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Amazon's Home Security Company Is Turning Everyone Into Cops (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Neighbors is not just a social media app: it's a service that's meant to be used with Ring security cameras, a Wi-Fi-powered home security company that was acquired by Amazon last February in a $1 billion deal. Neighbors was launched in May 2018, three months after the acquisition. If you have Ring security cameras, you can upload video content straight from your security camera to Neighbors. [...] Beyond creating a "new neighborhood watch," Amazon and Ring are normalizing the use of video surveillance and pitting neighbors against each other. Chris Gilliard, a professor of English at Macomb Community College who studies institutional tech policy, told Motherboard in a phone call that such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
In Amazon's version of a "new neighborhood watch," petty crimes are policed heavily, and racism is common. Video posts on Neighbors disproportionately depict people of color, and descriptions often use racist language or make racist assumptions about the people shown. In many ways, the Neighbors/Ring ecosystem is like a virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neighbors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat. Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. Motherboard placed the "home" address at the VICE offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and kept the default 5-mile neighborhood radius, meaning the neighborhood encompassed all of lower Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Hoboken. According to the Ring Community Guidelines, the Neighbors app bans "direct threats against any individuals, bullying, harassment, and any posts that demean, defame, or discriminate," but it relies on Neighbors users to report posts that violate that rule. The guidelines also claim that only "crime and safety related content" is allowed. The guidelines do not define what qualifies as "safety," but they do encourage users to "consider the behavior that made you suspicious and whether such suspicion is reasonable."
When asked if Ring moderates content on Neighbors or reviews posts for racism, a company spokesperson said, "The Neighbors app by Ring is meant to facilitate this collaboration within communities by allowing users to easily share and communicate with their neighbors and in some cases, local law enforcement, about crime and safety in real-time."
In Amazon's version of a "new neighborhood watch," petty crimes are policed heavily, and racism is common. Video posts on Neighbors disproportionately depict people of color, and descriptions often use racist language or make racist assumptions about the people shown. In many ways, the Neighbors/Ring ecosystem is like a virtual gated community: people can opt themselves in by downloading the Neighbors app, and with a Ring camera, users can frame neighbors as a threat. Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color. Motherboard placed the "home" address at the VICE offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and kept the default 5-mile neighborhood radius, meaning the neighborhood encompassed all of lower Manhattan, most of Brooklyn, and parts of Queens and Hoboken. According to the Ring Community Guidelines, the Neighbors app bans "direct threats against any individuals, bullying, harassment, and any posts that demean, defame, or discriminate," but it relies on Neighbors users to report posts that violate that rule. The guidelines also claim that only "crime and safety related content" is allowed. The guidelines do not define what qualifies as "safety," but they do encourage users to "consider the behavior that made you suspicious and whether such suspicion is reasonable."
When asked if Ring moderates content on Neighbors or reviews posts for racism, a company spokesperson said, "The Neighbors app by Ring is meant to facilitate this collaboration within communities by allowing users to easily share and communicate with their neighbors and in some cases, local law enforcement, about crime and safety in real-time."
Just as indiscriminately?
such a "crime and safety" focused platforms can actively reinforces racism.
That's unpossible!
Motherboard said it was racist, that settles it, and I believe them without question.
I read the entire (badly written) article and I don't understand what the complaint is. They didn't even give examples of people using racist comments? Example: "One post on Neighbors' “Watchlist,” which is hand-selected by Ring employees and appears at the top of the app, shows a black man stealing a package from a door step. Neighbor41 wrote, “Hope they put his ass in rikers, share a room with 50 other criminals. Oh, and one toilet.” A reply from Neighbor64 implied that he hopes the person gets raped."
Um, ok? Is it racist because of his skin color? Millennials are confusing.
>"Motherboard individually reviewed more than 100 user-submitted posts in the Neighbors app between December 6 and February 5, and the majority of people reported as "suspicious" were people of color."
That is not evidence of "racism" as claimed by the article. It is mostly prejudice based on actual observed experience. Most would not deny that racism exists in society, but now so much of what is reported as "racism" is not. So much so that the word is starting to lose all meaning. "People of color" *do* commit vastly more crime per capita. That is absolute fact. Being more wary or suspicious might not seem fair, but it is not illogical, irrational, immoral, or racist.
Men commit far, far, far more crime than women. Being more wary of strange men checking out your house is not sexist. Again, it is justified prejudice.
I would absolutely expect such reporting by "Vice".
But did you understand it? Because it is actually a confession that brown people will be blamed, no matter what the facts are.
If the last couple of years have taught us anything, racism does not go away if we just pretend it isn't there.
Racism is an intellectually bankrupt set of beliefs that only survives through isolated and sheltered ignorance. Better to expose it to the light than let it fester in the dark.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Here where i live, 80%+ of all crime is committed by people of color. it ain't racist if they're legitimately the ones doing it..
it is actually a confession that brown people will be blamed, no matter what the facts are.
No, not brown people. Just black people.
Indian-Americas (from India) have the lowest crime rates of any ethnicity. Chinese-Americans are right behind. They have lower crime rates than whites. Every ethnic group has come to America, survived discrimination, worked hard, and climbed the economic ladder. Asians have done it. Latinos are doing it. Only blacks stay behind.
Why do people associate crime with skin color? Isn't that racist? I associate crime with CRIME. That is what matters, that the criminal is caught and punished. I don't care what color the criminal is. In my area that is almost always white as if you cared.
Corporatism != Free Market
"EVIL AMAZON trying to protect the public from criminals by creating a new kind of neighborhood watch!!! All kinds of neighborhood watch is RACIST!!! Neighbors should not care if/when any criminals attacking their neighbors!!! Tech companies should not try to stop crime or help EVIL POLICE!!! "Amazon and Ring are normalizing the use of video surveillance"!!! Nobody should use security cameras anywhere!!! They are harmful for criminals!!!"
Keep the rapist, plundering nibbers, wettbakkks & spikks outa the 'hood. Makes peaceful, productive, law-abiding white folks feel safer. Also bitch-slaps race-traitor Trotsky-slut Demo-progs and that's always worth-while.
If white people committed no crimes you'd really have a strong point to say there was no possibility of bias in you only focusing on black crime. Racism would be a lot less plausible in your focus. Like, 100% more.
Whether or not in a small sample people are or aren't being discriminated against based on their race rather than actions is a lot harder to casually blurt out, than your racist obviousness, isn't that so?
