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Notes -
I hope this isn't too shallow for a top-level comment, but I wanted to share a personal observation about shifts in political views. Specifically, in the last couple of years, I've become a LOT more authoritarian on crime. Part of this is probably me getting older (damn kids, stop cycling on the sidewalk!), but I'd single out two main factors.
(1) A big part of it has been related to noticing shifting views on the issue among city-dwelling liberals (that's my in-group, whether I like it or not). I regularly visit a bunch of US cities for work, and I subscribe to their relevant subreddits, and there's been an incredible shift from "defund-the-police is a solid principle albeit the details need to be worked out" to "lock up the bums now". And similarly, several real life liberal friends who were traditionally pretty anti-police have become much more authoritarian of late, complaining about how e.g. the NYC subway used to be incredibly safe but has now become a creepy unpleasant space to inhabit, and something needs to be done.
(2) I've also had a lot more professional dealings with academic criminologists lately, and damn, it's been a wake-up call. It seems to be one of the most activist domains of academia I've ever encountered (and I deal with sociologists and social psychologists on a regular basis!). Over a few different conferences and dinners, I've chatted with criminologists who were pretty explicit about how they saw their role, namely speaking up for oppressed criminals; empirics or the rights of the wider populace barely came into the conversation. On top of this, there have been some spectacular scandals in academic criminology that have helped confirm my impression of the field. Suddenly, all those papers I happily cited about how prison doesn't work etc. seemed incredibly fragile.
I'm going to add two quick personal longstanding reasons why I'm inclined to be quite authoritarian on crime -
(i) Despite my fallouts with The Left, I'm still broadly a social democrat; I think that an effective state is one that provides good free services to all its citizens, including things like high quality education, healthcare, and public transit. But in order to be democratically sustainable, this requires a certain amount of imposed authority: if public schools become known as a magnet for drugs and gang violence, then middle-class parents will pull their kids out and send them to private schools, and won't give their votes or (more importantly) their organising energy to maintaining school quality. If subways become excessively creepy and weird and violent, the middle classes will get Ubers, and vote for candidates who defund public transit. In short, if the middle classes (who have options) decide not to make use of public options, then public options will die their democratic death. Speaking as someone who likes public options, I think it's essential that fairly strong state authority is exerted in public utilities to ensure that they are seen as viable by the middle class.
(ii) I have a weird sympathy towards Retributivism as a theory of justice and crime. More specifically, I have a lot of negative animus towards what I see as excessively utilitarian approaches to criminal justice, that regard criminals as just another type of citizen to be managed. As soon as we stop regarding criminals as people, but just factors of (dis)production, then I think we do them and our society a disservice; it's treating them as cattle. Instead, I'm sympathetic towards a more contractualist approach that mandates we treat all citizens as autonomous individuals who enter into an implicit social contract by virtue of enjoying the benefits of society, such that we would be doing them a disservice of sorts if we didn't punish them for their crimes. Let me try to put that in a maxim: you're an adult, you're a citizen; you fucked up, now you pay the price. If we didn't make you pay the price, we'd be treating you like a child or an animal.
Obviously lots more to be said here, but I'll save my follow-ups for the comments. Curious what others think.
Five more years and you'll be talking like our resident belle juive.
If you want to live in the first world, you either get Singapore or America. Humans are a variable species, and some will have lower intelligence, time preference, and inhibition. The stupid will always be with us. They can be controlled, for their benefit and for ours, by authoritarianism (both cultural and legal), like they are in East Asia. The schools are safe, the streets are clean, and there's no innovation.
Or we can have America. The uninhibited and unintelligent are allowed to express their nature, to the detriment of themselves and those around them. In return, there is no ceiling on the most productive among us.
If I lived in a city-state, Singapore would be the only tenable solution. I don't, however, I live in the suburbs, which seems to be a great arbitrage opportunity. I get all the benefits of the incredible creativity of America while living in peace and safety, and in return, blue tribers get mugged and have their stuff stolen.
Sounds great to me.
Yeah I've definitely moved further into the let's sacrifice innovation camp. If the most productive or ambitious or idiosyncratic feel kneecapped, so be it, for the sake of public order and a general ethos that supports regular people's dispositions.
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It seems to me that many places outside of East Asia, mostly but not exclusively in the Anglosphere and Northern Europe, had within living memory (and in quite a lot of them still have, as a matter of fact) safe schools, clean streets, and as much innovation as there ever has been. The greatest advances in science and technology took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a time with a much more restrictive social order than we have today, and I remain unconvinced that the removal of these restrictions through successive waves of progressivism and liberalization over the past century has done anything to make us more innovative in engineering, literature, etc. One would be better off making arguments for those changes on deontological grounds than by any utilitarian calculation of scientific or artistic output.
I too am thoroughly unconvinced that progressive shibboleth tolerance, etc drives innovation and economic development.
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I’ll go one better. Removal of those norms and expectations has stymied progress as people must put more and more effort into stop-gap work arounds for things that just worked in previous decades. It also creates a situation where kids don’t get to learn to be independent as they need to be under the watchful eyes of adults because bad things can happen if you just let a kid wander around.
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I don't see how it follows that allowing drug addicts people to harass strangers and push them in front of subway trains allows for greater innovation. If anything, it would seem to be the opposite. What's the mechanism here? Is the thought that someone like Kanye West would be jailed in Taiwan? I'm not sure that's true. I'm also not sure that there is no innovation in East Asia.
One thing I'm fairly certain of is that innovation in the United States now is lower than it was pre-1970 when crime and decay was much lower than today.
My hypothesis would be that the same degeneration which causes drug addiction and crime also lowers our creative capacity.
Well the libertarian ethos that has defended wealthy weirdos and their right to innovate and Do Their Own Thing is certainly wedded to the uncomfortable subway person in spirit.
And America's love of rags to riches stories also suggests that the uncomfortable subway person may one day be a startup founder!
In libertarian utopia, drug shops would be on every corner, and so would be gun shops.
In libertarian utopia, everyone would be packing, and when drug addicts start making problems, sober citizens will not need "cops" or "marines" to save them, sober citizens will draw faster, fire more accurately and solve their problems themselves once and for all.
(at least, this is what the theory says)
In short, this subway situation would be impossible in libertarian world, and no way could be blamed on "libertarian ethos".
I see. You're doing the No True Scotsman redefining of libertarianism to the stricter anarcho-capitalism only
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Correct, to get the subway situation you need anarcho-tyranny. The state claims a monopoly on force, then fails to enforce it against crazy homeless drug addicts, but comes down like a ton of bricks on anyone who tries to handle said crazy homeless drug addicts themselves.
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Yeah, that sounds about right. Kind of like the alcoholic's belief that their heavy drinking is somehow making them more interesting. Possible in some cases I suppose, but mostly it's just bad storytelling and cope from people who want to believe that there must be some reason that bad things happen.
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Sure… but while you’re basking in schadenfreude, many of the blue tribers you mock are hard at work advocating for low-income housing to be brought to your neighborhoods and diversity to your children’s schools, which would likely be downers upon your suburban bliss. So I wouldn’t get too comfortable resting on my laurels.
The solution to that would be something like modern day Texas, Georgia, or Florida, wouldn't it- blue tribers still control the major cities but don't have influence over the rest of the state.
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