate, and politicians
| have an interest in minimizing those statistics one way or
| another.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is why the headline statistic for crime tracking is
| usually homicide, which is also down.
| energywut wrote:
| You have any data to support that? I've lived in Seattle for
| 40 years, and crime here is way less of a concern now than it
| ever has been. Especially violent crime.
|
| My experience also seems to match statistics. So, it would
| seem that your friend's experience might be the outlier --
| I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying their experience
| doesn't match the data and there's at least one anecdote
| (mine) that runs counter to their anecdote. Seems like a good
| opportunity to try and find data that supports your
| hypothesis?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| "Data on the things that no one is reporting"
| energywut wrote:
| Don't be facile.
|
| Police reports aren't the only source of data. If this
| was a widespread impact then there would be other sources
| of data that could be used to build this case.
|
| Additionally, we cannot make policy decisions on "just
| trust me, my friend said...". Maybe we can't get a
| perfect signal, but if you are going to challenge the
| prevailing data, I expect you to bring something novel
| beyond vibes. It doesn't have to be perfect, but a single
| anecdote plus " _I_ believe it " is not sufficient to
| oppose what the data we _do_ have is consistently saying
| -- crime is lower in Seattle, and has been consistently
| lowering over time.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Nothing has to be reported for a retail business to note
| that shrink is going up.
|
| Why isn't shrink going up?
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Um you are more gracious than me. I will just flat out call
| out as his friend as lying
| WalterBright wrote:
| Googling "crime down in seattle due to lower reporting
| rates" results in:
|
| "While crime rates in Seattle have recently shown a
| decrease, some reports suggest this may be partially
| attributed to a decline in reporting rather than a genuine
| reduction in criminal activity. Specifically, some
| authorities have noted that crimes against businesses, in
| particular, are frequently not reported."
|
| "The police chief specifically mentioned that a 10% drop in
| property crime might not be entirely accurate because many
| business-related crimes go unreported."
| vessenes wrote:
| I'm not sure the data backs up your assertion -- in fact,
| it looks to me like Seattle's crime rate is roughly steady
| -- and bad -- over the last 20 years.
|
| Seattle had the highest burglary rate in the nation of any
| large city as recently as 2023 (1201 per 100k residents!).
| https://www.safehome.org/resources/crime-statistics-by-
| state...
|
| from 1999-2018 (most recent I can find a chart for),
| Violent crime ebbed and flowed but ended essentially where
| it started: 680/100k residents, almost double the US
| average. https://www.macrotrends.net/global-
| metrics/cities/us/wa/seat.... I believe this uses FBI
| numbers.
|
| Seattle Police report 5394 violent crimes in 2024, with
| 755k residents that's ~700 violent crimes per 100k, or
| roughly where it was in both 1999 and in 2018.
| https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2025/04/28/crime-
| drops-2...
|
| I note that the Axios article says 2025 is on track to be a
| big drop; I have no idea what crime seasonality is, so I'd
| take that news story with a grain of salt until the year is
| out. Either way I just don't think Seattle's crime rates
| are "way less of a concern" over the last 40 years. Well,
| people may have become acclimated or stopped caring. But
| the rates are high, and don't look to have changed that
| much.
| energywut wrote:
| Look back further - https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/04/F...
|
| In the 80s and 90s, violent crime rates were well above
| 1000/100k residents, and property crimes 12k/100k.
| senderista wrote:
| It is a fact that CVS didn't lock up the toothpaste until a
| few years ago. There must be a reason.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| this is great news. but...
|
| i fear the new avenues of business sought by companies that
| operate for-profit prisons - i don't expect they'll just eat the
| losses of declining populations in their main moneymakers, and
| we're already starting to see them work on detention facilities
| for DHS etc.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Detention facilities for deportations is an inherently fast
| shrinking population.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| at some point, maybe. i have no trust in DHS whatsoever.
| pessimizer wrote:
| But do you think they'd start letting more people into the
| country, just to charge to detain and deport them? It's
| actually sort of an ideal solution. Big business gets back
| labor that it can threaten to deport if it demands
| anything, then they can clean up on the public-private
| deportations. Factory managers could send ICE a list of
| their most annoying employees to visit. It would be so
| 80's, I almost typed "the INS."
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| what you're describing is more or less already happening.
| don't think h1b visaholders won't become a target.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| You think if an H1B is canceled that they would illegally
| overstay?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > i don't expect they'll just eat the losses of declining
| populations in their main moneymakers
|
| Most of them (probably all) have contracts that stipulate they
| get paid per bed they provide, whether or not it's occupied.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| sure, but if the beds are empty, they're less likely to get
| new contracts.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Just get a few more Ciavarellas[0] elected and boom! Kids for
| Cash 2.0 - Little Timmy will never mouth off in class ever
| again.
|
| 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella
| Hilift wrote:
| Prisons are ancient history. The latest chapter is the tough on
| crime states have glorious high speed pursuits. All those
| Challengers blasting away at 140 mph in the breakdown lane,
| rollover 10-50 pits, suspects at gunpoint, now published in
| 1080 on YouTube for some state and county agencies. A single
| pursuit may result in two or three disabled police vehicles
| that need to be replaced. A prepped vehicle is over $100k. In
| 2024 Arkansas had 500+ high speed pursuits, resulting in three
| suspect deaths and three civilian deaths. Additionally, nine
| civilians, 14 troopers, and 83 suspects were injured. and
| easily over 1,000 vehicles trashed.
|
| Each of these videos puts most film car chases to shame. There
| must be 20 channels dedicated to this. Participating states
| I've seen are mostly Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Ohio,
| Michigan, and California. But any agency can publish a video,
| particularly if there is a shooting death and an official
| investigation.
| strict9 wrote:
| > _Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes,
| getting arrested, and being incarcerated. This matters because
| young offenders are the raw material that feeds the prison
| system: As one generation ages out, another takes its place on
| the same horrid journey._
|
| Another factor which will soon impact this, if it isn't already,
| is the rapidly changing nature of youth. Fertility rates have
| been dropping since 2009 or so. Average age of parents is
| increasing. Teen pregnancy on a long and rapid decline.
|
| All of these working together means that each year the act of
| having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely
| having more resources. Which in turn should mean fewer youth
| delinquency, which as the article notes is how most in prison
| started out.
| bluGill wrote:
| > the act of having a child is much more deliberate and the
| parents likely having more resources
|
| This is both good and bad. Having a child is very difficult,
| but it gets harder as you get older. You lack a lot of monitory
| resources as a teen or the early 20s, but you have a lot more
| energy, as you get older your body starts decaying you will
| lack energy. A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your
| when you are 55 (kids is only 15), and if the kids goes to
| college may have some dependency on you when your peers are
| retiring. Plus if your kids have kids young as well as you, you
| be around and have some energy for grandkids.
|
| Don't read the above as advocating having kids too young, it is
| not. However don't wait until you think it is the perfect time.
| If you are 25 you should be seriously thinking in the next 2
| years, and by 30 have them (if of course kids are right for you
| - that is a complex consideration I'm not going to get into).
| Do not let fear of how much it will cost or desire for more
| resources first stop you from having kids when you are still
| young enough to do well.
| c22 wrote:
| I had kids in my late 30s and they tested my patience and
| emotional regulation to an extent greater than any other
| experience of my life. I was somewhat emotionally volatile in
| my 20s and I can't imagine my kids having better outcomes if
| I'd had to learn to parent at that time in my life.
| wvenable wrote:
| My children are 12 years apart in age and being a parent in
| my 20s was a much better experience. I had less money, but
| I had more time. I wiser now, but I had more energy. I
| could relate to being a kid more.
|
| I'm not suggesting it's better. But people seem to
| automatically assume that being older when having kids as
| better. I know some much older parents who were not good
| parents. I know I would not make a good parent to a younger
| child now that I'm in my 40s.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I did not have more time in my 20s. In my 20s and early
| 30s, I was busy "getting out there". Building my life, my
| interests, my foundation (not just my career). Now I have
| a happy life to stand on, and can devote more time,
| attention, and energy to my family.
|
| I don't deny that your way can work out as well. But OPs
| advice was "get children before you are 30, don't wait
| until after". Whereas my honest advice, based on my
| experience, is "wait until you are 35, you'll be much
| more stable life in several regards".
|
| Which approach is best for you depends on a lot of
| things. For me, I can honestly say, there is no way I
| would be where I am if I had had kids in my 20s or even
| early 30s, and I also wouldn't have been as good a father
| as I am right now based on how I've grown since then.
| Both things that my child directly benefits from.
| wvenable wrote:
| I was "getting out there" too! So many major life
| milestones. But actually it has never stopped. Most of my
| major career changes happened after the second child. I
| have entirely new interests now.
|
| I feel like I do have the unique perspective having
| actually done both. I don't need to assume what kind of
| parent I was in my 20s because I was that parent. And I'm
| a different parent now. But being a younger parent was a
| great experience despite any other consequences.
| anyfoo wrote:
| That's interesting. Because I genuinely feel I'm much
| better cut out to be a parent now. Is it different for
| you? I have so much patience and understanding, and I see
| that lacking in many of the younger parents around me. I
| see them and I remember myself.
|
| And the life I have would just not have been possible if
| I had a child back then. Not even if I completely
| sacrificed family time and attention back then, which I
| never would have wanted.
|
| But I guess we have to agree to disagree. For you, being
| a younger parent worked out better. For me, I'm certain I
| got my child at the right time. In any case, I find OPs
| general recommendation that if you want children, you
| should have them by 30, to be ill-advised to the point of
| being harmful. Many people would benefit from waiting
| until later.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > I have so much patience and understanding
|
| I'm 32, and I think I currently have much less patience
| and understanding than I did at say 22. Life has
| basically broken me to the point that I simply don't have
| the capacity for these things that I used to.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| Haha, I like to joke that I reached peak intellectual
| capacity around 26 and peak emotional maturity around 14
| and both have been dropping from their peak since then.
| mettamage wrote:
| It also depends on the person. I was not an adult at 27.
| I realized I was one at 32 though.
|
| Kids at 27 would have been a bad bad idea. Kids at 32 as
| well (wrong partner). I'm even older now but I am with
| the right partner and naturally want kids now. Before
| her, the topic wouldn't even cross my mind.
|
| I think it's really hard to give general advice if one
| doesn't mention how their advice interacts with other
| variables
| bluGill wrote:
| The advice was to start before you are 30, not finish
| then. If you have multiple kids my advice is the last
| should be around 35 maybe 40 but space them out
| davedx wrote:
| We have 4 kids and I relate to them really well I think,
| not to the level where I'm engrossed in descriptions of
| the latest Roblox game but they're just younger humans,
| not some alien species... I'm in my mid 40's and our
| youngest is 10.
|
| I also have plenty of energy, the only real change I've
| noticed getting older is I'm in bed a bit earlier than I
| was in my 20s.
|
| I don't understand why people think midlife is some kind
| of drained, lifeless decrepitude
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > I don't understand why people think midlife is some
| kind of drained, lifeless decrepitude
|
| I think people have a variety of health conditions and
| lifestyle choices, some of which do indeed result in less
| energy in mid-life.
| gmoot wrote:
| Or possibly you would have learned emotional regulation
| sooner.
|
| Kids change you, for the better if you let it. There's
| nothing like a completely helpless infant who is totally
| dependent on you to wear down your selfish tendencies.
| jimbokun wrote:
| A lot of people are "emotionally volatile" in their 20s
| because they don't have the growth in responsibility and
| maturity motivated by being a parent.
| anyfoo wrote:
| We _did_ wait for the "perfect" time, and are very happy we
| did.
|
| I got my son at almost 40, and I'm positive I'm a much better
| parent because of that. Sure, kids cost energy, but at 40 and
| 50 you're not geriatric. I often get the opportunity to
| compare our parenting style to younger parents, and it's
| clear that they often have some emotional growing up to do
| themselves. They complain about normal parenting things that
| we just shrug about, they are torn between their career and
| raising a kid, and most importantly they often lack patience,
| where to us it just comes natural.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > but at 40 and 50 you're not geriatric.
|
| biologically, and for pregnancy, yes you are.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I didn't say get pregnant at 50. I said I became a parent
| at almost 40, my wife is a couple of years younger. No
| problems whatsoever, and I seem to have more energy for
| parenting (and especially patience) than the parents in
| their 20s who haven't even found themselves yet.
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| It's actually the age of the egg that matters most, not
| the age of the mother during pregnancy.
| pnw wrote:
| Paternal age is also a contributor. Children with fathers
| over 40 see an increase in potential diseases, a shorter
| lifespan and higher infant mortality, likely due to DNA
| mutations.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paternal_age_effect
| anyfoo wrote:
| According to that page, the whole issue seems to be very
| nuanced. It also contains the quotes I attached below.
|
| Be it as it may, I conclude that there is an elevated
| risk for problems the older you get (although for some
| issues, cause and effect may be reversed, which is hard
| to resolve), but that that risk may not be so significant
| as to outweigh other advantages.
|
| > A simulation study concluded that reported paternal age
| effects on psychiatric disorders in the epidemiological
| literature are too large to be explained only by
| mutations. They conclude that a model in which parents
| with a genetic liability to psychiatric illness tend to
| reproduce later better explains the literature.[9]
|
| > Later age at parenthood is also associated with a more
| stable family environment, with older parents being less
| likely to divorce or change partners.[43] Older parents
| also tend to occupy a higher socio-economic position and
| report feeling more devoted to their children and
| satisfied with their family.[43] On the other hand, the
| risk of the father dying before the child becomes an
| adult increases with paternal age.[43]
|
| > According to a 2006 review, any adverse effects of
| advanced paternal age "should be weighed up against
| potential social advantages for children born to older
| fathers who are more likely to have progressed in their
| career and to have achieved financial security."[63]
| dh2022 wrote:
| It seems kids procreated by older parents (aged 35 years
| or older) have increased risk of Down Syndrome. The
| effect is most pronounced when both parents are older
| than 35 years: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12771769/
| kccqzy wrote:
| How are these two measures different? Oocyte formation
| happens before birth.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I believe freezing eggs is considered to be keeping them
| at the age they were when frozen?
| arkey wrote:
| > they often lack patience, where to us it just comes
| natural.
|
| Having kids fast-tracked me to a critical increase in
| patience. I've grown so much in less than three years
| because of my kids. I'm not sure this growth would have
| ever happened so quickly through other means.
|
| And I'll always have a special, particular respect
| especially towards my firstborn for causing that in me, and
| for enduring my shortcomings in the meantime.
| sethammons wrote:
| My wife and I had our first at age 15. Then another at 22.
| And our last at 27. I've raised children while on welfare
| and while a software engineer.
|
| I was more patient as a teen than I am now in my 40s. Now I
| am tired. All the time. I fear I would literally die of
| exhaustion if I had to maintain more irregular hours than I
| already do due to insomnia that I have developed over the
| last half decade.
| wiether wrote:
| The condition you're in now is a result of what you went
| through previously.
|
| Someone with no one to care about until their 40s is
| supposed to be in a much better shape than someone who
| raised three kids for the last +25 years.
|
| Congrats on making it though, I completely understand why
| you would feel tired all the time!
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > I got my son at almost 40, and I'm positive I'm a much
| better parent because of that.
|
| I think so too. Now to be sure to balance things, while I
| was 42 when we had our kid, my wife was only 28.
|
| 10 years later and things are still great.
| pamelafox wrote:
| I had my children at 36 and 38, and I'm the mother, and
| energy-wise, I've had no issues. Yes, they considered me to
| be of "advanced maternal age" in the OB department and gave
| me special treatment due to it, but my doctors told me that
| the "advanced maternal age" threshold (35) was based off
| outdated research anyway. In the bay area, most of the
| mothers I've met were around that age, and my friends are
| having their kids at the same age.
|
| It was really nice that I had time to establish my career and
| figure things out before having kids.
| Swizec wrote:
| > In the bay area, most of the mothers I've met were around
| that age, and my friends are having their kids at the same
| age
|
| San Francisco has the highest rate of geriatric pregnancies
| in USA. We are in a statistical bubble where having kids
| late is normal (because careers and hcol).
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/mother-birth-
| age...
