Economic Indicators and Crime

Economic Indicators and Crime

Posted on by jabittan
“Criminologists have long known that unemployment rates don’t correlate well with rates of violent crime,” writes Steven Pinker in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Despite what feels like it must be true, that national unemployment rates influence crime, there is not a correlation between rising unemployment and rising crime. We all have ideas about what causes crime, and for many of us unemployment is an explanation, but it turns out crime is much more complex and doesn’t fall in line with many of our economic indicators.
 
 
Pinker continues, “In the three years after the financial meltdown of 2008, which caused the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the American homicide rate fell by another 14 percent.” Every time I read this statistic I am surprised. It is hard to believe that when unemployment gets worse people do not resort to more crime. I imagine that many of us would expect more crime as desperate people try to get money and resources through illicit means when jobs are not available to provide those things for them. But that is not what has happened recently. Until 2020 crime was falling, going through the economic downturn of the early 2000s and the subsequent rise and record low unemployment of the late 2010s.
 
 
It also turns out that inequality isn’t much better at predicting crime. Regarding inequality Pinker writes, “the problem with invoking inequality to explain changes in violence is that while it correlates with violence across states and countries, it does not correlate with violence over time within a state or country.” Like unemployment, I would expect that more unequal societies would have more crime, as those at the bottom fight among themselves and are unhappy with the wealth and opulence they see in the lives of others. However, inequality was at a low point in the 1960s in the United States, when crime was  much worse across the United States. In the last couple of decades inequality has worsened in the US, but with the exception of the slight increase in crime since 2020, crime trends have gone downward. The global differences we see in crime rates, Joseph Henrich would argue in The WEIRDest People in the World, are probably better explained by factors other than a single measure of inequality.
 
 
The crime waves that have occurred since the end of WWII and our explanations for those crime waves are an interesting example of how quickly we can jump to inaccurate conclusions about the world. Humans make causal observations and connections in the world around them, but sometimes those causal links are invalid. While I do believe we have the ability to use math, statistics, causal observations, and experiments to be able to deduce and understand root causes, the process is difficult. Crime is an example of how far off our causal reasoning can be from reality. Explaining social phenomena is difficult, and even the best theories rarely seem to be able to explain more than 40% of the variance we see in a given phenomenon. We can do lots of studies of crime and start to get a better understanding, but simply assuming that a couple of economic indicators will explain crime is an inadequate way to think about trends and phenomena.
Baby Boomer Solidarity

Baby Boomer Solidarity

Posted on by jabittan
In The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker writes, “the baby boomers were unusual … in sharing an emboldening sense of solidarity, as if their generation were an ethnic group or nation.” Pinker explains that the baby boomers were the first, and perhaps only, generation to grow up as the largest demographic group in the nation and as a connected and unified age bracket. Nationwide technology was developing to bring instantaneous television and radio directly to the people. There were limited shows and channels, but everyone could listen and watch at the same time. And everyone could know that everyone else was watching the same few tv channels or listening to the same few songs on the radio. This brought the baby boomers together in a way that never happened before, and might not be able to happen again in our hyper specialized and individualized media environment that current generations are growing up within.
 
 
The Better Angels of our Nature is a book that explores the ways in which humans and our societies have become less violent over time. The baby boomers, Pinker explains, in some ways have contributed to the trend of reduced violence while in other ways have been a counter trend to reduced rates of violence. A large group of 15 to 30 year-olds who are emboldened and socially connected is a recipe for increased crime. Most crimes are committed by men in this age bracket, and when the baby boomers hit this age bracket, there was a lot of potential for crime in the United States simply because there were a lot of men living in their most crime prone years. Baby boomers reached this age bracket in the 1970s, a time when drug usage spiked and crime rose. However, a group of hyper connected hippies wasn’t exactly the most aggressive group of individuals of all time. While baby boomers may have created a crime bump in the United States, they opposed war in Vietnam in large numbers. Baby boomer opposition to the war likely played a role in decreasing the overall violence of that conflict (not to say there was not a ton of violence in Vietnam). Baby boomers continued the trend of being less violent, so even though there were record numbers of them and record levels of solidarity, their outlets and beliefs were less violent overall.
 
