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America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

motherjones.com

101–110 of 201 posts

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#101
post #4

Fun fact: the banning of leaded gasoline was one of the biggest regulatory successes in history, and went a long way to validate the model. The use of leaded gasoline was a classic market failure. It saved a small number of companies a relatively small amount of money, but was on the net a huge negative for the overall economic because it basically pumped lead directly into the bloodstream of children through their l…

Other 'fun' fact: the guy who discovered that lead prevents 'knocking' in engines also discovered the usefulness of freon as a refrigerant (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.)

His works probably did more environmental damage than those of anybody else in history.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#102
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll never understand how people can suppose that a government solution,... is by any definition or stretch of the imagination "more efficient" than private litigation. You mean private litigation which employs gov't judges to adjudicate and the gov't police to enforce? If so, you have a confusing definition of private. The only private litigation I'm aware of is the mob, which has a self-contained judgement and en…

> You mean private litigation which employs gov't judges to adjudicate and the gov't police to enforce? No, I mean private litigation and conflict mediation that is private. There is a lot of that already.

How would that work?

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#103
post #46
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any data to support this?

Google shows plenty of studies and sources. http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2011/05/18/uta-prof-video-games-lead... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13799616 http://gamepolitics.com/2011/08/23/research-video-games-help... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/video-games/8798927/Vi...

and this is something I can upvote :)

although neither article supports your line of reasoning ("violence -> venting frustration -> less crime"), all of them mention the lack of time as a reason for crime drop.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#104
post #74
post #4

Fun fact: the banning of leaded gasoline was one of the biggest regulatory successes in history, and went a long way to validate the model. The use of leaded gasoline was a classic market failure. It saved a small number of companies a relatively small amount of money, but was on the net a huge negative for the overall economic because it basically pumped lead directly into the bloodstream of children through their l…

It's not a market failure, it's a governmental failure, for this reason: if you spew poison into the atmosphere (it was known long before then that lead was poisonous), you should be expected to have to pay for the damages caused. But these companies knew they could get away with it with impunity, and they did. So, it was a governmental failure in the first place, and failure was piled on failure by not addressing th…

It's not a market failure, it's a governmental failure

And therein lies the rub: in America, it is frequently not clear that the government has the power to regulate such activity. The Clean Air Act and other similar regulatory acts were considered revolutionary when they were passed because no one was sure if they were even legitimate exercises of federal power.

Today, we generally agree that such regulation is within the scope of the federal government's power, but that is only because we have already grown up in a society where the government exercises such power.

However, as you can see from some comments on this thread, some people still deny the federal government's ability to regulate commercial activity.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#105
post #12

I'm tempted to repeat the oft said correlation is not causation. But really I have never thought that captures the problem I have with studies like this. Of course correlation does not necessarily imply causation. What I really find to be problematic is a small time series of data of a facet of a human behaviour across a population is probably going to correlate extremely well to many other time series across the sam…

This article cites research that goes way beyond the usual sort of correlation. How much stronger would the evidence need to get?

Well, for starters to prove casuation one doesn't only need to show X moves in sync with Y. One also needs to show that it is not because both X and Y are caused by some reason Z which influences both even though X and Y are completely independent from each other. E.g. correlation between good lead data and good crime data may be caused by the fact that in cities with better law enforcement both criminal laws and environmental laws are enforced strictly, or because richer folks drive less polluting cars and commit less crimes. It does not mean less lead pollution causes people to be rich.

The whole thing sound like classic fitting the preconceived conclusion. But there's also something like this:

>>>> Not only does lead promote apoptosis, or cell death, in the brain, but the element is also chemically similar to calcium.

How lead is chemically similar to calcium? They are on opposite ends of the periodic table and have very different chemical properties. That, of course, does not prevent lead from messing with ion channels, but saying lead is chemically similar to calcium is wrong.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#106
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simple answer is private insurance. More detailed answers can be found in all sorts of essays, books, and propositions regarding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycentric_law .

What can private insurance do for me if I am killed? What if I can't afford private insurance? What if I am not allowed private insurance? Seems like decrying a 'monopoly of violence' and replacing it with a 'vibrant violence marketplace' is quite a few steps in the wrong direction.

> What can private insurance do for me if I am killed?

What can anything do for you if you are killed? I don't understand the relevance. You could still have private life insurance to provide for your family, but that's no different than today.

> What if I can't afford private insurance?

