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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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Well, alright then:

A large study from all of Sweden has found that increasing people's incomes randomly (actually, increasing their wealth, but you can convert wealth to income via an interest rate very easily) does not reduce their criminality. The authors find that via a cross sectional model, people with higher incomes are less likely to commit crimes (this just compares rich people to poors and sees rich people are less criminal), while when they switch to a "shock" model where people who won what is effectively a lottery don't see reduced criminality in either themselves or their children. This is a pretty big blow for the "poor people are more criminal because they don't have money for their basic needs" theory.

Original study here: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w31962/w31962.pdf

Marginal Revolution post discussing this here (also reproduced below, post has an additional graph at the end on the link): https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/12/why-do-wealthier-people-commit-less-crime.html

It’s well known that people with lower incomes commit more crime. Call this the cross-sectional result. But why? One set of explanations suggests that it’s precisely the lack of financial resources that causes crime. Crudely put, maybe poorer people commit crime to get money. Or, poorer people face greater strains–anger, frustration, resentment–which leads them to lash out or poorer people live in communities that are less integrated and well-policed or poorer people have access to worse medical care or education and so forth and that leads to more crime. These theories all imply that giving people money will reduce their crime rate.

A different set of theories suggests that the negative correlation between income and crime (more income, less crime) is not causal but is caused by a third variable correlated with both income and crime. For example, higher IQ or greater conscientiousness could increase income while also reducing crime. These theories imply that giving people money will not reduce their crime rate.

The two theories can be distinguished by an experiment that randomly allocates money. In a remarkable paper, Cesarini, Lindqvist, Ostling and Schroder report on the results of just such an experiment in Sweden.

Cesarini et al. look at Swedes who win the lottery and they compare their subsequent crime rates to similar non-winners. The basic result is that, if anything, there is a slight increase in crime from winning the lottery but more importantly the authors can statistically reject that the bulk of the cross-sectional result is causal. In other words, since randomly increasing a person’s income does not reduce their crime rate, the first set of theories are falsified.

A couple of notes. First, you might object that lottery players are not a random sample. A substantial part of Cesarini et al.’s lottery data, however, comes from prize linked savings accounts, savings accounts that pay big prizes in return for lower interest payments. Prize linked savings accounts are common in Sweden and about 50% of Swedes have a PLS account. Thus, lottery players in Sweden look quite representative of the population. Second, Cesarini et al. have data on some 280 thousand lottery winners and they have the universe of criminal convictions; that is any conviction of an individual aged 15 or higher from 1975-2017. Wow! Third, a few people might object that the correlation we observe is between convictions and income and perhaps convictions don’t reflect actual crime. I don’t think that is plausible for a variety of reasons but the authors also find no statistically significant evidence that wealth reduces the probability one is suspect in a crime investigation (god bless the Swedes for extreme data collection). Fourth, the analysis was preregistered and corrections are made for multiple hypothesis testing. I do worry somewhat that the lottery winnings, most of which are on the order of 20k or less are not large enough and I wish the authors had said more about their size relative to cross sectional differences. Overall, however, this looks to be a very credible paper.

In their most important result, shown below, Cesarini et al. convert lottery wins to equivalent permanent income shocks (using a 2% interest rate over 20 years) to causally estimate the effect of permanent income shocks on crime (solid squares below) and they compare with the cross-sectional results for lottery players in their sample (circle) or similar people in Sweden (triangle). The cross-sectional results are all negative and different from zero. The causal lottery results are mostly positive, but none reject zero. In other words, randomly increasing people’s income does not reduce their crime rate. Thus, the negative correlation between income and crime must be due to a third variable. As the authors summarize rather modestly:

Although our results should not be casually extrapolated to other countries or segments of the population, Sweden is not distinguished by particularly low crime rates relative to comparable countries, and the crime rate in our sample of lottery players is only slightly lower than in the Swedish population at large. Additionally, there is a strong, negative cross-sectional relationship between crime and income, both in our sample of Swedish lottery players and in our representative sample. Our results therefore challenge the view that the relationship between crime and economic status reflects a causal effect of financial resources on adult offending.

It's a dead horse. The idea that poverty in and of itself causes crime (rather than crime causing poverty, or people who suck being poor criminals) doesn't have much support at all, but it's one of the axioms of modern social democracy (gotta tax the rich to give more to the poor so the poor don't revolt, after all) and also progessivism, so it's unchallengeable in practice.

Now do you guys see why I want to add 100 million more poor third worlders to Europe? Progressive modernity can not be convinced it is wrong, it has to fail, and fail spectacularly. And what better way to make it fail than giving it the exact same things it wants and says are good and will lead to a better life for everyone, only to have their belief system crumble due to an unstoppable force of human social nature that they have spent decades trying to convince everyone (including themselves) does not exist.