 
I think it is interesting to think about the baby boomers and their relationships with violence. Having large numbers of youth always creates the potential for violence, and we have seen this with different generations. The baby boomers also show us how emerging technologies can shift mindsets and change the way people think about social norms which may be tied to crime, drug use, relationships, and international security. Baby boomer solidarity, and a sense that they were the first generation in history to have such a sense of solidarity, created a unique moment in history where one generation could have such a dramatic impact on society, crime, and politics. That impact though, was hard to predict and had differing effects that didn’t always seem to fit together, like a pacifying influence on international war while simultaneously contributing to more crime within the United States.
American Homicides & Honor

Honor & American Homicides

Posted on by jabittan
The United States has more guns and more homicides than many other WEIRD countries. Compared to Europe in particular, the United States has much more gun violence, gun deaths, and murders in general. Peter Singer offers one plausible explanation for this in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature.
 
 
Pinker writes, “In Europe, first the state disarmed the people and claimed a monopoly on violence, then the people took over the apparatus of the state. In America, the people took over the state before it had forced them to lay down their arms. … In other words Americans, and especially Americans in the South and West, never fully signed on to a social contract that would vest the government with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force.”
 
 
The argument that Pinker makes is that Americans maintained their weapons because they never allowed government to become strong enough to take their weapons away. Americans never fully gave government the sole authority to use violence. Americans have retained the idea that they should be able to use violence to protect themselves if ever needed. In an almost mythical manner, weapons and defensive violence have been enshrined in the United States.
 
 
However, having weapons and placing defensive violence in a special place is not the entire explanation for higher rates of murder in the United States that Pinker offers. Pinker suggests, especially in the South, that the United States has also maintained a culture of personal honor. In such a culture, any slight against the individual needs to be avenged so that the individual’s honor is not damaged. Pride, family heritage, and displays of strength and power are important in such a system, and must be upheld (it is fitting that the biggest movie franchise in the United States is the Avengers).
 
 
The way this translates into more homicides is not through direct murders for individual advancement or gain, but through murders following individual fights. Pinker writes, “southerners do not outkill northerners in homicides carried out during robberies, only in those sparked by quarrels.” Southerners are far more likely to turn to violence, and accept violence, when it is a response to aggression or a slight against an individual. Honor, it turns out, is a dangerous force and idea that leads to more homicides surrounding frivolous slights.
 
 
I don’t think Pinker’s explanations fully capture or fully explain why homicide rates in the Untied States are higher than in other WEIRD countries.  I do think they demonstrate different aspects of the United States which contribute to greater uses of violence. When combined with ideas about racism in the United States, extreme positions of inequality, lack of social safety nets, and some capitalistic aspects of our economic system, I think Pinker’s considerations are very important. Violence is not fully owned by the state because our population won’t allow the state a full monopoly on violence. Many parts of the country still cling to honor cultures that tacitly encourage violence – especially in self-defense or preservation. As a result, the murder and violence potential of the Untied States is higher than many WEIRD countries, and that shows through in the data.
Violence and Statelessness Within a State

Violence and Statelessness Within a State

Posted on by jabittan
Recently I have been making efforts to take longer views of history, to understand how things that happened and developed a long time ago still impact the world today. Sometimes this is easy to do. In a city, infrastructure decisions are evaluated and planned with 30 or more years of useful life intended for the investment. A building, bridge, or park is expected to stick around for a while, shaping its immediately area for a long time (or possibly forever if we chose to maintain the infrastructure indefinitely).
 
 
What is harder to see is how cultural products, as opposed to physical infrastructure products, stick around and continue to shape the culture and development of human social worlds. We are used to thinking of humans as individual actors who have the power to change and adapt to any given situation. We don’t think about how specific cultural arrangements could influence people for the long term. But the reality is that cultural interactions, products, and institutions can have a dramatic long term impact on people, just as a park or bridge can have a long term impact on a city.
 