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
I'm as racist as the next person, but poor people commit basically all the crime. Keeping minorities in poverty through through subjective (nowadays virtually silent) bias, merely ensures they will live up to the stereotype you have carved out for them.
This is somewhat different from profiling, which is an often individually observed behavior based on probability. LEOs looking for drug mules pull over vehicles piloted by young male hispanic & black occupants with far more frequency than vehicles piloted by blue haired older ladies.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Crime is a way of life for black people - you'd be an idiot not to be wary of them.
Let's call it a racism issue and then no one will notice that the surveillance itself is the danger. This is what happens in a totalitarian country. People are encouraged to inform on each other for political purposes, which quickly becomes a way to get back at your personal enemies and works to make people afraid and therefore hypercompliant. Amazon may not be the government, but these big companies have deep state ties. The noose is tightening.
I live in a semi-rural development where a few households have deployed cameras. The primary effect of these have been to preclude stupid squabbles. "My dog didn't do that on your property; it never wanders off!" Yes it did, and here's video posted on Facebook; control your damn animals. "My precious little johnny wasn't sitting in the middle of street begging to get run over by next delivery driver!" Yes he was, and here's the video on Facebook; supervise your damn kids properly. "My boy wasn't doing 60 mph in a 20 mph zone because he drives carefully!" Yes he did, and here's the video of your kid literally flying over speed bumps in daddies $60k truck.
Really does put the kibosh on a lot of bullshit.
+1 informative? When did /. turn into 4chan?
Well, if my home security camera catches a black person trying to break into my house, then yes, a black person will be blamed.
I didn't ask you, I asked WaCMi - He declined, because yes, he knows he's a racist punk ass faggot who hides from that being common knowledge that he can admit and be judged for. Like all racist faggot punk ass bitches.
D-d-did I stutter? The everlasting lake of fire awaits, nazi cowards.
When the submissions turned into tumblr?
You can push politically-correct narratives that everyone knows are bullshit only so long until people say "oh fuck that".
I'm pretty sure that in most of the cases, what's actually keeping them in poverty is:
a) Their shitty attitude towards education
b) Their unwillingness to work legitimate jobs and better themselves.
c) Their own acceptance of, participation in, and glorification of crime and criminal lifestyles
d) Drugs
e) Irresponsible behavior, like crapping out baby-after-baby to shitty "fathers" who don't support their kids
But yeah, it's all white people's fault.
And tell me this, if white racism is to blame here, where are all the Asian ghettos and criminals? White people viciously discriminated against them too. But I don't see them on the news every night wanted for murder and robbery. Though I do sure-as-shit see a lot of them at graduation ceremonies for Ivy League schools.
Whether or not in a small sample people are or aren't being discriminated against based on their race rather than actions is a lot harder to casually blurt out, than your racist obviousness, isn't that so?
Your post is not totally clear to me. If I understand what you are saying, the AC grandparent is wrong to imply that the original article is making false accusations of racism because it's difficult to tell whether photograph selection is racist based on a sample of one. You are also saying that the original article is correct to make an accusation of racismYour post is not totally clear to me. If I understand what you are saying, the AC grandparent is wrong to imply that the original article is making false accusations of racism because it's difficult to tell whether photograph selection is racist based on a sample of one. You are also implying that the original article is correct to make an accusation of racism based on a sample of one. Have I missed something?
The referenced article has made a horrible accusation. One would expect at least one example where direct evidence of racism was presented. But the article only presents characterizations of people the article supports. We just have to take the word of the libellers rather than have some actual evidence presented.
There are a few photos like one of a person going up stairs and the assertion by the accused that they were a gang member. The article says the post was taken down but the article did not actually identify the person going up the stairs and what that person was doing. The tone of the article is such that if the person going up the stairs was a resident or visitor of a resident then the article would have called attention. But basically nothing said about the legitimacy of the person going up the stairs.
And basically that is it. That's all it takes to accuse a whole community of a repugnant and unacceptable set of behaviors. Oh there were other things like complaints about rough handling of deliveries by the delivery guys. Somehow that is racism from the libellers standpoint. Heck the people accusing the delivery people HAVE VIDEO. WTF. Having video to clarify your complaint is racist now? Or maybe it's because the particular posting section was supposed to be crime and safety yet people were including videos of package handling complaints in a forum where the primary crime shown on video was package theft. That's all it takes to brand a whole community racist?
You really shouldn't undermine your own credibility on such important matters. This is about video postings. One would expect at least one video presented next to comments that were racist. It would of course require a number of these things to accuse a whole community, but not one is presented. Eroding credibility results in a boy who cries wolf situation...NOT JUST FOR YOU. People who have to deal with REAL ABUSE are diminished by this ridiculous nonsense. You weaken the ability of people who actually deal with real problems.
The article is libel on the face. It makes a terrible accusation then only references its own characterizations as evidence. This is libel plain and simple and is completely unacceptable. The community should sue.
Yeah, because we all know that there are a ton of white people robbing convenience stores, breaking into houses, and killing each other in bad drug deals who the cops just let slide. "Someone robbed you at gunpoint? What color were they? ...Oh, they were white? Well, we can't help you on that one then. We racist cops only arrest black people."
That says it all to me.
a company spokesperson completely pretended a different question had been asked instead.
The loonie left has gone crazy with a passion. I blame cheap meth. You know the diapercrats have passed over into schizophrenia when Nancy "Queen of Berkeley" Pelosi shits all over the twisted triumvirate's New Green Dream. It's clear that you would eat a yard of Occasionally Coherent's shit just for a chance to kiss her ass and I know seeing your Emperor Trump standing before the Presidential Seal eats at your very soul, but you better sit back and get used to it. You crazy fucks are working hard to guarantee a re-election.
The word racist is currently right up there with "cloud" and "anti-Semitism" in it's epic and sloppy misuse.
Thinking someone is going to rob you because they look creepy is prejudice.
Assuming black people are probably criminals is prejudice.
Refusing to rent to blacks on assumption they will destroy your property is prejudice.
Racism is the belief in supremacy of one tribe over another. It's distinct from prejudice. You can be prejudiced without being racist.
Not only is everyone wired to be prejudicial it is often as a practical means prudent in cases where gaps in knowledge exist or are unavoidable.
Young people and very old people cause more accidents therefore insurance company prejudicially charges these groups more. You could be the safest best driver in the world at 16 but you're still going to pay thru the nose because the insurance company is prejudiced against young people. It doesn't mean they think young people are inferior to older people... it's just that in the aggregate people in this age group can't drive worth shit.
