Slashdot Mirror
UK To Mull High Video Game Taxes — To Fight Knife Crime
chareverie writes "The Prime Minister of the UK is being urged to impose high taxes on violent video games in an effort to reduce the number of knife-related crime. The request comes from Richard Taylor, who argues that young people 'feel that the law has no control over them. They just feel that they can go on the streets and do whatever they like.' He doesn't have a definitive number on how much to tax on the offensive video games, but says that they should be 'very high.' Rap music is also voiced to be a concern due to the alleged negativity and language. Taylor's son, Damilola Taylor, was killed in November 2000 at the age of 10 by knife stabbing."
People spending more time playing video games have less time to stab people.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
If raising taxes is a method of fighting crime (it's not, but supposing it is) then why not raise taxes on the sale of knives ?
, you know, knives?
if they would put police on the street. Apparently, spy cameras don't deter knife crime unless someone actually gets arrested for it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Is anyone surprised that the chavs and yobs running around with knives are powerful, and the defenseless British public are scared and powerless? This is exactly what happens when the criminals lack fear because the British people have been completely disarmed. What is a person supposed to do now against someone who has a knife? Ask politely for them to stop?
While the timing of this article, and response, is very poor given the two horrendous gun crimes yesterday and today, perhaps it is time to revisit the anti-weapon stance that has gripped England since the Scottish school massacre. Take away the guns, then only criminals will have them. Outlaw knives, and only criminals have them. Outlaw video games next?
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
Obligatory xkcd for you, and it's even a recent one: correlation.
Unfortunately, most idiots who spout drivel like this don't even have a strong correlation in the first place. Sales of violent video games may be up, and knife crimes might be up, but is it even the kids playing the games committing the crimes?
Giving adolescents more productive things to do is the best way to fight teen crime. If they're busy earning money, cleaning the parks as volunteers, acting in community theatre, playing music, dancing, painting, or playing organized sports they're less likely (and have less free time) to go out and commit crimes.
Plus there is the minor side issue that most video games use guns, not knives to inflict damage. It sounds like the proponent of this tax are yet another example of knee-jerk reactionaries with a hate-on for video games and rap music. Why is it that such nutbars are even heard by government, much less seriously considered?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Far be it from me to suggest that people RTFA or question the correctness of a summary title, but the father of a murdered boy urging the Prime Minister to tax violent games is a pretty big fucking step from the "UK To Mull High Video Game Taxes - To Fight Knife Crime " in the summary title.
Just for clarity - the UK government aren't doing anything like what's being implied. One man, rightly or wrongly, is suggesting this.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
...that some deranged turd will use WHATEVER weapon he can get his hands on to do WHATEVER he wants...
outlaw guns, use knives
outlaw/outtax knives, use baseball/cricket bats
outlaw bats, use rutabagas
You can never prevent crime, just certain tools used to accomplish it. Even if they have to resort to bare handed strangulation, that's what they'll do....
Twin or more? ITA
Apache/Spring/La
If it's anything like the US, then the kids buying video games are probably not the ones going around stabbing folks. Violent crime tends to correlate with a lower income bracket...whereas a kid who buys lots of violent video games for his next-gen console and HDTV probably comes from a higher-income family.
Ride the skies
This is what happens to a country that takes people's guns away.
I propose a 278% tax on all history books. History has long been known to contain scenes of bloody violence, sexual deviance and disregard for authority. It is time that the government and parents started to take a stand against the corruptive influence of history.
... soon criminals will only have knifes. What's next? Sticks and stones?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
What has this got to do with guns?
Do you think violent crime would be so rampant if the criminals weren't assured of having unarmed victims?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
...since they also 'feel that the law has no control over them'.
I still don't get this. Why is knife crime suddenly such a big deal here in the UK? It seems like every other day some newspaper or TV news or something is talking about it. You hear phrases like "knife-crime epidemic" bandied about.
See 2008 crime figures:
Nothing to see here. Move on. Stop whining, and yes, Daily Mail editors, I mean you.
So, if there is any correlation, it's a negative one: more video games, less knife crime.
Interestingly, that seems to be the opposite side of the correlation != causation arguments that come up on slashdot every time violent video games come up. I know you're not concluding this in your post - but a lot of posts do tend to say "correlation != causation, and besides, violent video games help reduce actual violence ..."
Can't have it both ways, it always seems to be the same kinds of studies (whether psychological, statistical, correlation types, etc) that "prove" violent video games increase violent crime as those that "prove" that violent video games decrease violent crime.
Bullying is bad and perhaps could have been handled better, but I'm pretty sure the cause of death was... the stabbing!?
Video games or no, any kid between 11 and 14 needs to know that stabbing people is wrong and a very bad idea.