 
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature Steven Pinker discusses how lower-income African Americans ended up with higher rates of violence due to poor policing. These higher rates of violence translated into discriminatory practices that have lasted for a long time, and are still with us today. It is easy to think that any black person in the US today can simply chose to be different, to ignore the long influence of history, but that is to ignore the real social institutions that shaped how African Americans understood themselves in our nation. Just as it would be foolish to ignore the impact that a park had in making a city an enjoyable place to live, ignoring the discrimination that African Americans faced and the subsequent violence that grew within African American communities would be foolish.
 
 
Pinker writes, “communities of lower-income African Americans were effectively stateless, relying on a culture of honor (sometimes called the code of the streets) to defend their interests rather than calling in the law.” When government discriminated against black people, when the police were not a reliable and trustworthy source of justice, when black people had to defend their own honor or risk being taken advantage of, violence became a solution. By segregating black people, denying them access to quality services, and by racially profiling communities of color in policing, a stateless people were created within our country. The law did not afford equal protections and the state did not provide the same opportunities and engagement for black people relative to white people. This created situations in which violence flourished, furthering the very systems of inequality and injustice that created the situations for violence in the first place.
 
 
This history is long. It is not something that can be understood simply by looking at the violence that exists in African American communities today. To understand how we ended up with Black Lives Matter, to understand why rates of violence in communities of color are what they are, and to understand racial tensions, we have to take a long view of history. We have to acknowledge that cultural factors can have long-term impacts and consequences, just as infrastructure decisions can. Discrimination created a stateless people within the United States, and that statelessness incentivized violence. None of this is a matter of individual moral failings, but a consequence of decades of institutional and governance failings.
Dogmas About Violence

Dogmas About Violence

Posted on by jabittan
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker demonstrates that many of the ways in which we think about violence are inadequate for actually understanding violence. Often, our views toward violence are more dogmatic than evidence based. We have ideas, views, and beliefs of violence that seem to fit, but that don’t actually have much historical backing and don’t really take full context into consideration. Pinker’s book pushes back against such dogmas to help us better understand what is happening in world-wide violence trends. His argument is that by better understanding the causes and underlying factors contributing to violence, we can better understand actual trends in violence and shape our responses accordingly.
 
 
Regarding some dogmas that people hold about violence he writes, “on the contrary, violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived in the minds of the perpetrators.” Morality doesn’t necessarily seem to be a key to stopping violence. Pinker demonstrates that many religious wars, such as The Crusades, were fought by people who believed they were very moral. In fact, their morality was at the center of their conflict. Morality today is still used to justify violence, such as when we tie capital punishment to a sense of justice. The idea is that someone who killed another deserves to have the same violence inflected upon themselves. Our moral sense is that more violence is a worthy response to violence.
 
 
Pinker continues, “a Third dubious belief about violence is that lower-class people engage in it because they are financially needy … or because they are expressing rage against society.” What Pinker found is that this isn’t necessarily true. People in the lowest socioeconomic levels, Pinker argues, tend to be “effectively stateless.” At a certain point, legal recourse to address crimes is just not possible for people in the lowest economic spheres. People may be dependent on government aid and assistance, but  they may be locked out of some of the protections that government and institutions afford more affluent people. Violence is better than trying to resolve conflicts legally for these individuals.
 
 
From a middle class perspective, impulse control more important for future success and security than it is for lower class individuals. Being impulsive and using violence against another person could lead to a job loss, a financial loss, the loss of friends, and the loss of familial assistance. If you have already lost those things, then the cost of violence falls. Approaches to address violence that are designed for the middle and upper classes literally are ineffective because they don’t operate on the proper incentive structure facing people in the lowest socioeconomic classes. And when those approaches fail, it can lead to a positive feedback loop where the poorest people are simply blamed for being impulsive and violent. We miss the importance of larger institutions and incentives.
 