Maybe I shouldn't be walking around in bad area of town at night. I don't know for sure that someone will mug me but you know it's better I not take that chance because creepy people tend to hang out around here.
Paradoxically a lot of the people crying "racist" always seem to be the ones blatantly equating blacks with being poor and or criminals. It's amusing listening to these asshats spewing prejudicial rhetoric. It's so mind numbingly self-contradictory.
Black countries are almost all universally shit holes with insane levels of crime, high disorganization and violence. Black people commit far more crimes per person in US. Half of human DNA encodes the brain. It's not credible to believe a tribe of people can have similar characteristics that makes them visibly stand out and yet not have any mental characteristics that makes them mentally stand out as well. Pointing out actual identifiable differences isn't racism. Racism is a belief of superiority which simply isn't warranted on racial/tribal grounds because genetic variations between any two individuals dwarfs differences between members of any two known living tribes. The smartest person could be from the dumbest tribe. The tallest from the shortest. The strongest from the weakest.
You can do statistics and put numbers on the probabilities and make rational evidence based assumptions about individuals and draw benefit from the outcomes. Or you can work to minimize prejudice where it occurs to give everyone benefit of favorable initial assumption.
Personally I see value in the ideology of minimizing prejudice for the benefit of society even if in some ways doing so is somewhat locally irrational and results in less than optimal outcomes.
Yet at the same time there is never an excuse for dismissing objective reality because it interferes with your ideology nor for being a miserable loud mouthed SJW asshole about everything.
How FUCKING INSANELY STUPID N$ggers are! It's 2019 and you STILL can't figure out what fractions? According to my magic word "proportion" which you've never heard since most of you don't graduate high school, your inferior race commits FAR more crime per capita. We can only be blessed that you abort so many of your children or the country would already be bankrupt because of you.
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
Right. THAT'S the reason racism exists. It never existed before blacks committed crimes. There was no trying to prevent blacks from getting an education, no attempts to prevent them voting, no attempts at letting them live wherever they wanted. There wasn't even any slavery. All those black people volunteered to work on the plantations with little to no pay.
Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group? How about child molestation?
You did not read the post carefully. "If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead."
I am certain AC is correct about that point -- doesn't matter who commits crime, it is always the right time to blame someone brown.
It's also a vicious cycle. Poor people do crime because ... they're poor? or because they're criminals? and then the system puts them in jail and that keeps them poor because they're poor? or because they're criminals?
America is the greatest example of how poor people can become very rich through hard work and honesty. There is massive economic mobility, regardless of your race, the largest predictor of success being 1) whether you have both parents at the home, 2) how hard you're willing to work and 3) whether or not your parents are criminals.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I am far more likely to be killed by a random angry white male on a rampage than a muslim terrorist.
But the FBI is not allowed to notice facts that do not support consensus racism and consensus Islamophobia.
" Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group? "
Mexican Cartels ?
ISIS ?
Assume these aren't the answers you're wanting ?
Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group?
Blacks.
How about child molestation?
It's a tossup between catholic priests and Muslims.
While in a predominantly white neighborhood, being any color other than white is going to instantly make you a person of interest.
( Like it or not )
The same is true for a white tourist in Mexico, a group of teens roaming around a neighborhood at 3am or a white guy walking through South Central LA.
Hell, if I spot a vehicle on my street I don't recognize, they get my full attention until I know what they're doing here.
It isn't racism.
It's simply realizing something is out of place. ( Which, by default, SHOULD warrant some extra attention on your part. )
I had a neighbor that I hated mostly for being loud and throwing garbage in my yard with the excuse that he didn't think anyone lived here. Obviously I'm not very loud. It was mostly the neighbor's son who was the problem and he hated me too, probably for complaining to his father.
One night about 2 AM I hear my doorbell ring repeatedly. I check the video cameras. There he is, shirtless and obviously very drunk. There's no way I'm gonna answer the door. He leaves, then comes back and vandalizes my fence and gate causing minor damage.
This is pretty much the definition of "petty crime", but it is still a crime. I sent a copy of the video to the cops via e-mail. They said they couldn't view it which is crazy because it was a standard AVI. I wasn't interested in pressing charges, I just wanted a police report for the record.
A week or so later a cop shows up at my door and I showed her the video. (LOL, I broke that rule that all the paranoid people say and I invited her into my house to watch it).
She asked if I wanted to press charges, just have her go over and talk to them or just write a report. All I really wanted was to have it on record and if nothing else happened that could be the end of it.
And the son moved away shortly after that.
The point of this (probably uninteresting to you) story is that crimes are crimes no matter how petty and reporting petty crimes is not "framing" someone. I have not even said anything to his father, let alone threatened anything, but of course I am including the video in my regular backups....just in case the situation ever reignites.
You'd have to be blind drunk not to see my security cameras too. Oh wait, I'm pretty sure he was blind drunk.
Okay, sometimes I sort of feel like a modern day version of James Stewart in Rear Window. I'm not in a wheelchair, but I spend a lot of time in front of my computer and the cameras are just an Alt-Tab away. Since getting cameras I now have a creepy awareness of some of my neighbor's habits.
I've always taken into account the possibility that I could be on camera. I remember 20 years ago I really wanted to key someone's car. I didn't know for sure, but I assumed there were cameras all over that lot. Is keying someone's car a "petty crime"? Even if it IS petty, it's still a crime and it's going to cost someone probably hundreds of dollars to repair. (It wasn't some exotic car so it wouldn't have been thousands). The mere potential for me being caught on camera was enough of a deterrent for me.
And I apologize for thinking about vandalizing someone's car 20 years ago. It would have been wrong. And like Dana Carvey used to say it wouldn't be prudent either.
America is the greatest example of how poor people can become very rich through hard work and honesty.
True, yet hard work and dishonesty is too often profitable. Perhaps it's fair to say the poorer criminals are disproportionately investigated and prosecuted. For every Michael Milken, there's a pound's worth of farthings' in broke people stealing food at the Super Duper Mart.
The great Carlin once said, "Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy."
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I watch my neighborhood at night through a night vision scope. So everyone looks green.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, that's the beauty of profiling. So long as profiling includes a substantial part of the population, you're basically guaranteed that "profiling works". Ie, eventually if you harass enough people you'll find *someone* committing a crime. By the same token, proactively harassing people unconstitutionally--like frisking random people--is likely to capture before or during a crime than waiting until after a crime and trying to painstaking collect evidence within the confines of constitutional law.
