America’s incarceration rate is in decline • Hacker News Board

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#511

Post by fc417fc802 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #327

mandmandam wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In foraging societies - ie, most people for the vast majority of human history - people worked ~15–20 hours/week on subsistence tasks. The rest was leisure or social time (ie, time for being a human later rebranded as 'idleness'). Industrialization has pushed inequality to extremes while raising hours worked - even as productivity keeps shooting up. There's no good reason for people to tolerate this; it's just exploi…

Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.

How many hours a day would you estimate that primates in the wild "work"? Without commenting on quality of life it seems readily apparent to me that many foraging animals have large amounts of leisure time.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#512

Post by gosub100 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 9:39 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #495

gosub100 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "don't need" part is a fictitious part you inserted into the argument and not a claim I made. Injury "can be" prevented by seatbelts, that is a valid claim.

I don't know what else you could have meant when you answered the question "Why not both" with "one can be prevented by the other". The implied meaning is: "Not both because one can be prevented by the other".

[flagged]

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#513

Post by fc417fc802 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #406

bluGill wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those hours worked are carefully defining a lot of work away. Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. When you relook at what people did most of the time you realize they had to work really hard for a lot more hours to survive.

> Most things people eat need hours of preparation that isn't counted in you 15-20 hours for example. Yeah, and we now expect women to work 40+ hour work weeks and house work on top of that. That is the thing causing societal reproduction rates to plummet. Let's just do the math: a day has 24 hours. The recommendation for healthy sleep is 8 hours. Then, you work for 8 hours, with 1 hour added for the unpaid lunch bre…

You're inventing sexism where there isn't any. The men who expect their wives to work 40+ hour weeks are not (at least as a group) the ones dumping all housework and childcare on them.

The time constraints that come with a dual income certainly make the logistics of having children more difficult though.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#514

Post by fc417fc802 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 9:55 PM UTC

Avshalom wrote: post #430

mandmandam wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. The choice isn't between having free time and having modern maternity care. And it's not what was being debated. Like, yeah, antibiotics and anesthetic are great to have, but working 40+ hours a week isn't a prerequisite for them to exist so I have no idea why you're bringing it up. 2. Sitting around the table, singing songs, telling stories, or quietly reflecting; all working at my own pace, in the comfort of a h…

Where'd the corn come from? hunter gatherers had teosint. How'd you turn a tree into logs? Where'd the house come from, where'd the table come from?

You've taken the position that there's some issue with original affluent society but none of the points you're raising run counter either to it or to the adjacent observation that modern quality of life almost certainly doesn't require anywhere near the hours worked at present. Unless you consider economic inequality to be a prerequisite for it anyway.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

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Post by jimbokun » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 9:58 PM UTC

markeroon wrote: post #492

jimbokun wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #2 is childcare. Cheap, plentiful, good quality. This costs infinite money. It's impossible to scale, because nobody wants an environment where their child is not getting attention from compassionate, engaged adults throughout the day. To get the same level of care as a stay at home parent, you need as many care workers as there are families with young children. And if you pay those workers comparably to the averag…

Most provinces in Canada have $10/day childcare

So the workers there are paid $10 / day?

$50 if they’re watching 5 kids, $100 for 10, etc.

That’s assuming 0 overhead.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#516

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 10:09 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #159

energywut wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have any data to support that? I've lived in Seattle for 40 years, and crime here is way less of a concern now than it ever has been. Especially violent crime. My experience also seems to match statistics. So, it would seem that your friend's experience might be the outlier -- I'm not saying they are wrong, I'm saying their experience doesn't match the data and there's at least one anecdote (mine) that runs count…

“Data on the things that no one is reporting”

Nothing has to be reported for a retail business to note that shrink is going up.

Why isn't shrink going up?

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#517

Post by mrguyorama » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 10:13 PM UTC

electriclove wrote: post #498

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young and hungry, without opportunity. Also something being cut with reduced food aid and education.

Education? Free Food Aid? In the US, people are not starving

13% of American households experienced food insecurity in 2023, which means "these households were uncertain of having or unable to acquire enough food to meet the needs of all their members because they had insufficient money or other resources for food."

5% (6.8 million households) experienced "very low food security" which is "normal eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and food intake was reduced at times during the year because they had insufficient money or other resources for food"

American food security is so bad in plenty of places that we can still get notable increases in academic performance just by giving people food

Lack of access to food is literally holding the US back.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#518

Post by insane_dreamer » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

NeutralCrane wrote: post #491

sixothree wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime rates in Georgia are higher. So there's that.

On the flip side the average age of parents in Utah is extremely low and the crime rate is also below average. So it may be more nuanced than you would think.

confounding factor: Mormons

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#519

Post by Tade0 » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 10:52 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #500

Tade0 wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical shape is not the same or even proportional to the ability to pull all-nighters. I know two men 18 years apart in age who became fathers at the same time - two months apart to be exact. Even though the older is an avid gym-goer, it's only the younger who can pull off popping back into full strength after less than 6h of sleep.

Newborns keep you up but an all-nighter is a stretch. Also, you're looking after your kid and trying to get them to sleep, not trying to churn out code to get something to market/go to prod.

Both of mine had colic and went through difficult teething. I've pulled all-nighters to deliver something and it's much easier than several weeks of sleepless nights with an infant.

Re: America’s incarceration rate is in decline

#520

Post by PartiallyTyped » Thu, Jun 26, 2025, 11:09 PM UTC

potato3732842 wrote: post #135

PartiallyTyped wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we blame lead for the US’ electoral landscape too?

I don't think it shifts the red blue much which is probably what you're getting at. I think it absolutely affects the quality of politicians we get though. The best that a given generation can offer is probably lower if that generation huffed a lot of lead gas. So as they age out and younger people hit peak career and fill those roles things will probably improve a bit.

I was mostly thinking that the politicians all look so incompetent — with some exceptions of course — that if it wasn't real, it'd be a very unfunny joke exactly because of how much caricature-like and exaggerated personalities the politicians have.