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Bubble implies that it's going to burst. I don't see it.
| Women aren't going to stop wanting careers, and HCOL is
| coming for everybody. I expect the whole country to join
| SF in this "bubble".
| TeaBrain wrote:
| Bubble in this context means a unique environment that is
| unlike places on the outside of said bubble. It's not
| referring to a bubble like in the sense of a inflating
| market bubble.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The desire to work and have children is going nowhere.
| Like Hollywood, the careers are going to go away. The
| money that lubricates the Bay Area is all from the Middle
| East now, and the return on in-region labor dollars is
| declining.
| froohmb wrote:
| I'm sure the return on in region labor dollars decline
| that you note is real but is it regional? Where in the US
| is the return on labor dollars not declining? Housing
| costs, including taxes, seems to be the big problem in
| the Bay Area. Workers are still productive, but they
| require higher pay to offset the demand for housing
| caused by all the foreign "lubrication" and tech-49ers.
| kgwxd wrote:
| The US is already a bubble. Government is currently
| trying to make it burst as fast as possible. Getting back
| to the point where what women want doesn't matter again.
| HCOL will be a luxury term, life in debtors prisons will
| be the new norm.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| The issue here is this can lead people to pushing it till
| 40+.
|
| I was talking to a nice girl up until she mentioned still
| wanting kids in her late 40s. Maybe I'm old school, but
| telling someone you froze your eggs the same day you meet
| them is weird.
|
| Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to graduate
| high school and make enough to support yourself and a
| family with a bit of struggle.
|
| This rapidly transformed into no, get your masters, get 8
| years of experience. Earn at least 300k as a couple. Then
| and only then should you consider a family. Childcare is 3k
| plus a month in many places.
|
| For myself , I wish I made this happen in my mid 20s. I had
| to move back home to take care of a family member (fck
| cancer) and I suffered various personal setbacks due to it.
|
| In my 30s I've let go of expecting anything. This world has
| already given me so much.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Nobody said you should wait that long. As for your
| anecdote, what's wrong with figuring out early during
| dating whether you plan on having children or not? People
| _should_ talk about those things early, since there is
| hardly anything that makes a relationship more
| incompatible long term, and leads to more (even mutual)
| heartbreak and sorrow than having to break up with a
| person solely because their most uncompromisable life
| plan differs.
|
| In my 20s, it felt indeed weird to bring that up early
| for me, because I wasn't ready yet and didn't even really
| know what I wanted yet. Later in life, when dating we
| always talked about potential family planning and general
| outlook on life early. (Unless it was never meant to be a
| serious relationship to begin with.)
| frollogaston wrote:
| Yeah, this is exactly something to discuss early. My wife
| and I were on the same page from earlier in dating about
| having kids in our 20s.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Absolutely. It serves as a filter, if people are being
| honest. It also highlights the bizarre dating culture and
| view of life we've adopted. This dating culture has
| produced a good deal of rotten fruit.
|
| The _ultimate_ purpose of dating is to meet your future
| spouse. We 're turned it into some kind of senseless
| sexual escapade, and this has poisoned the relations
| between men and women. It makes them exploitative and
| dehumanizing in spirit: sprinkling them with the waters
| of "consent" doesn't change that, as the subjective
| cannot abolish the objective. We've reduced sex to
| something that is merely pleasurable and _contradicted_
| its intrinsic and essential function which is procreative
| by employing an array of technologies that impede and
| interfere with healthy procreative processes. This
| creates a mindset not unlike that of a drug user who is
| obsessed with getting another hit with no thought given
| to the damage, or the bulimic who wants the sensual
| satisfaction of eating, but not the calories.
|
| The psychophysical reality of sexual intercourse is much
| more than some passing physical pleasure. It mobilizes
| processes in us that are completely oriented toward
| bonding and the strengthening of the relationship in
| preparation for children. Whence the stereotype that men
| will often exit quickly in the morning after a one night
| stand with a strange woman? Because both can feel, if
| only subconsciously, that the processes of bonding are
| taking place, and who wants to bond -- and in such a
| profound and intimate way -- with someone they've just
| met? In this regard, the character of Julianna in
| _Vanilla Sky_ makes an astoundingly profound and accurate
| remark for a movie coming out of Hollywood: "Don't you
| know when you sleep with someone, your body makes a
| promise whether you do or not?" Our capacity for sexual
| intimacy is likewise dulled.
|
| (Masturbation is even worse. Those processes bond us with
| a fictional harem of the imaginary and close us within
| ourselves. For social animals like us, this is a recipe
| for misery.)
|
| We thwart and ignore our biological nature to our own
| detriment. The procreative prime spans the mid-twenties
| into the early 30s. _Statistically_ , most people should
| be having families by their mid-20s. Our culture confuses
| people and creates a pointless obstacle course that leads
| them to postpone such things either because they're too
| immature (and encouraged to remain so, also by this
| unserious dating culture) or because they believe they
| must achieve some arbitrary milestones first.
| Furthermore, family and community support has been dashed
| by a culture of hyperindividualism.
|
| The causes of demographic decline are not a mystery.
| People simply either don't think deeply enough, or they
| don't want to make the cultural changes necessary to
| restore normalcy.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| This is a much more reasonable position than many will
| believe. I think writing like a 19th century nonfiction
| author probably contributes to that aha
|
| Edit:
|
| To be clear I appreciate this comment and agree with it
| in the large. It's hard to talk about these things
| without being quickly dismissed in the current zeitgeist.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| You have far too much of an obsession with sex here and
| really need to stop and take a breath.
|
| Dating culture is evolved to help you find a mate based
| on YOUR choices and capability not your parents or class
| level. This allows you to "trial" compatibility over
| shorter time and find better fits.
|
| What you seem to be talking about is 'Online Hookup
| Culture' which is more of a hobby if we are being honest
| than a way of finding a mate. And ultimately probably
| STILL better when faced with a society increasingly not
| finding mates or having kids at all. So basically all of
| your thoughts are self-contradictory due to a bit of self
| righteousness here.
|
| Please don't let your hangups around sex (correct or not)
| become a world view. It's not a healthy obsession.
| RankingMember wrote:
| > Masturbation is even worse[...] We thwart and ignore
| our biological nature to our own detriment.
|
| Masturbation is part of our biological nature and has
| been occurring for millions of years. Every primate does
| it.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Sexual escapades are only senseless if you rigidly
| believe sex is only for specific things, and adopt a
| model where human beings are property and can be owned.
| While sex does have a biological purpose, that in itself
| doesn't mean it has to be limited to that purpose.
|
| Sex is fun and most sex doesn't lead to procreation, nor
| is intended to. The last 50 times I've had sex, me and
| partner(s) involved have had no intention of making a
| baby, and that's fine. Nature/God agrees with me, because
| the number of children most families have are typically
| far less than the number of times the parents have had
| sex.
|
| There's a lot of times people want sex and don't want it
| to be some big life changing event. I won't marry someone
| like that.
|
| > This creates a mindset not unlike that of a drug user
| who is obsessed with getting another hit
|
| Everyone wants pleasurable things with a minimum of bad
| or unwanted consequences. This is called being smart and
| using your God-given brain and free will. This doesn't
| make anyone a drug user. This puritanical war on pleasure
| can only serve authoritarian and anti-human ends, which
| is often an explicit or implicit base of forms of
| slavery/indenture, and is the main reason why I strongly
| advocate against it.
|
| > The psychophysical reality of sexual intercourse is
| much more than some passing physical pleasure.
|
| Anything that feels really good will beget attachment
| because you want more of it. When it's attached to a
| person, you're going to want to be around that person
| more. And of course, human beings are naked apes with
| courtship and bonding instincts and all that good stuff.
| But people bond over things other than sex, and any good
| relationship or marriage will have many bonds other than
| the sexual one. Indeed, marriages where sex is the only
| reason they got together are as hollow as this drug user
| strawman you trotted out.
|
| > Masturbation is even worse.
|
| People who become overly dependent on parasocial
| relationships with fictional anything, whether that's a
| harem, video game, movie star, person mentioned in a
| religious book, etc. need help. I masturbate from time to
| time and it does not give me any problems, but I'm not
| addicted to it. But I would rather lonely people
| masturbate themselves into a coma than sexually assault
| others simply because of people who will say masturbation
| is wrong but at the same time won't consider other things
| like legalizing prostitution.
|
| > they don't want to make the cultural changes necessary
| to restore normalcy.
|
| I don't. The old way sucked. Robots and AI should be
| doing all our menial work, and the possibilities for
| pleasure are endless. The people who just can't exist
| without an employer giving them meaning because they
| never got enough approval from their daddies need to move
| to another planet.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| This wasn't even a first date, it was like she said hi to
| me at an event and just started taking about having a
| family.
|
| Felt really awkward for small talk.
|
| My point was the economy should support having a family
| in your 20s if that's what you want to do. You shouldn't
| need a well paid career, a quality lifestyle that
| supports a family should be available for everyone.
|
| I imagine universal health care, paid family leave ( for
| months not weeks) and affirmative (free?) childcare could
| bring that gap.
|
| At a point it isn't even an age issue. A lot of people
| will never earn enough to really support a family, and
| that's a failure of the social contract.
|
| You should be able to get a job as a Walmart clerk, have
| your partner work part time and still afford to have a
| family.
|
| I think I've muddled my own point here, but it should be
| easier. Maybe that Walmart clerk could own a house ?!
| anyfoo wrote:
| I do agree with your point about society. The reason we
| waited are way beyond monetary issues, and we would have
| waited regardless, but people should be able to support a
| family without an "advanced" career if they choose so.
| gus_tpm wrote:
| I think it would be hard to find someone that does not
| agree with you on the street.
|
| These conversations should not need to happen but they do
| because of the current inequality that exists. A couple
| can't change the world so they talk about these things
| since it's their best option
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| Sounds like her biological clock was ticking very very
| loudly
| frollogaston wrote:
| Society does kinda support this. People with low-paying
| jobs actually have the most kids. You just need more
| income if you want to have kids at a good time _and_ send
| them to higher-end schools, including K-12.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > For myself , I wish I made this happen in my mid 20s. I
| had to move back home to take care of a family member
| (fck cancer) and I suffered various personal setbacks due
| to it.
|
| I hear ya. My spouse developed mental illness after sons
| 4,5 were born. A spouse can sabotage a lot of things when
| they set their mind to it - and their mind never stops.
| Not even at 3am. The first year was hard. The second was
| harder. After 5ys we run out of adjectives. After 15y
| we're using Dr.Seuss letters to spell out how things are.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| What was the nature of her illness and was it directly
| related to the kids? If you don't mind me asking, of
| course. That sounds like a very challenging thing all the
| best
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > What was the nature of her illness
|
| Psychosis, bipolar, BPD, NPD, pretty much all the *PDs.
| She switched it up.
|
| > was it directly related to the kids
|
| As in stemmed from? No.
|
| As far as challenge related to the kids, it was 1)
| keeping the them as safe as possible when she was not and
| 2) proving some semblance of parenting. Both were
| difficult-to-impossible, given that kids are trapped at
| home, thanks to eradication of free range areas.
| wredcoll wrote:
| > Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to
| graduate high school and make enough to support yourself
| and a family with a bit of struggle
|
| This has literally only been true for about 30 years out
| of the sum total of human history, would you like to
| guess _when_ those 30 years happened to be?
|
| Obviously the answer is "1950s america".
|
| For the rest of human history, you needed something
| beyond the education you received until the age of 18 in
| order to support a family.
| wizee wrote:
| People supported families with single incomes with less
| than high school education for centuries before the
| 1950s.
| watwut wrote:
| All the other members of the family were active and
| produced useful things - both kids and women. The iddle
| lifestyle was limited to richer classes.
| mandmandam wrote:
| In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast
| majority of human history - people worked ~15-20
| hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or
| social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded
| as 'idleness').
|
| Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while
| _raising_ hours worked - even as productivity keeps
| shooting up. There 's no good reason for people to
| tolerate this; it's just exploitation.
| _benton wrote:
| You can still do this now, it's just called "being
| homeless" and it actually sucks.
| mandmandam wrote:
| A, being homeless and being in a gatherer society are
| very different things.
|
| And B, even if you wanted to live that way you can't any
| more; because the commons has been relentlessly exploited
| past its breaking point for centuries.
|
| I shouldn't really have to explain any of this, but
| people generally seem to have some weird ideas and blind
| spots surrounding our history as a species.
| _benton wrote:
| In many countries the only obstacle is the legality of
| living on government lands. In Canada there are people
| living a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle on crown land.
| The option is totally available for many people who chose
| not to do it.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > the only obstacle is the legality of living on
| government lands
|
| Yes, the obstacle of living illegally on land that has
| been systematically over-exploited for centuries (or too
| harsh to bother), without any community or experience.
| Not sure I'm seeing your point.
| _benton wrote:
| People do it so it's definitely possible. Most people
| chose not to do it because it's a hard life with a
| horrible quality of life. Being a hunter-gatherer and
| living a nomadic life is not and was never easy or fun.
| bluGill wrote:
| Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work
| away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation
| that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When
| you relook at what people did most of the time you
| realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours
| to survive.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Look man if you want to write a refutation of Marshall
| Sahlins' work, go ahead. I might even read it. But I'm
| not going to just take the word of a random commentator -
| are you even in anthropology?
|
| Like, this is a broad consensus thing. There's not really
| much debate; ethnographic studies have backed it up.
| Where are you getting your info from?
| Avshalom wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#C
| rit...
| mandmandam wrote:
| There seem to be two main points of critique there:
|
| 1. That there was war and war sucked; disease; and also
| infant mortality was high - therefore life sucked back
| then. None of that really factors in to the debate of how
| much free time people had; and those thing are all still
| very much with us (especially in America).
|
| 2. That food prep and gathering firewood takes time.
| Well, gathering firewood is also known as 'going for a
| walk in nature', and it's actually good for you. You can
| chat with your friends while you do it. It's not like
| your average job. It might not be technically 'idle', but
| it's a lot closer to 'idle' than flipping burgers in a
| sweatbox.
|
| Same with food prep - picking through some dried beans,
| or stirring a pot every 30 mins and making sure it
| doesn't boil over, while you tell stories around the
| table just isn't comparable to working in an Amazon
| warehouse pissing into plastic bottles.
|
| It's critique, and you can buy it if you want; but
| there's nothing there I would call substantial.
| Avshalom wrote:
| 1. how many hours a day would _you_ work if it meant not
| watching 6 of your 7 children die.
|
| 2. How'd you get those dried beans out of their pods?
| Where'd you get that pot? Where'd you get the water?
|
| 3. You didn't actually read the critique did you, you the
| wikipedia paragraph characterizing the critiques.
| mandmandam wrote:
| 1. The choice isn't between having free time and having
| modern maternity care. And it's not what was being
| debated. Like, yeah, antibiotics and anesthetic are great
| to have, but working 40+ hours a week isn't a
| prerequisite for them to exist so I have no idea why
| you're bringing it up.
|
| 2. Sitting around the table, singing songs, telling
| stories, or quietly reflecting; all working at my own
| pace, in the comfort of a home that's been owned outright
| for generations, surrounded by organic soil free from
| pesticides and plastic.
|
| 3. I read your link, not every cited article. I've
| personally _lived_ that way, and I know what I 'm talking
| about. There's a big difference between shucking corn
| with your family or stacking logs, and shuffling numbers
| at a bullshit job which exists to make two or three
| incredibly rich people thousands of miles away a tiny bit
| wealthier. That said, if there's something more you'd
| like to bring to the discussion, bring it.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Where'd the corn come from? hunter gatherers had teosint.
| How'd you turn a tree into logs? Where'd the house come
| from, where'd the table come from?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| You've taken the position that there's some issue with
| _original affluent society_ but none of the points you
| 're raising run counter either to it or to the adjacent
| observation that modern quality of life almost certainly
| doesn't require anywhere near the hours worked at
| present. Unless you consider economic inequality to be a
| prerequisite for it anyway.
| kulahan wrote:
| You're not really responding to what he's saying. You're
| sitting at the middle of the story, where the family is
| no longer surviving, but rather thriving. It's probably
| possible to do this, but it's a difficult stage to reach,
| and maintaining it requires a LOT of resources.
|
| And anyways, if you're a hunter-gatherer, you're
| following your prey, not sitting around growing corn to
| be shucked while you sing songs or whatever.
|
| By the way, my buddies and I tell each other stories at
| work all the time? You can do this at work too, you know.
| What you seem to be doing is imagining a world where
| you've outsourced all your labor to "it'll get done"
| land, then combined hunter-gatherer lifestyles with
| agrarian lifestyles
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Most things people eat need hours of preparation that
| isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example.
|
| Yeah, and we now expect women to work 40+ hour work weeks
| _and_ house work on top of that. _That_ is the thing
| causing societal reproduction rates to plummet.
|
| Let's just do the math: a day has 24 hours. The
| recommendation for healthy sleep is 8 hours. Then, you
| work for 8 hours, with 1 hour added for the unpaid lunch
| break. That's the two largest blocks, leaving 7 hours to
| distribute... dedicate 3 hours for the "staying alive"
| stuff (preparing for going to work in the morning, aka
| breakfast, shave, getting dressed, preparing dinner,
| eating dinner, have a shower and at least some unwind
| time to fall asleep).
|
| And that in turn leaves only 4 hours for everything else:
| running errands (aka shopping, dealing with bureaucracy,
| disposing of trash, cleaning), just doing nothing to wind
| down your mind from a hard day at work, hobbies, social
| activities (talking with your friends and family or
| occasionally going out) and, guess what, actually having
| sex.
|
| Easy to see how that's already a fully packed day.
| Society just took the productivity gains from women no
| longer having to deal with a lot of menial work (washing
| dishes and clothing, as that got replaced by machines,
| and repairing clothes) and redistributed these hours to
| capitalism.
|
| And now, imagine a child _on top_ of that. Add at least
| half an hour in the morning to help get the kid ready for
| school, an hour to drive the kid to errands (because
| public transit is more like "transhit"), and another two
| hours to help the kid with homework because that workload
| is ridiculous and you don't want the kid to fall behind
| kids of parents rich enough to afford private tutors.
| But... whoops, isn't that just about the entire
| "everything else" time block? And younger children need
| even more work, constantly changing nappies, going to the
| doctor's all the time because it's one new bug every new
| week and sometimes the bug also catches _you_ cold...
