Sitrep: London looting and riotingFollow

Oh, I was talking to Olorinus. I didn't see your post.

I agree with you to a degree. The government need to make it harder for people to live if they refuse to work.

And to be clear, I do mean refuse to work. They've made it harder for people to cheat the system by pretending to look for work.

Edited, Aug 9th 2011 8:27pm by Nilatai

I just think people should be productive in the larger society. And, let's face it, the large number of people who refuse to work really just aren't doing that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPbdWuBHIEw

I suppose there's merit in both sides of that. But to me, the bigger issue is about the social effects of attempting to provide for those who don't work (for whatever reason). As we've seen, it's not the dignity of the first generation, but of their children and grandchildren, who grow up in communities in which there are concentrations of those living "on the dole", and in which as a result there simply aren't sufficient jobs available for them to engage in any sort of employment, regardless of whether it's indignant or not.

Most people will put up with crappy jobs if they know that those jobs provide them the opportunities to get better ones later on. It's practically a tradition in the US to work at some form of job which requires wearing a paper hat (or equivalent) along the way. But we tend to expect that you should gradually be able to obtain better jobs with better pay as your work experience and responsibilities increase.

What happens when we create a social safety net is that there aren't sufficient jobs in the area to allow for this effect to happen. Those raised in those areas are lucky to get a crappy job, and very very few will be able to leverages those into something better. The sense of hopelessness this creates has to be crushing over time. At the risk of injecting a free market argument into this topic, this effect can only happen where governments step in to try to "help" the poor. Absent that intervention, such large and concentrated populations can't exist. They wont grow to include that high a percentage of folks without any access to jobs, let alone good jobs.

We create these problems with our own best intentions. And unfortunately, those segments of the population which tend to be the most favored targets of such "help" also tend to be those which have historically been disadvantaged (so those who ethnically different than the majority). This tends to create a secondary racial aspect to the whole problem.




Absolutely. I guess where I take a different approach is that I believe we failed them by trying to single them out for special "help" in the first place. Unintended consequences and all of that.



Again though, I'll counter with the argument that it was too much social planning that caused this.

I think he should sig it anyway, for the irony.

I used to live in Eltham, I've got a lot of family and friends who were in that crowd.

This is a completely different issue. I'm talking about supporting adults who aren't able to obtain jobs to support themselves. That's not even remotely the same as providing housing and shelter for children who's parents have died, abandoned them, or are unfit.

My argument is that by "helping" poor people to have housing and food and whatnot even though they aren't earning enough to obtain those things for themselves, we ultimately create the very conditions of poverty itself. Social programs tend to work best when those in need of them are nearby. It's just more cost effective to help a thousand people all living in tenements within a 2 block radius of the government hand-out office than if they're spread around. As a result, you end out over time creating concentrations of people living on the dole in areas in which there are not sufficient jobs to employ them even if they wanted to.

This process effectively creates urban prisons which are just as real as any other prison. The bars aren't there physically, but it's just as hard to escape.



Far far fewer than are created via the process of trying to prevent that darwinistic process. Absent that social service "help", you don't get that same amount of concentration of poverty in single areas. It's pretty easy to see this if you think about it. Imagine that 15% of your population is "poor". If that 15% is concentrated in areas, so that 100% of those living in those areas are poor, you've effectively removed any chance of the people living there ever improving their lot in life. And you'd done the same for their children as well.

Spread that same 15% among the rest of the population and they're surrounded with opportunity. They wont all succeed, but at least they'll have a chance. Each individual has a chance at success. They aren't just lumped in with the group called "poor" and left to a miserable existence on public assistance.

It's that lack of opportunity which causes the sorts of desperation and despair which in turn leads to riots of this sort. Those people just don't care because they don't believe that they can improve their lives, so why bother trying? Surely you can see that concentration of that sort also makes rioting like this happen. Riots require high concentrations of people all feeling the same thing. They can congregate to riot, but it's particularly easy when everyone in your neighborhood is in the same crappy situation you are in, right?



A free market stacks the deck against no one though. It rewards effort and skill. It's only when we start applying alternative social agendas that we start stacking the deck against groups of people. I just honestly can't see how any amount of racism in the free market (for example) could be more effective at limiting the outcomes of minorities than modern liberal social policies do. Feel free to make a case otherwise, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming.

I'm on a...payroll?

Have you considered that there aren't actually enough jobs to go around? Job centres tend not to increase the number of jobs filled by very much. They just shuffle the deck chairs on the Hindenburg. Unemployment is at 7.7% and that's not going to change anytiem soon.

I'm not suggesting looting fill the void, but you seem to be in thrall to the myth that most of the people on unemployment actually want to be.

Edited, Aug 11th 2011 5:17am by Kavekk

The free market also rewards cunning, deceit and exploitation. The rest of this post is some of your better fiction. Srsly, have you ever met a single one of these folks you seem to know so well?

They even stole those poor girls' abilities to speak English! Bottle, damnit, not bah`ul

There's no more reliable source of facts than from someone who calls himself the High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth.