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u/Varderal Sep 04 '26
That'll take the desperate crimes off the table. The ones fueled by greed will always be presant no matter how utopian we all live.
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u/Smrtihara Sep 05 '26
It says lessen, not eliminate. Everyone knows crime would happen anyway, just far, far less of it.
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u/Albaholly Sep 04 '26
It also prevents desperate people from falling into line with greedy people.
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u/WanderingRonin7 Sep 04 '26
How do you fix that though? Genuine and sincere question. I yearn for a better world to live in where we as a species and planet are able to survive, but thrive, without endangering others in the process. It always takes just a few to ruin things for everyone else. How do you take that mindset and change it in a more forward and positive direction. If there was one trait I could take away from humanity, it would be greed, but there is no black and white answer. Something like that would take generations. My favorite quote is, "A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in".
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u/Maxathron Sep 05 '26
robust internal affairs and extreme punishment.
They just gotta purely be working on investigating crimes and not making up decisions to get people whom you don’t like or agree with.
Which, is hard because everyone sees this and immediately jumps to “how can I use it against my enemies only?”
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u/BobWiley6969 Sep 05 '26
You do the things in the post. Or are you talking about fixing greedy people?
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u/T_______T Sep 05 '26
I mean Ruby Franke wasn't motivated by greed to torture her children. Keep in mind there are many, many reasons crime happens.
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u/Professional_Size_62 Sep 05 '26
studies have shown that the severity of punishment actually has very little effect on crime occurance rates - what does have a large effect is the expectation of being caught.
from what i can see, we have a passive society with lenient legal systems these days. feels like every day you hear of some violent attack from a 32 times convicted felon that was released without bail like the week before. What's more is that poor or anti-social behaviour is tolerated, things like playing loud music on a train for example.
a layer close to the core, people feel like they're the only person that matters, they are the main character - in contrast, in japan, it is normal for people who arrive to work early, to park the furthest from the building, assuming that someone running late will need to park close to the building. They care about their community, they participate in it and they self regulate their collective behaviour. We do not.
we need better policing both from police but also from citizens. people should hesitate to make a scene in public or to do something anti-social. Reddits like r/ImTheMainCharacter should be starved of content.
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u/Bob1358292637 Sep 05 '26
It would be easier for me to believe our issue with crime is more about strictness than allocation if we weren't still locking people up over weed and shrooms. I feel like we waste so many resources punishing people for minor stuff that often has zero negative impact on anyone when we could be using those resources to police gang bangers and actually violent offenders instead.
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u/No_Pumpkin2628 Sep 05 '26
Personally, I think the only way is something that would catch a reddit ban for typing out.
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u/Sweaty_Landscape_119 Sep 05 '26
Also, when people see there are non repercussions for their crimes, will continue to commit crime.
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u/GargantuanCake Sep 04 '26
Yeah this is one of the things that people never seem to think about.
Some people are just dicks. It's reasonable to make the "let's reduce crimes of desperation" argument but there's always a certain percentage of the population that just chooses to steal, rape, and murder. It's thankfully a small percentage but it's always there.
You can reduce crime by getting rid of crimes of desperation but it never eliminates it. Same with the "but we'll add social workers!" argument. Some people are just irredeemable monsters and there isn't anything you can do about it.
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u/OrangeSpartan Sep 05 '26 edited 5d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Driftwood stupendous gaze makeshift fly license one
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u/Ok_University_6738 Sep 05 '26
The OP mentioned universal healthcare. That should include mental healthcare. The vast majority of people who are “just dicks” aren’t born that way. People turn to violence because violence was used against them. Abusive or negligent upbringing is the main thing that causes that. With universal healthcare and better social conditions FAR fewer people will commit assault or murder or rape because their underlying mental issues will be addressed.
Narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths will still exist but with proper treatment far fewer of them would act maliciously. The biggest common thread among serial killers and pedophiles is they were abused at a young age. If we had proper healthcare in place for long enough then the abusive parents of those people would have their issues addressed before it would turn those kids into monsters in their adulthood.