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| You're inventing sexism where there isn't any. The men
| who expect their wives to work 40+ hour weeks are not (at
| least as a group) the ones dumping all housework and
| childcare on them.
|
| The time constraints that come with a dual income
| certainly make the logistics of having children more
| difficult though.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| How many hours a day would you estimate that primates in
| the wild "work"? Without commenting on quality of life it
| seems readily apparent to me that many foraging animals
| have large amounts of leisure time.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Who said anything about the idle lifestyle?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Implied by "single income".
|
| In reality in most families all family members were
| contributing something to the household income.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| No they didn't, read some history. 'Cottage industry' and
| 'child labor' are good search terms to use.
| defrost wrote:
| You might want to brush up on your history.
|
| Aside from the peer comment pointing out the bleedingly
| obvious, there's also a bit of history here:
| In 1907 Justice Henry Bourne Higgins, President of the
| Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court, set the
| first federally arbitrated wages standard in Australia.
| Using the Sunshine Harvester Factory as a test case,
| Justice Higgins took the pioneering approach of hearing
| evidence from not only male workers but also their wives
| to determine what was a fair and reasonable wage for a
| working man to support a family of five.
| Higgins's ruling became the basis for setting Australia's
| minimum wage standard for the next 70 years.
|
| that you're clearly unaware of.
|
| * https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-
| moments/resources/harvester-...
|
| * https://www.fwc.gov.au/about-us/history/waltzing-
| matilda-and...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvester_case
| chownie wrote:
| Can a man support a family of 5 on minimum wage in
| Australia, or did it stop working?
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Minimum wage is more complicated in Australia. There are
| effectively minimum wage levels set per profession, known
| as awards.
|
| This is the list of awards:
| https://www.fairwork.gov.au/employment-
| conditions/awards/lis... it's pretty extensive
|
| Each award is also complex, and covers a range of issues
| in the employment. For example, this is the Professional
| Employee award:
| https://awards.fairwork.gov.au/MA000065.html just working
| out what the minimum wage would be for a graduate
| engineer with 2 years experience is a complex, detailed
| matter.
|
| But yes, probably, for most professions you could
| reasonably expect to support a family of 5 on the award,
| depending on location and definition of "support".
| Affording a house would largely depend on an additional
| inheritance, though.
| pc86 wrote:
| Is "inheritance" used in a different way here similar to
| how "award" is, or are you saying you often need to
| inherit money from your family in order to be able to buy
| a house in Australia?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > or are you saying you often need to inherit money from
| your family in order to be able to buy a house in
| Australia?
|
| Tell me a place in any Western society (outside of run-
| down rural areas/flyover states) where an average
| employee (i.e. no ultra-rich tech hipster bros) is able
| to afford a home before the age of 30 purely by his own
| savings and income. That is frankly no longer a reality
| for most people.
| pc86 wrote:
| You seem pretty defensive over me asking whether a word
| was used in the way I expect it was.
| erikerikson wrote:
| For most of human history, there were no formal schools.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Obviously the answer is "1950s america".
|
| And the 50s to 80s anywhere else in the civilized world.
| graemep wrote:
| It does not have to be a replica of of 50s society
| though. In particular, I do not think the model of "men
| go out to work, women look after home and kids" is a
| great one.
|
| There are lot of alternatives. Men can be primary parents
| (I was, once the kids got to about the age of eight or
| so, and was an equal parent before that) and they could
| stay at home (I continued working, but I was already
| self-employed and working from home, and my ex never
| worked after having children).
|
| I think the ideal set up (it would have been so for me)
| would have been for both parents to work part time.
|
| Of course it still comes back to, you should be able to
| raise a family on the equivalent of one full time income.
|
| Of course, if the leisured society predicted a few
| decades ago had come to pass it would be one part time
| salary.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > I think the ideal set up (it would have been so for me)
| would have been for both parents to work part time.
|
| Beautifully said, very progressive also!
|
| I am a big fan of the 4-day work week (for the same
| amount of money as 5 days), it's been transformative for
| my life. The extra energy and focus you get from that 1
| day translates to higher productivity in the 4 days where
| you do work. Sadly, the current "squeeze em', bleed em'
| dry, and drop em'" brand of capitalism is incompatible
| with the majority of the people to experience how good
| life can be like that.
|
| I certainly ain't looking forward to them raising the
| retirement age to 1337 by the time I get to retire.
|
| It's like a race where they repeatedly move the finishing
| line because the organizers took the medals and sold
| them, while waiting for you to drop dead so they don't
| have to give you what you are due.
| pc86 wrote:
| Who wouldn't be a fan of 80% of the work for 100% of the
| pay? It's a built-in raise equal to or greater than what
| you'd get from changing jobs, without the switch in
| seniority or experience.
| ryoshoe wrote:
| A 4 day work week can always be implemented as 4 10 hour
| days instead of 5 8 hour days.
| ath3nd wrote:
| > Who wouldn't be a fan of 80% of the work for 100% of
| the pay?
|
| If you, as an employer, want a motivated, energetic
| workforce who are not slacking off, it's also in your
| interest to give that opportunity to your employees, as
| multiple experiments have shown that 4-day work results
| in increased productivity and employee retention.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Knowledge work does not have 1-1 correspondence between
| time spent and productivity. Things get VERY non-linear,
| to the point that more than 50 hours of real knowledge
| work a week is often LESS productive than 40 hours.
| bluGill wrote:
| The model of men work while women watch the kids was most
| of history. Of course is completely ignors 'womens work'
| which was very needed for survival and defined by things
| you could do while also watching kids. for the first few
| years kids eat from mom so she cannot get far from them
| (after that she is probably pregnaunt again thus
| restarting the cycle). Mens work was anything that needed
| to be done that could not be done when pregaunt or
| nursing a kid.
|
| today men have the ability to watch kids thanks to
| formula (though it is better for the kids to eat from mom
| - this is rarely talked about because it is easy to go
| too far and starve a baby to death in the exceptions).
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Huh? Maybe that's when you saw people on TV for the first
| time.
|
| High school was advanced education in 2000. Basic
| education ended around grade 6-8.
| pc86 wrote:
| No reasonable person considered high school advanced
| education in the 70's let alone 2000. If 85%+ of people
| get it for half a century, it is by definition not
| advanced.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/02/Grad-ra...
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Whoops, that was a typo, i meant 1900 :)
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Whether something should be the case has little bearing
| on whether it has been the case for any length of time
| particularly in something as flexible as the organization
| of society. It should largely be fine to point at
| something and say "I would like things to work this way"
| and try to organize society in that direction.
| tuna74 wrote:
| That was only true for 1950s USA if you were a white male
| with a pretty good job and a wife staying home taking
| care of the kids.
| frollogaston wrote:
| In less wealthy countries, usually the compromise is that
| husbands are significantly older than their wives. A
| woman is ready for marriage at 16-20 but a man isn't
| ready until 25-35. Also they don't own single-family
| houses unless they're in totally rural areas.
| kashunstva wrote:
| > this can lead people to pushing it till 40+
|
| ...which is not necessarily problematic either. I was 43
| and my wife 41 when our daughter was born. Our child has
| had a great life and so have we. While I'm 60 now and
| don't have quite the same energy I had at
| 20-30'something, everything has worked out well for us.
|
| Everyone's path, goals and priorities is different and as
| long as would-be parents consider the trade offs all
| around, it's hard to be prescriptive about this.
|
| > Society itself is broken. You SHOULD be able to
| graduate high school and make enough to support yourself
| and a family with a bit of struggle.
|
| No argument there. The complex socioeconomic forces that
| has created this dilemma are going to tough to unwind.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Some of it is economics but some of it is the structure
| of relationship choice. Feminist scholar Eva Illouz in
| _Why Love Hurts_ talks about the reasons why women find
| it hard to get into committed relationships where they
| feel safe having children:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Why-Love-Hurts-Sociological-
| Explanati...
|
| Not least the idea that if you keep dating you can find
| somebody better than you've found so far -- a problem
| that's worse in large cosmopolitan cities where the
| dating pool is large and perceived to be large.
| giardini wrote:
| Society is not "broken" whatever that means.
|
| Half the population has an IQ less than 100. Do not
| expect the low-IQ group to _ever_ get a masters or earn
| 300K as a couple, etc.
|
| _Caveat_ - this may have to be amended due to the
| watering-down of educational standards in the USA.
| anitil wrote:
| I wish they called it "advanced maternal age" here. They
| use the delightful phrase "Geriatric pregnancy" in
| Australia
| zafka wrote:
| My wife is a retired nurse ( American ), she uses that
| term when referring to such pregnancies.
| kergonath wrote:
| It's just the technical medical term. I don't think
| "advanced maternal age" is much better (advanced age at
| 35?). Besides, advanced age is exactly what geriatric
| means.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Mother's age of 35 at estimated due date.
|
| So, if the due date is beyond your 35th birthday but you
| give birth early it's still a advanced maternal age
| pregnancy.
| Always42 wrote:
| so people feel better about having kids when its riskier?
| graemep wrote:
| It also depends on your health and fitness.
|
| My ex-wife was 37, and I was an year older, when our
| younger one was born and energy was not the problem so I
| agree with you that 35+ should not be a problem.
|
| However, a lot of people are having kids significantly
| older than that.
|
| I not know whether I could cope with a baby 20 years later.
| Contrary to stereotypes I used to get up faster and more
| fully if a baby cried in the night. On the other hand,
| having a baby might energise and motivate me! Not planning
| to try it out though!
| ncruces wrote:
| You'll probably be 80 by the time your oldest grandkid
| enters kindergarten. How energetic will we be in our 80s?
| That's the bit that's scary to me.
| jorts wrote:
| Same here. The issue is mainly the likelihood of getting
| pregnant after about 36, from what the fertility folks
| shared with us. It drops off a cliff.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Obviously I think the answer to this question depends so much
| on individual circumstances that all any of us can do is
| offer anecdotes. I think that while energy levels do decline
| as you get older, the degree of the decline depends largely
| on how much you stay in shape. My partner and I are very
| active and find ourselves only marginally less physically
| energetic in our 30s as our 20s. I've seen friends of ours
| with more sedentary lifestyles having a much sharper decline.
| If you're inclined to stay in shape then I don't think age
| makes as big of a difference (within reason.) But YMMV.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > A kid had at 40 will still be depending on your when you
| are 55
|
| I had my kids 25-35; all 5 are adults. We live together as is
| befitting a 4 income economy.
|
| > and if the kids goes to college
|
| Do you mean go away to college? Yeah. No.
|
| > may have some dependency on you when your peers are
| retiring.
|
| Me and peers are all working grey. End of career happens with
| first major illness intersects with the lack of health
| insurance and we die.
|
| > Plus if your kids have kids
|
| If one of my a sons pairs off with someone and they both
| work, they'll still be 2 typical incomes short of self
| sustenance.
|
| BUT, if they got married and then married another couple, the
| 4 of them only have to find one more adult - the one who will
| parent during the work day. After the last child enters
| school, the core 4 can kick parent 5 to the curb.
|
| > Do not let fear of how much it will cost
|
| No fear. Just math.
|
| > or desire for more resources first
|
| But if they had more resources they might only need 3 or even
| 2 adults working full time to afford basic bills.
|
| > Do not let ... it ... stop you from having kids when you
| are still young enough to do well.
|
| Parents can (and do) parent while living in their car...
| graemep wrote:
| SO what? That is well below retirement age and life
| expectancy. MY younger one turns 18 when I will be 58, and
| I am a single parent. Baring accidents or the severely
| unexpected (which can happen at any age - plenty of people
| die in the 30s or 40s) its not a problem.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > That is well below retirement age and life expectancy.
|
| What is below RA/LE? My comment addressed common
| financial realities. It applied to every adult age, up to
| and including death.
|
| > MY younger one turns 18 when I will be 58
|
| okay.
|
| > and I am a single parent.
|
| You may be interested to know that parenting can be get
| much harder than that. ex: I would have loved my
| difficulty level to be dialed down to Single Parent.
|
| > Baring accidents or the severely unexpected
|
| I agree that some folks do experience year after year
| after year of luck.
|
| > (which can happen at any age - plenty of people die in
| the 30s or 40s)
|
| I agree that not having life-changing advantage & luck is
| pretty dang common.
|
| > its not a problem.
|
| What's not a problem? Taken together, your comment seems
| to be lacking a subject.
|
| I did the best I could. If you could share which of my
| points you were responding to, that might help.
| mrweasel wrote:
| > Don't read the above as advocating having kids too young,
| it is not.
|
| Depending on the circumstances in a persons country, maybe
| getting children at a young age isn't that dumb. I'd argue
| that the best time to get kids is as a university student.
| You get free daycare, the government doubles your stipend
| (and it's extended), your housing subsidy increases, you
| generally have more free time as a student, grandparents are
| younger and able to help more and you have more energy and
| can more easily deal with lose of sleep.
|
| As a bonus, when your kids move out, you're not even 40 year
| olds.
|
| The only real issue is: Have you meet the right partner yet?
| arkey wrote:
| > I'd argue that the best time to get kids is as a
| university student. You get free daycare, the government
| doubles your stipend (and it's extended), your housing
| subsidy increases, you generally have more free time as a
| student...
|
| Where... where do you live? I'm all for having kids as soon
| as possible, but I was barely able to provide for just
| myself during university.
| mrweasel wrote:
| I'm in Denmark. You get around $1100 per month from the
| government as a university student, you then get around
| the same amount per child (not sure if a couple get half
| of that each). Still if you're two students, with a
| child, that's at least $3300 a month. That's not a lot of
| money, but there are also government loans you can get,
| and again, free daycare and subsidies for housing. It's
| not a get rich scheme, but it's also only meant to be
| temporary i.e. until you finish your studies.
| arkey wrote:
| That's amazing.
|
| I'm in Spain, absolutely different landscape here. I
| guess your government is trying to boost both higher
| education and birth rates.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Yes and no, the government is trying to steer young
| people in the direction of engineering, nursing, doctors,
| teachers and trades (carpenter, bricklayer and so on),
| but it's not clear where the people are suppose to come
| from. Essentially Denmark is missing people in also every
| profession. There aren't enough people. My wife works in
| a field where unemployment is 12, not percent, but 12
| people. So if you're unemployed, qualified to work in the
| EU and have a recognized education, applying for jobs in
| Denmark isn't a bad bet.
|
| Various governments have also attempted to boost birth
| rates, but unsuccessfully.
| tuna74 wrote:
| According to Google the the amount you get per child per
| month in Denmark is 1450-881 DKK (227-138 USD) depending
| on the age of the child.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Stupid sexy socialism.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I concur. Kids would have been much better at 20 than at 30.
| I can barely keep up with what they want to do now. If you
| live in a decent country it's not even that expensive. Most
| states really want people to have children, so the basics are
| often supported or free.
| sim7c00 wrote:
| most ppl in my region have kids 35+ in order to first find a
| place in life that can support children. i don't see any
| issues with that.
|
| having energy is subjective and does not really depend on
| being young or old. some old folks are full of energy and
| live really active lives. It depends on your state of mind
| and lifestyle more than age.
| grumpymuppet wrote:
| We were 38 with our first. I strongly agree that is too late
| to have them, especially given the likelihood of birth
| defects. Thankfully, we avoided issues there.
|
| A few years in and I feel "back on my feet", but it was
| harder for being older.