What if you can't afford the fees associated with litigation in the government court system? I never claimed that my suggestion would suddenly make everything fine for poor people. It's always going to be worse to have less wealth, just like it is in our current society.

> Seems like decrying a 'monopoly of violence' and replacing it with a 'vibrant violence marketplace' is quite a few steps in the wrong direction.

I don't understand how. Neither system is a utopia, but a competitive system motivated by profit would probably be cheaper (because customers like lower prices) and less violent (because violence is expensive and risky) than a government monopoly.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#107
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is false, and I don't understand why you think conflict resolution works better when it is violent and compulsory.

Declaring it false does not make it so. Violence is always a specter (a potential action) in any conflict between people. The question is; How do we minimize the role of violence in coming to resolutions to conflicts? I think the rules we've evolved to answer that question of the course of human history have done a decent job. Do you have a different set of rules that you think would better optimize this minimization…

> Declaring it false does not make it so.

Of course not. It was already false, long before I declared it so.

> Violence is always a specter (a potential action) in any conflict between people. The question is; How do we minimize the role of violence in coming to resolutions to conflicts?

I agree completely.

> I think the rules we've evolved to answer that question of the course of human history have done a decent job.

I disagree completely.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Declaring it false does not make it so. Violence is always a specter (a potential action) in any conflict between people. The question is; How do we minimize the role of violence in coming to resolutions to conflicts? I think the rules we've evolved to answer that question of the course of human history have done a decent job. Do you have a different set of rules that you think would better optimize this minimization…

> I'd love to hear it. And sadly you are dealing with a Libertarian and you will.

Yes, because "Libertarians" (improperly capitalized) are the only people who express their ideas to other people. Good point.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#109
post #29

tl;dr version: http://tldr.io/tldrs/50e6993885d8d1617b000a23/americas-real-... There is now enough statistical proof that lead is the prominent cause of crime. Crime rates and lead concentrations are extremely well correlated everywhere: the more lead in the environment, the more crimes will occur. Furthermore, it is scientifically proven that lead has a very negative impact on the brain, killing gray matter and impa…

The fact that lead is poisonous is definitely taken by the government seriously, and for quite some time. The hypothesis that crime is caused by lead is not, and it is not proven by correlation. I bet if you scan through millions of data series available on everything from wool production in New Zealand to average thickness of hairs of dogs in the USA, you could find a series that correlates very well with the crime data over the last century. Did you know, for example, that US stock market is driven by butter production in Bangladesh? Here it goes: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_archive/199... http://business.time.com/2009/04/16/the-bangladeshi-butter-p...

Scientific proof of the cause IMHO needs much more than even very nice correlation.

Re: America's Real Criminal Element: Lead

#110
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then the insurance company becomes the government. (Insurance companies will merge until there is a single one... if the history of companies is to be believed). Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't like you, and since there is no actual way for you to enforce me paying you out, I just won't". Again, if the insurance company decides not to pay, they are enacting bad things on someone and not honorin…

> So then the insurance company becomes the government. Why? Retail stores don't become the government or merge into one. Neither do private security agencies. It's unlikely that any organization could "become the government" unless a vast portion of society accepts them as the sole legitimate purveyor of violence, which is precisely what I don't want to happen. > Or the insurance company also just says "No I don't l…

Nope, not even close to a reasonable response. If insurance is supposed to pay out in the cases of the big black swan events, and I in good faith of the insurance agreement have put a significant amount of capital towards restitution, repairs, what-have you, expecting to be reimbursed. Now the insurance says "oh nope, fuck you"... What means do I have of paying a different company? What means do I have of getting word out that they have fucked me? I can't afford to buy off majority of reporters like a big insurance company does.

I guess I could hope for one reporter to be nice... but all the others making crap up about me for a few $K would make the other customers not actually pay heed. No penalty for the shady insurance.

Similarly you are making a big fuss over the difference between physical and economic violence. Yet you adamantly refuse to explain how a bunch of economic policies via collusion of the players, resulting in a scenario of "play by our rules or else get no way of eating or sheltering yourself" is any less violence than "do what we say or we shoot you". To me the difference is a false one: forcing me to do something with one death threat really isn't different than with another.

Finally, you somehow are confusing free market with "open and transparent operation of all economic players". We already see that isn't the case - most business hide most information about themselves the best they can, and rebel against any attempt to shed light on them. In fact government is more open about operations than almost all businesses, yet somehow there will be magic knowledge transfer between consumers and business about what those businesses really do once you take away government.

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