I mean, it's almost as if the system was designed to create self-fulfilling prophecies.
White people built the first university and then WENT TO IT.
No, they didn't. The first university was in India starting around 600 B.C. The world's oldest continually operating university is in Fes, Morrocco. It was founded by a woman.
Now go crawl back into your hole and try to think of another lie because your pathetic snowflake ass can't stand the truth.
That the USPS truck claimed they tried to deliver a package, but the previous nights snow is still untouched in the driveway? No options to report such a thing. They really hate Amazon I guess.
Since I've commented on this thread, I did the honorable thing, and down-modded you on other threads.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Alas, this is why we can't have nice things.
Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group? How about child molestation?
You mean per capita or by raw total numbers?
Because the answer changes depending.
That's like when people push numbers of which group has killed the most in terrorist attacks ... counting from September 12, 2001 onward.
Maybe we could look up who commits the most murders in the USA? Rather than the purposefully narrowed-down sub-category of "mass shootings" that doesn't include gang shootings & drive-bys either (Nice try BTW). Even without normalising per capita it's bad but if we do it's even worse.
Going AC for this post for reasons...
There are of course shades (inappropriate pun intended) of racism. On one extreme there are the genocidal racists. Then you have those who just make assumptions based on race.
I've been guilty of this when I was younger. My exposure to black people consisted of 4 people, 2 students in my class and our maid and our lawn guy. They were hard-working and the students were intelligent, but I viewed these 4 examples of black people as exceptions, which I have now come to believe was wrong.
Since then I have met many more people of all races and I've seen examples of hard-working, intelligent humans and I've also seen those who I would consider the scum of the earth. I don't see a whole lot of correlation to so-called "race".
And you also have to take into account socio-economic factors. When everyone expects you to be a criminal, lazy or stupid one might tend to live down to those expectations. If black Americans seem less educated, it might have something to do with the shitty schools we send them to. If Asian people seem smarter, it just may be that only the privileged and/or smart ones get to come over, at least for the most part.
I've been slumming around the Fox News comments section way too much lately and the racism is so blatant I can't believe no one calls them out for it.
When Jayme Closs escaped her kidnapper, it took nearly a day for the cops to release the name and picture of her assailant. During that time the big question on 90% of the commenters minds was whether he was black or an illegal immigrant or Mexican.
Oops, he was white.
And when 4 cops were shot executing a warrant in Houston the same thing happened. They said the reason they haven't announced the suspect's names or pictures was obviously because they were black or Mexican (which is of course a term they use for anyone with a Spanish-sounding name, even people from Italy). And again all they could agree on is it had to be one or the other.
Of course the reason the names were not immediately released is because 4 cops had just been shot and they were trying to investigate everything and figure out just exactly happened while 4 of them who were there were lying in the hospital.
And once again the suspects were white.
I'm white and I'm sick of racists. Can you imagine how black people feel?
-----
Oh, and remember last year when Trump said it's "a very scary time for young men in America"?
Did everyone forget how Trump reacted to the Central Park Five?
To summarize a woman was brutally assaulted in 1989 and 4 blacks and one Hispanic were convicted despite very shaky evidence. Trump took out full page ads before the trial proclaiming them guilty and calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty.
Based on DNA evidence and a confession from someone else their sentences were vacated in 2002 and yet Trump still kept proclaiming their guilt as recently as 2016.
What he REALLY meant was "It's a scary time for WHITE males who might actually have to suffer the same kind of injustices that we've put minorities through for all of our history. MAGA!!!!!"
I think it's a myth that anyone can become "very rich" although by 3rd world standards even I could be considered "very rich". Granted, I started off being born to parents of at least above average wealth.
I recognize that I could have been richer if I had made different choices in life, but I once turned down 2 job offers that paid more money to take a job that I thought I would like more and I still think that was the right decision. But maybe that was a failure on my part for not negotiating harder.
Of course, it's not just that. I could have studied harder in school but there are only so many "very rich" slots available. If everyone becomes "very rich" because it's possible then being "very rich" becomes "middle class".
But in a way, the average American is very rich not only compared to many other (not all) people, but also compared to our great grandparents....
To get "very rich" though sometimes doesn't require hard work or honesty at all. In fact, dishonesty seems to pay off quite nicely for some people. And hard work and honesty are no guarantee of becoming rich, let alone "very rich" compared to other Americans.
5% of the population(roughly) commits about 50% of rape, murder, and robbery. That 5% is male, between certain ages(15-60 or so), and one other category.
>it's poor's fault they're poor
We heard you the first time.
It would be easier for you to pull off the "race realist" thing if you were able to put 3 sentences together without giving away how unbalanced you are.
Racism exists because black people commit basically all the crime. If they stopped then people would complain about mexicans instead.
This was posted three hours ago and is currently at +1 Informative. Slashdot is broken, and this is disgusting.
"Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group?"
Ding, ding, ding! The answer: liberals and leftists, often on psych meds.
Ummm... Did you see who your presidential candidates were at the last election? More than Slashdot is broken my friend.
I'm sure there is some real racism left.
But by and large, there's not real any racism left, just a lot of people claiming this or that is racism - even when not referring to race.
One of the most aggravating aspects of this faked racism, is that when you cannot refer to someones race for purposes of pure description - which would seem to be the case with the Ring videos. Why is it so wrong to say someone s black if they are? Why has that become evil, in an age where people of all color should celebrate who they are?
I wasn't interested in the Ring camera at all, but I may have to consider it if for no other reason than to stick it to the PC bastards, and speak truth to power...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps it's fair to say the poorer criminals are disproportionately investigated and prosecuted.
in my opinion, part of the reason black people are arrested more often for drugs than white people despite using in similar numbers is that poorer people are more likely to buy off the street where they are better targets for the cops and the poor are made up of a disproportionate number of black people.
I've been a white middle class stoner for 35 years and people like me don't have to hit the streets. It's always a "friend" who I met from an actual friend who knew the guy and I'd go over to their house or apartment and hang out for an hour or two so his place wouldn't look like grand central station. Really, you don't want a whole bunch of people stopping in at your home and staying for 5 minutes or less. It looks suspicious.
I used to buy pot from a guy who once answered his phone with "Grand Central Station" because he had finally scored and he was pretty busy. He did get arrested twice, but that was for DUI. Even though he had a small amount of pot in his truck both times, the cops weren't very interested in that. He was drunk.And also a lower middle class white blue-collar worker.