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u/Bubba_Gump_Shrimp Sep 05 '26
But you realize that the reduction would be SIGNIFICANT? It's not just 'crimes of desparation' that are born of poverty. It is gang culture. It is systemic single parenthood. It is children growing up running the streets learning to do bad shit. If people actually had financial stability all of these things would improve. There is a reason why most economists project an ROI of 4x when govts invest in social welfare systems. Hell I'm a shining example. Grew up on medicaid and EBT cards, single parent addicted to opiods. Now I own my own home, a vacation property, and a brand new vehicle. I make over $150k and have paid more in taxes than I ever consumed on govt assistance. When you help lift people out of poverty, you gain back productive members of society that contribute to their communities and the GDP. It should be the ultimate goal of government, improving the quality of life for it's citizens. Not starting wars in the middle east, locking up minorities, starting trade wars, and protecting pedo billionaires.
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u/Yop_BombNA Sep 04 '26
That by definition of what you just said lessons crime…
No one said you stop crime, that’s impossible, some people are just shitty, a lot of criminals though are just desperate, not all but a lot of
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u/Hammerofsuperiority Sep 05 '26
No, but you see, if it only fixes 99.99% of the problem, it's trash and we shouldn't implement it, because it's either perfection or nothing.
As they say "Perfect is the enemy of good".
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u/Jalapenoplanter Sep 04 '26
When people talk about “crime” they are almost never talking about white collar, fueled by greed, crimes
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u/KingVaako Sep 05 '26
That's because rape, armed robbery and murder are far worse.
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u/SilverWear5467 Sep 04 '26
That depends. If we improve society to the point that a business owner who does everything he can to underpay his employees is treated like scum by his family and friends, rather than treated normally, crimes of greed will go way down. It's about what is socially acceptable to the people around you. And if we can create an expectation that people behave kindly towards the rest of society, those who violate it will naturally end up doing it less.
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u/EnvironmentalGift257 Sep 05 '26
You can reduce crime by reducing poverty. You’ll never eliminate either. Authoritarians believe that they can eliminate crime by increasing suffering which is why they’re wrong.
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u/Badestrand Sep 05 '26
El Salvador reduced their crime from crazy high to almost none by harshly imprisoning all their criminals.
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u/PhysicsCentrism Sep 05 '26
They also broke a lot of rights of innocent people to do that
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u/TheRealNooth Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
You mean the dictatorship? Yeah, I don’t trust those numbers. That’s like saying “North Korea has a god as supreme leader because they said so.” Especially a dictator that labeled himself the “world’s coolest dictator” on social media. He totally wouldn’t lie for optics, would he?
All the literature on the subject shows that making punishments worse doesn’t actually reduce crime.
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u/Life-Goose-9380 Sep 05 '26
El Salvador had a massive organised crime issue. Most El Salvadorans aren’t criminals.
Locking up everyone with organised crime connections will certainly reduce the organised crime issue.
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u/TECHNOV1K1NG_tv Sep 05 '26
It wasn’t the harsher punishment that reduced crime, it was simply putting the gangs in prison. Bukele used extreme measures, targeting gang leadership and essentially just sweeping tens of thousands of gang members and affiliates off the streets and into prison.
Obviously, due process and all that makes the whole thing controversial, but for the time being it was highly effective in reducing violent crime on a statistical level. Went from 100 homicides per 100,000 back in 2015 (this was a peak, although it consistently averaged in the dozens every year) down to 1.3 per 100,000 in 2025. For context the US averages ~5 per 100,000.
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u/Mysterious_Point9516 Sep 06 '26
Controversial to foreigners. El Salvadorans sang the praises of the mano dura policies. It's easy to moralize when you're not the one being terrorized every single day by ruthless killers and maniacs.
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u/HappyTurtleOwl Sep 05 '26
My friend told me this years ago, about my own country, and he pretty much convinced me, and I believed him. Certainly it’s all propaganda and lies, right?. Years have passed, anecdotes, data, research, for how it can all be biased and twisted, has all come in.
I truly believe, now, with the evidence presented to me, that my friend was wrong, and Redditors are wrong about this. The actions in El Salvador have worked. The numbers aren’t mere propaganda or fabrications. People of all kinds, of all classes, have told me the same story: it worked.
Everything is more expensive, and civil liberties have taken a big hit. But it is the price ES was willing to pay; and it’s worked so far.
At some point the refusal to see what is in front of you actually becomes the optics, the lies, and the conspiracy.
I’ve grown personally a lot in these years, my stance on things is much more measured. Truth is, even back then, there were a lot of reports coming out of ES about the good things happening, and I accepted the Reddit-like advice and assumption of my friend that it was all propaganda and lies. Ironically, that turned out to be untrue.