| MaxHoppersGhost wrote:
| I think having kids when you're in your early 30s is the way
| to go but having kids at any age is great. I think waiting
| until later is a mistake because you want a full life with
| your kids and ideally you can bless your parents with
| grandkids (they most likely want one, even if they say they
| don't). But not having kids because you "waited too long" is
| a bigger mistake.
|
| Kids take a lot of energy but they also give you a lot, no
| matter the age. We are biologically hardwired to rise to the
| challenge of having kids no matter the age.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Lifestyle is key here.
|
| An older friend conveyed to me pretty much the exact same
| thing you are, that he cannot imagine having kids at 40
| because you will not be able to keep up with them energy
| wise. You get old and your body really starts to give in.
|
| Alright Geoff, thanks, but you are 54 and do zero exercise,
| have a diet of eating out at fast food and fast casual
| restaurants, a body type that would be described as
| "meatball", and a list of medical conditions which all scream
| _lifestyle change_.
|
| Meanwhile at trail running meets, I bump into 60 year olds
| still giving some 35 year olds a run for their money.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This is ridiculous. I'm 40 and in moderately good physical
| condition (I can lift and run many miles).
|
| I am perfectly capable of keeping up with my kids.
|
| My 72 year old father who is also in good condition keeps
| up with my 3 year old son.
|
| The difference I see between a reasonably fit 40 year old
| and not is the massive gap.
| winter_blue wrote:
| _> Alright Geoff, thanks, but you are 54 and do zero
| exercise, have a diet of eating out at fast food and fast
| casual restaurants, a body type that would be described as
| "meatball", and a list of medical conditions which all
| scream lifestyle change.
|
| > Meanwhile at trail running meets, I bump into 60 year
| olds still giving some 35 year olds a run for their money._
|
| Yup, this is very much key.
| CPLX wrote:
| My son was born when I was 45 and I absolutely could not be
| more happy about it. I am in way better shape than I was at
| 30, I finally started taking that seriously, and also I am
| way wiser, more patient, and have more money.
|
| So if you hear anyone telling you they can't imagine late
| fatherhood ignore them, they obviously aren't good at
| imagining things.
| jajko wrote:
| While generally true, you are not the only one aging
| around you, and some sickness/accident stuff can happen
| with higher probability as years add up.
|
| The chance you will need to take care of both your kids
| and your parents in your 50s is pretty high (not even
| going into you and your partner), while facing declining
| health yourself.
|
| Could be easily manageable, or not. Ask me in a decade.
|
| But one thing is darn true - if a good long term stable
| match is not there, no point pushing for kids. World
| really doesnt need more damaged folks struggling their
| whole lives to overcome shitty childhood. And thats fine,
| parenthood is not for everybody and there can be an
| amazing life to be had instead (and I mean it in best way
| possible, but that life shouod not be spent behind the
| desk and on the couch)
| techdmn wrote:
| Aging sucks! Obviously you can do everything wrong, and
| mess your body up pretty good. You can also do everything
| right, and just have bad luck. Lingering injury, hereditary
| health conditions, things add up. By the time you are in
| your 60s, it takes a combination of good habits and good
| luck to be in good shape. It's comforting to point to
| active older people and say "I'm going to grow up to be
| just like them". Just aware of survivorship bias.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Good news: most studies show that adults that do moderate
| exercise have a lower rate of fall-related injuries in
| old age than those that do little to no exercise.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Physical shape is not the same or even proportional to the
| ability to pull all-nighters.
|
| I know two men 18 years apart in age who became fathers at
| the same time - two months apart to be exact. Even though
| the older is an avid gym-goer, it's only the younger who
| can pull off popping back into full strength after less
| than 6h of sleep.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| Newborns keep you up but an all-nighter is a stretch.
| Also, you're looking after your kid and trying to get
| them to sleep, not trying to churn out code to get
| something to market/go to prod.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Both of mine had colic and went through difficult
| teething. I've pulled all-nighters to deliver something
| and it's much easier than several weeks of sleepless
| nights with an infant.
| missinglugnut wrote:
| >Meanwhile at trail running meets, I bump into 60 year olds
| still giving some 35 year olds a run for their money.
|
| Interrupt that 60 year old's sleep twice a night with a
| newborn crying, add a bunch of new responsibilities, and
| I'll be impressed if he even makes it to the meet.
|
| You're comparing people who have made exercise their #1
| priority in life to people who have made their kids and
| supporting their families financially their top 2
| priorities. It's a bullshit comparison.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| This is a very good comment. I had my first kid in my mid-20s
| and my next two in my late 30s.
|
| There are definitely pros and cons, but overall I'd recommend
| kids in mid- to late-20s.
|
| >However don't wait until you think it is the perfect time.
|
| Yes! There is no perfect time to have kids, but there will
| definitely be a time when having kids isn't biologically
| likely anymore
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| there are also age correlated birth defects, the cause of
| which have not been adequately determined in all cases but
| the high correlation does suggest a relation.
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I had a kid at 22, I am now 40 with a kid going to college. I
| can echo this exact sentiment.
|
| However at 22 I wasn't the experienced person I am today. Nor
| was I stable, nor could I jump on opportunities like my peers
| could.
|
| If having a child in your early 20s would mean not losing
| opportunities in progressing in a career, at least with
| enough free childcare and food to feed the children, people
| could be more inclined to have children while they get their
| life together. Our culture of moving away from home is also a
| big problem -- having 2 sets of grandparents helping raise a
| child REALLY helped me at my youth not miss out on youth and
| still raise my child.
|
| kids between 25-32 is something our society should aim to be
| as practical and pleasant as possible.
| specialist wrote:
| Was also a young parent. Empathetic yes to all.
|
| Securing stable health insurance dictated most of my career
| decisions. I was captive to turrible gigs, had to pass on a
| lot of opportunities.
|
| Want to revitalize our society?
|
| #1 is Medicare for All. More startups, more risk taking &
| innovation, higher birth rate, etc.
|
| #2 is childcare. Cheap, plentiful, good quality.
|
| #3 is housing. Again: Cheap, plentiful, good quality. Plus,
| rentals better suited for young families (eg more 2 & 3
| bedroom units).
| complianceowl wrote:
| I think willing to take a cut in one's standard of living
| so that the mother stays at home and raises the children
| would revitalize society beyond any of the above-
| mentioned options.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > #2 is childcare. Cheap, plentiful, good quality.
|
| This costs infinite money.
|
| It's impossible to scale, because nobody wants an
| environment where their child is not getting attention
| from compassionate, engaged adults throughout the day. To
| get the same level of care as a stay at home parent, you
| need as many care workers as there are families with
| young children. And if you pay those workers comparably
| to the average wage, you need to tax the entire wages of
| one parent in each family to cover the care costs.
|
| It's probably much cheaper to write checks to families
| encouraging them to have one parent care for their own
| children full time.
| markeroon wrote:
| Most provinces in Canada have $10/day childcare
| jimbokun wrote:
| So the workers there are paid $10 / day?
|
| $50 if they're watching 5 kids, $100 for 10, etc.
|
| That's assuming 0 overhead.
| complianceowl wrote:
| As someone who is 34 with two kids (toddler and newborn), I
| completely agree with your comment. My wife and I had
| difficulty having kids, or we would've had them sooner, but I
| completely agree with having kids before 30. My energy is
| still solid, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't compare to
| energy in your 20s. People think too much about the financial
| aspect. You can continue building and growing financially
| even with kids, you just need to be smarter and more
| disciplined. A lot of people use the financial argument, but
| I think more and more, it is only a cope for not having had
| kinds sooner. All my kids will be in their 20s when I'm in my
| 50s; not bad, but having kids in your 20s is the way to go.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think having kids before you are 30 is fine, but we had our
| second kid when my wife was 36 and it was also fine. I think
| when you get in your forties as a man or late thirties as a
| woman it can be tougher.
|
| Also, adopt. Before I was a parent I thought of a child as
| "mine" because of biology. Really you see that you shape
| people and form a connection with them because they are part
| of your family.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > I think having kids before you are 30 is fine, but we had
| our second kid when my wife was 36 and it was also fine.
|
| Which is another important point: if you want multiple
| children you probably want to have your first earlier than
| you might otherwise.
| emptysongglass wrote:
| > If you are 25 you should be seriously thinking in the next
| 2 years, and by 30 have them
|
| I need to push back on this because no one is actually an
| adult at the age of 25 despite those people wishing it were
| so. You do not have your shit figured out and assuming a
| partner of similar age, neither do they. It's only starting
| in your 30s where you _start_ to understand what it is to be
| a responsible adult to yourself and to the world.
|
| So please, do not seriously consider having kids in your 20s,
| for all our sakes.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > no one is actually an adult at the age of 25 despite
| those people wishing it were so. You do not have your shit
| figured out
|
| Too strong.
|
| You're an adult who doesn't have their shit figured out.
| Some people never get it figured out, others take into
| their 30s, 40s or even 50s.
|
| And then in your 60s, you've got new shit to figure out.
| kulahan wrote:
| Isn't your brain still forming until you're like... 26?
| It's probably more correct to say that 25 year olds are
| children in that case. Other ages are mostly arbitrary.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| This is a level of infantilization that I think becomes a
| self-fulfilling prophecy. People don't magically become
| adults, they learn to be adults based on the situations
| they are placed in.
|
| It seems to me like when you move the definition of
| "adulthood" back to age X, fewer people function like
| adults prior to age X.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| It's lead.
|
| Lead concentration in America "rapidly increased in the 1950s
| and then declined in the 1980s" [1]. There is a non-linear
| discontinuity among kids born in the mid 80s, with linear
| improvements through to those born in the late 2000s [2].
|
| Arrest rates for violent crimes are highest from 15 to 29 years
| old (particularly 17 to 23-year olds) [3]. They're particularly
| low for adults after 50 years old.
|
| We're around 40 years from the last of the high-lead children.
| 17 years ago is the late 2000s.
|
| [1]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10406...
|
| [2] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP7932
|
| [3]
| https://kagi.com/assistant/d2c6fdd5-73dd-4952-ae40-1f36aef1e...
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Can we blame lead for the US' electoral landscape too?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Can we blame lead for the US' electoral landscape too?_
|
| More of a pet theory, but voters born between 1950 and
| 1980, boomers and Gen X, have had a well-documented set of
| policy preferences.
| ivape wrote:
| What if I told you voters born between nnnn-yyyy had a
| set of policy preferences?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| There's supposedly a cycle of attitude between
| generations. If your parents are X, you want to be Y. If
| your parents are Y, you want to be Z. If your parents are
| Z, you want to be X
| jdminhbg wrote:
| Boomers were essentially statistically indistinguishable
| from Millennials in the 2024 presidential election:
| https://www.businessinsider.com/how-generations-voted-
| trump-...
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| No. You can't blame lead. There is zero justification for
| making the average person less responsible for their own
| worldview and choices in leadership.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Well, that's the first time I've heard anyone explicitly
| say they don't want to understand causal factors because
| it would reduce the ability to tell people they should
| bootstrap themselves.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I don't think it shifts the red blue much which is probably
| what you're getting at.
|
| I think it absolutely affects the quality of politicians we
| get though. The best that a given generation can offer is
| probably lower if that generation huffed a lot of lead gas.
| So as they age out and younger people hit peak career and
| fill those roles things will probably improve a bit.
| krapp wrote:
| No. Much of the American electoral landscape is still
| shaped by the systemic remnants of slavery, reconstruction
| and segregation, and the post-Trump landscape by the
| cultural trauma of having elected a black president.
| krapp wrote:
| No. Much of the American electoral landscape is still
| shaped by the systemic remnants of slavery, reconstruction
| and segregation, and the post-Trump landscape by the
| cultural trauma of having elected a black president.
| Although I'm sure all of the lead poisoning didn't help.
| krapp wrote:
| i don't know why there are two copies of this comment
| now, I didn't post it twice.
| vkou wrote:
| You could, if you wanted to misdiagnose the problem.
|
| You'd have more success blaming COVID inflation and the
| general public's poor education in economics and lack of
| understanding _why_ eggs were $3.50 /dozen. (Today they are
| $6.00/dozen)
| aaomidi wrote:
| And abortion access.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Probably not. That played out in the last wave of crime
| reduction.
| throwaway_2121 wrote:
| Lack of boredom is also a factor.
|
| Social media and modern games are keeping them occupied.
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| People also have fewer possessions worth stealing and
| trying to hock? It's not like TVs and radios cost that much
| anymore. People wear less jewelry. Though this is not a
| significant factor, it might be worth putting on the list
| still.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The most valuable things on a person these days (credit
| cards, phone) are also incredibly easy to lock down and
| make worthless. Many of the things like jewelry, are also
| now rendered essentially worthless because a lot of
| jewelry now is cheaply sourced; pawning off crap from
| fast fashion is not going to be worth it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I was thinking that as I was getting ready to sell my
| house. I'm not a particularly materialistic person to
| start with, but there are hardly any physical objects in
| my home that I value that much besides (a) some photo
| albums/pictures and yearbooks - and for newer generations
| these are mostly digital I guess, (b) my violin and (c)
| my espresso machine and grinder. I guess you could throw
| my cellphone in there as well - easy to replace but would
| be a PITA, like losing my wallet. It'd be a pain to
| replace all my furniture and other stuff but I certainly
| don't feel any attachment to those things.
| matwood wrote:
| I feel you. I'm selling my house and I joke that I'll
| give someone a better deal if they just take everything
| in it as part of the sale. A suitcase for my clothes, my
| computer, and some physical mementos is all I need to
| keep. Even the clothes are optional, but I don't feel
| like buying a new wardrobe.
|
| My coffee grinder may have been on my list, but I moved
| countries and the power is incompatible hah.
| nradov wrote:
| Right, there has been a huge reduction in home burglaries
| over the past several decades. The only stuff really
| worth stealing anymore is cash, drugs, and firearms.
|
| https://doi.org/10.1057/s41284-021-00284-4
| tayo42 wrote:
| That's funny to see. Sometimes I get stressed about the
| lack of security around my house, but I'll stop and
| think, if someone broke in what would this hypothetical
| thief actually steal anyway?
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| Bicycles and tools seem to be the main things still
| stolen. They are often left unattended locked to poles or
| in the back of cars which can be easily broken in to, and
| can be immediately flipped for a lot of money.
| matwood wrote:
| I was wondering about this the other day. Do people even
| steal car radios/amps/subs anymore? When I was a kid in
| the 90s, having your car radio stolen was typical.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The more modern equivalent has long been the catalytic
| converter. I don't know how well legislative efforts to
| crack down on the resale of used catalytic converters has
| gone though.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Also, TVs have gotten way larger on the screen size,
| making them harder to transport in a hurry, and are often
| screwed to the wall.
| strict9 wrote:
| No it's not. Not entirely anyway.
|
| One thing I've learned in my decades on this planet is that
| just about never is one explanation for a human condition
| mostly correct. Lead is a convenient technical explanation
| that underestimates the impact of upbringing and community.
|
| It doesn't explain a lot of factors of juvenile delinquency
| that existed for generations before lead service lines or
| leaded gasoline.
| stubish wrote:
| Industry and highways and other high sources of lead
| pollution were built in the areas with higher juvenile
| delinquency. Not in rich, privileged areas. I think you can
| also correlate the _rise_ in violent crime to amount of
| lead contamination in the soil, some articles claiming down
| to the city block level.
| pc86 wrote:
| Which order did these things happen in?
|
| Maybe industry and highways increase lead exposure which
| leads to crime, or maybe areas already high in crime are
| cheaper so that's where industry and highways go?
| ericmcer wrote:
| It is insane to just confidently assert that the only factor
| in the decrease in crime is Lead. Treating an insanely
| nuanced issue as an absolute doesn't make your argument more
| compelling, it is actually kind of baffling.
| YinglingHeavy wrote:
| But it's so satisfying to one's ego that a single cause is
| the issue. All complexity of societal changes in the last
| 50 years can be outmanuevered. Simplification is sexy.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| It's satisfying to know that we've eliminated a major
| environmental toxin with so many awful effects. It
| doesn't mean that lead explains everything, but it is a
| lot better than the "we built enough prisons to lock up
| all the bad guys, maybe we should build more" alternative
| hypothesis/proposal I've heard.
| sien wrote:
| There was a crime decline in many rich countries from the
| 1990s as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_drop#Decline_since_the_
| e...
|
| Maybe they were doing similar things with lead or something
| else is a big factor. Perhaps the rise of ever more cheap
| entertainment for young males who are most likely to commit
| crime. That's a global thing.
| kragen wrote:
| Yes, leaded gasoline was being banned in many rich
| countries at about the same time, and there's a positive
| correlation between the year it was banned and the year
| that violent street crime began to decline.