 
Understanding these dogmas and the reality of violence helps us better understand why people are violent. Taking a long view of humanity allows us to more clearly see how these dogmas are built from limited perspectives of our current moment and current socioeconomic situations. To get beyond these dogmas requires that we think differently about the systems, structures, institutions, and incentives in people’s lives and how those factors can influence violent behavior.
Declines in Elite Violence

Declines in Elite Violence

Posted on by jabittan
Violence among the elites and upper classes isn’t something that never happens, but it is less common than violence within lower socioeconomic status groups. This feels obvious and not really worth calling out, unless you take a long view at human history and violence. Medieval Europe was a place of great violence inflicted by elites. Even the American South from the inception of chattel slavery on the continent to the Civil War was a region of violence inflicted by elites. It has not always been the case that in human societies the elites and highest socioeconomic status individuals were the least likely to use violence against other humans.
 
 
In his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker writes, “The European decline of violence was spearheaded by a decline in elite violence. Today statistics from every Western country show that the overwhelming majority of homicides and other violent crimes are committed by people in the lowest socioeconomic classes.” Humanity has gotten more peaceful in part because violence among elites has fallen. We no longer live in a world with economic systems (in WEIRD countries) where feudal lords and slave owners can use violence to drive workers and manage their estates.
 
 
Pinker continues, “One obvious reason for the shift is that in medieval times, one achieved high status through the use of force.” Gang violence, black markets, and crime syndicates can be a pathway to riches today, but they are not the dominant ways or preferred ways to riches. They are risky, particularly because they operate outside of the state and the legal protections of the state. In medieval times, however, the state did not have the ability to prevent violence and illegal means of wealth creation in the ways the state can today. Similarly, slave owners could use violence to force and compel their workforce of subjugated humans. Violence was a necessary and even expected tool in wealth creation in the Antebellum South.
 
 
What this demonstrates is that changing economic systems and structures changes levels of violence in human cultures among socioeconomic strata. When incentives existed to use violence to obtain wealth, then it was common for elites to use violence. When institutions and incentives shifted, elites became less violent. In the Untied States we view ourselves and our decisions, actions, and behaviors through a lens of individualism, often forgetting the larger institutions and incentives that push us to make certain decisions, take certain actions, and generally behave in certain ways. But what Pinker shows is that incentives matter, even for our elites, and that shifting incentives has been key in driving down violence at the highest level of our socioeconomic system.
Laws & Trust

Laws & Trust

Posted on by jabittan
“Many criminologists believe,” writes Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, “that the source of the state’s pacifying effect isn’t just its brute coercive power but the trust it commands among the populace.” People do not respect laws and rules simply out of fear. They may obey and follow rules and laws when they know they are being watched, but that is not the same as actually following the laws because they agree with them or understand why the laws exist.
 
 
Humans do not follow every law perfectly. There are some laws we will absolutely follow and some to which we will almost always adhere, and some laws that we will generally ignore. Pinker’s quote is getting to the heart of why there are some laws we will always, or almost always follow, relative to others that we may ignore completely. Whether we respect and trust the state is a big factor in whether we follow the laws, even if we don’t suspect there is any consequence for breaking laws.
 
 
When we perceive that the state is unjust in its application of the law, then deliberately disobeying a law doesn’t seem to be as big of a problem. When we sense that the state is corrupt, then we have trouble justifying to ourselves that the state’s laws are important to follow. When we see others doing the same then there is a chance of a positive feedback loop with no one following the law. Brute force is not enough to change our behaviors and get us to actually respect and follow laws. When we trust the government and when we believe the government is responsive then we will be more likely to actually follow the law without constantly trying to cut corners. 
Explaining Nazi Violence During a Time of Civilizing Processes

Explaining Nazi Violence During a Time of Civilizing Processes

Posted on by jabittan
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Steven Pinker writes about German sociologist Norbert Elias and his theory of civilization. Over time, people became less impulsive, less disgusting, and more civilized, and this trend toward civilization among people corresponded with declines in violence between people. For Elias, a decline in violence was a result of increased civility among human beings.
 