Blaming video games, the principal, rap music or any other convenient scapegoat partly absolves these kids and their parents of their own responsibility to not stab people. Let's not do that.
... feels as if the government *must do something* owing to his loss...
Hell's bells, why do we excuse this ridiculous assumption everyone has that the government is the solution...
Did he teach his child to be aware of his surroundings, or was the government supposed to provide cops to watch his every step?
Did he consider moving since the neighborhood was turning to shit or did he expect the government to clean up the streets at some other tax payers expense?
Did he teach his kid not to piss off and enrage the unstable or was the government supposed to put him in a protective custody so he could shoot off his mouth without consequences?
Maybe none of these apply, maybe all of them do, but damn... this insistance that we can't make changes ourselves, that it HAS to be done by the government is 80% of why the economy in both our countries is sucking the crack pipe right now.
Don't know about you, but my daughter has known for the last 10 years (she's 14) that if she's ever uncomfortable being somewhere, get off the streets and call me, anytime and anyplace. And I've taught her to be paranoid an err on the side of caution... should I have to? Well, not if we lived in Candyland...
But we don't... so get off your ass, protect yourselves, and then see what you can do to make the place better... after that, then maybe the government can help. But if you haven't done that first, you make idiots look smart and the crime situation is a direct result of your (and your predecessors) actions.
--
I drank what?
This hysteria and panic is caused by, well, nothing. Except the fact that for some unknown reason over the last 5 years the media has become much more likely to report each and every incident of violence with a knife that they get to hear about.
Perhaps there's more media: more reporters + more vehicles of delivery = more output for the same crime.
Blow it out of proportion: one knife crime a day, 10,000 reporters to cover it, and reported in 25 newspapers, 37 TV channels and 600 websites. You would think the world was ending, too.
While I have every sympathy for the poor man, it's not a good idea to let the victims of crime determine how to prevent it. Their judgement tends not to be the most balanced.
He doesn't know what the causal relationship is between knife crime and games, nor does he have any idea what the effect will be on demand for games should they be taxed (it's possible that the publishers would end up swallowing a large part of it because games are presumably at the price which maximises profit*number of sales).
No, people (you, for example) like to pretend that it's a simple problem because they're terrified by the knowledge that the world is complicated. They tell themselves the comforting lie that if they pick a scapegoat and attack it, everything will magically get better.
Did he also notice that the kids who carry knives get their games via The Pirate Bay...?
Thought not.
No sig today...
Not to be rude or anything, but maybe he shouldn't have named his son Damilola? With a name like that, the kid was doomed to be either the victim of a gang or the leader of a gang...
Seriously though, there's too many things wrong with the whole story to do more than begin to point them out. He's trying to legislate his grief, which has been a bad idea since the beginning of time (and the reason a lot of humanity has gotten away from the idea of kings). And in the process, he totally missed his mark. If he wants to legislate something, he should consider what went wrong in the schoolyard.
Why, with the UK's omnipresent surveillance and nanny state, did no one notice that a pack of kids had gone all Lord of the Flies on the playground? Could it be that the surveillance of everything DOESN'T WORK? That it induces a sense of false security on the part of adult supervision, eliminates the idea that personal responsibility should be inculcated in kids, and does absolutely nothing to address any of the root causes of gang violence? Could it be that by passing law after law after stupid assinine law that a contempt for the law has been bred into the citizenry? And now he wants to add another stupid assinine law...
A certain Biblical quote is apropos: You reap what you sow.
No, people (you, for example) like to pretend that it's a simple problem because they're terrified by the knowledge that the world is complicated. They tell themselves the comforting lie that if they pick a scapegoat and attack it, everything will magically get better.
Ahh, the "It's too complex for you to know that, how dare you hold me responsible" argument. I've never heard "THAT" one before...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Sometimes the solutions are simple, but unpleasant, or require effort, so they are ignored.
Right off the bat, there's some serious overgeneralizing in that statement. However, if it is the case, then the solution is simple in concept but difficult in execution.
Show young people that the system can work for them. That involves thousands of hours of education in basic finance, civics, and law.
Show young people that the system can work against them. That involves an effective police force and appropriate punishments.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
If you think punishment of any form is not a deterrent
He isn't saying that punishment has no effect, he says that harsher punishment has no effect. People might reason about getting captured by police, but they don't reason about getting 5 instead of 3 years in jail when commiting their act. If you want to stop future crime you have to fix the underlying causes in society, which of course most of the time isn't that simple or easy.
Right off the bat, there's some serious overgeneralizing in that statement. However, if it is the case, then the solution is simple in concept but difficult in execution. Show young people that the system can work for them. That involves thousands of hours of education in basic finance, civics, and law. Show young people that the system can work against them. That involves an effective police force and appropriate punishments.
