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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   29418 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Recently there has been some discussion in the media about fare evasion, and I thought in light of @WhiningCoil's comment on low trust societies it might be of interest to you all.

Over the past five years the fare evasion rate on New York City's bus lines has risen from 20% to 50%. while there has also been a similar (but less dramatic) rise among subway customers.

Recently the MTA commissioned a study to investigate the psychology of fare evaders and The New York Post has picked this up and mocked the project.. The study broke down different "personas" of fare evaders like a software product manager might. The NYP felt that this was inane as the obvious conclusion was that scofflaws were simply motivated by a lack of enforcement:

The pricy research – which comes as the authority is crying poverty and pushing for a detested congestion pricing plan — is being blasted by critics as a huge waste that will only tell them what anyone with common sense already knows about scofflaws....If we are going to hire a behavioral consultant, it will be to help change the behavior of a criminal justice system that has determined that fare evasion should have no consequences

I enjoyed this article by Manhattan Contrarian that criticizes the New York Post for completely ignoring race when discussing this issue, and pretending that lack of enforcement is the source of our woes.

But even the Post, in both its editorial and news pieces, is not willing to talk honestly about the association of race and fare-beating. Neither their news article nor editorial says a word about the race of the fare beaters. The subject is too sensitive even for them. But the problem is that until we can have an honest discussion about the association of race and fare-beating, it is almost impossible to address the issue.

I'll note as an amusing aside, that even the conservative Post uses an image of a White teenager for their illustration of a common fare evader.

However, I have to disagree with Francis Menton of The Manhattan Contrarian here when he writes the following:

To enable such a program to begin and to move forward, it is necessary for the issue of refusal to pay fares by race to enter the public consciousness. Someone first must collect systematic data and report it and point out what is actually going on. If it is too sensitive to report by race per se, then how about reporting by zip code? And then the newspapers and TV stations and podcasts and websites would need to pick up the story and make something out of it.

The racial makeup of fare evaders is perfectly well known of course and actually quite openly acknowledged so long as it is being done by the right sorts of organizations for the right ends.

I also wonder why the Post refuses to ask why draconian fare enforcement measures are only now needed? Somehow the MTA functioned perfectly fine with its easily-avoidable turnstyles decades ago. To relate it back to WhiningCoil's comment, I can only say "I think the bottom line, is this is just what a low trust society looks like."

I can only say "I think the bottom line, is this is just what a low trust society looks like."

Luigi's CEO assassination has been a real statement piece to drive your point.

Other than money, the US lacks other recognizable traits of a developed nation.

High violence, low trust, unreliable social safety nets, bad health outcomes...... you name it. The US has money, and that's about it. Yes, being in the top 1% of America makes for an amazing life. Guess what ? That applies to every half-developed nation.

This is how ChatGPT outlines what living in a developed nation feels like:

Aspects of a Developed Country from a Quality of Life Perspective

  1. Healthcare

    • Universal access to high-quality healthcare services.
    • Advanced medical facilities and technologies.
    • High life expectancy and low infant mortality.

  2. Education

    • Free or affordable access to primary, secondary, and tertiary education.
    • High literacy rates and skilled workforce.
    • Emphasis on research and innovation.

  3. Economic Stability

    • High GDP per capita.
    • Low unemployment and inflation rates.
    • Strong social safety nets and pensions.

  4. Infrastructure

    • Efficient transportation systems (roads, public transit, airports).
    • Reliable utilities (electricity, water, internet).
    • Modern urban planning with sustainable practices.

  5. Safety and Security

    • Low crime rates and effective law enforcement.
    • Political stability and strong governance.
    • Protection of civil rights and freedoms.

  6. Environmental Quality

    • Clean air, water, and well-maintained public spaces.
    • Access to green spaces and recreational areas.

  7. Social Equity

    • Gender equality and inclusivity.
    • Access to housing and elimination of poverty.

  8. Work-Life Balance

    • Reasonable work hours and paid leave policies.
    • Opportunities for cultural, leisure, and recreational activities.

(Note: it gave me a couple of woke talking points. I deleted those)

I've personally striked out what America fails at. It's pretty damning.

  • -19

The US does have a European-sized welfare state, has crime rates which are not globally that high, has a high life expectancy and low infant mortality with universal access to emergency medicine(seriously a driver of US healthcare costs is the constitutional right to access emergency medicine and then just not pay it), and has universal access to college education(which, if you’re willing to accept the kinds of conditions college kids have historically lived in, is actually fairly affordable). There’s a housing shortage, but it’s a lot better than other Anglosphere countries.

Crime rates are geographically constrained in the USA rather than an everpresent reality. Much ink can be spilled about general observations, but the simple fact is that if you don't live near blacks, crime will be a much lower problem. The USA has enough space for crime-worried californians to flee to economic centers in texas or florida, while economic activity concentrated in only a few cities filled with racialized criminality limits the options for Europeans.

Racialized crime is a solvable problem; black people don't like crime either as clearly evinced by their disapproval of 'defund the police'. The problem is liberals who use disparate impact as a means to castigate their proximate political opponent instead. There is of course the grift of NGOs and the like to extract sympathy from do gooders, but that happens on both sides of the aisle and so its a wash.

Crime in the US is a disproportionately but not exclusively black problem- US whites have much higher homicide rates than Europe, and indeed higher than Canada. It’s also not the case that crime is a mostly blue state problem- if anything, it’s more common in blue cities in red states, while there remain many hotspots in other locales.

Red states are disproportionately black, with blue cities in red states blacker than blue cities in blue states. Everytime liberals (so not specifically referring to you) smugly post that red states are stupider and more criminal than blue states they end up shooting themselves in the foot because it goes back to how large the black population is.

The ultimate test of this experiment will be the outcome of St George county in Louisiana after it split from Baton Rouge county. Richer whiter (but still having black residents) zone splits off from failing black county because the whites wanted better schools. With less whites around will the blacker Baton Rouge be free to prosper and flourish without the evils of racism tainting their progress? I posit no, but the anticipation of the upcoming crash is itself part of the journey.

Well yes, Baton Rouge itself does not want St George county to split off for that very reason. And the prototypical blue cities in red states, like Austin and Asheville, are doing at least OK.

Very poor governance associated with extremely large- and often outright majority- black populations is a major problem for these cities; Jackson and St. Louis are not doing well on non-crime related metrics either. Very white red states often do quite well on things like education and crime. But sun belt states maintain high crime rates and rural whites in the south have extremely high crime rates by first world standards- while blacks have a big portion of the blame, there are still other things going on.

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