 
But Elias was writing in the 1930s and 1940s in Germany, a country controlled by a political power that launched some of the greatest violence the world has ever seen. Elias had to explain how humans became more civil and less violent and how his own country managed to be so awful. Pinker writes, “he documented the persistence of a militaristic culture of honor among its elites, the breakdown of a state monopoly on violence with the rise of communist and fascist militias, and a resulting contraction of empathy for groups perceived  to be outsiders…” Pinker goes on to explain that homicide rates and other rates of violence did continue to decline in Nazi Germany while violence toward outsiders and the rest of the world spiked. Pinker affirms that violence and civility continued their inverse relationship through WWII despite German violence and aggression.
 
 
I find Pinker’s analysis of the explanations that Elias provides for why Nazi Germany could be so violent at a time of declining violence very interesting. Throughout the book Pinker supports the idea that a militaristic culture of honor can lead to increased violence. When people feel a need to protect their honor via force or equal punishment for slights against their honor, then violence can escalate. When the state loses its control on the use of violence and force, individual vigilantes and armed militias can become dangerously prominent. When people begin to dehumanize other groups and justify violence against them, then pockets of violence can easily erupt. These factors still promote violence in the world today.
 
 
Ahmaud Arbery was shot in Georgia, a state in the Southern United States where honor cultures have always persisted to a greater extent than elsewhere in the United States. Perhaps he was in a place he shouldn’t have been, perhaps he had stolen something in the past. But the violence inflicted upon him was a result of a culture of honor that has long persisted and encouraged a sense of vigilantism among Southern Whites. Across 2020 and 2021 in the United States the breakdown of the state monopoly on violence factored into a lot of violence and death. Armed militias killed Black Lives Matter protesters and stormed the Nation’s Capital. These groups certainly appeared to be in part fueled by a lack of empathy for people they perceived as different and other, as somehow wrong and less deserving than themselves. The diagnosis from Elias on why Nazi Germany became so violent seems to be echoed in the recent uptick of violence within the United States.
 
 
(Please note that I am not saying the United States today or in the last few years is Nazi Germany. I am simply identifying some factors that explained Nazi Germany violence and asking if they also explain some trends observed today in very different places, times, and settings.)
Deterrence Plus Good Lawful Alternatives

Deterrence Plus Good Lawful Alternatives

Posted on by jabittan
I will admit, when I was younger I used to pirate music. Even just a few years back I used to pirate unauthorized video streams online for sporting events I wanted to watch. If you don’t mind some questionable audio and video quality and if you don’t mind hunting around on some sketchy websites for links, then pirating media isn’t a huge challenge. However, I eventually decided that there were enough sufficiently easy to use legal alternatives for tv and music to stop pirating. I generally stream everything through either Spotify or Pandora for music and my Smart TV easily connects with streaming services really for what feels like a fair price.
 
 
The lesson from my example is that good lawful alternatives are an effective way to fight against illegal music and tv streaming and downloading. This is an idea that Steven Pinker briefly explores in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature when he writes, “it’s easier to deter people from crime if the lawful alternative is more appealing.”
 
 
Pinker was not writing about illegal media downloads, rather violent crime in Medieval Europe, but the idea still holds. In my example, tv contracts with cable or satellite that cost well over $100/month for channels I wasn’t going to watch wasn’t wasn’t a good legal alternative for me to watch the sports and occasional cooking shows that I wanted to see. The process for getting services started was cumbersome and the contracts locked me for long terms of service with guaranteed rate increases. Illegal streaming was more appealing even if it had some risk and poor overall quality. In terms of music, my options used to be paying $1 for a song or $10 for an album for a legal download versus illegally downloading songs. It wasn’t that I couldn’t afford the music (or the tv contract for that matter) but rather that it wasn’t optimal for how I wanted to consume media. Music streaming services now offer a better service for a reasonable price, and I no longer download music illegally. Good legal alternatives changed the incentive structure and ultimately changed my behavior.
 
