What does the decline in homicide rates look like? It’s been going pretty steadily downward for the past few centuries:
What we would do is write down a system of differential equations that claimed how two or more groups of people interacted with each other — say, “criminals,” “law-abiders,” and “police” — and fool around with them until they produced a solution that would show cycles or oscillations around an overall downward trend.
Mencius Moldbug reacts to such scientism:
Hari Seldon rides again!What I would do is to write down a sentence in English. This sentence would say: Europe became generally more orderly from 1500 to 1900, and generally less orderly from 1900 to 2000, especially after 1950.
If you wanted to know why, I would say: because order is a product of coherent state authority, and coherent state authority generally strengthened from 1500 to 1900 and generally weakened after 1900, especially after 1950.
And if you wanted to know why this happened, I would say: read some history. It’s a story, not a spreadsheet.
Much of the confusion arises because “modern” to the ordinary intelligent reader means post-1900 (as in “modernism”), whereas as a technical term it is often used to mean post-1500. Thus, in the “modern” era to the ordinary reader crime has been rising vertiginously — eg, 4700% in Britain.
He goes on:
Presumably you’ve never read any Theodore Dalrymple.Actually, though, I think a better read would be a bound book of newspapers, English or American, from any year before 1960 or so. Have a look at how they report crime. I believe I’ve suggested this experiment to you before — I hope you’ll try it sometime. Any good library will have one.
For example, I was in a used bookstore once looking at copies of the Napa Valley Journal from 1940. On the top of the front page — German armies were pouring through France. On the bottom of the front page — police had arrested a man who was wanted for passing a bad check in Fresno.
To make it as retarded as possible, what I’m saying is that if you applied pre-1960 standards of journalism to post-1960 crime, every newspaper in America, every day, would look like an issue of the Gotham Globe: MURDER SPREE PARALYZES CITY. And, of course, the public would react accordingly. That’s public opinion for ya.
Heck, during this period, America’s fourth-largest city lost pretty much its entire decent, law-abiding population, who fled due to crime. Said city is now a ruin.
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This isn’t hysteria we’re looking at here. It’s precisely the opposite. It’s anesthesia. How do you anesthetize a population? When it reacts normally, convince it that it’s being hysterical.
A commenter going by Zimmern adds some anecdotal evidence that most of us should be familiar with from talking to our own parents or grandparents:
I know it’s anecdotal and not empirical data, but this post led me to ask my dad about his experience growing up in Washington DC in the 50s and 60s with respect to crime, violence, safety, etc.People never locked their house doors nor their cars. And people would leave their car keys in the ignition after parking their cars. Not just at home, but when they would park their cars at stores and elsewhere outside the home. And if someone’s headlights were accidentally left on, passersby would just reach in and turn them off out of courtesy. I believe a commenter at Steve Sailer’s mentioned this as well. During high school, he would often hitchhike to school. And he actually hitchhiked across the country and back several times, both with friends and without, to visit friends/relatives, just to travel, just for kicks, etc.
Segregation was still in effect in DC for at least a portion of my dad’s upbringing, and this is a major variable of course, to say the least.
The past is a different country, that’s for sure.