And with maybe 2 exceptions every pot dealer I have regularly bought from didn't rely on it for their sole income or even a majority of their income and both those guys got busted.
And they both acted stupidly. One thought he could move 3 pounds across state lines while speeding with a roach in his ashtray and the other...well, I don't know how he got busted but I wasn't surprised at all. He had gotten fired from his job at the head shop for stealing ("How the hell you gonna get fired on your day off"). And for all you racists out there he was mostly white. He had so much ink his arms and chest weren't white anymore though.
Also, CSB time.
It helps to have a mole in the police department.
He wasn't really a mole, but just some guy a friend of mine who also dealt a little pot on the side knew who did data entry for the local PD.
That's how another dealer found out the cops had him on a list of suspected pot dealers. I don't know if they ever busted that guy, but they never busted my friend who dealt pot and makes his living through legal means. He limited the people he dealt with to the point where I suspect he just made enough to pay for his own pot. And he was careful too. I was over at his place hanging out one day when his dealer was coming over and I had to get lost for about 45 minutes.
Mr. Big, as he called him wasn't going to lay a big bag of the finest pot you could find at the time in front of me because he didn't know me and didn't want me to know him.
Although I never met him, I don't think "Mr. Big" was some scary gangster or anything. I'm sure that was more of a tongue in cheek name than anything else.
Thank God pot is legal here now. I remember when we sat around arguing if it would ever happen with some saying it would and others saying it would never.
I don't give a shit about federal law as long as I can go to a store and not have to worry about all the drama of being paranoid and hoping you're not getting a bag full of stems and seeds.
if this post sounds a bit incoherent, I'm not just stoned. I'm drunk too.
The original Free Mr. Big
Inbred conehead, your pillowcase is starched up, your tiki torch is ready. Get that bovine semen injection and lets goosestep your way off to hang with the traitor Drumpf. Nobody in this genepool or the next will miss you nazi trash child.
Be proud of your ignorance. Jesus is watching your soul with a deep thirst for your cowardly essence to be corrected by eternity in the fire lake. You have earned your place next to the cowards and traitors you worship, forever. Amen.
When did /. turn into 4chan?
After 4chan threw a few deplorables out?
What he REALLY meant was "It's a scary time for WHITE males who might actually have to suffer the same kind of injustices that we've put minorities through for all of our history. MAGA!!!!!"
Well, you were doing great up until this point, but why would "white males" "have to suffer... injustices?"
And why do you presume that whatever injustices were committed in "all of... history" were also committed by all white males alive now?
You seem to completely reject the idea of the individual. I was raised to believe that the problem in the first place was the belief that the differences are substantive, and the solution is simply to treat people as individuals.
'm as racist as the next person, but poor people commit basically all the crime.
Common misconception. Show me a primarily white neighborhood with comparable income levels to any predominantly black neighborhood anywhere in the US with similar crime rates. If you think there aren't predominantly white neighborhoods as poor as black neighborhoods, try Appalachia for starters.
Neighborhood Quality Assurance Bureau
[...] Here's a question: which group commits the largest amount of mass shootings, by far, than any other group? [...]
The media, and the shootings are staged. It's all nothin' but goddamn fiction.
This is why most of American laughs at liberals. When faced with two competing hypotheses to explain a social phenomenon, they always choose the least plausible. In this case we have two competing hypotheses:
A. Black people tend to commit more crime, and therefor have "earned" the stereotype
B. Black people behaved exactly as white people, but one day white people decided they weren't having any of that and decided to invent old wive's tales about black people as a national pastime. Eventually hearing all the stories about what crooks they were made black people steal more and murder more than white people with comparable education and income.
Liberals choose B.
What about white collar crime? or those affluent people? true is that poverty exacerbates problems, but our society does nothing to understand and address the roots of crime, it only deals with the consequences if the perpetrator is poor or has no influence.
Actually, the best single predictor of wealth in the U.S. is the wealth of your parents. There's a lot of people doing back breaking labor for minimum wage and a few people putting in a "hard day" at the golf course for millions a year (and I don't mean pro golfers who may actually have to work at it).
In most rags to riches stories, the rags turn out to be Gucci.
Unfortunately true. Also true is that those in power want that to happen and to continue to happen, so the population is focusing much attention there and is reduced in intelligence as a result of fear, and hence ignores what those in power do. And a whole industry (police, legal, prisons) critically depends on crime. They will _not_ kill what feeds them, sad as that is.
Also completely agree with your sig. Best you can get as an intelligent person is temporary contentment.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There are very few "criminals" around. Most people labelled as such just find they cannot obey all the rules made by people in in much better situations. The actual criminal minded ones (meaning they do have a real choice) you mostly find in positions of power and wealth.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
and the tide goes out...
"It's a scary time for WHITE males who might actually have to suffer the same kind of injustices"
Yay for injustice! Fuck those deplorable crackers! I'm not racist, I just hate white people!!
It's a gross oversimplification. First, nobody keeps black people in the US in poverty, secondly Youtube is full of channels of new immigrants who came to the US from the worst shit countries with 500 bucks and no education, a much worse start than being born in the worst US ghetto. One guy from Uzbekistan with no education won the diversity green card lottery, came to NYC with no money, on the third day he was already working a construction job, a year later he brought in his wife and little daughter and they are living in an OK neighborhood and paying off a new family car. As the guy below said, the problem is poor cultural attitude towards hard work and education.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Forged in the fires of Mount Bezos by the hand of Sauron himself! One ring to find them and in darkness bind them; one ring to rule them all!
A (anti)social media system like this will be attractive to people who by nature are suspicious, hair-trigger, types already. This just gives them an outlet for their fears and paranoia. One that will support and magnify their already jittery emotional state. It will make them feel normalised and validated: look! there are loads of people reporting the same crimes that I see every day.
So yes, this encourages extreme behaviour. Unless normal people go onto the site too, and tell them all to calm down, stop seeing evil where ever they look and to keep taking the tablets.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Or from another perspective, look at a large population of very poor immigrants, chinese and japanese immigrants - whom we treated very poorly and took most of their stuff at one point - yet have a 5% higher average income than white americans.
What a racist, classist, society we CLEARLY have here. One where a culture of known work ethic does well ? This is shocking, absolutely shocking.
Cultures of known poor work ethic do poorly? Also shocking. Of course, in this case, it's because whitey made them do it.