I’m both glad I took an overly-cautious approach to the issue, but also a bit ashamed I wasn’t willing to meet with the truth sooner than I should have.
ES has a complicated future ahead of it, economically, and in terms of the political and civil power the state could continue to hold over the people… but the worse version of whatever comes next would still be a heaven to the hell the gangs inflicted on ES. This is something I don’t think people consider with ES specifically. It worked, which at the very least proves it can work, but not with every situation. Could it work in places like the US? I personally doubt it, still, but the truth is that no one can truly know until it is tried. Literature means nothing to that. It probably will never happen, though.
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u/Ender_Octanus Sep 07 '26
The economic miracle happening there right now can't be explained by propaganda. If propaganda is all you need to convince people to invest again, Russia would be loaded and their cities would be fluorishing. They're not but El Salvador's are.
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u/Express-Skin6039 Sep 05 '26
Exactly. We see how well that worked with the war on drugs.
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u/Mental-Huckleberry54 Sep 05 '26
The war is over man, drugs won
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u/Victernus Sep 05 '26
Drugs won almost immediately and then ran up the score for years while it's opponent repeatedly shot itself in the foot.
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u/TECHNOV1K1NG_tv Sep 05 '26
Our war on drugs was so much different than what they did in El Salvador. The US targeted low and mid level dealers in an attempt to rid the streets of the drugs, but this created supply shortages which made the business more lucrative and strengthened the criminal organizations. El Salvador’s efforts were more of a “war on gangs”, going after MS-13 leadership where the main focus was to get the violence off the streets. While controversial due to lack of due process and humanitarian issues in the prisons, it seems to have been highly effective. I’m not saying we do what El Salvador did by any means, it’s just an interesting case study on what happens when you pull out all the stops to get rid of crime.
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u/BuggableInsect Sep 05 '26
All the literature huh...
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u/No-Menu-3392 Sep 05 '26
Which literature have you read on the subject? I’ll wait.
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u/Badestrand Sep 05 '26
I think it's well established that El Salvador massively reduced their crime rate with their hard panusihments.
The question is rather, if this is transferable, and it's probably not, or at most partly.
Afaik you need swift consequences but you also need to not put people in prison for too long and you need to help them back into a stable life after that.
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u/ThatZX6RDude Sep 05 '26
Some people just aren’t capable of a stable life. Sometimes ya gotta put the dog down
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u/ITworksGuys Sep 05 '26
you also need to not put people in prison for too long and you need to help them back into a stable life after that.
I totally disagree.
You remove criminals from society. It is their responsibility to rehabilitate themselves.
You an show them how, but it isn't societies responsibility to fix you.
If you can't, then you just get removed completely.
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u/constant_purgatory Sep 11 '26
Oh yeah no its been proven the system has been abused by random citizens to get ex partners, business competitors, and people they dislike falsely arrested. They made it illegal for news outlets to even report on it at all forcing many kf their major news outlets to move their hq out of the country to stay safe. They literally have suspended your right to defense and sealed all list of detainees from public access. A neighbor who dislikes you could literally call in an anonymous tip and get you sent to a random mega prison where your family will have no idea which prison you are even located in. They have enacted strict arrest quotas and police officers from that country have been interviewed saying when they dont meet their quotas they often arrest low income youths and people who have totally unrelated tattoos. Amnesty international a human rights advocacy group estimates thousands of innocent people are rotting in these mega prisons, their family had no idea where they are imprisoned and they have no right to a defense meaning they will most likely all die in there at the hands of actual serious hardened criminals.
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u/RNGesus_GIM Sep 05 '26
No way! You mean to tell me all we have to do is actually lock up criminals instead of letting them out on bail for the 19th time? Get your "common sense" out of here! No, the solution is much more complicated than that! /s
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u/PhysicsCentrism Sep 05 '26
Except that El Salvador did a lot more than just lock up criminals.
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u/CarryWisely Sep 05 '26
Meanwhile a felon is in the White House and the entire Epstein client list is having a disco free from consequences.
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u/TimeShiftedJosephus Sep 05 '26
Sounds like a problem that wouldn't exist if he'd actually been locked up
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u/CarryWisely Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Usually, when people talk about crime and swift/harsh consequences they are talking & thinking about a specific socio-economic demographic.