| dmix wrote:
| So reducing lead exposure immediately changes your brain
| to do less crime?
| kragen wrote:
| No, there's an offset of about 18 years, if I remember
| correctly?
| dmix wrote:
| I see, so since a large majority of crime is done by
| young people, peaking between 15-25, they are basically
| comparing a whole new generation of kids who didn't have
| developmental brain issues vs their elders.
|
| Were the older people who grew up with lead exposure also
| experiencing higher rates of impulsive crime in the late
| >1990s relative to the new and prior generations? That
| would help eliminate the major differences in
| economics/culture/politics of their upbringing (for ex:
| mass flight of families moving to the suburbs to raise
| their young kids after the 1970s crime wave scared them
| away).
| kragen wrote:
| That's an interesting question, and I don't know the
| answer.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Kids that grew up huffing leaded exhaust are more bad
| decisions inclined than they would otherwise be. It's not
| just crime. The most heavily leaded cohort in the US is
| also known for drunkly crashing their muscle cars and
| wasting their youth smoking pot in a commune.
|
| Bad decisions like these get less common with age, partly
| because of consequences (jail, death, etc), partly
| because getting up to no good requires free time,
| ambition and freedom, all of which are in shorter supply
| with age and the resultant responsibilities competing for
| every individual's supply of these resources.
|
| So if the replacement cohort of people who are coming
| into prime crime age decline to participate at the same
| rates the crime rate goes down.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Why bother stopping at crime rates with that confidence?
|
| The 1st recorded cases of fatty liver disease and T2D in
| children were in the 1980's are have continued growing
| since - lead must have been protecting children's health.
|
| Testosterone has been on a sharp decline during this same
| time period - lead must promote healthy testosterone
| production.
|
| Debt of all kinds, from the national debt, to household
| debt, to student loans debt has increased exponentially and
| consistently with lead removal - lead must promote
| financial literacy.
| treyd wrote:
| If you do the same comparison of the rates of leaded
| gasoline during childhood to adulthood crime rates across
| different countries which have different histories of
| leaded gasoline usage, you notice that the correlation
| persists. While of course correlation does not imply
| causation, it's a link that's fairly well-established in
| literature, it's not a spurious correlation, and we know
| that lead has concrete neurological effects, so it's
| plausible from a pharmacological basis.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| Since 1970 testosterone has declined 1% per year and it's
| well established higher testosterone is linked to
| impulsive and violent criminal behavior and in countries
| like the US crime rate is at a 50 year low correlating
| with this decline starting 1970.
|
| There are many factors that correlate and potentially
| contribute to a reduction in incarceration rates.
|
| There are estimated 1.8-1.9M incarcerated. Since 1980 to
| the present there are well over 1M violent crimes (rape,
| murder, aggregated assault, robbery) per year. Let's look
| at another factor that _might_ contribute to falling
| incarceration rates that tend to explain this discrepancy
| in incarceration vs total crimes...conviction rates:
|
| Murder: ~57.4% in 1950 vs. ~27.2% in 2023--a ~2.1x
| difference.
|
| Rape: ~17.3% in 1950 vs. ~2.3% in 2023--a ~7.5x
| difference.
|
| Aggravated Assualt: ~19.7% in 1950 vs. ~15.9% in 2023--a
| ~1.2x difference.
|
| The neurological effects of lead don't tend to explain
| away falling police clearances nor convictions.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Where are these conviction rate statistics from? What are
| they measuring? (is it reporting of crime to a conviction
| on that crime?)
| chrisbrandow wrote:
| There have been a lot of studies that show the correlation
| with lead up and down and varied by lead in different
| cities countries with different phaseout timelines.
|
| Kevin drum and Rick Bevin both did a ton to lay this out
| systematically.
|
| As leaving drum has noted, Lead is NOT the only contributor
| to crime, but it was the cause of the largest variations
| for most of the 20th century.
| ern wrote:
| I think lead is nasty stuff, but if it was the single cause
| of high crime, surely we'd see a similar effect in other
| domains, like a rebound effect on IQs (another thing lead was
| blamed for)?
|
| Instead the Flynn Effect seems to have been strongest during
| the era of high lead, and it's tailing-off now.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| The only reasonable conclusion is that lead causes crime by
| making people smarter.
| hellzbellz123 wrote:
| or maybe intelligence doesn't correlate with likeliness
| to commit crime?
|
| plenty of criminals are intelligent.
| hellzbellz123 wrote:
| below study claims test score variances are mostly related
| too declarative knowledge side note, i wonder how internet
| had an effect on iq scores.
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160
| 2...
| hirvi74 wrote:
| I'm not convinced these tests measure what they claim to.
| Even assuming they do, IQ scores offer little practical
| value.
|
| The human body and mind are always adapting, however
| subtly, to changing environments. So I wonder -- are IQ
| tests assessing abilities that may no longer be optimal
| today?
|
| Homer likely had an exceptional memory, as did many ancient
| Greeks that participated in oral traditions. But how
| relevant is memorizing epics in the modern world?
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Seriously? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_n
| ot_imply_c...
| treyd wrote:
| I'll do you one better.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| kryogen1c wrote:
| What exactly are you claiming?
|
| Your points say old people have more lead, but then you say
| young people are more violent. That doesn't square with the
| articles point that incarceration rates are falling.
| Nopoint2 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44365162
| Nopoint2 wrote:
| Let's add an example to illustrate the difference:
|
| Let's say that there is a correlation between the number of
| flights between London and New York, and the prices of
| sulfur. The correlation is near perfect.
|
| When your neocortex is working, you ignore it. You can't
| create any plausible scenario how this could work (it
| doesn't exist within your latent space) so you don't learn
| anything from it, it doesn't even register in your brain as
| anything worthy of notice.
|
| But everybody with the cerebellum only absolutely does
| learn it. And completely for real, not just as some fun
| factoid, but as a fact that they know the same way you know
| that airplanes have wings, and everybody knows it, only you
| don't.
|
| Then, one day out of nowhere people start buying sulfur.
| Your questions are met with laughter and mockery "dude,
| everybody's buying sulfur, are you autistic?". And you
| don't know, because you haven't even learned the pseudo
| facts that everybody else bases their reasoning on.
|
| This is only a made up example, but this is exactly how it
| works.
| spinner34f wrote:
| The flip-side of an aging society with declining fertility is
| that older people, with fewer children are likely to be less
| sympathetic to children, and you could see the incarceration
| rates increase, or remain steady, as less severe infractions
| are punished more harshly.
|
| We recently saw this play out in the Queensland, Australia,
| state election where the opposition party, which was pretty
| much out of ideas, ran a scare campaign about youth crime in
| regional areas. Neighbourhood Facebook Groups where CCTV
| footage of "suspicious youth" are a mainstay and an aging
| population did the rest of the job and they won the election
| and passed "adult time for adult crime" laws: whether you agree
| with these or not, "adult time" in Australia means that the
| youth incarcerated will be adults in their 20s and 30s when
| they get out.
|
| The Australian state of New South Wales routinely strip-
| searches young children, but again, there isn't much outcry.
|
| It will be interesting to see how this plays out elsewhere. The
| worst case scenario is that kids will be politically
| scapegoated ("why should childless and aging taxpayers fund
| education?"), and it leads to a further decline in fertility
| rates.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Australia has had pretty terrible "jail children like adults"
| opinions for a long time. Politics in Melbourne constantly
| turns on fears of youth [black immigrant] crime waves that
| are making people afraid to leave the house.
|
| https://raisetheage.org.au/
| Nursie wrote:
| Queensland seems to be making a lot of noise about that at
| the moment as well.
|
| Seems to be this weird reasoning (and I know it has cropped
| up in the US too) that - if they did an 'adult' crime they
| should be tried as an adult. It totally ignores what we
| know about developing brains - they are not fully
| developed, they don't consider consequences the same way as
| older people.
|
| That's not to say they should be allowed to 'get away with
| it', but we need to take into account that it's not really
| the same thing as adults doing it.
| worthless-trash wrote:
| > That's not to say they should be allowed to 'get away
| with it', but we need to take into account that it's not
| really the same thing as adults doing it.
|
| However, they -clearly- do get away with it, continually
| the current method of punishment is not deterring them
| from crime. These are not 'oh he made poor decisions
| style crimes', you're not paying attention or are not
| living in this area if you think so.
|
| I wish i could dig up the study from Townsville crime
| statistics (this is the closest i could find
| https://statements.qld.gov.au/statements/101697 )
|
| The key takeway is:
|
| "The residents living in these areas have been let down
| for too long under the former Government who allowed
| serious repeat youth offenders to avoid adequate
| punishment and let them continue to terrorise these
| communities,"
|
| Current deterrents clearly are not working. There are
| only so many levers the government can pull. Children
| learn poor lessons and inadequate supervision from their
| families, but if they are taken from their home the media
| screams 'stolen generation' so in the end individuals
| terrorised by them have to deal with the burden of their
| continued long term criminal behavior.
|
| You may believe that children can be rehabilitated, I'd
| dearly love this to be the truth, however my observations
| show that its not a reflection of reality.
| Nursie wrote:
| I'm not trying to play down any problems or say nothing
| should be done.
|
| In fact I'm not expressing any beliefs other than the
| (very well supported) notion that children's brains are
| not fully developed and therefore they shouldn't be dealt
| with in the same way as adults because that's just _dumb_
| and is likely not to help.
| jlawson wrote:
| Can you expand on "that's just dumb"? I don't understand
| what argument this is trying to make.
|
| All people have different brains; some are very low-
| intelligence and impulsive by nature and training, and
| this can apply at any age. The point of this punishment
| is not to apply a sort of cosmic morality according to
| the true culpability of a soul. Abstract principles about
| whether the person 'deserves' a punishment aren't
| actually relevant regardless of what shape their brain
| is. The point is the real-life consequence of their
| criminality on others, and how to stop them hurting
| people. We must stop them hurting people; let's figure
| out how.
|
| This dedication to abstracted principles and cosmic
| morality over fixing the actual issue is really
| problematic; I see this more and more these days.
| thmsths wrote:
| I am very conflicted on this. On one hand I absolutely
| despise that hating the children attitude and I believe we
| are reaping what we are sowing. On the other hand there are
| serial offenders that are not being dealt appropriately. My
| naive solution is to keep the current, more permissive system
| for first offenders and then treat repeat offenders as
| adults. I mean if you are a teen, succumb to peer pressure
| and do something stupid like stealing a car, I fully believe
| that we should not throw the book at you. We need to dispel
| you of the notion that this is not a big deal and that you
| will get away with it, while ensuring that we do not harm
| your future prospects.
|
| But if being arrested, handcuffed and taken in front of a
| judge is not enough to make you understand that this kind of
| behavior will not be tolerated, and you do steal a car again
| a few weeks later, then yes, we will have to escalate instead
| of saying "nothing we can do, it's just a kid". Otherwise we
| are literally sending the message that they can act with
| impunity.
| frollogaston wrote:
| But it's not uniform. In the span of ~60 years, the average
| birth rate doesn't matter as much as the distribution and how
| much the children model their parents.
|
| Small example (multiply all numbers by 1M), average birth rate
| of 1.5 can be a group of 4 people where one had 0 children, one
| had 1, one had 2, one had 3. If each child has as many children
| as its parents, next generation, 0 have 0 children, 1 has 1, 2
| have 2, 3 have 3, for a new average of 2.33.
|
| If you take a higher starting average but a tight spread [2, 2,
| 2, 2], the next average is only 2. Or if you have [0, 1, 2, 3]
| but kids model society instead of parents, you get 1.5 again.
|
| Of course children didn't model their parents the past couple
| of generations, but times may be changing.
| naasking wrote:
| > All of these working together means that each year the act of
| having a child is much more deliberate and the parents likely
| having more resources. Which in turn should mean fewer youth
| delinquency, which as the article notes is how most in prison
| started out.
|
| Or the less popular more controversial hypothesis: the steepest
| decline in births is among the poor, a population with, on
| average, worse impulse control and more issues with mental
| health, and since all qualities are at least partly
| heritable...
|
| Surprisingly, the fertility rate among the affluent does not
| appear to be nearly as impacted.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > the steepest decline in births is among the poor, a
| population with, on average, worse impulse control and more
| issues with mental health, and since all qualities are at
| least partly heritable... Surprisingly, the fertility rate
| among the affluent does not appear to be nearly as impacted.
|
| Generally, fertility rates are higher among poorer
| populations compared to wealthier populations. This pattern
| is observed both at the national level, with poorer countries
| generally having higher fertility rates than wealthier ones,
| and at the individual level, with poorer families tending to
| have more children than wealthier families.
|
| https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-
| economy/2016/december/link...
| naasking wrote:
| > Generally, fertility rates are higher among poorer
| populations compared to wealthier populations.
|
| Yes, but they were even higher in the past. Fertility has
| _declined_ among the poorer classes much more than among
| higher income classes, probably due to the availability of
| contraceptives and abortion:
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gs5lgb_bIAAYoo1?format=jpg
| dcow wrote:
| We may have swung the pendulum a little too far towards
| deliberate, though. The birthrate right now is below
| replacement rate, meaning that if we keep going like this (even
| if the birthrate doesn't keep trending down and holds steady)
| that society will die off. We need to figure out how to build
| an economy and society that can facilitate deliberate
| responsible parentage younger and more often. Luckily we have
| generations to solve the problem, but it's there looming.
| TrueTom wrote:
| This is not going to happen when you can just import people
| from other countries.
| ipdashc wrote:
| ... until, obviously, those countries' populations start
| declining as well?
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Every country on earth is trending downwards. A lot of
| currently immigrant-exporting countries (e.g. Vietnam,
| India, Mexico) have sub-replacement levels of birth.
| They're going to have absolutely massive problems in a few
| decades when a lot of their youth have left and they're
| stuck with an inverted population pyramid.
|
| There's a tendency for people in developed (particularly
| western) countries to feel entitled to immigrants. It's
| weird to think you'll not only have people changing your
| diapers when you're 90, but that your country should
| actively bring in people and deprive poorer countries of
| similar care, then leave those poor working class
| immigrants to fend for themselves once they're old.
|
| It's the same mindset that drove society since the 1950s:
| it makes my life convenient, who cares if it makes life
| harder for people far from me or after I'm dead? And now
| we're all living with the accumulated consequences of all
| that (depleted ozone, climate change, ocean acidification,
| microplastics, oceans stripped of life, teflon pollution,
| deforestation, CO2 rising rapidly).
|
| The world needs better solutions.
| palmotea wrote:
| > This is not going to happen when you can just import
| people from other countries.
|
| That's basically the same solution as dumping toxic waste
| overseas: you're just shifting the problem (depopulation)
| to someplace poorer and probably less able to deal with it.
|
| Birthrates are declining _everywhere_ , and the _current_
| global fertility rate is _at_ replacement (so don 't expect
| it to stay that high). In the future, there's going to be
| no magical place from which you can "import" all the people
| you need, because you chose not to make them yourself.
| quantified wrote:
| A plane at 75,000 feet can descend for a long time and then
| level off without crashing. Eventually population will stop
| declining. Everyone needs to just chill about a declined
| birthrate.
| bbarnett wrote:
| What is your proof that it will not decline further? If you
| have no proof, then at the very least the cause must be
| investigated. After all, the concern is that the current
| rate of declining birth rate, means extinction in a few
| centuries.
|
| You don't just shrug that off and say "oh well, it'll
| probably be just fine."
| wredcoll wrote:
| We don't just shrug off the fantasy that there will be
| zero children born in "a couple of centuries"??
|
| What on earth am I reading?
| palmotea wrote:
| > We don't just shrug off the fantasy that there will be
| zero children born in "a couple of centuries"??
|
| That's not a fantasy, it's the inevitable outcome of sub-
| replacement fertility, _which is the state we find
| ourselves in_ (though my intuition says it will take
| longer than "a couple of centuries" to get to zero).
| quantified wrote:
| It's the inevitable outcome of everybody continuing it
| for all the generations that remain. As soon as there
| aren't enough people to manufacture contraceptives, it
| will of course grow. But after a few generations, there
| will be more land, water, animal and plant life, copper,
| cobalt, gold and such per person, and people can easily
| say "that shrinkage sucked, let's grow". You assume that
| things will always be the way they are now, which is of
| course false.
| sdenton4 wrote:
| ....assuming the sub-replacement rate continues forever,
| which is a hefty assumption. It's quite certain that a
| greater-than-replacement rate can't continue forever
| (eventually, the mass of the humans would be greater than
| the mass of the planet), though that has been the world
| we've lived in up to now.
