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The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

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Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#111

Post by calinet6 »

ctdonath wrote: post #51
calinet6 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is truly another world, with so much wilderness. This difference changes the culture greatly as well, and how people think about land, the earth, and other people. You can find good people and good places everywhere, but the west really is better in nearly all respects.

This difference changes the culture greatly Hence the importance of liberty as an axiom of federal governance: one group with particular cultural interests (say, deep urban) should not impose their situation-specific views on others far away with radically different cultural interests (say, rank wilderness). What some may find need to prohibit in one situation, others may find necessary to survival in another. The la…

Woah that went political real quick like.

Ironically, the people in the West, surrounded by the most land and wilderness, have the most liberal political leanings.

Being connected to the wilderness means you realize how insignificant our tiny wants and needs are compared to the whole.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#112

Post by kefka »

sp332 wrote: post #89
kefka wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be partially true. But this topic gets very murky, very quick. Spanish are just as white was the rest of the Europeans. It was back about 450 years, when the Spaniards came over to the Americas and made what is called the Hacienda. Just like when the USA had their racial times regarding Africans, the Spanish did so to the natives here. What happened was a mixing between white Spanish and Incans, Aztecs, and…

Hm, so among other Central Americans, what makes them stand out is their Spanish heritage. But in America, they stand out for being Central-American.

Stand out would be true.

Unfortunately, what happens is that the Spanish are the whites, and the Indians are the native cultures. Then you end up with Mestizo, which somewhat maps to the word Nigger here in the US. And unlike our incursion with slaves in the US, the Hacienda system lasted for almost a half a millennium.

Mestizo means mixed. And that's what they are treated as. Not good enough to be native, and not 'pure blood'.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#113

Post by aetherson »

rayiner wrote: post #110
aetherson wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite an amazingly strong claim of biological essentialism. Got any data to back it up? It would be naive to imagine that there is no "fundamental nature" element to people. That your genes or early childhood experiences or whatever do not make some people more prone to antisocial behavior, and indeed do not make some people guaranteed to be extremely antisocial. Some people who are now criminals connected wit…

I'm not suggesting anything is biological. But the guy who has never had a real job other than crime isn't not a "bad, antisocial person" just because you can ascribe his condition to his circumstances growing up. Nor can you say that the drug war created those circumstances.[1] The drug war didn't create these insular low-income communities that don't trust the police. It didn't create households where fathers aband…

You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. And, sure, it's true: people who have committed fully to lives of violent crime are deeply unlikely to turn around and become model citizens.

But: if they don't have an income to support their lives of crime, and if their leaders don't in fact have quite a nice income that the more common criminals can aspire to, there's going to be much less incentive for people who are deciding what they want to be to choose a life of crime.

And furthermore: committed, full time violent criminals are not the only people we care about here. People whose lives are impacted by the black market nature of the drug trade include many criminals who may in fact have a job, and do some crime on the side. It also includes people who are drug consumers, not dealers, who would materially benefit from a safer and hopefully cheaper drug habit.

And it also includes people whose boyfriends and fathers would not be in jail now, and if a large number of those boyfriends and fathers would not be material help to their girlfriends and children, some number of them would be.

Is this it? Is it the only policy that we would need to vanquish poverty and crime in the US? Of course not. But there's a reasonable argument that you can't meaningfully address poverty and crime without addressing the drug war -- that it blocks any other attempt to improve conditions in poor, crime-stricken communities.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#114

Post by rayiner »

aetherson wrote: post #113
rayiner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not suggesting anything is biological. But the guy who has never had a real job other than crime isn't not a "bad, antisocial person" just because you can ascribe his condition to his circumstances growing up. Nor can you say that the drug war created those circumstances.[1] The drug war didn't create these insular low-income communities that don't trust the police. It didn't create households where fathers aband…

You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. And, sure, it's true: people who have committed fully to lives of violent crime are deeply unlikely to turn around and become model citizens. But: if they don't have an income to support their lives of crime, and if their leaders don't in fact have quite a nice income that the more common criminals can aspire to, there's going to be much less inc…

> You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members.

I'm not. The vast majority of the gang members driving around shooting each other up are not "committed fully to lives of violent crime." But they are still "bad, antisocial" people. The 19 year old who mugs someone in a gang initiation ritual is still a bad person even if you can explain his behavior in socioeconomic terms.

> Is it the only policy that we would need to vanquish poverty and crime in the US? Of course not.

Obviously the drug war contributes to poverty and crime in the U.S., I'm not denying that. But the comment I originally replied to stated: "Interesting to see an effect of the drug war manifested on a map." As if that state penitentiary wouldn't need to exist without the drug war.

People dramatically overstate how much the drug war contributes to violence in the U.S., because their world views (usually individualist ones), don't grapple well with a world where a meaningful percentage of the population is bad and antisocial. If only the government didn't prosecute this drug war, they say, we wouldn't need these prisons! People would get along! But the data just doesn't support that narrative. Look at this chart of spending on drug control: http://cdn6.theweedblog.com/wp-content/uploads//us-drug-addi..., and cross reference that against the homicide rate chart I referred to earlier. You can clearly see that most of the dramatic increase in homicides between the minimum in the late 1950's and the maximum in the 1980's and 1990's happened by the early 1970's, while drug war spending didn't really start until 1973 and didn't really ramp up by the 1980's.

We're not seeing the product of communities ravaged by the drug war. What we're seeing is that the drug war has become the focal point for communities that were already disintegrating before the drug war even started.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#115

Post by Houshalter »

dragonwriter wrote: post #77
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a state institution, and only 17% of state prisoners are there for a drug offenses. 83% of those dots are in for something else. There is some sort of weird need for certain groups of people to ascribe all crime to the drug war. I assume its a result of their holding worldviews incompatible with the fact that the world has lots of bad, antisocial, people.

> That's a state institution, and only 17% of state prisoners are there for a drug offense. That doesn't mean that only 17% are there because of the drug war. > There is some sort of weird need for certain groups of people to pretend that crime only happens because of the drug war. Perhaps, but that's no more weird than the weird need for certain groups of people to minimize the impact of the drug war, e.g., by prete…

What are they being prosecuted for then?

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#116

Post by Houshalter »

aetherson wrote: post #78
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a state institution, and only 17% of state prisoners are there for a drug offenses. 83% of those dots are in for something else. There is some sort of weird need for certain groups of people to ascribe all crime to the drug war. I assume its a result of their holding worldviews incompatible with the fact that the world has lots of bad, antisocial, people.

A fair amount of crime which is not narrowly "drug crime" is at least partially ascribable to the drug war. In decreasing order of being "drug caused," we have: 1. Violence over territory from drug dealers can lead to various violence-related charges. 2. Drug addicts may commit monetary crimes in order to pay for drugs. 3. The general mess that the black market drug trade makes of some neighborhoods creates an enviro…

I don't think you can count number 2. That assumes there wouldn't be just as many or more addicts without the drug war.

Number 1 might be due to the drug war, but they aren't exactly innocent victims of it.

Number 3 assumes there would be options for them otherwise. I don't see how stopping the drug war would do that.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#117

Post by curun1r »

Houshalter wrote: post #115
dragonwriter wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a state institution, and only 17% of state prisoners are there for a drug offense. That doesn't mean that only 17% are there because of the drug war. > There is some sort of weird need for certain groups of people to pretend that crime only happens because of the drug war. Perhaps, but that's no more weird than the weird need for certain groups of people to minimize the impact of the drug war, e.g., by prete…

What are they being prosecuted for then?

I hope you're being snarky, because it's well documented and should be completely obvious. Whenever you have a black market economy where product is sold for large multiples of its production costs, it will inevitably be accompanied by violence. And when substances are expensive and addictive, people will steal to support their addictions. And when kids grow up without parents, either because they're in jail, addicts unfit to parent or dead from drug-related violence, they're much more likely to run afoul of the law as adults.

There's a ton of reasons why someone would be in jail for a reason related to the WoD without their crime being classified as a drug offense.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#118

Post by curun1r »

rayiner wrote: post #114
aetherson wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. And, sure, it's true: people who have committed fully to lives of violent crime are deeply unlikely to turn around and become model citizens. But: if they don't have an income to support their lives of crime, and if their leaders don't in fact have quite a nice income that the more common criminals can aspire to, there's going to be much less inc…

> You seem to be really caught up in this idea of hard-core gang members. I'm not. The vast majority of the gang members driving around shooting each other up are not "committed fully to lives of violent crime." But they are still "bad, antisocial" people. The 19 year old who mugs someone in a gang initiation ritual is still a bad person even if you can explain his behavior in socioeconomic terms. > Is it the only po…

> But they are still "bad, antisocial" people.

Yes, but how did they get that way? They got that way because they were drawn into that life by older gang members. They see older gang members living a life of relative privilege and they're willing to accept the violence that goes along with it. If you take away the money, those older gang members become much less attractive role models.

> As if that state penitentiary wouldn't need to exist without the drug war.

From Wikipedia: "In the twenty-five years since the passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, the United States penal population rose from around 300,000 to more than two million."

In that same time period, when the prison population increased over 600%, the US population increased roughly 30%. Unless you've got some other theory for drastically increased incarceration rates, that prison and many others used to house the over 1.5m extra prisoners we have today because of the WoD literally would not exist.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#119

Post by Houshalter »

curun1r wrote: post #117
Houshalter wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they being prosecuted for then?

I hope you're being snarky, because it's well documented and should be completely obvious. Whenever you have a black market economy where product is sold for large multiples of its production costs, it will inevitably be accompanied by violence. And when substances are expensive and addictive, people will steal to support their addictions. And when kids grow up without parents, either because they're in jail, addicts…

I really doubt a majority of prisoners are in there for black market violence. And you can't blame addiction problems on the drug war, there would be just as many addicts if not more without it.

Re: The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

#120

Post by curun1r »

Houshalter wrote: post #119
curun1r wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're being snarky, because it's well documented and should be completely obvious. Whenever you have a black market economy where product is sold for large multiples of its production costs, it will inevitably be accompanied by violence. And when substances are expensive and addictive, people will steal to support their addictions. And when kids grow up without parents, either because they're in jail, addicts…

I really doubt a majority of prisoners are in there for black market violence. And you can't blame addiction problems on the drug war, there would be just as many addicts if not more without it.

> And you can't blame addiction problems on the drug war, there would be just as many addicts if not more without it.

You can't blame addiction problems on the drug war any more than you can prevent them with a drug war. They're inevitable. But you can treat them as what they truly are, medical problems, rather than criminal acts. You need look no further than the two major legal drugs in our society to see how how few people are stealing or committing acts of violence to support their alcohol or tobacco addictions. But if you rewind 90ish years, you'll see the same violence you see now with illegal drugs surrounding the then-illegal alcohol. We can thank congress for giving us the 18th and 21st amendments because that period showed us the difference between a legal, regulated market for drugs and a black market.

People are going to use drugs whether they're illegal or not. And that means other people will sell them those drugs, no matter what laws we put in place. Faced with that eventuality, we need to structure society to minimize the damage that's caused by this. Criminalizing substances manifestly does not meet this goal. It's asinine to suggest that it hasn't multiplied our prison population many times over.

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