  • -22

You continually vacillate about your justification, though. Sometimes you actually come out and admit that you want Europe flooded by poor third world immigrants as a punishment, because you blame them (rightly or wrongly) for the plight of the third world, or because of more petty personal vendettas. (They expect you to drink at social functions and this makes you uncomfortable, don’t they know you’re better than them, etc.) I do wish you’d at least stick with that, instead of occasionally lapsing into pretending that this is somehow for our own good, or that somehow we’ll come out of this total societal collapse with a better and more sustainable set of moral principles.

Dude's a troll calculating everything he says to get a rise out of us, I wish people stopped taking him seriously.

I do think he has sincere opinions and that they roughly approximate the basic worldview he espouses here. I also agree that he expresses those opinions in a way that is calculated to get a rise out of people such as myself. (And to some extent he succeeds at this goal!) Ultimately I still think it’s worth engaging with the underlying arguments and pointing out the ways in which he is being inconsistent and deceptive, both to make his trolling less effective in the future and to argue by proxy with those who hold similar views to his.

Ultimately I still think it’s worth engaging with the underlying arguments

I wish. Most of my issue with him that it would be interesting to engage with these arguments, but he's not really engaging in a conversation.

Even if he is a troll, there's no problem engaging him. Plenty of accelerationists sincerely believe the kind of things he espouses.

One can have multiple reasons for wanting something, e.g. I might want to take a walk to the shopping centres because 1) I want to get groceries and 2) I want to get fresh air. I could do 1) on its own by just ordering online or 2) on its own by just going to the park, but there is a certain beauty in achieving multiple goals with as few actions as possible (not to mention efficiency). All the best mathematical theories are beautiful, and there is a reason why beauty and truth are so often put together.

I do think Europe needs punishment, and I also think the third worlders should have a better living standard than they do at the moment as they are just as human as you or I (doesn't mean they are equal though), and I also think we need to destroy progressive modernity and that its adherents have reached a level of delusion where it has to fail on its own terms. "Flood Europe with immigrants" is a 3 for 1 that achieves all of these goals in one fell swoop. It's beautiful in its simplicity, don't you think?

  • -12

Sweden becoming 60% sub Saharan African does not necessarily imply that Sweden then adopts sub Saharan African morality- the progressives will come to and stay in power by offering the Africans free shit, and then attempt to impose progressive morality from above. No, they won’t turn some guy from the Congo into a gay rights activist overnight, but they’ll break immigrant families very effectively.

and I also think the third worlders should have a better living standard than they do at the moment as they are just as human as you or I (doesn't mean they are equal though)

Given that progressive modernity has the high living standards, shouldn't your answer be the reverse? To help the global hegemon spread progressive modernity to the 3rd world? Why burn the golden goose rather rather than clone it, so to speak? Delusion or not it is demonstrably better at creating improved living standards.

You can do that and import some 3rd worlders to the West for the faster boost.

To help the global hegemon spread progressive modernity to the 3rd world?

To an extent I agree. Large parts of the world still have women treated really badly, including my homeland. I think you can get a lot of the economic conditions for growth without the need for progressive modernity (see Singapore) but even still you have to admit their social policies are directionally compared to highly traditional places like Afghanistan. We need a dose of progressive modernity to improve lots of things: I agree the gays shouldn't be persecuted as long as they keep it behind closed doors and don't force Pride on the rest of society (I am against gay pride for the same reason I am against accountant pride), divorce and abortion should be legal (though seen as socially suspect) and cheaply available, women shouldn't have to stay at home or be obliged to obey their husbands, minorities should have some organisation dedicated to make sure they aren't being taken advantage of, mental health should be seen of as just as important as physical health, women should be educated and play just as big a role in the direction of the country as men etc. etc.

Progressive modernity is a good servant but a bad master, the modern west has become enslaved to it and hence over there it needs to be destroyed, however in the third world I geuninely believe there is a lot of good it can do as long as its worst excesses are kept in check.

Thanks, I'll let my daughter know that we had to accelerate the degradation of her homeland in order to prove a point.

This is a fair response, but taking the accelerationist argument seriously for a sec, the argument is generally that it will be better for your granddaughter, not your daughter.

Which, y'know, choosing between the two is one hell of a sophie's choice level decision, but I don't think it can be dismissed off hand that easily if what you value is the safety/comfort of your decedents. I feel like a better counterargument is that there's a decent chance we never get advanced civilization up and running again if the whole thing collapses.