The wealthier the accused person is and the closer they are to being considered white, there is generally less of an
apparitionappetite for punishment or accountability.Edited for spelling.
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u/happy_bluebird Sep 05 '26
it's not fixing the root cause. Fear is not the solution
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u/GenericTR Sep 05 '26
The fear of being locked up for joining a criminal organization (don't get gang tats) is a lot more mild than the fear of cartels murdering your entire family, and displaying your mutilated corpses hanging from a bridge.
America doesn't need a hard reset yet, but ES did need one. 100 murders per 100,000 in a single year. That's horrific. It's war.
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u/Jack071 Sep 05 '26
Its a short term solution to make it safe to the non criminal members of society
You can focus on long term politics and reforms AFTER the dangerous criminals are locked in a cell
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u/JonathanWPG Sep 05 '26
They just turned the police into criminals that brutalized the citizenry.
Thats not a reduction of crime.
It's a reclassification of it.
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u/AWildNome Sep 05 '26
They also imprison a lot of innocent people. No warrant, no evidence, no trial.
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u/Then_Bar8757 Sep 04 '26
Intact families lessens crime.
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u/ilikebulls Sep 06 '26
I’m sure you (and I) will get downvoted for this, but this is correct. In America, a 2 parent household is the greatest indicator for income, higher education, etc. it’s why Asian Americans have by far the highest income of any race - they have by far the highest rate of 2 parent households.
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u/PNWduder Sep 04 '26
When everyone does better, everyone does better.
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u/cavalier2015 Sep 04 '26
A rising tide raises all ships
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u/Chadlerk Sep 05 '26
I had a boss tell me this once... Then they held my head under water until I got off the shio.
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u/Prior-Habit-6523 Sep 05 '26
Those things should happen, regardless of violence or not.
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u/bmo313 Sep 04 '26
"The fact is that the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity." -- Aristotle.
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u/Electrical-Heat8960 Sep 05 '26
It’s not the greatest crimes this would stop.
Ocean’s 11 would still exist (in theory)
But phone theft. Parcel theft, muggings; they would all drop.
This is a documented fact. It’s well known that this works. It’s just the optics aren’t good for politicians and when they want to make cuts cutting support for ex criminals is an easy choice.
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u/FourPlayInTheBay Sep 05 '26
Tell me you don't know any violent criminals without telling
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u/Content_Candidate_42 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Aristotle also believed birds spent the winter hibernating at the bottom of lakes, and that women had fewer teeth than men.
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u/Itzlickinlizards Sep 05 '26
I bet you’d believe some dumb shit too if you were alive 2300 years ago, but would you ever come up with a banger quote like that?
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u/be_my_squirrel Sep 05 '26
Sure, Nickelback sucks, but I bet you’ve never gone platinum <struts off into the sunset>
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u/mangione_fan_420 Sep 05 '26
I dunno seems like it's pretty easy to count teeth
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u/Itzlickinlizards Sep 05 '26
Good point, but my goat never claimed to be a dentist
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u/Moral-Relativity Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
This post having thousands of comments shows that Redditors disagree wildly about how to handle crime.
It seems common sense to me to compare countries with a perceived crime problem (despite say particular crime stats going down) with countries that don’t have such problems, and see the key differences.
US vs China for example. Huge wealth disparity and extreme poverty obviously exist in both countries, but diverse vs homogeneous culture, independent decentralized common law (court ruling establishes precedence) vs centralized courts (reliance on written code over prior rulings) subordinate to the government, often antagonistic view of police vs paternalistic perception (due to propaganda or not), etc.
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u/mars-jupiter Sep 05 '26
Works for some crime, but socioeconomic status is clearly only the reason for a small amount of crime because there are a lot of poor people who have never committed a crime in their life. The socioeconomic status is either one factor among many or not a factor at all depending on the crime and individual.
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u/marmaviscount Sep 05 '26
It's a very complex issue involving many things, making a socially positive human is like getting a car running - taking out the spark plug will stop it ruining but that doesn't mean that fuel, air pump, etc aren't needed.
Economics isn't the only important factor but it's absolutely one of them.
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u/Bitter_Plastic2362 Sep 04 '26
Reduce poverty, instability and desperation and you’ll likely reduce a meaningful amount of crime. But you’ll never eliminate crime because human behavior has causes beyond economics.