 
But this doesn’t mean that deterrence is unnecessary. Good deterrence can be paired with good lawful alternatives to further shape people’s behaviors in desired directions. A close example to my media piracy and subsequent changes to legal alternatives comes from the world of gaming. Video games can be illegally uploaded online and played on computers or home consoles without an individual purchasing the game. Video game companies have gotten creative with how they combat piracy. Some developers build their games in a way that allows the game to recognize if it has been stolen or is being played on a computer rather than the console it was intended for. In some instances, developers will allow players to reach a set point in the game before preventing further play. This gives the illegal players a chance to experience the game and hopefully want to purchase it to play it all the way through. Rather than making extreme efforts to combat the piracy, these developers accept that some piracy will happen, but rely on providing a good enough product and legal alternative model to obtaining the game to reduce the total amount and overall impact of piracy. They pair reasonable forms of deterrence with good legal alternatives.
 
 
This idea is interesting because when we think about crime in the United States at least, our primary response tends to be punishment and deterrence. We don’t often seem to think much about legal alternatives and barriers to legal alternatives. We don’t think reasonably about the trade-offs for escalating deterrence versus accepting some negative behavior and making the most of it like video game companies. Costs, incentive structures, and barriers (like red tape) can make illegal activity more appealing, but we don’t always recognize that. This was true in my illegal music and tv streaming and downloading and Pinker argues it has been true at various points of human history with respect to violence. One explanation that Pinker offers for why humans have become less violent is because we have developed better legal alternatives to obtaining things that humans want and desire. Violence is no longer a great way to ensure you have resources and status. Less violent ways of obtaining such things are now good alternatives through institutional and societal design. This is an important lesson to learn and think about when we are trying to shape people’s behaviors and deter criminal activity. Tough on crime sounds great, but deterrence needs to be paired with good legal alternatives.
 
 
Gentle Commerce

Gentle Commerce

Posted on by jabittan
On a recent episode of the show Solvable from Pushkin, a guest interviewed about reality TV said that contestants on reality TV shows are rarely as good or as bad as they appear in the series. The shows present narratives which causes us to think about contestants in an extreme way. We seem to fall into this type of thinking very easily, and I think it shapes the way we think about real world actors outside of reality TV settings. I think the same piece of advice can be applied to big businesses, government, and sports. In particular, and the focus of this post, I think we view big business as being much worse than it truly is.
 
 
This is a view that Tyler Cowen puts forward in his book Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. It is also an idea that Steven Pinker shares in The Better Angels of Our Nature. In his book Pinker writes, “though many intellectuals … hold businesspeople in contempt for their selfishness and greed, in fact a free market puts a premium on empathy.”  One benefit of global free markets its that customers can chose where they shop. They can spend their money on things that are important to them and they can buy things where they feel respected and supported. We are often critical of big businesses for being uncaring and for having too much power, but big businesses have to listen to political and social trends. They have to try to be responsive to people to provide them with products, services, and narratives that they want.
 
 
Pinker continues, “a good businessperson has to keep the customers satisfied or a competitor will woo them away, and the more customers he attracts, the richer he will be.” This is an idea known as doux commerce (gentle commerce), which suggests that free markets and big businesses reduce violence by participating in positive sum games. “If you’re trading favors or surpluses with someone, your trading partner suddenly becomes more valuable to you alive than dead,” writes Pinker.
 
 
Businesses encourage us to think about what our customers need, want, and expect. While businesses may be cold, may be greedy, and may have all sorts of problems, they do reduce violence. Many people dislike that big businesses are trying to conform to social pressures today,  but the reality is that businesses are always trying to react to the social changes and pressures of the time. Successful businesses empathize with people to win them over. They are not trying to wipe out or alienate any segment of the population, but trying to predict where the market is going and sell to that future market. For all the problems of markets and big businesses, reducing violence is one bright spot. Perhaps big businesses, as Cowen would argue, are not as evil or as bad as we might think they are.