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- Frixionburne, on 06/15/2009, -1/+34Wait... let me get this right. Crime goes up when people get desperate?
Ahhhhhhhh so thats why crackheads rob people, all this time I just thought they did it for sport! - nhan26, on 06/15/2009, -0/+17If anything, the recession should teach us to be thankful for what we have, and that morals don't have to take the sidelines. I grew up with family and friends who have demonstrated that.
- Leo21k, on 06/15/2009, -3/+19Now imagine if the government suddenly stopped sending out welfare checks, food stamps, etc
Choas - lekahe, on 06/15/2009, -1/+15We had the first kidnapping in Finland's history and it is turning out to be one man's need for money. There still are people who have the money to pay...
- DerangedPenguin, on 06/15/2009, -0/+10Great Comment! When life is good we often spend time whining about what we don't already have. When times are rough it shows the character of a person when they can be thankful for what they do have.
- krawkula, on 06/15/2009, -0/+10Well... I have been robbed myself 3 times in January. My car was broken into, took the gps and window scraper(wtf). And while the window was still busted someone else went in and stole my car cellphone charger. And after I got the window fixed someone robbed me of the change I had in my pocket from the window repair($3). That was a ***** up week, and then I got the stomach flu.
- DerangedPenguin, on 06/15/2009, -3/+11Animals in a zoo will turn upon their masters if they are not fed, if they get sick or uncomfortable. This is why Democrats work so hard at keeping their voters fed, clothed, medicated and housed, lest they become less like caged animals and more like humans.
- lizard450, on 06/15/2009, -3/+11Why would drugs or prostitution make me fear for my safety? Both non-violent crimes and the associated violence of both of those industries is soundly secluded outside of my communities and is almost entirely a result of the government's prohibition.
- BAM22, on 06/15/2009, -0/+7that prostitute was tall.
- Bloodwine, on 06/15/2009, -6/+13That'd be fine, as long as all states made it legal where we could shoot all trespassers on our property.
- DerangedPenguin, on 06/15/2009, -2/+8I am sure that the home security system would have scared them away and the police would have arrived in time.
Smith & Wesson home security experts for over a century. - PoliticalMan922, on 06/15/2009, -5/+11People, more and more, do dangerous things when they are desperate. As more people lose money, more people will do what is necessary to live. It's called Survival of the Fittest.
- CrazedLeper, on 06/15/2009, -6/+12No, it's called being an evil bastard and there has never been a people who tolerated it...not for long, anyway. Survival of the fittest is a fallacy because any (human) society that attempts to exist by such principles will, inevitably, self-destruct. History is littered with ancient cultures that were extremely violent but no longer exist.
- g7gij, on 06/15/2009, -1/+6The biggest criminals by far are the swine bankers that caused the banking collapse in the first place.
Lending to people who obvisously couldn't afford a mortage or getting the mortage applicant to lie
about their income are fraudulent acts. That was particulary rife in the UK - a few short years ago.
It nothing more than institutional fraud. The tax payer has had to pick-up the bill for the crooked banker.
laissez-faire financial regulation will always bring out the crooks. - thcobbs, on 06/15/2009, -1/+6"There are plenty of non-predatory species on earth. I refuse to believe that sheep, for example, have been able to survive millions of years with no defenses whatsoever."
Modern "sheep" are domesticated animals. The ones in the wild DO get killed by predatory species. If the predators and prey don't come to a balance in killing/births then they both die out. So in effect the complete death of sheep was unacceptable to the predators and therefore was the sheep's protection.
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"You would-be intellectuals sicken me with your dry, pre-packaged thoughts. You just repeat what you've been told by influential men and "confirm" it by agreeing with each other. Sickening."
Ah, now we choose ad hominin... nice! BTW, you didn't do anything to dispute his accusations.
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"No, he cited a principle, "survival of the fittest", which is a fallacy. Humans don't survive by killing each other. The notion is utterly ridiculous."
Tell that to the next wolf you meet. And survival of the fittest doesn't necessarily mean killing... usually it refers to being the one NOT killed.
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"Thus canceling "survival of the fittest"? If you "band together" aren't you averaging in the weaknesses of others in the group? Why not eliminate them to make the herd more "efficient"? Because when you do, you're not "banding together" anymore, are you? There is an inherent contradiction in your logic."
Correction... any group that can protect its own will. And generally, the "survival of the fittest" is due to external influences.
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"Yes, that the kind of thinking that unravels societies. You have been specifically mis-educated to that end. You contribute to your own demise by embracing and propagating the error."
Katrina
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"This "predisposition" to which you refer is a matter of personal choice. If someone points a gun at you and says "your money or your life", you want both, don't you? Even if it is a hard choice, it is a choice nonetheless and we define ourselves by our choices."
