Axle wrote on Feb 14
th, 2011 at 8:47pm:
iconoclast wrote on Feb 13
th, 2011 at 10:57am:
I wish to make a simple assertion: That a very large % of crime and social dysfunctionality is not a function of absolute level of of resource access (i.e. poverty).
My claim is that a considerable % of violent, deviant and dysfunctional behaviour is a result of an individual's pereceived RELATIVE position in society and not just a lack of resources.
I make this claim based on the following: Absolute level of resources available to all levels of Australian society have increased since WWII. Yet violent crime especially has been on the increase since 2000 (AIC figures).
In practical terms, anyone can fall down in the street. Most people have mobiles to call 000 and an ambulance will turn up. In hospital they will receive world class care, surgery, rehab and if unfit for work, a pension for life. It is not possible for any Australian to starve. Some may be temporarily homeless, but this is often a result of emotional and family issues. With low unemployment, plenty of menial jobs are available and will allow people to survive quite well. Certainly better than much of SE asia.
If relative position is the driving factor (I am on the bottom, and that
is unfair no matter how well I live) then crime will always be with us since we are primarily social primates with an acute sense of relative position.
If we didn't have migrants or some other group then we would find minor differences amongst ourselves to create a hierarchy. This is the point of Gulliver's Travels where how one opens an egg defines a group, their alien-ness and our fear of them.
If this assertion is correct then no amount of resourcing will assist in the prevention of crime or the creation of ghettos. All ghettos are a paradise compared to somalia, yet the fact that its inhabitants are on the bottom of society is not lost on them and breeds resentment and nonparticipation that is expressed in crime, addiction, poor education, teen birth rates etc.
If this assertion is true then it is logical to conclude that no amount of resourcing will change it and a different kind of policy is required.
1. You have just arbitrarily stuck your reason together with alleged increasing violent crime without establishing that connection. You might as well have said that greenhouse gases have been increasing and so has violent crime. I find the claim of rising violent crime spurious. You haven't gone past a vague reference to some statistics. I think crime, including violent crime fluctuates.
2. How does your idea fly with people in the situation you imagine who do not commit any crime- the vast majority? Crime only occurs at the hands of miniscule percentage of the population. If your scenario is a necessary cause, which hasn't been demonstrated, it's certainly not a sufficient cause.
3. You said "perceived relative position". Hell, after the richest man in oz we'd all be perceiving a relative lowly existence. We'd all be committing violent crime according to you. It doesn't happen.
Your thesis is empirically spurious and theoretically bankrupt.
I'll address your points in their sequence.
1. The focus on causal variables is not as arbitrary as choosing say greenhouse gases which are an obviously fallacious covariate. Indeed, poverty has been historically identified as a major cause of crime going back to the days of transportation where we are told thousands were unjustly convicted and transported for daring to steal a loaf of bread to feed their family. Poverty has a host of other correlates: poor education, ill health, unemployment, teen pregnancy etc. All of these are barriers to living full, healthy lives and can constitute a motive to pursue crime. I have not arbitrarily chosen poverty as a causal factor. It is a major topic of research in criminology and has been for several hundred years. An implicit assumption has been that once people were lifted out of poverty and were not forced into crime in order to survive, then crime levels should drop.
2. In terms of necessary and sufficient condition- the very basis of causation- i can only conclude that in most social issues they do not apply deterministically as in the physical sciences. A petrol air mix of certain proportions will ALWAYS explode in the presence of a spark of certain gap. In social phenomenon, the causation seems to be more probabilistic. Hence the focus on risk factors in medicine. People with high blood pressure will not ALWAYS have a stroke, but in probabilistic terms, causation still exists.
3. See my above point. Not all people perceiving themselves to be in a poor relative position will commit crime, but the probabilities can be higher - reflecting an imperfect causal relationship. You do not die every time you have too much to drink,. That does not mean that alcohol is not causal in road accidents.
You need to study more scientific method.
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