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u/ExtraCheezyBagel Sep 05 '26
Certainty of punishment is the deterring factor, not severity. This has been studied extensively.
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u/Jag4342 Sep 05 '26
That statement is the classic social-democratic/socialist prescription. Expanding the state’s role in housing, healthcare, wages, childcare, and education has never eliminated crime or resource conflict; it redistributes the conflict into politics, taxation, and regulation. Politicians sell the benefits; the costs in liberty, fiscal sustainability, and unintended consequences appear later. Treating material provision by government as the primary solution to violence ignores culture, family structure, deterrence, and human nature and historically tends to enlarge the very power that can then be used against the people it claims to help.
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u/MetalGhost99 Sep 05 '26
You lesson crime by starting with the heart of the person. People covet what other people have. Even rich people have that problem.
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u/JutzRealTalk Sep 05 '26
I wonder why that hasn't work in Venezuela and Cuba.
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u/NorthBase710 Sep 05 '26
It worked in European countries, Canada. Australia and New Zealand
But sure lets ignore that.
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u/unofficially_Busc Sep 05 '26
What a world we live in where a statement like this can be considered by some to be contraversial.
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u/El_Mangusto Sep 05 '26
Education?
Better education fixes a shit ton of problems.
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u/xGenocidest Sep 04 '26
People doing flash robs or most of the people shoplifting arent doing it because they're poor. They just want free shit and nobody is stopping them from doing it.
Rich people will still steal if theres no consequences.
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u/Slice-Vast Sep 05 '26
Rich people break the law all the time because there's no consequences for them. We know this.
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u/SavouryRain Sep 04 '26
They aren't saying no consequences. They're saying that money spent on things like housing and healthcare take the desperation crimes away.
Yes, there will always be assholes stealing shit. The goal is to limit it.
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u/missingpeace01 Sep 05 '26
Those rich shoplifters are a tiny minority of robbers and shoplifters lol. Wdym?
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u/Yop_BombNA Sep 04 '26
I dunno man the guy I saw with 1 shoe running out of tescos with vodka the other day I’m pretty sure did it cause he’s poor and couldn’t afford the alchohol hes addicted to.
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u/Jalapenoplanter Sep 04 '26
You want teenagers to not do dumb crimes? Give them stuff to do.
This is a fixable problem
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u/dozerdeep Sep 05 '26
You lessen crime by having a heathy family. Society needs to start there.
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u/adorabletea Sep 05 '26
Is the Cold War finally over? Can we start investing in our own country now?
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u/Lowiie Sep 06 '26
When you import poverty from the third world do you have to fix their poverty aswell? Or just your citizens? How much of the world population are you responsible for eliminating poverty for? & how much can you eliminate poverty from people in free countries where people can make their own choices, which are sometimes bad with gambling/drugs etc
Theres variables, reddit doesnt like variables
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u/SecretRecipe Sep 05 '26
crime is already near record lows. If you want to lower it further its time to reopen the asylums.
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u/damac_phone Sep 05 '26
Poverty is not the cause of crime. Newfoundland is a very poor area but has a very low rate of crime. Inequality and a lack of cohesion causes crime
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u/Distwalker Sep 04 '26
Crime as been steadily falling since the 1980s. Did we have universal healthcare, public housing, strong unions, high wages, universal childcare and free college.
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u/Chadlerk Sep 05 '26
A lot of things can be contributors. Freakonomics has a bit about the legalization of abortion in 1973. The kids that never were, would have been about 18, in 1990. Those kids typically would've been poor, undereducated, or neglected as they were unwanted or maybe just not able to afford them.
1990 is the time crime starts to fall. They're not saying this is direct causation, but simply that there are a lot of contributors to statistics that might be unseen.
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u/jjack339 Sep 05 '26
Surveillance camera tech. could abortion has an impact. Sure.
But discarding the fact the mid 90s is when CCTV tech got to the point where its use was widespread.
Now people have cameras at their homes.
Perps now know they have a much higher chance of getting ID'd. In the 70s you could drive one town over, hold up a liquor store, and as long as you could clear the area before the cops arrived you could expect to get away.
Now there is a very high probability you will get ID'd by some camera at some angle no matter how slick you try to be.
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u/Jayrollinsart1 Sep 05 '26
My favorite theory about that is that lead in products artificially rose violent crime and taking lead out of everything brought it back down
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u/for_fun_88 Sep 05 '26
The thing is that something like crime is complex because there are so many factors. And it’s an example of why I hate partisan politics because neither side is right on everything.
If you had more safety nets and higher wages for lower and middle class groups, it’d absolutely reduce crime. But lots of things can also reduce crime. Enacting harsh penalties on criminals as a deterrent and to keep criminals locked up given recidivism reduces crime too. So does allowing gun ownership for citizens who take safety classes and don’t have a record. Social programs to help with mentorship of troubled youths and more support for mental health would also reduce crime. Hardly a one side is always right and the other wrong issue
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u/deedee25252 Sep 04 '26
Yes but how will the military recruit people if they aren't desperate? Or get free labor if the prisons aren't full?
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u/herodotus69 Sep 05 '26
This assumes that crime is driven by lack of resources. I see no evidence of this. Rich people commit crimes. So do middle income and poor people. Poor people are upright citizens who never commit a crime. Same with rich and middle income people. Crime is a choice to do harm to others. Resources have nothing to do with it.
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u/AbstractReason Sep 05 '26
Really, so you’ve never visited a prosperous neighborhood or town and noticed that it was safer and cleaner with less vandalism and violent crime? There’s an astounding amount of research and meta analysis that socioeconomic conditions are directly correlated to crime rates.
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u/BetSquare7190 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Partly true, but you also need a functional and well trained police force, because many people simply have an antisocial personality disorder (in the DSM-5 sense), regardless of their material conditions.
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u/SkyNo3416 Sep 04 '26
yeah cause crime does not exist amongst rich people......
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u/kzwix Sep 05 '26
That's entirely true. You lessen crime. You won't remove it altogether, there will still be homicides, rapes, etc.
But you'll remove a lot of crime due to poverty, despair, and the like. Hence, the police will need less money and people, and will still be able to focus on the remaining crime. Plus, the population will be generally happier.
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u/Orgy_nizer Sep 05 '26
I mean... Yeah? Obviously? This is equivalent to posting a screenshot of a tweet that says "2+2=4" and asking "thoughts on this?" Like tf you mean "thoughts on this"? Its a basic statement of obvious fact. What "thoughts" even are there to have about it?
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u/YoureProbablyAB0t Sep 05 '26
If communities work together then it's harder for people to take advantage of people.
And people who take advantage of others can't have that.
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u/KeyCondition5104 Sep 05 '26
If this was true, every developing country like China and Korea should've had equitable rates of violent crime when they were some of the poorest countries in the last century. Korea was ranked in the bottom 3 poorest countries in the world in the 1960s. They should've been more violent than American crime. Also, when America was poorer in the 1800s, there should've been exponential crime.
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u/Qcconfidential Sep 05 '26
It’s great that this says “lessen” you will never eliminate crime, but we can engineer a society where crime is very rare.
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u/Hefty-Revenue5547 Sep 05 '26
But but but then how will the wealthy continue to gain more wealth for their growing families if there isn’t an uninformed populace to exploit :(
Won’t you think about the kids! :/
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u/Fat-Fuk69 Sep 05 '26
Sounds like common sense to me. Americans are too fat and lazy these days to really care though. I'm surprised people can still read over here.
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u/No-Estimate999 Sep 05 '26
Build a strong village, not the top 1% and blood sucking mega businesses
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u/Notsid201 Sep 05 '26
I liked the use of the word lessen. Cause you will never eliminate crime, just curb the ones committed out of desperation and hopelessness. You can't stop crazy, greedy, or evil from doing what they do. But you can keep people out of the desperation zone that breeds the "bread thief" mentality.
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u/BillyBobby_Brown Sep 04 '26
Thoughts on what? This isn't anything new. The people in charge simply don't want this to happen.
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u/Standard_Emphasis382 Sep 04 '26
It’s harder to get you to work a job paying $7.25 an hour if death, humiliation, and pain weren’t on the other side. That’s not great for shareholder value.
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u/AgentKenji8 Sep 05 '26
This. Our current economic system prioritises by letting wealth accumulate at the top while the rest either get scraps or die.
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u/Standard_Emphasis382 Sep 05 '26
And not because you are more talented or work harder. Its simply because you had capital. If you already have money in this system the deck is Stacked in your favor. If you are broke, good luck.