Welll, in my case I give him the money and then shoot him with my concealed carry weapon... See, survival of the fittest in action.
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"Some have starved or burned themselves to death for a cause. People will always have a choice. "Doing what they must" will take on different meaning to different individuals depending, not upon their "evolutionary" inclination but their own individual choice. Some people will resort to crime, other people will work harder, become more resourceful and innovative and make due with less. The latter are men of character, morals, if you will."
And sometimes my morals tell me that I will not submit to another person's will simply because they think its best for me.
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"No, not the average. The above-average, thus condemning the former and making him obsolete."
A man of morals is nothing with out the strength and wisdom to back it up. - adml_shake, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5It's jumped up where I live. We have home invasions just about daily now, guy a few blocks down got his door kicked in and robbed while he and his family were watching TV. And this is one of the safer parts of the city.
- adml_shake, on 06/15/2009, -0/+5There was a case of this a few months ago, a home owner (or renter I guess) was up with some friends playing games or watching TV late at night when someone beat on the door and tried to turn the knob, after the guy yelling to get the hell away from his door he shot through the door and hit a drunk college student who though she was at her house, and didn't realize that her house was the next one down (it was in one of those cookie cutter neighborhoods). Some people were in a up roar, others felt he was justified in what he did.
- youannoyme, on 06/15/2009, -2/+7PoliticalMan used no fallacy, but you had a pretty straw man. He wasn't talking about acceptable normal behavior for a society. He is talking about how individuals act in unusually stressful times. Humans are first and foremost a (mostly) solitary animal that learned how to band together into societies to make life more prosperous and secure. Yes, a society that is going to survive must reign in such behavior, but in the short term, when the ***** hits the fan, the individual is going to be preoccupied with the survival of the individual. Sure, a predisposition for violence or crime will make someone move into crime under less inconvenience than another person with strong morals and sense of society. But everyone has a breaking point, and as things get harder, more and more people will start doing what they must to survive. To say otherwise means you have to believe the average "moral" bloke would crawl into a corner and die so as to not hurt others, rather than going out and doing what he needs to do to fill his belly...
- asgardshill, on 06/15/2009, -2/+7"I am sure that the home security system would have scared them away and the police would have arrived in time."
Only if everybody involved was white. See the never-ending series of Brinks Home Security TV ads for particulars.
The never-changing script for these ads reads:
- Homeowner is always white and lives in an obviously upper middle-class single-family home. Homeowner must be depicted as doing something yuppie like running on a treadmill during the staged burglary attempt.
- Burglars are always white and MUST wear black clothing with a poorly-fitted balaclava so you can always see part of their face.
- Burglars never think to cut the phone line or disable the security system so the handsome white uniformed security guard guy can easily call the homeowner and ask if everything's OK.
- The handsome white uniformed security guard guy always assures the homeowner that the police have been dispatched and will arrive no later than 3 minutes from now. - nitsuj, on 06/16/2009, -0/+4@CrazedLeper
Too bad for you that domestication of livestock is a fairly well researched subject.
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHisto ...
and:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_sheep
Genetic evidence for sheep domestication:
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/news/mediacentre/mediarel ...
"You are correct, I had not factored rams but I still don't believe they evolved through a lottery of errors."
It's not a lottery of errors. It's natural selection.
Modern sheep have been bred for the purpose of meat, milk and wool. Independent survival traits are no longer important to them. We've selected them for tasty flesh, milk yield and quality of wool. And we have many cases of the selection process resulting in new breeds of sheep - and in fact all livestock - in much the same way that we have bred dogs and cats for various physical appearances.
Also, you should know that there are feral sheep and wild goat populations. They tend to avoid living where predation is frequent.
Let's face it, your alternative suggestion is that it all appeared as is by magic somehow. - KrisStrong, on 06/15/2009, -1/+5Simple....people don't have any ***** money.
- apackofmonkeys, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4...and then I found $10!
- lizard450, on 06/15/2009, -2/+6Not everybody has the same constitution, independence, and self-worth. Our society baby's people too much and when the nipple is gone people lose it.
- covertbadger, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4@CrazedLeper
"Neverlution is a fever dream and "survival of the fittest" is a fallacy. There are plenty of non-predatory species on earth."
Your problem is, as usual, a complete failure to understand the terms you are using. The phrase 'survival of the fittest' is not meant to be a scientific principle - it is an over-simplified layman's description, and was not coined by Darwin.
Furthermore, 'fittest' does not mean 'predator'. You have a history of misrepresenting basic terminology to support your otherwise flimsy argument so your dishonesty in this instance is no surprise. - CoD4, on 06/15/2009, -1/+5Survival of the fittest is never a fallacy. You don't have to be violent in all cases. Different people have different methods of surviving. One may resort to violence, some will rely on trickery, some will acquire more knowledge and use it, and others will new ways.
- inactive, on 06/15/2009, -0/+4asgardshill white people are smarter then that.
most white people have cell phones now
and if you disable the security system to a white person's house that in and of itself activates a distress call.
crazy white people lol! - inactive, on 06/15/2009, -1/+5why not support staffing companies or job coaches then? I don't like fronting the bill for lazy ass people with 8 kids.
- covertbadger, on 06/15/2009, -1/+4@CrazedLeper
"The "over-simplified" description and the theory from which it is born are equally errant."
And yet you choose to base your attack on the over-simplified layman's description rather than one of the most well-established, proven, and reliable scientific theories ever conceived. Funny that.
"I didn't say that "fittest" meant "predator""
***** wriggling. Already? We're only a couple of posts in. You specifically said that sheep disproved "survival of the fittest" since they aren't predators and yet still survive. That is clearly an assertion that non-predators are not fit to survive, revealing your colossal ignorance of the subject. Your other drivel about wolves 'counting sheep' is too stupid to address. You can starve from a scarce food supply without being able to count.
"It takes no brilliance to observe that you have to be "fit" be be alive."
Given that you've demonstrated a total failure to understand what "fit" means in this context, I would say that it takes a lot more brilliance than you are able to lay claim to. - NetJunkie, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3As a gun owning very pro-2nd amendment person... That's awful. That is NOT the idea of self defense and protection. He should go to jail for a long time.
- nullcodes, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3Unfortunately the recession had made everything tougher, including crime. It used to be that anyone with a drug addiction or financial problems could easily have a successful ceiminal career, but nowadays it has gotten so much harder. there is a lot of competiotion and now the tools have gotten more expensive. To make things worse you now gave to rob more people to make the same amount of money.
This recession sucks, for everyone. - Phaedryn, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3Actually, eugenics is closer to "survival of the fittest" than this article. Eugenics was meant to be a form of forced (or accelerated) evolution, by weeding out the undesirable physical traits and promoting the desirable ones.
This is about behavior, not genetics or physiology. Eugenics has no thing to do with this article. - inactive, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3did you report the missing window scraper in the police report?
- ApokalypseNow, on 06/15/2009, -2/+5Crazed is just repeating the same logical fallacies and falsehoods he has clung to all this time, despite having been corrected on them numerous times.
Crazed, as usual, just because you don't understand a thing doesn't mean it is impossible. - Mike17102, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3You need a gun.
- 9966, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3Payday loans are nothing but legalized loan sharking. They don't help anything or anyone.
- nheels, on 06/15/2009, -0/+3It's probably not a good idea to think of one horrific event as an indication of increases in crime.
- mindwalker, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2No, they said prostitution was on the rise, too.
- Lennox24, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Even worse would be the chaos that ensued after the initial 'choas' subsided.
- Mike17102, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Yes lets pay people to not work so they can sit home and breed more future welfare getters all day.
- silverchrysalis, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2i dugg you up even though you cannot spell ;)
- nheels, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Now it looks like many of you believe this article - it is easy to understand and makes 'commonsense', but it begs us to look at our other attitudes towards crime/crime prevention. Politicians always hop on the 'Get Tough on Crime' strategy. No sense in getting into detail (you can do some Google searches), but if the economy has such a large influence on crime rates and our behaviour, why do we tend to think about higher punishments when blue collar crime rates increase? The economy has a stronger influence on crime rates then does punishment strong legislation. That said, we don't live in a vacuum of space and decisions are influenced by many different variables.
- nemomarlin, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2I think people are able-body but don't work should not get a penny of welfare.
- pimpster123, on 06/15/2009, -1/+3prostitution is illegal? hmm... uh oh.
- thcobbs, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Funny... I seem to remember that eugenics was touted by many HIGHLY educated men.
- minnecrapolis, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Actually, in regard to sheep that have not been domesticated, breeding is their main predation defense. Their main focus is to live long enough to increase the numbers of the herd for the following year.
You also forget that rams know exactly where their horn tips are and will slash at anything they deem a threat. Rams are the main defenders of a herd of sheep. Canids are very much afraid of those horns. - Leo21k, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2Can't shoot someone while you're sleeping or not home.
- phosphite, on 06/15/2009, -0/+2War is violent, and black markets are violent. See Prohibition of Alcohol in the 20's.
- minnecrapolis, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1Finland's first money ransom kidnapping ever.
- sodade, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1@theungod - nice to hear some real world pragmatism from a libertarian.
Beyond that, I really think that people make a mountain out of a molehill with welfare - it is ***** pennies compared to our INSANE military budget, which, like welfare, does more harm to the american people than good. - inactive, on 06/15/2009, -0/+1Are you telling me that someone taking drugs is never violent???
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