Germany closes borders!

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ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

lilljonas posted:

A small part is because more reported deadly violence turn out to be something else, such as suicide, overdose, accidents, and so on. Police forces are getting better at ruling those stuff out.

But largely it is that people are more likely to report crimes in general: one example given to explain this graph is a doctor who was accused of 74 murders (suspected euthanasia), each one made as a new report, and each case was later dismissed. The public is more likely to report suspected crimes. One reason for this is that some crimes are less and less tolerated. For example, two drunks having a go at each other might have been less likely to be reported to the police two decades ago, and it was unthinkable when I was young that schoolyard fights would be reported to the police, though that happens these days.

Speaking in general terms, it is also partly a result of New Public Management, where public agencies such as the police force is being evaluated to a larger extent by numbers. Did your precint have 60 burglary cases last year? Holey moley, you guys must be in a need of more resources! It doesn't matter that it was the same burglar who broke into 60 cars, which would have been reported as a single case a few years ago.

But yeah, looking at reported crimes is dumb because people are dumb and there is little correlation between reported crimes and real crimes, pretty much.

I don't really understand how this explains the stat. If a burgler broke into 60 cars and 60 people reported him, that's still 60 criminal acts. If the criminal broke into 1 car and 60 people reported him, I guess that would skew the # of reported crimes vs the # of actual crimes, but I would imagine that the police already lump together reports of the same crime as they receive them and wouldn't count it as multiple reported crimes cause that would just be dumb.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 16:11

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 13:03

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

lilljonas posted:

Sorry, I gave a very bad example.

An actual example that is more relevant is how drug crimes are reported. If you find out that a dealer sends out a mass e-mail to all his customers offering drugs, you can charge him with attempting to sell drugs. Ooooor, you could multiply it with each recipient of the e-mail, and charge him with 150 counts of attempting to sell drugs. Since it's a simple crime to prove, you just solved 150 drug-related crimes, and your results look great. The criminal gets the same sentence, but you solved 150 times as many crimes.

Another example that got a bit of publicity was a man who harassed a woman through text messages last year. Instead of booking him for one count of harassment, the police made a report for every single of the 390 messages. It was simple to tie him to the crime, and the 390 reported crime were cleared up. Reported crimes soared so much that this single event had an impact on the national reported crime numbers for sexual harassment, but at the same time the police precinct could show a 100% clear-up rate for 390 reported crimes, not bad.

This type of dividing reports of crimes has grown more common (and critizised) around here, which is a reason why it's hard to get anything meaningful out of the number of reported crimes over time. The victims, however, stays the same, and the number of people convicted as well, so those numbers are more useful when comparing the amount of crimes occuring

That makes more sense, thanks for clearing that up. The first example just didn't jive with me cause I was like 'of course those are still separate crimes' but what you're saying is like if someone stole your speakers, your stereo, and your gps from your car, it'd be reported as 3 crimes even though that's essentially 1 crime with 1 victim.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 17:26

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Roger Craig posted:

It gets worse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_haw_YDC_zo

I don't believe the man with an undercut in the salmon tank top when he says he has the worst gag reflex.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 17:35

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

No. 6 posted:

Take this to its logical end. Refugees, immigrants, and everything else aside, what (criminals aside) is the point of restricting the movement of people other than desire to preserve wealth and local culture? If neither of those matter, why not just allow anyone to enter?

Nothing, it's just kind of weird that every culture except ones associated with white people are above reproach. It's only problematic nepotism when white people are looking out for white people.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 19:48

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

If you could make a top 10 list of places you'd spend the rest of your life, what percentage of them have a mostly white population.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 19:50

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Why can't allah do anything about this. Where is their god now?

# ¿ Sep 14, 2015 20:38

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

hackbunny posted:

Reporting from Milan, Italy to say that my daily routine has been, so far, completely unaffected by the migrant crisis. Carry on

Isn't italy one of the places that's not taking it's fair share?

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 15:44

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Samuel posted:

Except that there is, it's called a scarcity of opportunity, just like how an abundance of human capital drives the prices down for the bourgeois vultures by the assassination of the middle class through cheap immigration labour out competing it. So maybe now the communist dream is coming true that classicism will be equally lovely the world over instead of just the third world.

This is mostly artificial. If you look at the US for example and go off capacity utilization, we're usually only operating at 75-80% of max industrial output (stuff like mining, manufacturing), we have enough idle factories and such to employ pretty much every unemployed person in the US if we so chose. For privately owned industry though, there's a huge incentive for this not to happen as wages have an inverse relationship with unemployment. Your ceo and board of directors care about profit not putting the most people possible to work; if only running 4 out of 5 of their locations means they can push wages low enough to make it a net gain for them that's what they will do.

There's always something of value a person could do and plenty of unskilled labor, if you had a society focused around maximizing quality of life rather than maximizing profit for the upper class, more people would only be a bad thing if it as just a straight up overpopulation issue.