| arkey wrote:
| You should play a game of Age of Empires, and have your
| Villager population halved at some point of the game. See
| what happens then.
| modo_mario wrote:
| We do. Because as you said it's a fantasy.
| quantified wrote:
| Sure I do. You have zero proof that decline goes below a
| world population of 1 billion. This belief that it must
| always grow is based on just a fear. Very similar to the
| fear that gays marrying will cause everyone else to stop.
| Hasn't happened.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| There are subpopulations with high birth rates. They are
| very small currently, but if you really think the general
| population will die off for want of reproduction,
| eventually they will comprise a sufficiently large
| fraction of the population to raise the overall birth
| rate.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Too far is an understatement.
|
| People keep poking at the wrong reasons, but in some
| societies it is quite dire. South Korea with this year of 1,
| when 2.1 means 'static', means more than halving the
| population every 30 years or so.
|
| For a reverse comparison, if you take a penny and double it
| every day, you end up with > $5M in 30 days. And yet this
| birthrate issue doesn't take into account plague, war,
| natural disasters, and potential issues with lack of
| food(starvation). And the worst of it?
|
| Is that I believe it is 100% environmental.
|
| People think "having children" is a conscious choice. And
| sure, there is some of that. But at the same time, it is the
| very point of existence for an organism. Actually producing
| children (not just performing the sex act) is an evolutionary
| requirement. It is literally the primary drive of existence.
| Risky behaviour is ingrained into us, if it enables the
| possibility of reproduction. The drives and energy we place
| into everything we do, has a background drive that is sexual
| in nature. We seek to excel, to impress the opposite sex.
|
| Like it or not (I'm not like that, I decide, not my
| hormones!), this is effectively an accepted fact of animal
| psychology. It's a part of who we are, our culture is
| designed around it, and every aspect of our lives is ruled by
| it.
|
| Why am I on about this??
|
| Well, my point is that this is a primary drive, interlaced so
| deeply that it affects every aspect of who we are.
| Reproduction, the production and raising of offspring is an
| act we are, naturally, compelled to. Forced to. Need to do.
|
| Unless of course specific chemicals, maybe microplastics or
| all of the "forever chemicals" in our blood, are blocking
| that process.
|
| Again, people will chime in with the popular "But it's
| expensive". No. Just no. Nope! My point above is that this is
| primal drive. People have had children in the depression, on
| purpose. Historically people, even with contraceptives, have
| had children regardless.
|
| If it's about money, why is the birth rate declining in
| countries with free daycare, universal health care, and
| immensely strong support for parents post birth? Mandated
| career protection for mothers, months and months of time off
| after birth all paid. Immense tax breaks making children
| almost a profitable enterprise. In fact, in some European
| countries, it is more affordable to have kids than at any
| time in human history... and the birth rate still declines.
| It's just not about money. It just is not.
|
| Why I think this is immensely important, is because we aren't
| seeing a rate, but an ongoing declining rate. The rate isn't
| just the lowest in human history, but the rate continues to
| decline. It's not '1' for South Korea, it's 1 right now, and
| will be 0.5 eventually.
|
| What happens when no one can have children?
|
| I further ask this, because the entire future of the species
| is at risk. People get all "who cares about going on", but
| wars do happen, plagues do happen, and I assure you I'm happy
| to be here, regardless of what the survivors of the bubonic
| plague thought at the time. Yet if we see a plague that kills
| 1/2 the population, where does that leave this equation? And
| what happens if we see a war that kills mostly those of child
| bearing age? What then?
|
| My secondary concern in all of this is, we have very
| specialized roles these days. There was a time where a person
| could be a "a physicist", yet now there are 1000s of sub-
| specialties in such fields. And not everyone in the
| population is capable of expanding science. Of discovering
| 'new'.
|
| My thoughts here are that we require a certain base number of
| humans to continue to expand science. If we have 100M humans
| world wide, I do not believe we'll be capable of expanding
| our current knowledge base, instead, I think we'll regress.
| There simply will not be enough people intelligent in a way
| functional to, say, physics, to expand that field.
|
| So if our population decreases too far, we may not be able to
| resolve issues with, say, forever chemicals. Or with
| microplastics. Our capacity to do research and resolve such
| issues may vanish.
|
| Couple that with a graph that is constantly declining, and a
| simple 50% death rate in a plague, could mean the extinction
| of the human race.
|
| So my real concern here is, we aren't swinging the pendulum
| on purpose. It's happening to us. We're in the middle of an
| extinction event.
|
| And it's only going to get far, far worse.
| EGreg wrote:
| Throughout most of human history we have had less than a
| billion people.
|
| More people are alive today than have ever lived.
|
| And you are concerned that the population will drop by a
| half?
|
| Everyone will be richer and better off. The amount of
| pollution and resource use will be solved too. The
| underlying input to that is the number of people.
|
| One third of arable land is undergoing desertification
|
| Insects and other species are dying off precipitously
|
| Corals and kelp forests too, entire ecosystems. Overfishing
| etc.
|
| _My thoughts here are that we require a certain base
| number of humans to continue to expand science. If we have
| 100M humans world wide, I do not believe we 'll be capable
| of expanding our current knowledge base, instead, I think
| we'll regress._
|
| That's silly when AI can already make 1 person do the job
| of 100, and soon will be doing most of the science -- it
| has already done this for protein folding etc. And it will
| happen sooner than in 30 years.
|
| This argument you and Musk make about needing more humans
| for science is super strange. Because you know the AI will
| make everything 100x anyway. And anyway, I would rather
| have the current level of science than ecosystem collapse
| across the board.
| bbarnett wrote:
| _And you are concerned that the population will drop by a
| half?_
|
| If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two things.
| A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over this. I
| think you don't get how the rate is continuing to
| decline, and further, that knowing why is important.
|
| And I have not said we need "more humans". Instead, I
| said we need a base number of humans.
| motorest wrote:
| > If you read more carefully, I am concerned by two
| things. A reduction to 0, and the lack of control over
| this.
|
| I think you need to drop back to reality to reassess your
| concerns. Barring a major disaster, there is no risk of
| extinction. Population decline is a factor only in
| economic terms, as demographics alone will require a
| significant chunk of a nation's productivity potential to
| sustain people who left the workforce. However, countries
| like the US saw it's population double in only two or
| three generations, and people in the 50s weren't exactly
| fending off extinction.
| agurk wrote:
| > More people are alive today than have ever lived.
|
| Assuming you meant died instead of lived to avoid a
| potentially nonsensical reading, this is not true.
|
| It seems this factoid[0] has been around since the 1970s,
| and at least in 2007 it was estimated to be 6% of people
| who'd ever lived being currently alive [1]
|
| [0] In the original sense of factoid - being fact-like,
| but not a fact (i.e. not true). C.f. android, like a man
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-
| fiction-l...
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| The entire point of having human intelligence is being able
| to ignore or overthink or delay or prevent any primal
| urges. We also have urges to kill and rake and destroy but
| I doubt you're going "laws are bad because they prevent out
| primal urges".
|
| Also appeals to evolution are extremely weak and lazy and
| unproven.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Urges to kill and rake and destroy? The first, yes. The
| second, lack of care by some.
|
| Yet the first is aggression often born from, again,
| reproductive drive. You don't see moose smashing the
| horns together for fun, they do it to exhibit dominance.
| All creatures strive to say "I'm the best!", in hundreds
| of subtle and overt ways. "Success" at any act means "I'm
| a better mate!".
|
| All of human culture, all of human drive, all of our
| existence is laced, entwined, and coupled with this
| drive. You may think your fancy pants brain is the ruler
| of all, but it's not, for the very way you think, is
| predicated by an enormous amount of physiological drives,
| the primary being "reproduce".
|
| Saying that "citing concepts from entire branch of
| science" is weak, is a very weird thing to do.
| protocolture wrote:
| Population is a london horse manure problem. In both
| directions.
|
| In 30 years time, people might be uploading their
| consciousness to computers, or colonising the moon. Making
| dire warnings about a concept like breeding that we might
| just get rid of seems foolish at best.
|
| >We're in the middle of an extinction event.
|
| No we are not. Lmao. Same way Horse Manure didnt snuff out
| life in London.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > What happens when no one can have children?
|
| That sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie.
| fulafel wrote:
| Not too far at all considering the level of overpopulation
| and resulting environmental crisis we're in.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| > The birthrate right now is below replacement rate, meaning
| that if we keep going like this (even if the birthrate
| doesn't keep trending down and holds steady) that society
| will die off.
|
| Why? Why are we sure that the population will not settle? Or
| that our increased productivity won't offset a change in
| labor?
|
| I do worry societies will fail to handle side effects like
| the temporary increased demand for elder care, but no real
| fear of total societal collapse.
| solatic wrote:
| Or, you continue to grow the population through immigration.
|
| The US is unique (or maybe there are a handful of others, I
| don't know) in its ability to welcome immigrants who, within
| two generations, largely see themselves as Americans first
| and not as the identity of their grandparents. American
| identity politics has eroded this _somewhat_ but it is still
| largely true, for example, that grandchildren of immigrants
| will usually have a very poor grasp of their grandparents '
| native languages.
| kfajdsl wrote:
| This doesn't work forever. The birth rates in developing
| countries are also falling.
| achillesheels wrote:
| I disagree. Immigration suppresses wages. Which suppresses
| native born childmaking, which fuels more government
| charity, erm, welfare, which dampens productivity, which
| erodes civil liberties.
|
| American is not seen as promoting human rights, and to
| infer all immigrants are good is naive, hate to get off my
| porch about this. _sits back down on rocking chair
| whistling "I Wish I was In Dixie" and widdling a hangman
| with the noose almost finished, just a few more threads_
| hylaride wrote:
| > Immigration suppresses wages. Which suppresses native
| born childmaking, which fuels more government charity,
| erm, welfare, which dampens productivity, which erodes
| civil liberties.
|
| Japan and Korea have almost no immigration and abysmally
| low birth rates. Your arguments don't really hold water.
| Having children is actually more of a burden on the
| state, as those kids need schools, (in most western
| countries publicly funded) healthcare, etc. Taking in a
| healthy immigrant at 20 is better almost all round from a
| purely economic point of view.
|
| And immigration doesn't suppress wages any more or less
| than having tons of kids would over the long term. A
| person "taking" a job is still a taking a person whether
| they were born or immigrated. This is ignoring the fact
| that more people over time enlarge the economy and
| opportunity in it. Would the United States be a better
| country today if it didn't accept the mass immigration
| from Italy, Ireland, and Eastern Europe between 1850-1914
| and had 1/4 the population?
| jimbokun wrote:
| Declining fertility is a global phenomenon.
| motorest wrote:
| > We may have swung the pendulum a little too far towards
| deliberate, though. The birthrate right now is below
| replacement rate, meaning that if we keep going like this
| (even if the birthrate doesn't keep trending down and holds
| steady) that society will die off.
|
| The US alone doubled it's population since the 1950s. Enough
| scaremongering.
| sethammons wrote:
| So we need a Thanos snap and go to half the population to
| recreate the 1950s growth economy?
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Birth rates won't "hold steady" because people don't die at
| equal rates. If birth rate is below replacement, old people
| die off first, the population's average age goes down every
| year, and birth rate increases.
|
| A society that is producing children will not die off. The
| U.S. saw over 3.6 millions births in 2024.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| > ...society will die off.
|
| *capitalist society will die off. ( )
|
| See also: automation, ai, robots.... we probably don't need
| as many people / are headed for work shortages anyway.
| mc32 wrote:
| We still need to improve the numbers regarding single (&absent)
| parent households.
| buckle8017 wrote:
| The entire premise of the article is that fewer crimes are
| being committed by youth because arrests are down.
|
| That's wrong, actually what's happening is police have just
| given up on arresting kids who will be released.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| You're half implying this but I wonder if the change in youth
| culture comes from the simple ratio of adults vs kids in the
| social circle around each kid. Youth culture needs a lot of
| kids around to get amplified. When most of the people around
| you are adult you may tend to adopt the culture of the adult
| world rather than creating your own.
| anonnon wrote:
| Or maybe it's just today's youth are too neurotic, anti-social,
| and screen-addicted to go out into the real world and
| misbehave? They're also having less sex, and drinking less as
| well. Also consider that it's much harder to get away with
| crimes today than it was decades ago, and penalties for getting
| caught are often more severe.
| zellyn wrote:
| If you do decide to wait longer, be aware that there are
| hilarious differences geographically. When we had our first kid
| in SF, the other dads pushing swings were around the same age
| as me (fortyish). Moving back to Georgia... oh my god, the
| parents of kids my second kid's age were babies! (There are
| "graybeard dad" Facebook groups etc., but the average vibe is
| way different)
| meindnoch wrote:
| >the parents of kids my second kid's age were babies
|
| Babies can have kids?
| bombcar wrote:
| A parent who's forty with a newborn will feel that the
| 20-year old with a newborn is "babies havin' babies" as
| Strong bad would say.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Strong Bad - now thats a throwback!
| sixothree wrote:
| Crime rates in Georgia are higher. So there's that.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| On the flip side the average age of parents in Utah is
| extremely low and the crime rate is also below average. So
| it may be more nuanced than you would think.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| confounding factor: Mormons
| xattt wrote:
| Even regionally. My kid goes to an urban school where the
| majority of parents are those with at least an undergraduate
| degree, and are at least my age.
|
| Family friends have kids in a rural school with parents being
| those that haven't moved 10 miles from the community where
| they grew up and small-town soap opera dynamics.
| bn-l wrote:
| With this and robotics advancement maybe everything could work
| out.
| kovek wrote:
| This is interesting. I don't know why it's happening. However,
| this book deserves a mention:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Better_Angels_of_Our_Natur... .
| It shares statistics on how violence has been decreasing
| throughout the history of humanity.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| as a followup to that (excellent) book, here's Barry Glassner -
| A Culture of Fear. The Better Angels of Our Nature talks about
| how violence has always been declining. A Culture of Fear talks
| about how the rate of that decline has been increasing since
| the 90s but people actually perceive things as becoming more
| dangerous rather than less, and attempts to come up with an
| answer as to why that may be the case.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| The most obvious answer is large-scale media. I can learn
| about a shooting on the other side of the country within
| hours of it happening, and think "that could happen where I
| am". Likewise with any other news, which by definition is
| about out-of-the-ordinary events. There's more news about
| violence because there's more news, not because there's more
| violence, but it _feels_ like there 's more violence.
| spogbiper wrote:
| "if it bleeds, it leads" is (or was, i'm old) a common
| saying regarding the news media. It may be that there is
| more news that scares us because scaring us is profitable
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Piling onto this, humans have both recency and frequency
| biases that, combined with the attention-as-currency news
| industry, tend to lead to an increase in the perceived
| danger of violent crime that's entirely disconnected from
| the actual statistical danger of violent crime. You hear
| about more crimes, you hear about each crime more often,
| and your estimate of how much crime there actually is
| increases.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This has often been attributed to banning lead additives from
| gasoline.
| watwut wrote:
| 20 century features pretty much largest genocides ever.
| Multiple of them. And in addition, things that we do not count
| as genocides, but still involved deliberate killing of
| millions.
|
| That particular book was criticized by historians a lot.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Maybe that violence is just better organized now. Personal
| violence is declining (assault, murder, ...), but not
| organized violence (war, genocide, ...).
| mcmoor wrote:
| I don't know how good that book actually is, but I read acoup
| blog and it criticizes that book very often. Instead it
| recommends readers to Azar Gat's War in Human Civilization
| instead https://www.amazon.com/War-Human-Civilization-Azar-
| Gat/dp/01...
| rawgabbit wrote:
| This is good news. The level of crime and number of offenders has
| decreased.
|
| Quotes from the article: > As of 2016--the
| most recent year for which data are available--the average man in
| state prison had been arrested nine times, was currently
| incarcerated for his sixth time, and was serving a 16-year
| sentence. > But starting in the late 1960s, a
| multidecade crime wave swelled in America, and an unprecedented
| number of adolescents and young adults were criminally active. In
| response, the anti-crime policies of most local, state, and
| federal governments became more and more draconian.
| > Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes,
| getting arrested, and being incarcerated.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Rapidly declining numbers of youth
|
| May be the result of a rapidly declining birth rate.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _Rapidly declining numbers of youth are committing crimes,
| getting arrested, and being incarcerated_
|
| Well also, the number one crime these youths were getting
| arrested for was drug possession. With drug trafficking being
| second. 15 years ago the vast majority of people in prison in
| texas were there for drug possession or trafficking. If all of
| a sudden everyone's drug of choice is marijuana, and it's being
| decriminalized everywhere, I have to think that makes it hard
| to get the numbers you used to get in terms of arrests.
|
| Not that this is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that while
| arrests did go down, I don't necessarily believe that the
| prevalence of pot smoking decreased.
|
| One benefit is that this new environment should help them to
| have better futures than the youths that came before them.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Like all complex phenomena 1960s crime wave probably has many
| causes, but lead poisoning stands out -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| ivape wrote:
| Drugs. Don't overthink things.
| const_cast wrote:
| To dig deeper, not only are young people doing less drugs
| (good), but we've also stopped being so unbelievably
| fucking crazy with our policing of drugs. In many places
| marijuana is basically decriminalized, although not
| outright legal. Not too long ago even just carrying around
| marijuana could land you decades in prison, depending on
| how black you were.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Still can in many states, although the average internet
| seems to be unaware of this. I saw someone getting torn
| apart for defending their husbands felony marijuana
| possession conviction as "not a bad person" because
| people think that today you only get that charge if you
| were driving a truck full of the stuff with a body in the
| back, but in e.g. Florida it's still up to 5 years for
| 20g plain possession.
|
| https://www.findlaw.com/state/criminal-laws/marijuana-
| posses...