You should look it up. Amongst the developed nations, America is actually one of the worst. Basically, Americans are most likely to earn the same income as their parents. The income mobility is largely myth based on a few successes. You do do better then the UK though.
To quote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I'm as racist as the next person, but poor people commit basically all the crime.
Black Americans aren't *that* much poorer than the rest of the population - not enough to explain the difference in criminality. You're also making an unwarranted assumption that minorities remain poor because of discrimination against them, rather than their culture - the example of Asian Americans, who faced the same sort of discrimination (back in the 1950s, when discrimination was actually commonplace), and succeeded despite it.
The causal chain seems to run (culture) -> (criminality) -> (poverty). The right place to fight it is at its source.
So, probably 90% of the thieving hoodlums caught on Ring cameras in my area are white. That's probably because the demographics in my area are probably 70% white, and the next 25% (Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese) seem to have strong family structures and raise their kids to be fairly law abiding.
America is the greatest example of how poor people can become very rich through hard work and honesty. There is massive economic mobility,
No it's literally not and no there literally isn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
While a few people (Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg) can make out like the bandits that they are social mobility is not that high. Much, much much worse than you excessively polite Northern neighbour.
largest predictor of success being 1) whether you have both parents at the home, 2) how hard you're willing to work and 3) whether or not your parents are criminals.
You missed out the "your parents are rich" part which goes at the head of the list and dwarfs the other three.
The best life choice you can ever ever make is to be born rich. Especially in America (and the UK, my country. which is apparently slightly worse. Oh well I'm sure Brexit will improve that lolololol ).
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Actually the American Dream is a bit of a myth, especially these days.
Pew did some research on it, but this article has some great graphs illustrating how social mobility has declined in America (and many other places).
People born in the 80s have a much poorer chance of moving up in the world than their parents. Their fortunes are much more closely tied to their parents'.
Americans tend to overestimate social mobility by quite a margin, which stops them taking action (via the ballot box) to fix it.
https://insight.kellogg.northw...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
First, nobody keeps black people in the US in poverty
What about Donald Trump? His companies blocked non-whites from renting/buying his real estate, or even getting jobs building it.
One guy from Uzbekistan
Don't have a link to this channel do you? Apologies but I need to verify your extraordinary claim before accepting it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actual stats are not supporting your attempt to lump all races together, and you actual sound like the closet racist here, the way you lump almost every single non-white into a single group with the equal sign.
And you conveniently leave out East Asian groups - the Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, who "inconveniently" to your narrative have much lower crimes rates even though one has been nuked twice and the other two either colonized or repeatedly "bullied" by the West the last 150 years and were reduced to rubbles a few times this century. Perhaps you've difficulty computing why not all Muh Oppressed acts the way that fits your narrow-minded worldview? Two of them are even considered to be a developed nation now!
I'm proudly ethnic Chinese and an immigrant that grew up quite poor, in case you feel like trolling me about me not understanding issues due to privileged (?) background.
Cherry picking the extremes tells you nothing about the overall statistics or the common case. Exceptional individuals exist.
99% of people aren't exceptional by definition. That means if you're born poor you'll stay poor. And you're essentially blaming them for not being more cabable than the vast majority of the entire population.
You can work two jobs and still barely make rent. But sleep's for the weak right? Thise people should jsut work even harder.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What's truly pathetic is you're getting downmods.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well he should be, he's a dumbass. The original AC may be an idiot too, but he's right about one thing; the people of India are Caucasian.
Also this virtue signaling fuck just had to toss out the "founded by a woman" line. Only one problem; Fatima Al-Fihri didn't found a university; she used her inheritance to found a mosque. Universities didn't become a thing until 300 years later. That her mosque eventually became a university is nice and all, but like a good SJW he's trying to rewrite history by suggesting that she founded it as one.
"America is the greatest example of how poor people can become very rich through hard work and honesty."
Citation with some ratios to whole population needed ( exceptional cases don't count)
It's funny really. You know you're not right which is why you feel the need to misrepresent what people said. I mean if you felt you were right, you could just quote it directly. The reason you need to change it is because it doesn't say what you want. Viz:
the people of India are Caucasian.
The racist GP sais "white". People from india are not white. You going on about caucasians is you misrepresenting the OP because for some reason you refuse to believe racism exists even if you have to change what people said.
If you think Indians are white you should have said so so we could all have a laugh at you.
had to toss out the "founded by a woman" line.
Why do you always virtue signal about your attitude to gender? It's really tedious and just adds noise to the conversation.
Fatima Al-Fihri didn't found a university; she used her inheritance to found a mosque.
Again, why do you feel the need to misrepresent reality to support your beliefs? We both know she founded a mosque AND a madrasa. The madrasa is a place of learning, the kind of thing we call universities these days. Why did you pretend the latter doesn't exist?
Oh yeah it's because you're racist and sexist and if a muslim woman founded the oldest extant university you simply cannot deal and need to misrepresent reality so it looks like white dudes did everything.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
There is a major difference between black Americans and the rest. Blacks did not 'come', they were brought against their will and while they remain a distinct group, they retain the group heritage of their slavery. And the whites still share the group heritage of the slavers. The primary actions may have ended in the mid 19th C, but a quick look at your history will show that it has scarred both the black and the white populations. You are showing your scars.
The racist GP sais "white". People from india are not white.
White is a synonym for Caucasian, dupshit.
Why do you always virtue signal
If someone else were misusing that phrase I would point out that they don't know what it means ... but not you. I know from past experience that you know what it means; you're just a disingenuous asshole who intentionally misuses it in order to troll.
We both know she founded a mosque AND a madrasa. The madrasa is a place of learning, the kind of thing we call universities these days.
Now this part I'm not sure about; are you actually stupid enough to believe that a 9th century madrasa was anything remotely like the later European universities? Or are you aware of the difference, and are again being a disingenuous fuck?
Either way, it's hilarious.
It's not an argument. Period.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Exactly my views on the problem. It's culture, not race
I have acquiantances from every single country in North Africa whom I meet on a daily basis. Blacks, of course. Culturally, they are different from majority of blacks born here. Very different. They are much more similar to all other first gen immigrants than to American blacks.
The problem is culture and very influential pieces of shit that perpetuate it in mass culture.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I googled these search terms and got nothing connected with Amazon products. This habit of using common words for brand names really is very silly.
The original slaves were brought against their will. Everyone else was born here like me. It's like the song The gambler,life isn't about the cards your dealt,it how you play them. "Every hands a winner and every hands a loser"
shitty "fathers" who don't support their kids
It's hard to support a kid when you're in prison for being black, or in prison for being a man.
