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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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I won't contest that Jamaica and Barbados are better than Haiti, yet I'll contest 'pretty respectable society'.

Jamaica has one of the higher murder rates in the world. 44.5 murders per 100K as per 2020. Barbados is at 14.

Haiti was only at 6, surprisingly enough. I imagine a fair few murders are not reported there and even if that's not the case, it's still a very poor dysfunctional country outside of crime.

Chile was at 4, Argentina at 5. Neither of these countries are known for their spectacularly good governance, that's where a 'pretty respectable society' ought to be at or below.

Australia is at 0.8, Japan at about 0.25. These are definitely respectable societies.

The US, of course, is at about 6. Russia is at 7. Yet both countries have made many scientific developments, an ameliorating factor in my view. The entire black-African world, Caribbean included, has only a single Nobel outside Peace and Literature.

Source website is here: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ETH/ethiopia/crime-rate-statistics

What else should a society be graded on other than scientific achievement and not killing eachother? What is there apart from prosperity (albeit an abstracted precursor form) and harmony?

The US, of course, is at about 6.

How does the US look if you break the statistics out by race? My suspicion is there a minority population with a disproportionate contribution.

Is it the extra-judicial nature of the killing that feel warrents a poor grade? Many of the precursors to current western governments executed far more people than today.

IIRC Scott did this back in the day. Blacks are high, Southern Whites are at about 4-5, so equivalent with the white and stable parts of Latin America, non-southern whites(he didn't make a distinction between old-stock whites, ethnics, and urban/rural) are below 4 but still higher than Europe or Canada, and Hispanics as a whole are higher than Southern Whites but lower than the rates in places like Mexico or Black America.

How does the US look if you break the statistics out by race? My suspicion is there a minority population with a disproportionate contribution.

Of course there is, I considered including Detroit as a small Jamaica, the murder rate is about the same. I just wanted to be concise.

Is it the extra-judicial nature of the killing that feel warrents a poor grade? Many of the precursors to current western governments executed far more people than today.

Absolutely, extra-judicial killing is the problem. Perhaps I should've been more specific in my last paragraph. If I included executions, I'd probably have to include war as well. Anyway, executions are for a different purpose. Chemotherapy kills healthy cells like diseases do but its purpose is to improve the health of the body, not reduce it.

Yes people are selected for death via execution much differently than war casualties.

Would you think over periods this selection would apply a selection pressure?

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/147470491501300114

Every country is the same for that. I don't think there has ever existed a country with equality in murder rate.

No multicultural country anyway.

Your suggesting honor games are behind the disproportionately murderous minority?

There is, surprisingly, quite a lot of evidence behind that hypothesis- it's notable that White Southerners also have elevated murder rates, although not as high as blacks, and for obvious reasons the two cultures are similar. In the case of White Southerners, their culture being acceptable to criticize, there's been a few articles alleging that honor games are behind higher rates of interpersonal violence. This probably generalizes at least partially to blacks, given that the cultures are extremely similar and the similar but more intense problem with increased levels of interpersonal violence.

While I do enjoy the idea of Chicago afflicted with dualists intent on maintaining honor. The comorbidities of other crime with the murders suggests to me pecuniary and regular criminality, lack of self regulation and executive function.

I’m now imagining a rapper going ‘now’s the last time you’ve insulted my honor/pistols at dawn and you’re a gonner/it was a long time ago you should’ve started playin’ nice/now I’ve got no choice to put you on ice’, but something tells me that what is meant by ‘honor games’ isn’t exactly that. In any case it seems quite apparent that the black community has far worse problems with violence than White Southerners even if the roots are the same; you could chalk this up to HBD, socioeconomic factors, what have you.