Wait - I thought New York city's crime rate actually rose 4 percent because of all the iPhone thefts? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212093/Spike-iPhone...
The daily mail is not a reputable source for anything.
Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
181–190 of 190 posts
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
When was it effectively phased out in Brazil, though? Leaded gasoline was mostly gone in the US by the 1970s and there was a 20 year lag before the crime rate started dropping. The wikipedia article says lead was banned in the US in 1995, but it was definitely not widely available. However, if lead was widely used in Brazil right up until the ban date there (1989) then it would stand to reason that the crime rate wou…
I was buying leaded gas in Indiana as late as 1990, and had no trouble finding it in the general Illiana area. I don't think it's fair to say it was "mostly gone" in the 70s.
[By 1979 half of the gasoline in the US was unleaded](http://66.147.244.135/~enviror4/about/ethyl-leaded-gasoline/...). So by the early eighties it was mostly gone. So yeah, I slightly misspoke saying it was mostly gone in the 70s, but it was halfway gone by then.
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could still be the main driving force, and it just so happened that an associated force or two started a little earlier.
But violence has been declining steadily for the past 400 years. Something other than the internet must be behind that.
No, it was all the internet! :)
But seriously ... I think that, although before it was not the internet, now the internet has accelerated it.
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's true that welfare makes it less likely for someone to commit a crime then wouldn't that also mean it makes them less likely to get a job?
The future doesn't need us - or at least many of us. Already now we have no need whatsover for 15-20% of population to get jobs, as demand for low-skilled labor is permanently reduced. Soon it will be 30%, 40% and more. As soon as robots for stocking shelves, driving trucks and flipping burgers will be cheaper than minimum (or any livable) wage, we can expect that there will be no practical need whatsoever for large…
This is a fallacy that is levied every generation, that automation and technological advances will lead to mass unemployment in the future. It completely ignores the fact that new types of jobs are created all the time and that there's always something that will require expertise and hard work. Instead of assembling widgets in a factory it will be working with data and information.
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice one, ya probably true. Smartphone and camera ubiquity probably also plays a role. Just as cops know if they try to Rodney King somebody it will be on YouTube an hour later, so are criminals aware there will be a bunch of digital evidence. Support is given to this by the fact that many of the crimes that are rising are things people can't witness you doing (bank fraud, identity theft etc). And it's definitely not…
Increased respect for the 2nd amendment probably plays a role. Private ownership of firearms means that a home invader may get a face full of lead, which has to act as a deterrent for some.
Has private ownership of firearms been increasing in a way that correlates with the decrease in crime?
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#186Online.
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fly planes, and I haven't met a rich owner yet. The typical cessna 150/172 costs less than a new SUV. The rich owners tend to fly kerosene burners. Also, most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's just the high-compression engines that require the lead. The FAA, AOPA and others are working on developing alternatives, but it takes time. Perhaps they should have done this sooner.
> most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's just the high-compression engines that require the lead So they could change engines, but would rather continue to poison us to save the cost/loss of performance. AOPA is fighting against it in the bureaucratic way, via numerous stalling tactics, for 40 years now: http://www.aopa.org/Media-Relations/Position-Papers/Issues-r... If your toys cos…
Well as I've pointed out above, I don't own a plane and you yourself appear to be a lot richer than me.
The majority of private pilots I've met are hardworking people (not rich) who love aviation. They either rent from a flying club or partnership, or own a cheap cessna 150/172 or homebuilt. You can buy a decent buck 50 for about $20k, which doesn't make you rich if you own one. The average HN programmer earns $150k+ if they work at Microsoft (like you), Google or facebook in silicon valley. That's fairly rich, and it's a bit hypocritical of you to be calling me rich when my income for the past few years has been around $40k. I used to earn over 100k 15 years ago, but I chose lifestyle over stress and being rich.
I pay $50/hr dry to fly a friend's plane, and he's not rich. He is retired and never earned much money during his career. He can only afford to own a plane because he was left money by his father, and also because his wife has a good pension. He absolutely loves flying, so that is what he has decided to spend his retirement money on. He drives a falling-apart car from the early 90s.
Getting back to the discussion: the high compression engines that run avgas tend to be in light twins, which are mostly used to train airline pilots, air-taxis, medevac, etc. There certainly are some rich people with high performance piston planes, but that is probably a minority. At the moment there simply isn't any viable engine replacement for these planes. AOPA is actually working hard with industry groups to find a drop-in replacement for avgas, which will work in all these engines. It's not an easy thing to do, as you have to make sure the new fuel isn't going to damage the engine, cause an engine failure, etc.
Perhaps they should have started looking for a replacement earlier. Part of the problem is that there isn't too much innovation in aircraft engines, in order to avoid possible problems and because it's very expensive to develop (and aircraft sales are a few orders of magnitude lower than car sales). Even new aircraft piston engines don't tend to have ECU/FADECs (or even electronic timing).
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Talk to the FAA, who have made it so expensive to upgrade/update anything related to airplanes. There is a marginally viable aftermarket parts market for these engines now, but for a long time owners were strictly limited to OEM, salvage, and remanufactured parts. Also, the number of older GA Airplanes, and antique/warbirds in service are so small, it's got to be nothing compared to the exposure from thirty years ago…
If it's 50% of our current exposure, it's not "nothing".
50% is relative... 50% of 5mg is a less than 5% of 200mg.
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
The future doesn't need us - or at least many of us. Already now we have no need whatsover for 15-20% of population to get jobs, as demand for low-skilled labor is permanently reduced. Soon it will be 30%, 40% and more. As soon as robots for stocking shelves, driving trucks and flipping burgers will be cheaper than minimum (or any livable) wage, we can expect that there will be no practical need whatsoever for large…
This is a fallacy that is levied every generation, that automation and technological advances will lead to mass unemployment in the future. It completely ignores the fact that new types of jobs are created all the time and that there's always something that will require expertise and hard work. Instead of assembling widgets in a factory it will be working with data and information.
Please take note that currently these new types of mass jobs are not being created; there is already observable mass structural unemployment, and there are no new major economy sectors that need a lot of people. In recent years the jobs "working with data and information", i.e., white collar middle-class clerical jobs are exactly those shrinking because of automation, not growing; they were growing 20 years ago but not in 2010s.
Where is the next wave? Historically new sectors opened up three times, but it's not a natural law that requires that to happen once more. There are some new jobs created in software engineering and product design, however, they are an order of magnitude less than the shrinking areas. Unlike the earlier shifts towards artisanal, industrial and later service jobs which could employ a majority of population, the new industries need relatively tiny numbers of employees - such as the (classic, exaggerated) example of 140.000 employed by Kodak vs 11 by Instagram.
The "new new" jobs are scalable - i.e., you need a few of the best specialists that can cover some need X for a billion people, instead of earlier nonscalable jobs where there was a need also for lots of average and below-average employees to fulfill the quantity of work. The whole modern "information age" that we enjoy needed only 3-5 million engineers to create it, that's 0.1% of the global working population. Even the ever-shrinking farming currently needs more people than the Silicon Valley 'digital economy'.
Re: Falling Crime: Where have all the burglars gone?
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Simple and likely wrong. Violent crime started falling in the early 1990s, before the internet had much of any penetration outside academia.
Anecdotal, but growing up in a generally low-income rural area, I don't remember any of my peers not having a computer in the early 90s. Many of them, including myself, even had computers into the mid-80s and some of those families were quite poor, even by local standards. The internet came later, but games like Doom were huge long before that, which is pertinent as you mention violent crime specifically.
Yeah I am guessing that having computers made people more sendentary and less prone to violent urges etc.