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >ike all complex phenomena 1960s crime wave probably has many
| causes, but lead poisoning stands out
|
| And the ones who didn't get sent to prison, stunt their
| career by being useless hippies or drive their muscle cars
| drunk so habitually that laws got passed are the current
| heads of most public and private institutions.
|
| So things will likely improve a bit when those people age out
| as their replacements will likely be picked from an unleaded
| pool.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| Bold of you to assume the "microplastic'd pool" will be any
| better
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Crime is still happening. The arrests are just not being made.
| There is a readon why us stores have more and more stuff behind
| locks.
| kyo_gisors wrote:
| > There is a readon why us stores have more and more stuff
| behind locks
|
| To foment hysteria in feeble minded neurotics?
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| Why would stores be interested in fomenting hysteria in
| feeble minded neurotics?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The prison industry is very profitable and influential. If
| prison populations are dropping naturally, you might imagine
| that politicians might start looking for some new population to
| incarcerate.
| FredPret wrote:
| No it isn't.
|
| One of the biggest ones, GEO, only made $30m last year with a
| margin of 1.1%.
|
| Another one, CXW, made $84m.
|
| SSTI is losing money.
|
| Microsoft makes $284m... _per day_.
| rwmj wrote:
| The question not even asked by the article is ... why?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| The answer is likely unknowable, but I can think of several
| factors that tie into the plummeting birth rate:
|
| - While the Freakanomics citation of widespread access to
| abortion has been debunked as a sole cause, I think it remains
| credible for at least a contributing factor. Fewer young people
| born to folks who are too poor/busy/not wanting to raise them
| is doubtlessly going to reduce the number of young offenders
| who become the prison system's regular customers their whole
| lives.
|
| - Beyond just abortion, contraceptives and contraceptive
| education have gotten much more accessible. For all the endless
| whining from the right about putting condoms on cucumbers
| poisoning children's minds with vegetable-based erotica, as it
| turns out, teens have sex, as they probably have since time
| immemorial, and if you teach them how to do it safely and don't
| threaten their safety if they do, they generally will do it
| safely.
|
| - Additionally, there has been a gradual ramp-up in how badly
| negative outcomes stack in life, and "messing up" on your path
| to adulthood carries higher costs than it ever has. Possibly
| contradicting myself, teens are having less sex than ever, as
| all broad forms of socializing have decreased apart from social
| media, which is exploding but doesn't really present
| opportunities to bone down. Add to it, young people are more
| _monitored_ than they 've ever been. When I was coming up, I
| had hours alone to myself to do whatever I wanted, largely
| wherever I wanted as long as I could get there and my parents
| knew (though they couldn't verify where I was). Now we have a
| variety of apps for digitally stalking your kids, and that's
| not even going into the mess of extracurricular activities,
| after school events, classes, study sessions, sports, etc. that
| modern kids get. They barely have any unmonitored time anymore.
|
| - Another point: alternative sexuality (or the lack thereof) is
| more accepted than it's ever been by mainstream society, and
| anything that isn't man + woman is virtually guaranteed to not
| create unwanted pregnancy unless something truly interesting
| happens.
|
| - Lastly, I would cite that even if you have a heterosexual
| couple who is interested in having kids, that's harder than
| ever. A ton of folks my age can't even afford a home, let alone
| one suitable for starting a family. The ones that do start
| families live either in or uncomfortably close to poverty, and
| usually in one or another variety of insecurity. The ones that
| can afford it often choose not to for... I mean there's so many
| reasons bringing kids into the world right now feels
| unappealing. It's a ton of work that's saddled onto 2 people in
| a categorically a-historic way, in an economy where two full
| time salaries is basically mandatory if you want to have a
| halfway decent standard of living, and double that for one that
| includes children. That's not even going into the broader state
| of the world, how awful the dating market is especially for
| women, so many reasons and factors.
|
| Any stressed animal population stops reproduction first. I
| don't see why we'd think people would be any different.
| 123yawaworht456 wrote:
| >how awful the dating market is especially for women
|
| "World Ends, Women Most Affected."
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| I think that demographically we might be in a trough, of new
| born children. Also children born to the last major cohort
| (the children of the baby Boomers) are just becoming tweens
| and young teens, or very young adults. There might be a spike
| in crime, in the next 10 years, as they start to mature. It
| helps that they are more spread out, and not born in the same
| few years like the Boomers were, (a more flattened and spread
| curve).
|
| Very rough midpoint years; Baby Boomers 1949, Gen X 1979,
| Millennial 2009.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| ...about putting condoms on cucumbers poisoning children's
| minds with vegetable-based erotica
|
| The Christians did invent Veggie Tales.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > how awful the dating market is especially for women,
|
| Don't worry, I assure you it's just as terrible on the other
| side of the fence.
| standardUser wrote:
| From what I've read, mostly sentencing reform and less
| aggressive drug prosecution/more drug diversion. That and the
| general trend for crime to recede in wealthy, stable societies.
| pjdesno wrote:
| It's not just law enforcement and sentencing - there are
| verifiable numbers for the results of certain crimes -
| homicides and auto theft come to mind - and most have
| declined precipitously.
|
| E.g. Boston had 1,575 reports of auto theft in 2012, compared
| with 28,000 in 1975; Massachusetts had 242 murders in 1975,
| and 121 in 2012. (a 56% drop in homicide rate, as population
| went up 14%)
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| That car theft number is blowing my mind. I would have
| easily guessed 10x that.
|
| Are there any aspects of the crime that make it less
| appealing? Electronic counter measures too good? Price of
| replacement parts no longer carry a premium? Too easy to
| get caught?
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| Consumer goods went on a 50 year deflation streak while
| health care, housing, and education pumped to the moon.
| That's its own problem, but it's hard to steal any of
| those three things.
| pjdesno wrote:
| This paper argues that electronic locks played a large
| role: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41284-02
| 4-00452-2
|
| I would bet that the pervasive use of electronic records
| has something to do with it, too. According to this 1979
| report from the Nat'l Assoc. of Attorneys General, in the
| 70s there were a lot of paths to retitling a stolen
| vehicle back then, which along with the the rise of chop
| shops and easier export of stolen cars, supported a large
| stolen-car economy:
| https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/59904NCJRS.pdf
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Freakonomics argued that crime correlates to whether or not
| abortion is available.
|
| If it is not, crime rates are up, and by a lot.
|
| If it is, crime rates are down.
|
| When you flip from one to the other, takes about 15/20 years for
| the effect to show up.
|
| Rationale is that forcing parents to have their kids when they're
| not ready for them significantly increases delinquency in young
| adults.
|
| This is apparently the only possible theory at the moment. It's
| not proven, of course, but the other theories which were given
| have been found lacking. This is the only theory which has some
| evidence, and hasn't been found to be wrong.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| I'd wager that the foster system is a huge factor. Poverty is
| likely the rest.
|
| When you don't give a human resources, they will find a way to
| take it. When you force humans with no resources to have kids,
| well...
| gosub100 wrote:
| Why abortion and not contraceptives?
| wil421 wrote:
| They probably aren't using them.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Why not both
| gosub100 wrote:
| one can be prevented by the other
| bdangubic wrote:
| not prevented... (trust me :)) but best we can do!!
| nkrisc wrote:
| No contraceptive method is 100% effective.
| gosub100 wrote:
| hence "can be"
| OKRainbowKid wrote:
| Hence "both".
| nkrisc wrote:
| We don't need airbags because injury can be prevented by
| seatbelts.
| gosub100 wrote:
| The "don't need" part is a fictitious part you inserted
| into the argument and not a claim I made.
|
| Injury "can be" prevented by seatbelts, that is a valid
| claim.
| nkrisc wrote:
| I don't know what else you could have meant when you
| answered the question "Why not both" with "one can be
| prevented by the other".
|
| The implied meaning is: "Not both because one can be
| prevented by the other".
| gosub100 wrote:
| Your reptilian reflexes have impaired your ability to
| read or have meaningful discussions. Good bye.
| y-curious wrote:
| Women's contraceptives in the states require a prescription.
| Which requires a doctor's appointment + insurance. If you are
| poor or live with strict parents (ironically), you are much
| less likely to seek them out.
|
| Condoms are their own bag of worms. I think there are
| cultural differences in condom use here, as well as the same
| problem with them being a cost. This doesn't even touch on
| men being shady with stealthing and pressure.
|
| On the other hand, the abortion clinic requires only an
| appointment and a way to get there.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| In the 1980s, condoms were "behind the counter" things you
| had to ask for and suffer the critical eye of the pharmacy
| worker (at least in small town USA).
|
| It's no wonder we had so many teen pregnancies.
| wvenable wrote:
| Maybe people who are bad at pre-planning are also potentially
| poor parents.
| yesbut wrote:
| That correlation has pretty much been debunked.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime...
| wyre wrote:
| Dubunked does not mean critiqued.
| jjcob wrote:
| I doubt there is a single explanation. I think it's multiple
| factors.
|
| Unleaded gasoline could also be a factor. Every country has
| shown drops in crime rates when leaded gasoline was phased out.
|
| If I recall, leaded gasoline was phased out in the 80ies, which
| fits a drop in crime rates in the 90ies.
| leptons wrote:
| Availability of pornography has cut down the rate of rapes
| significantly. Too bad the republicans are going to try to
| ban all porn pretty soon, according to their stated agenda.
| They do love their wealthy donors that run the prison-
| industrial-complex.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| A lot of the current drop has decriminalization of drugs as
| a contributing factor. Same principle.
| Spivak wrote:
| This would be a good theory if it was supported at all by
| data. There has been a decrease but if you squint it's a
| flat line. The best you can really say is that the
| availability of pornography is neutral.
| leptons wrote:
| I have seen the data that suggests strongly that
| pornography lowers rapes. You've put up no data to refute
| that, so until you do I will continue believing the data
| I saw. If you do put up some actual data to support your
| claims (instead of just saying "nuh uhh"), I'll review it
| and then provide my own.
| jrflowers wrote:
| Can you share that data
| leptons wrote:
| There are numerous articles all over the internet both
| supporting my claim, as well as negating it, depending on
| the agenda of the source - there are many people that are
| morally opposed to porn that would want my claim to be
| false (and they would still want to ban porn even if that
| increases rape). Here's some articles that support:
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-sunny-
| side-of...
|
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/10113011132
| 6.h...
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-
| sex/201601...
|
| The data I saw, probably about 20 years ago...
|
| https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-
| qimg-d6f248400fd5308b6d5d0...
|
| I can't verify the source since this data is 20 years old
| and I can't remember where it came from, but at the time
| it seemed like a good enough source, and this was before
| "truth" lost all meaning in the age of the conservative-
| bent "my feelings are as good as your facts" world we
| currently live in.
| jrflowers wrote:
| The rate of homicides and other violent crime have also
| declined significantly over the same period, so unless
| you contend that pornography also caused that, _the data_
| shows that it does not increase the rate of rape.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-
| rate-1990-vs-202...
| tclancy wrote:
| >Availability of pornography has cut down the rate of rapes
| significantly.
|
| Oh for the love of $DEITY, this is some
| /r/shithackernewssays. Rape is not a crime about sex.
| Please don't do this.
| krunck wrote:
| Yes but I'd say reduction of lead use in general.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| And lead paint.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesis
| Izkata wrote:
| The drop in crime also correlates very well with releases of
| popular violent video games:
| http://www.gamerdad.com/blog/2008/04/08/downard-spiral/
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the current US administration and congress are
| trying to expose us to more lead:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/feb/03/republicans-...
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| America closes a college per week and multiple primary schools
| per week. There are fewer youth to commit crime or otherwise.
|
| In NYC the black community has a majority of pregnancies not
| end with the birth of a child. This is where abortion policy is
| focused.
| BirAdam wrote:
| It's simpler and less nefarious than that. Kids have to meet
| up to produce offspring. If kids don't meet up, no drugs, no
| sex, no kids having kids. Video games, smart phones, and chat
| apps are more likely the cause of this change.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| That would also explain why the current administration is
| banning abortion. Got to keep the prison slaves flowing.
| tdiff wrote:
| Unless abortion is considered a crime by itself?
| mdorazio wrote:
| Please be careful about Freakonomics and the other PopSci books
| like it. Many of the claims it makes have either been
| disproven, shown to be flawed, or do not reflect consensus
| among serious researchers. Some examples here:
|
| https://www.americanscientist.org/article/freakonomics-what-...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| For me, this is a bit of a suspicious explanation, because
| Europe is a patchwork of abortion laws, with some countries
| being traditionally strictly religious and other less so, but
| the crime stats don't copy that.
|
| Communist Romania once banned even contraceptives, and yet it
| never became a violent crime haven, not even after Communism
| fell. (Which was some 25 years after the ban, so the unwanted
| kids should still have been in their prime criminal age.)
|
| Maybe the correlation isn't causational, maybe it only works in
| specific demographic groups...
| testing22321 wrote:
| It's clearly very easy to correlate low crime with free
| healthcare, education, unemployment, social safety net.
|
| Compare the US to every other OECD country.
|
| Nobody outside the US would even waste their time on having the
| discussion it is so blaringly obvious, but those in the US
| suffering the effects will denounce it till the cows come home.
| rendang wrote:
| What do you mean by education? The USA has higher PISA scores
| than peer countries and also has high rates of tertiary
| education. Do you think that middle class educated people
| having high student debt burdens causes crime?
| testing22321 wrote:
| Free tertiary education.
|
| The US has vastly higher illiteracy than OECD countries.
| rendang wrote:
| US has much higher tertiary education attainment than the
| OECD average. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count
| ries_by_tertiary_...
|
| People with tertiary education who paid a lot for it or
| are in debt for it do not commit large numbers of crimes!
|
| Not sure what you mean by "illiteracy" which is measured
| in different ways. US PISA reading scores are higher than
| all but 2 EU countries
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programme_for_International
| _St...
| deadbabe wrote:
| There are many reasons why crime is in decline, but ultimately
| its economic.
|
| Crime _used_ to pay. Your expected return on a crime was pretty
| good for the risk involved. Nowadays though, because of
| technology, risk has increased while the returns have also
| decreased. Barriers to entry for crimes worth committing are now
| way higher. Robbing a gas station decades ago could yield a nice
| chunk of cash that could probably pay bills for a month. But now
| with less people using cash and cost of living increasing,
| there's no point. Most registers have pitiful amount of cash. And
| mugging strangers on the street is likely even worse. No one
| carries wads of cash anymore.
|
| The hot industry to be in is ransomware. The sums are vast and
| the risk is low if you do it right. But it's very white collar,
| it requires skills that your typical low level criminal won't
| have.
|
| Overall, it means there's a lot of crimes that are done not for
| any financial reason, just for personal satisfaction.
| permo-w wrote:
| not forgetting that CCTV is absolutely ubiquitous and high def,
| where previously it was reasonably rare and low quality
| deadbabe wrote:
| And most young people would rather have social media that
| lets them easily be tracked than staying anonymous for the
| purposes of committing crimes.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Even if you leave your phone at home to create an alibi for
| yourself, it is very likely that CCTVs will see you enroute
| to the crime scene, if not at the crime scene itself.
| Between businesses with cameras, front door cameras on
| houses, and traffic cameras, it's very difficult to travel
| anywhere without leaving a trace that investigators can
| pick up after the fact if they're sufficiently motivated.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I have a (likely lifelong) mostly-unrealised project to
| try and document all the things necessary to maximise the
| anonymity of committing a petty crime, with the vague
| notion of turning it into a meta-story about the joys of
| pointless intellectual pursuits that cost far more than
| they materially return.
| 3eb7988a1663 wrote:
| I am doubtful widespread recordings are making much of a
| change. Unless you are Luigi Mangione, are police actually
| following video footage trying to tie up a crime? Even with a
| city wide alert, he almost escaped.
|
| It has been a common refrain that someone has an AirTag or
| other electronic surveillance they used to identify a thief,
| for which the police do nothing.
| qingcharles wrote:
| They actually do use the footage in a lot of cases. Bigger
| cities often have staff dedicated to just trying to extract
| raw footage from Temu-quality CCTV recording devices that
| most places own.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| By necessity criminals are having to move up the corporate
| ladder to have access to that which is worth appropriating.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| How much of this is due to smartphones? The years seem to line
| up.
|
| 2014 seemed like the big year where smartphone ubiquity changed
| US teen culture. Less boredom, dumb adventure, drinking, etc.
| (For better or worse but in this case better.)
| y-curious wrote:
| Devils advocate: smartphones have made antisocial tiktok
| trends, "fast money" hacks and paint an unrealistic portrait of
| success. Before, only rappers could be young and rich and
| flashy. Now, seemingly regular teens are millionaires and this
| is constantly fed into young people's feeds.
| janalsncm wrote:
| That might be true but it's another topic.
|
| If your point is that the benefits of crime reduction due to
| smartphones are outweighed by harms to mental health, then I
| think most people would disagree.
|
| But this is also probably painting far too rosy a picture of
| what Meta is doing.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| I hear your point as: up until then scams, gambling and Ponzi
| schemes were for adults with strong purchasing power (could
| sink all the family's money in one single decision), when
| with smartphones everyone gets to enjoy screwing themselves
| directly.
|
| My hot take is that previous generations weren't better
| prepared for the adult world than today's kids. They were
| more "mature" (sex, violence, abuse resistance) in some
| respects, but not specially ready for caring about society.
| deeg wrote:
| Or maybe video games. Lots of teen boys staying at home playing
| Xbox instead of getting into trouble.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| I blazed that trail in the 80s.
| redwood wrote:
| A big part. But pagers too. The decline of drug "turf" crime
| when things transitioned to networks of contacts correlated
| with the decline in violence on the streets which probably only
| accelerated with smart phones. No longer worth fighting over
| corners.