Prosecute and sentence black men the same as white women that do the same crimes and you'll suddenly find far fewer fatherless black households.
The plural of YouTube anecdote is still not data. As has been said elsewhere in this the comments here, US (and worldwide) economic mobility is not nearly what it used to be and the "American Dream" is largely a myth today, and "hard work" doesn't get one far enough in most cases. I'd argue that the poor cultural attitudes towards hard work and education include yours since you're propagating this magical thinking (blaming "lazy" people) rather than focusing on the bigger socio-economic issues creating the situation we're in.
Half of human DNA encodes the brain. It's not credible to believe a tribe of people can have similar characteristics that makes them visibly stand out and yet not have any mental characteristics that makes them mentally stand out as well.
You're wrong in about 18 different ways here but I'll focus on just two:
Skin colour is a tiny fragment of DNA, with people of all skin colours sharing far more in common than having differences. By your logic you should also be arguing for differences in behaviour by hair colour, eye colour, finger length and the shape of ears.
Further, people with brown skin are not all from the same tribe. There are tens of thousands of tribes in the world, with natural skin colours varying immensely, and interbreeding pretty much negating the fucking lot of them.
"As the guy below said, the problem is poor cultural attitude towards hard work and education."
That is A problem, but but not the only problem. Furthermore, the "poor cultural attitude" is a result of a broader culture that includes racism.
Your single example may not suffer from the same discrimination that many blacks do and for every successful immigrant story there is a successful black American story. While your example is interesting, it simply doesn't support your claim.
Now...of course "nobody" keeps black people in the US in poverty, but that doesn't mean black people in the US aren't heavily disadvantaged or that this "poor cultural attitude" you speak of is the cause of it rather than a symptom of it. Stop pretending that people are uniformly afforded the same opportunities.
Black American culture is unique, but why is that? Could it have anything to do with generations of systemic racism?
It's true that black Americans have to overcome culture that works against their interests, but it's both black culture AND American culture that's to blame. Does anyone honestly believe that black American culture would be what it is without hundreds of years of racism?
Keeping black people in poverty is enormously profitable and there are plenty of examples, from the abuse of the criminal justice system (example: people fined more than they can possibly afford for minor offenses like minor traffic violations, then imprisoned for not paying the fines, guaranteeing they can't continue), to the selling of subprime/variable rate mortgages to black people and refusing to even offer regular mortgages even if they're eligible.
Let's also not forget the defunding of public education in predominantly black areas.
Making that claim shows a chronic ignorance of what's going on around you. I'm not even sure why you'd make that claim without at least doing the research and finding out why community leaders and anti-racist and anti-poverty groups say otherwise.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Yup, we only brought over the smart and hard-working chinese to build the railways. All the dumb and lazy ones obviously died out and now we only allow the best and brightest to immigrate here.
Can you spot the stupidity in your claim, or do I need to make it more explicit?
White is a synonym for Caucasian, dupshit.
Christ you're thick. And dishonest. Probably both. Here's a picture of an idian guy you complete moron:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/...
still think that guy is white?
I know from past experience that you know what it means;
I know exactly what it means: you bleat about race and gender and whatnot and how you're so virtuous for making *just* the right comments on it, so your fellow idiots from whichever nutty political wing you stick to think you're marvellous.
Now this part I'm not sure about; are you actually stupid enough to believe that a 9th century madrasa was anything remotely like the later European universities? :)
I knew you'd fall righ into that little trap I laid for you. You are so predictable. All the oldest universities in Europe were founded essentially as centres of religous teaching.
Or are you aware of the difference,
And what difference is that? The icky brown religion makes it not a proper university unlike the clean white religion?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The FBI tracks crime statistics by race. White people commit almost 70% of the crimes (2016). https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
Have you read my blog lately?
"suddenly find far fewer fatherless black households"
I seriously doubt that, and I don't put all of the blame on the fathers.
It seems to be "a thing" now to have kids out of wedlock, sometimes by several different men. For this, I blame the mothers, as they should be holding the fathers accountable for support.
Your misconception seems to be thinking that people stay in their neighborhood to commit crimes.
From what I've seen, poor people go to more affluent neighborhoods to commit their crimes. In their own neighborhood, they could only steal what they probably already have. In the more affluent places, they have access to better stuff.
People below a certain IQ do not do well in school, no matter how much money is tossed at the people who "teach" them. Those folks also cannot hold any but the most menial jobs. They often have behavioral issues that also prevent them from holding a job. Their best career choice is crime. For unknown reasons people of color have lower IQ distributions than people of paleness, or people of asianness; consequently they make that career choice in greater numbers.
I have to say, thats a well laid trap.
Please mod parent DOWN. While I think that this article is incredibly poorly researched (eg in BK), this rant deserves deletion.
poor people do not commit the bulk of the crime Companies do.
We lose orders of magnitude more to white collar crime then we do some punk taking the stereo out of your car, and violent crime is at historic lows. Meanwhile that "Tough on crime" bullshit your parroting gave us the Drug War and Civil Asset forfeitures. Oh, and while you were busy worrying a punk with an untreated drug problem stealing a few bucks from the till somewhere Wall Street deregulation crashed the economy multiple times, lowering your wages by tens of thousands of dollars a year.
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That's bullcrap. There are no living former American slaves, and some American blacks owned slaves. Many, many other races were enslaved it's just blacks that can't seem to do anything for themselves. In most cases they were criminals sold into slavery by their own people.(That were guess what: black)
Only 3 things are clear:
- caucasoids are provably superior to negroids
- negros are ugly as fuck
- you are some facially deformed faggot Jew who spends hours online sucking minority dicks because you couldn't even attract a dirty nig for a mate
Hard work is profitable for the top 1% of criminals. The rest make less than minimum wage or end up dead or in jail. The prospects aren't good for most criminals.
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Nice way to rewrite history.
There's no doubt that 300 years of slavery has had an effect on African American culture, just the same as millenia of oppression has had an effect on the culture of European Jews. In fact, many of the jobs that are somewhat stereotypical for Jews are the ones that just happened to be legal for Jews to have in various parts of Europe.
From The Inquisition, to pogroms, to The Holocaust, Jews have been subjected to just about every horror you can imagine. And that discrimination didn't stop in America, either. Yale created the concept of "legacy admissions" to keep Jews from pushing out the White students; Jewish developers created subdivisions in suburbs they themselves were not allowed to live in; and in the twentieth century there were immigration quotas to keep Jews out. Yet their culture doesn't have the problems with crime and poverty that African American culture does.
Swing and a miss. Two strikes so far.
C6gunner the white man who's never done anything wrong in his life. News at 11.
If you are scared of brown and black people just fucking saying it.
Stop hiding your fear behind hypothetical straw men and then blaming the "liberals"
You cucks own all the guns are still the most scared shitless bunch of people I've ever met. Fuck you guys must have little cocks or something to be projecting so much.
I agree, serviscope_minor is the smartest guy ever. And very humble too!
He would have caught him, too, if it wasn't for those damn meddling kids!
Fair enough, yet, perhaps the parameters you've set aren't completely inclusive of those criminals who seem beyond the prospect of prosecution as criminals. Many, if not most, of the white collar rule breakers are well insulated from traditional indictment, prosecution, and ultimately, labeling, as criminals.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
What he REALLY meant was "It's a scary time for WHITE males who might actually have to suffer the same kind of injustices that we've put minorities through for all of our history. MAGA!!!!!"
Well, you were doing great up until this point, but why would "white males" "have to suffer... injustices?"
They shouldn't have to, but let's not ignore that it wasn't a scary time for young males before now.
And why do you presume that whatever injustices were committed in "all of... history" were also committed by all white males alive now?
I don't. I have no idea where you got that idea from.
You seem to completely reject the idea of the individual. I was raised to believe that the problem in the first place was the belief that the differences are substantive, and the solution is simply to treat people as individuals.
I have no idea where you got that from either. I was talking about general perceptions as a child and general perceptions of many adults living today. In fact, a few sentences in, I specifically said there were good and bad people (of all "races")
Wow. Statistics fail on a grand scale.
> Could it have anything to do with generations of systemic racism?
It does not matter. There is no systemic racism. Racist of 100 years ago were racist to all racists. The notion of prejudice and treating people just by their general appearance was very prevalent. Yet some races in United States recovered from it, while some did not.
Eradicate the culture, you will eradicate both perpetuated poverty AND racism. There is very little racism now in US towards Asians.
>Black American culture is unique
Stop lying you bulshiiter. It's not "Black American" culture it's stupid subculture common to many other people.
"Black American" culture is culture of resilience and hard work, respect to education, kindness and humanism.
Stop calling that disgusting aracial ghetto piece of shit culture "Black American"
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Some of the people in India, but not all. Try to get even basic facts right. They are all human, deserving of respect for their humanity.
America is the greatest example of how poor people can become very rich through hard work and honesty. There is massive economic mobility, regardless of your race,
This is no longer the case. America now has much less economic mobility than Europe.
That study (and one other one that keeps getting quoted above) has been heavily debunked.
Ed Conard, has a nice expose on those studies that ignore the relative worth of the money, healthcare and other tax benefits, smaller families (less mouths to feed) etc. You can buy more goods cheaper now than you could in the 70's and 80's. We live in a relative welfare state in the US (we're dying not because lack of healthcare, but either too much intervention and/or lifestyle choice issues).
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"Heavily" debunked? As opposed to normal debunked?
If I understand correctly, Conard's argument is that since the economy has grown over the last few decades, everyone is better off than before, even if the relatively-poor are forever stuck in the relatively-poor spot on the ladder.
If so, he is not disputing that economic mobility is lower in the US than Europe. He's just saying it doesn't matter, because everyone is getting richer.
The problem is:
1) Even if poor people now are doing better than poor people a generation ago, they are doing worse than poor people in Europe. Which suggests we should adopt European-like policies.
2) Well-being is not measured in dollars. Life expectancy in the US is no longer growing. Housing and medical expenses cause more economic stress and bankruptcies than before. Much of the "goods" that can be bought are electronic gadgets and such that arguably decrease rather than increase happiness. Economic polarization decreases social solidarity and capital, making people more distrustful, jealous, and lonely.
If you had ten attemptend break-ins in your home - and all ten out of ten were perpetrated by a group that has only a few percent of the population in your area, you kind of get biased after a while.
If noticing a strong pattern in the real world is racism, then the only way to reduce racism is to a) refuse to recognize any patterns anywhere or b) discard or reinterpret all patterns that do fit the preconceived definition of racism.
Since pattern recognition is the core element of human intelligence, so not recognizing patterns is only possible if playing dumb or literally be the opposite of intelligent. So option a) is unavailable to intelligent humans and b), reinterpreting all recognized patterns in a non-racist manner, would remain the only option to avoid racist patterns fitting the available data. This would mean that the outcome or conclusion of the observation of the real world would be fixed and could never be changed by real-world observations. So it would be prejudice in the literal sense, upholding a pre-conceived conclusion despite any and all evidence to the contrary. That is hardly scientific and hardly intelligent.
If thousands of observations are considered racist, which more or less means the observable reality is racist and should not be noted, we should probably rethink our priorities and commitment to truth, however painful it may be.
As to
1) Poor people in the US are doing a LOT better, especially compared to poor people in the EU, we're only surpassed by Luxembourg and Switzerland as far as amount of disposable income at the 'poverty level' (based on OECD and UNICEF data) with the average US person at the poverty level, having ~$18,000 in disposable income (average income being ~$25,000 for a family of 4, but the assisted income (housing assistance, food stamps, free health care etc) being a lot higher)
2) Exactly, hence why UNICEF and the like measure disposable income instead of plain dollar values. Life expectancy is no longer growing partially because we've capped it, partially because we're dying due to our own lavishness, a lot more people die in the US due to heart disease. People in the US aren't dying of lack of food, it's too much food. Bankruptcies in the US are now 1/3 the rate they were in the 80s while in many places in the EU have seen an uptick with some exceptions like Germany they are 3x as high.
Again, all of this is public data. The left likes to take short term statistics such as a recession as 'proof' without taking in causes, effects or comparing it to others. Sure, electronics 'feel' bad as a cheap good because the side effects but they have improved the lives of so many while places like Europe that have historically pushed away foreign investment and foreign products, are doing a lot worse than we think.
The only people that think Europe is a socialist paradise is Bernie Sanders, but even Denmark told him: "we're not socialist" and the Nordic countries, which are 'so great' have actually stagnated ever since introducing broad socialist reforms. They're living off oil and natural resources, I actually did a case study in the early 90's on Norway's timber industry which together with the oil industry was (and still is) a major driver within their economy, until the EU started regulating them.
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