Question for you:
If the majority of the population are retired, and they vote for the young minority to work double shifts to support them, and the police enforce the will of the majority vote, is that freedom, or is it slavery?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
While a lower violent crime rate in the UK is not an argument saying that outlawing guns lowers violent crime, I think it is a fairly strong argument that allowing everyone to own guns doesn't necessarily lower it either.
I suspect that we would both agree that the best way to lower crime is to address the underlying causes of it. You'll note how crime tends to go down when the economy is doing better and less people are pushed into desperate acts for example.
I also suspect that we would both agree that no matter how good of a job you do on paragraph a, you'll never be able to entirely eliminate violent crime. Once you accept this you have to decide if you want your citizenry to be able to defend themselves or if they should have to rely on the state to do it for them. Personally I want to be able to defend myself and am glad that I live in a country where that is possible.
The biggest argument against your reasoning, however, is your implied assumption that criminals use game theory to decide if it is rationally beneficial to commit their crime
*shrug*, I've seen studies of convicted criminals that suggest that one of the biggest fears they have is running into an armed victim that is able to resist their attack. Either way though I don't really have to justify my ownership of weapons in the United States. It's a Bill of Rights, not a Bill of Needs.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Seriously, thought, we're suffering from massive unemployment, not lack of manpower.
You mean, the people who own all the resources that you could very easily go and do productive work with are comfortable and have no desire to allow you permission to work them. But you can go stand in front of their box of stuff and say "Cash or Credit, I'm sorry sir, you'll have to pay for that" all day, and they'll feed, water and house you like the animal you are...
It's not unemployment, its disenfranchisement. While the disenfranchisement continues, the employment or lack of it are rather irrelevant.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Not sure what both parties carrying guns would accomplish, except to make one or more parties into a fatality.
And the criminal ending up a fatality is a bad thing, because.....? The criminal is the one who made the decision that somebody was going to die when he decided to pull that knife or gun. At that point it's just a question of who.
But the few times when I have been mugged, me having any sort of weapon would have very quickly become the criminal having that weapon, along with my wallet and phone
Maybe you should learn some situational awareness so you won't get surprised like that in the future? Go take a self-defense class. You need not carry a gun to learn ways to defend yourself against those situations, although the gun certainly helps.
Should you have the right to kill someone because they want your wallet?
I would only kill someone if I believed my life was in danger. If someone pulls a gun or a knife on me then my life is in danger and his underlying motives (be it robbery or murder) don't really matter, do they?
I really dont think arming more stupid humans is the right way to go.
So what is the way to go? You'll never eliminate all crime. Criminals will always be armed with something. The only question is whether or not the citizenry should be able to defend themselves. I've yet to hear a compelling argument for why they shouldn't be able to.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
On this count you're dead wrong. "Can you see our bowler hats? We're not faceless bureaucrats!"
I worked for the DWP and we got privatised last Feb. I now do exactly the same job for the same T&Cs (because of TUPE, one thing I can actually thank Thatcher for!) but my firm is taking a profit for the work we do from the tax-payer. Brown promised to get rid of 100,000 civil servants and he did it - by transferring us to the private sector and letting them take a huge profit on contracts with virtually no penalties for failure. Plus the service we provide to the rest of the DWP has been reduced because loads of odd things we did on our site weren't in the new contract.
That's where all the money has gone, to shareholders of firms involved in the various privatisation scams.
Nick
They destroyed industrial communities. They gave the police virtually unlimited powers to stop and search young people. They established a foreign policy of might-makes-right and went out of their way to antagonize and alienate immigrant communities. They lied, took bribes, started wars, incited racism, crushed civil liberties, and they are still standing trying to talk like statesmen.
And computer games are to blame when the kids go berserk? Fucking retarded.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
For 18 years, the children (generally) get food, shelter, preferencial legal status (Do it for the children!!!!!!), and golden opportunities at an education for nothing more than the hard work of having a pulse.
The parents, however, have the expense of earning the money, keeping the home, and providing moral/social guidance. The neighbors pay taxes on the school whether they like it or not, have kids or not.
*Now* who's the slave?
(Such a specious argument. It's a tenant of being in a society that sometimes society pays into you and sometimes you pay into the society. It's a freakin' exchange between generations. Slavery doesn't come into it. Now get offa my lawn. Jerk.)
Oh look, an Obama troll. Listen up, troll, UK government isn't liberal, it's borderline fascist. You want liberals, go to vermont or new hampshire or something.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I find it interesting that despite having such an apparently intense fear of inanimate tools, the UK populace keeps electing them.
im honestly curious, how does taxing video game sales help fix knife crime?
that being said if video games are the one true problem behind knife crime, why did stabbings occur before video games?