Realistically though that's never going to happen.

ArbitraryC fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Sep 15, 2015

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 15:56

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

I think I was just remembering one of the articles I read wrong, I thought italy was one of the countries refusing to take any.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 16:13

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Samuel posted:

Except for the fact one has to expand production to remain competitive and corner any markets one caters to through either of scale production or the exclusivity of patents. Meanwhile unskilled labour is becoming more worthless by the year.

You say that because it's plausible sounding but it just doesn't reflect reality. That capacity utilization number I referenced is a legit gov statistic, the idea that we couldn't just put more people to work in agriculture or manufacturing if we felt like it is wrong. There are a lot of factors that go into private sector decisions but at the end of the day they are maximizing profit whether or not that goal meshes with the good of society. Profits would suffer if we operated at 0 or close to 0 unemployment rates and so while of course businesses do expand it is done so in a measured way that they know won't drive up wages.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 16:32

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Samuel posted:

Except that Kurds and Turks fight all the time in Germany and NL and god knows where else, so I'm really not as willing to lie to other people as you are about people bringing their old baggage to the new world.

Link your statistic already, because this isn't my first time to the "studies" rodeo. You explain this to me like I haven't got a clue how the private sector works, yet I have a feeling you want to pin slower growth on the ebul corporations because they're keeping you down man. But frankly underutilized potential versus the alternative "malinvestments and losing money" seems like a plausible thing to have across the board unlike having commie government overwatch telling you to spend all your money constantly and bank nothing as reserves.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/Current/

You can google 'industrial production and capacity utilization' if you wanna read more about what those numbers mean.

And that doesn't even factor in just how much work in general can always be done. For example our roads and bridges are falling apart and you could hire a ton of people to work on that. There is pretty much always something of value a person could be doing with their time if we were looking at it from a 'what's good for all of us' standpoint, unemployment is just wasted manpower.

I think people have this tendency to assume that profit driven is the best way to make things efficient, but that's not really true. If a profit driven person had the option to increase their profit while creating a net loss to the overall economy, they'd do it, they don't care that the pie got smaller just that their piece of what's left is bigger than what they previously had.

ArbitraryC fucked around with this message at 16:49 on Sep 15, 2015

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 16:43

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Is there any game plan on how these destabilized countries will stabilize? I mean most of the first world has bounced back from several major wars, even world wars that happened less than 100 years ago. You think when I'm 90 and dying we'll be looking at peace in the middle east?

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 17:00

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

SHISHKABOB posted:

I mean Hey man it happened here why cant THEY pull themselves up by their bootstraps too???

It seems like when we do do stuff, people get mad and say we're destabilizing the region, and when we don't do stuff, people get mad and say we previously destabilized the region. I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment, but at this point I'm looking for solutions not problems. I don't really like human suffering, but it seems like when even humanitarian aid disrupts local economies it's hard to really do anything other than let them sort their own poo poo out and I'm just sorta wondering how long of timeline that's gonna be.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 17:18

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Moridin920 posted:

most of the west helped each other out afterwards though (Marshall Plan comes to mind)

Why is this not possible for the middle east? Is there anything stopping them from going "you know, life would be better if we stopped wasting so many resources on fighting".

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 17:21

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Honj Steak posted:

If we needed the Middle East as a strong ally in a possible war against a hostile super power then I'm sure you would find a lot of politicians willing to create such a plan. In reality noone really cares about this region too much.

Why do we need to save the middle east though I guess. It seems like every time we try to help we just make things worse. I understand we've had a lot of influence on arms and the power structure of the region, but like if we just stopped doing that and ignored the region for a century, would that fix things or would they still be fighting? It seems like people always wanna blame problems over there on white people and there are certainly some legitimate reasons for that, but these people never really offer an alternative to western meddling or even encourage it at other times.

It seems like there might be cultural elements at play that push people into fighting and killing for ideologies simply not present elsewhere in the world.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 17:29

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

kikkelivelho posted:

The thing is, countries like sweden have self-loathing and cultureless native populations who see these immigrants as their only chance to achieve some semblance of self-identity.

Why can't they consider having a nice peaceful life a culture.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 17:45

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Cake Smashing Boob posted:

hate to break it to you but mona sahlin makes up a very small percentage of the native swedish population

It's a pretty common mentality among well off white people who romanticize struggles they've never experienced and say things like "but they have such a rich culture".

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 18:11

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

Nation posted:

i guess you leave the women at home when you invade

Yeah, why are all the refugees men? You'd think women and children would make up a bigger chunk of people fleeing a conflict region cause the men would be fighting.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 18:12

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# ¿ May 8, 2024 13:03

ArbitraryC: Jan 28, 2009; Pick a number, any number; Pillbug

If 70% of these refugees are adult dudes we should just give them guns and send em to syria, instant army.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2015 18:17

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