I always have to shake my head at all the people who claim that the twentieth century wasn't a century of bloody murder and barbarism because they're usually guilty of statistical manipulation.
Let's get a bit of perspective, shall we?
First, if we're going to be looking at stats, let's look at my chart. Mine is better.
So we had very low crime rates in the late 1800s, followed by a spike in crime at the turn of the century that reached its peak in the 1930s, went down slightly in 1950s, rose again in 1960s to peak in the 1970s and 1980s, and then fell down to 1950s levels in the 2000s. Notice how it's right after the most progressive eras of American history - the Progressive era at the turn of the century and the Civil Rights era of the 1960s - that you see the highest crime rates. Put a pin in that. We'll come back to it later.
Both of our stats claim that our homicide rates are on par with the homicide rates of the 1950s. But understand that these are numbers, and numbers have stories behind them. Does having the same homicide rate as 1950s mean having the same amount of violence
per capita as the 1950s?
No, actually. There have been
advancements in medicine that have
decreased the number of violent deaths in spite of rising gun violence. Given that medical technology has been steadily advancing throughout this time, if the rate of attempted murders was the same in 1953 and 2013, we would expect a steady decrease in homicide rates over time because lot more people would be surviving their attempted murders. Instead, 2013 has the same homicide rate as 1953 in spite of having far more advanced medical technology.
So, we can rely on attempted murder stats, right?
Actually, no. We can't really because governments manipulate stats. We've seen this happen in
New York,
Denver,
Milwaukee,
Buffalo,
Chicago,
Nassau County,
Washington D.C.,
all over the United Kingdom, and probably everywhere else too.
In
2002, the practice of “downgrading” rapes to misdemeanor trespassing “allowed a man to commit six sexual assaults in a Washington Heights neighborhood.” An investigation by the NYPD in
2010 found that a single precinct had “improperly reported” the following: “a Chinese-food delivery man robbed and beaten bloody, a man robbed at gunpoint, a cab driver robbed at gunpoint, a woman assaulted and beaten black and blue, a woman beaten by her spouse, and a woman burgled by men who forced their way into her apartment.” In
2011, the
New York Times found over a hundred felonies that had been downgraded to misdemeanors or simply ignored, including an attempted rape, a double shooting of teenage girls in the Bronx, the theft of an iPhone and an iPad, a nearly fatal choking, and a razor-wielding robber. In
2013, “police paperwork for lost property ‘described a complainant who “lost property” following an assault by multiple individuals.’”
In short, “assault becomes harassment, robbery becomes grand larceny, grand larceny becomes petit larceny, burglary becomes criminal trespass” — and the mayor’s approval rating goes up.
Meanwhile, “the number of assault victims taken to emergency rooms nearly doubled” from 1999 to 2006.
This is totally the same as 1953, I'm sure. I'm also completely positive that
the Ferguson Effect has been utterly benign too!
In any case, given that you actually have not seen Moldbug's argument that 1953 is objectively better than 2013, here it is:
Picture the Earth—our beautiful, blue, spinning globe. Take all the habitable land area and color it white—as a neutral background for our thought experiment.
Now, select the subset of this beautiful planet on which a sober, sensible, civilized person, such as Sam Altman, would consider it prudent and safe to wander, “
on foot and alone,” carrying his iPad, at night. Leave that part white. Color the other part brown. Then, from the brown subset, select the further subset in which Sam Altman, carrying his iPad, would not consider it prudent and safe to wander
in the daytime. Color that part
black. (Why can’t Google Maps do this?)
Then do the same for Sam Altman’s grandfather, in 1950, with his portable Smith-Corona. Then, repeat the exercise for 1900. (Part of the reason this is such a useful mental exercise, and unfortunately such a difficult one, is that it requires you to actually
know what the world was like in 1950 or 1900. If your way of getting this information starts with statistical tables, ur doin it rong. There are these things called “books” which will help you out.)
If you perform this exercise accurately, or at least if you get the same results as me, you’ll see a 20C quite indistinguishable from Stage III melanoma. And this progress continues, to rousing applause and general self-congratulation, right up into our own dear official NYT-approved 2013. Hey, been to Egypt lately? What’s that
Google guy up to these days? Is he still tweeting?
So, let's talk about this statement.
The denial of rights in the 50's? Definitely real. The lack of freedom? Also real. The actual discrimination of the 50's versus the imagined discrimination of today? I'll take today any day of the week. Then on top of this, you have no USSR (which was much scarier than China is today).
I think it comes from an alien mindset from that of myself and Moldbug. Neither of us think that this "denial of rights" stuff is real. As an Aristotelian-Thomist, I don't conceptualize rights the same way a liberal does, and Moldbug doesn't even believe in human rights. Neither of us would believe that a "rights violation" occurs because of discrimination
per se.
The fact of the matter is that African-Americans are more prone to criminality than their white counterparts. If you don't believe me, then take a look at
this (scroll down to the section on blacks, read the studies, and weep). Seeing this and comparing it to how primary sources described Africans and African-Americans, we can conclude that this was the general perception of Africans at the time, and that this perception was mostly based on reality. It stands to reason that European-Americans who lived in areas with a lot of African-Americans wanted protection from this criminality. Racists used this to justify their segregationist policies.
So you don't like the policies. Fine, I don't particularly like them either. But did the Civil Rights Movement address the underlying causes of support for segregation - the violent crimes? No. Instead, they advocated for policies supported by
literal socialists like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Said policies made things so much worse! Forced integration? Affirmative action? Criminal justice "reform"? None of these helped solve the problems and only exacerbated them. Little wonder that white flight is such a phenomenon today.
So, the question then becomes: what's a worse human rights violation? Black crime or segregation?
The answer of the anti-racist progressive would say "segregation." Of course, said anti-racist progressive would also claim that
discriminating against Chinese people who might have the virus is racist too. Their worldview is pretty alien to mine. But I have a feeling it might be kind of a pickle for you.