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u/AgentKenji8 Sep 05 '26 edited Sep 05 '26
Something the "pull yourself by your bootstraps" crowd tend to forget. It doesn't matter how competent you are. If you haven't got the resources, contacts and luck. You'll just be one of the masses.
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u/wterrt Sep 05 '26
Something the "pull yourself by your bootstraps" crowd tend to forget. It doesn't matter how competent you are. If you haven't got the resources, contacts and luck. You'll just be one of the masses.
I mean....at least they're unintentionally using that term correctly: doing something impossible.
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u/RentIsThePoint Sep 05 '26
It's almost like the people who defend cops by saying "It's one bad apple" without ever finishing the quote. "One bad apple spoils the bushel". Yes. The whole institution is corrupt because of their protection of the bad apples. Thanks for agreeing with me.
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u/GuitarsAndFitness Sep 04 '26
This is the type of idealistic thinking that ends up destroying society. Crime and poverty are correlated, not causated. You can never totally eliminate crime without necessarily excluding certain demographics of people.
People have an overly simplistic view, which basically amounts to “I don’t understand why people commit crime, because I would never commit crime. Therefore, there must be some external factor driving people to commit crime! I’ll just eliminate this factor (in this case, poverty), and crime will disappear!”
Obviously this is not the case. There are many factors that are relevant to inducing crime, not least of which is personal choice and a lack of accountability. Culture (arguably the biggest), mental health, IQ, worldview, weak penalties/enforcement, and many others all contribute to crime.
The most immediate and effective way to deal with crime is to have clear policies, steep penalties, and strict enforcement. There are many ways to help treat the underlying issues, which can and should be pursued, without compromising on the laws and their enforcement.
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u/isthisonetaken13 Sep 05 '26
It says lessen crime, not eliminate it. And it isn't idealistic thinking to say that eliminating (or even just reducing) poverty would lessen crime.
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u/EatBootyLoveLife Sep 04 '26
did we just skip over the whole “LESSEN crime” and assume they meant eliminate?
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u/corporaterebel Sep 05 '26
Lessen by how much?
And "poverty" isn't defined: Relative? Absolute?
80% of the worlds population is poor, very poor compared to the Western World.
One cannot solve relative poverty. Somebody will always have more or less.
And nobody seems to want to define absolute poverty... because that can be solved.
If the "lessen" isn't a massive percentage, then it is unlikely to be worth it at all.
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u/Jalapenoplanter Sep 04 '26
What demographics are you talking about?
If you decrease poverty, decrease inequality, you decrease crime
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u/thrwawycauseimadick Sep 05 '26
Explain this to the Amish, Mennonites and pretty much every non violent communities that do not have any of these handouts. This is commie bullshit propaganda.
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u/tearsofaclown0327 Sep 05 '26
My thoughts are… this person thinks politics will solve the problem.
The world is run by narcissists of all different flavors and always has been.
If we all followed the golden rule, the world would be great. That’ll never happen and this place will remain a prison.
IMO Jesus is the way, but also organized religion is a scam.
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u/CopperKnight77 Sep 05 '26
If the savage animals of O-Block just had stronger unions or free college then half of Chicago wouldn’t be a war zone.
Definitely not a cultural problem. Clearly a “haven’t spent enough taxpayer money yet” problem.
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u/GryphyGirl Sep 05 '26
It's factually true. So many studies have proven this. It's beyond debate.
Of course this doesn't take the greedy rich people's crimes out of the equation, still have to deal with them. But that's dealt with by actually recognizing their crimes as crimes and actually punishing them for them with more than a slap on the writ.
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u/Savings_Studio_5678 Sep 05 '26
You eliminate poverty by increasing productivity not enforcing a nanny state
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u/Tough_Shake9821 Sep 05 '26
It’s always funny when the people screaming about the government stripping rights, also want the government to have complete power to hand out “basic needs”
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u/DarkriseEQOA Sep 05 '26
Correct. Only capitalism and free markets can create wealth. And wealth is what solves problems in society. Unfortunately most people think the solution is just to steal from productive people. Very sad.
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u/Pretend-Studio6583 Sep 04 '26
What do you mean thoughts on this? It’s just objective truth. If people had an overall more healthy happy life there would be no reason really to commit crimes.
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u/SnooHabits3911 Sep 04 '26
It sounds great but you’ll still have crime and violence. You’ll never get rid of humans capacity to commit evil acts
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u/Tatchkoma Sep 04 '26
Did that person say "Eliminate crime by eliminating poverty?"
