Dan Boresjo <dan(_at_)boresjo(_dot_)demon(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk>:
On Thursday 11 December 2003 9:43 pm, Philipp Morger wrote:
That's not true - that only a sympthom of a capitalistic culture.
How can it be untrue and a symptom of a capitalistic culture at the same time?
Actually, he's sort of right. In "non-capitalistic" cultures, crime
is somewhat less concentrated in poor neighborhoods because (a) even the
well-off people are poor by U.S. standards, (b) usually, the system is run
by an exceedingly corrupt nomenklatura, and (c) there basically isn't
any social mobility.
I'm not speaking theoretically. I lived for years in such places,
including both Third World countries and two Western European
countries I won't name. I have visited many others. Often, they
think they are more "progressive" than the U.S. -- but their people
live harder, they die younger, their crime and suicide rates are
higher (yes, *higher*), their native populations are in demographic
free-fall because they aren't having kids any more, and their
brightest people tend to split for the U.S. as soon as they can.
They're pretty effective advertisements for capitalism, actually.
--
<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond</a>
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