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| > After peaking at just more than 1.6 million Americans in 2009
|
| > But a prison is a portrait of what happened five, 10, and 20
| years ago.
|
| Is this just a result of the dropping crime rates since the mid
| 90s, but on a 20ish year lag?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| That's what the article goes on to describe, yes. Declining
| crime rates mean fewer new prisoners, but high recidivism rates
| plus long sentences means many old prisoners are still in
| prison. As those old prisoners die off or for whatever reason
| don't commit more crimes after release, the total population
| declines.
| standardUser wrote:
| Mandatory minimum sentences can be 10, 15 or 20 years depending
| on the quantity of drug and other factors. Often just for
| possession. The US spent several decades filling our prisons
| with people using those sentences, and we still do, just not as
| aggressively.
| oceansky wrote:
| Bad news for prison owners
| egypturnash wrote:
| GOOD
| kazinator wrote:
| In part due to simple demographics?
|
| If most prisoners are younger, starting their incarceration
| incidents in their teens or twenties, then basically the fewer
| young people you have, the less people in prison:
|
| https://populationeducation.org/u-s-population-pyramids-over...
|
| Compare 1960 to 2020.
| standardUser wrote:
| They fail to mention the reason the prison population soared in
| the 70's and 80's, because of ultra-harsh prison sentencing for
| drugs. In retrospect, those laws appear to have been deliberately
| designed to create a massive and permanent prison population, far
| beyond what locking people up only for non-consensual crimes
| could ever sustain.
|
| Now, most of those laws have been rolled back. In the past 10-15
| years the number of people locked up at the state level for drug
| crimes is down 30% even though drug arrests remain high. And
| those still getting locked up are getting shorter sentences.
| (though over 40% of inmates at the federal level are still there
| for drugs)
|
| I'm not sure why they failed to mention such a key issues related
| to incarceration. They repeatedly refer to the surge in crime in
| the drug war era as a "crime wave". And they link to 3 other pro-
| drug war articles by the same author. Maybe Keith Humphreys had a
| bad trip in his youth and now he's making it everyone's problem.
| viktorcode wrote:
| In the light of that dynamic I fund it curious that Russian
| prisons population is rapidly declining too, but for very
| different reason.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| You might be half joking, but your hypothesis is interesting to
| show how many different reasons can exist for the same
| phenomenon. Lots of people here talking about lead, for
| whatever reason, but also decriminalisation of drugs, abortion,
| etc. Most are logical explanations, even if contradictory. Very
| nice to see how we need to be super aware of statistics; we can
| force the numbers to say anything we want.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| This is an amazing domain for correlation vs causation,
| because a lot of hypotheses make sense.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| The Atlantic suggests this results from the release of those
| convicted during a decades long crime wave, which apprently took
| place when many of us grew up. Perhaps it also tracks with a
| progressive decline in law enforcement. Whether that is because
| crime waves not longer exist or whether it is some other reason
| is a question for the reader. A substanbtial amount of crime is
| now done via internet. Few are ever convicted.
| saulpw wrote:
| Marijuana possession was the number one crime and is now legal
| in a majority of states. This seems like the high-order bit.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| ^ This. The drug war was an attempt for conservatives to
| punish poor people for using a harmless drug (marijuana) to
| help cope with systemic inequality, and kids for wanting to
| have fun.
|
| From 1950-1970, America introduced new mandatory minimums for
| possession of marijuana. First-time offenses carried a
| minimum of 2-10 yrs in prison and a fine of up to $20,000.
| They repealed these minimums in 1970 because it did jack shit
| to stop people smoking. The govt even recommended
| decriminalizing marijuana _in 1970_ , but Nixon rejected it.
|
| But then came The Parents. As fucking usual, parents
| "concerned for their children" began a years-long lobbying
| and marketing effort to convince the public _any_ kind of
| drug was evil and harming kids. Through the 1980s their
| lobbying spread to all corners of the government, influencing
| messaging and policy. So finally in 1986, Reagan introduced
| new mandatory minimums for marijuana, based on amount. Having
| 100 marijuana plants was the same crime as 100 grams of
| heroin. And then they went further; if you we caught with
| marijuana _three times_ , you got a life sentence. Life. For
| pot. In 1989, Bush Sr. officially declared the "new" War on
| Drugs. And we've all been paying for it ever since.
| tptacek wrote:
| At what point in the last 30 years did cannabis possession
| account for even a plurality of incarcerated persons, in any
| state or federally?
|
| Cannabis is not the high order bit.
| BlackFly wrote:
| Well apparently 43% of American inmates are incarcerated
| for drug related offenses. https://www.bop.gov/about/statis
| tics/statistics_inmate_offen...
|
| This article claims that about 32k people in 2021 were for
| cannabis related offense, and simply carrying that to today
| would be 23% of the prison population: the largest offense
| type. https://www.lastprisonerproject.org/cannabis-
| prisoner-scale
| tptacek wrote:
| 32,000 people is about 1% of all those incarcerated.
| jahnu wrote:
| How do the two sets of states compare on crime rates since
| the change?
| actuallyalys wrote:
| Crime is also down compared to where it was if you ask people
| directly [0].
|
| [0]: https://ncvs.bjs.ojp.gov/multi-year-trends/crimeType
| UmGuys wrote:
| Of course it does. The framing is from the establishment. The
| surge in crime and rise in prison population is because we
| criminalized existence EG "the war on drugs". Now we're getting
| rid of some of the worse things.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| One more thing to throw into the mix. The treatment of ADHD might
| be helping:
|
| "ADHD medication still reduces risks, but benefits have weakened
| over time"
|
| https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
| vharuck wrote:
| I once asked myself, "What did people with ADHD as severe as
| mine do before there was medication?"
|
| The obvious answer was: drugs. People like me used to do a lot
| of drugs.
| eikenberry wrote:
| I think taking available stimulants, like nicotine and
| caffeine, were also ways of coping as they generally help
| with ADHD focus (or the lack thereof). I know anecdotally
| that I really hit my academic stride in college when I took
| up both habits. I still notice a small difference after
| coffee (gave up smoking a long time back).
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The best stat is that nearly 90% of prisoners had absent fathers.
| knowitnone wrote:
| only because the US is soft on crime - so soft that drugs that
| were illegal are no longer illegal
| ilitirit wrote:
| I'd like to see stats on how many people are getting arrested for
| petty crimes e.g. marijuana (which isn't even a crime in some
| contexts any more) back then vs now.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| Does this include those sent to the gulag in El Salvador?
| plantwallshoe wrote:
| Is it possible that incarceration had the intended effect? Did an
| entire generation grow up seeing their fathers and uncles locked
| up and decide that there must be a better way?
| boston_clone wrote:
| there is no research to support the notion that mass
| incarceration leads to a reduction in crime; full stop.
| wskinner wrote:
| The scholarly debate is over how large and how lasting the
| effect is, not whether any evidence exists.
| boston_clone wrote:
| Is it not that studies show how mass incarceration
| increases likelihood of children to be offenders, not make
| them less likely to do so?
|
| e.g., an incarcerated parent before the age of 12 increases
| the chances of being in jail after 18 by 230%
|
| I genuinely don't recall anything to support the idea that
| incarceration decreases crime, in general, at all...
| khasan222 wrote:
| I would argue that not having a male role model in your life is
| way worse than seeing the consequences enacted on another.
|
| This even if their was a gain from watching others suffer, the
| lack of discipline, guidance, sternness, is way more
| detrimental than the positives of fearing the consequences
| qingcharles wrote:
| Absolutely not at all. I have a lot of experience with the
| justice system and I can tell you that incarceration has almost
| no positive benefits for those that are redeemable.
|
| And for those who cannot function in the real world (i.e.
| serious untreatable mental problems resulting in constant
| criminality) we need to find a softer way to keep them
| separated from being able to harm the public.
| b3ing wrote:
| Crime has been going down since the 90s, video games and online
| porn probably helped this
| m3kw9 wrote:
| When they decide change the threshold for arrests, like the SF
| robberies or under some dollar amount.
| anovikov wrote:
| Problem isn't with people who are in prison. Problem is with
| people who are out of prison with prison experience - most of
| them are thoroughly criminalised for life. So one should count
| people who served serious time behind bars, and now out -
| ideally, age-corrected, because people age out of crime and
| someone who got in jail at 18 and left at 50 is probably ok and
| isn't a big danger. That is the metric that society should strive
| to minimise.
| qingcharles wrote:
| It's essentially that once you leave prison you have zero
| resources, usually all your friends are gone, often your family
| shuns you, you can't get a job due to your record and lack of
| skills, you can't rent any accommodation due to background
| checks, and you are on a knife-edge parole that will send you
| back for any tiny infraction.
|
| And it's easy for someone to just give in and go back to
| prison. Prison is only scary the first time. After that you
| walk back in and meet people you know who don't judge you. You
| know the staff. You know the routines. Do a few more years for
| the parole violation and see if things have changed next time
| around. If not, repeat ad infinitum.
| zombot wrote:
| Prison is big business in the U.S., so I fully expect red alerts
| going off and panic attacks sweeping the country.
| philipallstar wrote:
| Incarceration isn't the same thing as crime. If the most populous
| state by far (California, almost 40m people in 2025) passes a
| law[0] that stealing things under $950 is a misdemeanor rather
| than a felony, then crime can continue while incarceration rates
| drop.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
| pyuser583 wrote:
| It's very hard to record crime rates in prisons.
|
| Incarcerating people likely to commit crimes will mean their
| future crimes are much less likely to be reported.
|
| This does not mean less crime, it means crime just isn't being
| recorded.
|
| Even the most rigorous studies account for crimes committed in
| prisons.
| snarf21 wrote:
| This is a very one sided presentation of the facts. This fact
| is generally used to suggest that theft is all a liberal blue
| state issue. The highest felony theft amount in the US is in
| red Texas and is $2500. Around 40 states have a *HIGHER* felony
| $ limit for theft than California. If you think about it, it
| makes a lot of sense to not spend $10K+ to jail someone for
| stealing $500 of stuff. There are more cost effective ways to
| rehabilitate people. However, our society doesn't prioritize
| helping as much as punishing.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| The whole hoopla around the felony status is just a proxy.
| when you commit a bunch of felonies there's all sorts of
| coded in law and process (sentencing guidelines) that apply
| (as well as KPIs, cops and prosecutors care about being able
| to say they put felons away) so you can't really be
| habitually felonious very much without winding up behind
| bars.
|
| Below the felony threshold the system is far more free to let
| you go back out and keep doing what you're doing.
|
| So the actual dollar threshold of felony theft is really just
| a crappy (because not all states go equally hard on non-
| felony crime) proxy for the rate of recidivism.
| almosthere wrote:
| Yeah search for "California store owner kills" and "Texas
| store owner kills" and see the variety that comes up. In
| Texas the people are the militia and defend their property.
| That limit doesn't matter there.
| Spivak wrote:
| Sounds like crime is real bad in Texas if citizens are
| having to take the law into their own hands.
|
| My state has guns and a felony theft limit higher than Cali
| and we neither have store clerks regularly killing people
| nor businesses closing due to theft.
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| Your own link points out that $950 is just taking into account
| inflation. When the law was created in 1982 the amount was
| $400, which was about $981 in 2014.
|
| Inflation would eventually make stealing a candy bar a felony.
| Or we could updated the numbers periodically
| UncleMeat wrote:
| You know that the bar is _higher_ in Texas for it to be a
| felony, right?
|
| The "California decriminalized theft" narrative is nonsense.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| We may see a boom in crime as functional illiteracy rates climb,
| which is already correlated with criminal behavior. A generation
| that is weaned on having a computer do everything by voice
| command and gaining passive knowledge exclusively through videos
| will have more living on the margins who can't function well in a
| society that needs some base level of competence in understanding
| and interpreting text.
| charlescearl wrote:
| The Black southeast is still in over the Soviet Union's rates
| during the 1930s https://www.prisonpolicy.org/profiles/LA.html.
| Racialized carceral warfare.
| shadowtree wrote:
| While my Target puts Legos behind plexiglas. While my Safeway
| puts deodorant behind plexiglas.
|
| Statistics are amazing.
|
| Even crime stats are "down". Don't report, don't convict - done.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This points more towards organized crime rings targeting
| stores, taking large amounts of the same popular items, then
| reselling them on eBay or Amazon. If you have a smallish number
| of people doing a largish number of crimes, this won't be
| reflected in incarceration statistics (particularly if the
| resellers rarely get caught).
| chaps wrote:
| "This points more towards" -- you have any source towards
| this? :)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Why selectively put this onus on the person you've
| responded to and not the person at the top of this thread?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I know that in recent years Target has announced that they
| were investigating, in partnership with local and federal
| law enforcement, organized theft rings. It was publicly
| reported on here in Minneapolis.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Even the organized crime ring panic was made up. The data
| presented to congress was completely wrong and various
| organizations had to publicly eat crow about it.
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| Or maybe they're low sales-volume items in a low profit margin
| store and it's cheaper to put some things behind glass than
| post up a security guard to deal with the fact that almost
| everyone, even nice old ladies at the grocery store, steal
| things sometimes?
| witty_username wrote:
| What makes you think almost everyone steal things sometimes?
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| Well 40% admit to it but those are just the honest
| dishonest people
|
| https://losspreventionmedia.com/new-survey-reveals-more-
| than...
| almosthere wrote:
| After covid they changed who will go to jail for what because
| they decided overcrowding with covid was killing inmates. I think
| it was the right thing to do at the time.
|
| However since 2021ish crime has been skyrocketing. It's
| definitely time to figure out the next steps. I want to live in a
| peaceful, safe society. It makes sense to separate those that
| can't help but destroy the peace.
|
| It has also been stated that something like 90% of crime is
| performed by a very small percentage of people and most of it is
| just the same person over and over and over. Those people must be
| separated from society.
| fredfish wrote:
| An interesting and upbeat article.. But the death rate from
| overdose went from 9 to 32 per 100000 in the last 2 decades.
| Using their entrance logic, if I understand what this means afa
| per annum, couldn't that amount to a few hundred per 100000 who
| are not cycling into long prison terms because they are dead?
|
| There's been something like 900k excess deaths since 1968
| compared to if the rate was just flat since then. That's a lot of
| people who probably had a much higher chance of incarceration
| than average even if you only consider drug law and the more
| recently someone was born the more likely they are to have
| already overdosed at any given age.
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