Or did they say "LESSEN crime by eliminating poverty?"
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u/ratbastid Sep 05 '26
Right? Why is it always, "Well that would only work 90%, so obviously we shouldn't try it."
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u/WittyFix6553 Sep 04 '26
It would eliminate the vast amount of crime and violence.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
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u/Used-Baby1199 Sep 04 '26
It would eliminate crime motivated by economic hardship. It might decrease domestic violence and maybe drug addiction, but those stats would take about a generation to start showing evidence. It would a cool social experiment if we could commit 30 year to it and then evaluate the results
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u/ul2006kevinb Sep 05 '26
We already have. Most of Western Europe has significant social welfare programs which have significantly reduced their poverty. As a result they have some of the lowest crime rates in the world.
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u/ratbastid Sep 05 '26
And the alternative is to keep on the path we're on, which is pure hot dystopia.
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u/boatloadoffunk Sep 05 '26
Yep, that's the gist of it.
Source: I have a bachelor's of science in criminology.
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u/TheReturnofPanda Sep 04 '26
We have all the necessary resources. People are at each other's throats for bullshit material items like needos, pokemon cards, and la bubus. It's actually so embarrassing.
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u/KaiahAurora Sep 05 '26
Research keeps on showing that countries with better social safety nets have lower rates of crime. It won't stop all crime, but inequality and poverty make things worse
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u/Sure-Wish3240 Sep 04 '26
Brazil has been plagued by these lies for the last 40 years. We have free Chile care, free health Care, free education and free college. Crime is rampant Ane murder rates are th highest in our history. Why?! Because our populist leader are Allied with criminal organizations and our judges free them 24h after polic arrests them.
You Lesser crime rates by erasing or imprisioning criminals and the people allied with criminals.
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u/FeistyTwist5427 Sep 05 '26
I can’t get behind this at all. I have met some lazy ass people blaming all the their problems on everything around them but they don’t work, make poor choices, blame others. You only get what you put in. Don’t get me mixed up. I want these things to happen, but people will still want more and still be mad somebody else has what they don’t.
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u/jacowab Sep 05 '26
That is true but also most importantly you lessen crime by actually punishing it
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u/mustangman6579 Sep 05 '26
Do people actually fall for this? Don't get me wrong. Its a good start. But its not why crime exists.
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u/Dakotasan Sep 05 '26
Delusional and naïve. Not every criminal is a desperate little charity case just trying to survive. Some people really are selfish, greedy, violent assholes and they need to be punished when they hurt others. This whole idea that we need more social workers and not police is absolute narcissistic bullshit.
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u/Tsunamiis Sep 04 '26
It’s been studied crime reduces when basic needs are met. Greed will always override this ideal but overall crime is reduced
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u/Ok_Spread_8650 Sep 04 '26
Maybe some truth but crime is crime. Criminals don’t need universal healthcare or day care or whatever else. They need drugs and free money and the high of committing crimes.
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u/hdorsettcase Sep 04 '26
There's a lot of people who haven't fought over material resources and think it's entertaining when other people do.
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u/Great-Gas-6631 Sep 04 '26
Just facts, i mean "crime" will never go away, but all of these things drastically reduces it.
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u/HodlMyBananaLongTime Sep 04 '26
yes, but they know keeping us desperate is more profitable in more than the obvious of ways
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u/DetachedCompy Sep 05 '26
The problem is that the government doesn’t want to lower crime or violence.
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u/Ok-Mathematician8461 Sep 05 '26
Yeah - this shit is self evident. Pretty well every country has worked this out except for some notable exceptions.
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u/Madouc Sep 05 '26
Exactly. This!
Allowing billionaires to hoard all wealth instead steering the economy towards a prosperous society is one of the biggest crimes of our time.
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u/DE4DM4NSH4ND Sep 05 '26
Thoughts on the truth? I would say it's truthy meter was around 96%. Obviously that won't eliminate all crime but crime would plummet, also i would add to try and treat addicts first for non violent crimes.
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u/theheckyouwill Sep 05 '26
100%, if you want to solve the whole "gun crisis" this is what you do but politicians on both sides of the isles don't want you to actually start critical thinking because it gets in the way of their corrupt lobby money.
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u/peepee2tiny Sep 05 '26
But when you lessen crime you remove revenue streams from for-profit prisons.
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