I meant to imply your better counteragument, in a way - I don't think that what is currently being torn down can be rebuilt at all in any time-frame in which one can speak of a given family or country. Sure the world may yet see another place with qualities similar to the best of the Germanies of recent past, but I very strongly doubt that there'll be any continuity. And I opine that continuity is one's job as a maintainer of or contributor to civilization, and not burning it all down as a cautionary example.

Ahh, my apologies then, that did not come across in my reading of the comment. It came across as pretty standard concern for the welfare of your children. Which, fair, that's a pretty basic human emotion.

Either way. Happy new year. Hope your day is going well

While I am not immune to schadenfreude, this is like an anti-nuke activist wishing for nuclear apocalypse to prove the MAD doctrine wrong. The point is to prevent the left from turning my country into a third world hellhole, not to say “I told you so” when they do.

Only problem is that societies don't tend to reform-their-way-out of a self-reinforcing, negative feedback loop such as this. Things inevitably get worse before they get better, and that "getting worse" part brings them to dig their own grave.

One could try to stake out some sort of position where one wants X random Western country to turn into a shithole in order to prove a point to the rest.

One could also go full Nazi and intend on "fixing" the demographic problems after the point is proven with death camps.

I do not actually hold either of those positions, but they are logically coherent.

Don't you worry it will cause a Dark Age? Civilizational collapse doesn't seem good for anyone, or do you not expect it will get that far?

Or is the satisfaction of saying, "I told you so," worth what you believe will be European civilization "fail[ing] spectacularly?"

Wouldn't you rather hope that social science develops and we create societies that facilitate the thriving of human nature?

Don't you worry it will cause a Dark Age? Civilizational collapse doesn't seem good for anyone, or do you not expect it will get that far?

It's not in their interest to care, if you believe there's nothing in it for you as things stand. Would you continue to be part of a system if you thought things would never go your way again?

Or is the satisfaction of saying, "I told you so," worth what you believe will be European civilization "fail[ing] spectacularly?"

For some people that's enough. And if that's all they have, they might as well revel in it. "Better to reign in hell than serve in Heaven."

Wouldn't you rather hope that social science develops and we create societies that facilitate the thriving of human nature?

Everyone agrees with that thesis. Nobody agrees on the details. The things conservatives will point to for regarding Russia a success for instance, are the exact same things progressives will point to for regarding it a failure.

social science develops and we create societies that facilitate the thriving of human nature

I don't suppose anything resembling that is going to happen. Politicians and academics will propose societal changes, but I think it will be something along the lines of compact urbanism and some sort of Great Society style misguided welfare.

Civilizational collapse doesn't seem good for anyone, or do you not expect it will get that far?

Oh I don't expect civilisational collapse, I expect things to become more like they are in the third world, which is to say, not that bad if you're near the top of society on one of a multitude of different axes (e.g. you have social elites, political elites, entrepreneurial elites, professional elites, academic elites, military elites, all you need to live a comfortable life is be one of these or close to being one of these or be the family of one of these), however it will be in such a state that the modern welfare state white elephant collapses under its own weight and has to be abolished, alongside all the other currently "fashionable" social theories which all Good Right-thinking People believe.

Indonesia seems like a good goal to me, and nobody would say it is undergoing civilizational collapse, Jakarta is a modern highly technologically advanced city, no reason humanity can't thrive in such a society.

(But yes, getting to go "I told you so" will be very nice too, extremely cathartic after all the shit and excessive taxation I've had to endure).

  • -11

South Africa is the society you describe and the ANC is full of idiotic and largely falsified progressive theories.

all the shit and excessive taxation I've had to endure

oh you poor dear. I guess we should destroy our culture to make it up to your poor beleaguered brahmin head. Please sir accept my apologies for the excessive taxation.

That's all well and good, but it's not bringing my money back is it?

Who forced you to stay in the shitty tax-heavy West where you were losing money compared to your homeland?

Back home we don't have the sorts of high paying jobs like the one I do here. These jobs do exist in places like Hong Kong and Singapore and the US but I have family reasons for not wanting to move too far away from the UK, at least not right now. Money is not the only thing that matters.

  • -10
More comments

And what better way to make it fail than giving it the exact same things it wants and says are good and will lead to a better life for everyone, only to have their belief system crumble due to an unstoppable force of human social nature that they have spent decades trying to convince everyone (including themselves) does not exist.

Has anyone of any ideological stripe in history ever not doubled down while blaming everyone else when faced with this sort of thing? I think history, including much of recent history, shows that the human capacity for self delusion in ideology is effectively infinite and certainly well beyond what's needed to get people, en masse, to march all the way to oblivion if that's what is demanded of them.

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