07 January 2009

crime fighter

crime fighter

I particularly liked suggestion #6's result: Frito sales may go up, but crime won't.
I wasn't totally in agreement with #9, but I do heartily agree that no overall educational standard is the same as no meaningful standards. That's basically why the whole thing is a joke.

Also I'm already annoyed at the level of media attention for the Obama girls.
Posted by Sun Tzu at 23:28
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2 comments:

Bazarov said...

I thought it was the book Freakonomics which put forth the idea that the reason we've seen the dip in crime we saw during the Clinton years was, I won't venture how large, in part due to the relegalization of abortion. You allow women to get rid of unwanted pregnancies and 15-25 years later you have fewer criminals (males between the ages of 15 and 25 committing the most violent crimes in the world). I was surprised that the "more abortions" option wasn't listed, such as free abortion clinics. Spend a few hundred tax dollars now and save incarceration funds twenty years down the road.

08 January, 2009 11:00
Sun Tzu said...

It wasn't the guy who wrote the book who came up with the list (Levitt/Dubner merely asked 3 other people to do it). But realistically the only way one would sell "more abortions" is as "have fewer unplanned babies"...meaning rather than easier access to abortions, which is already relatively improved from when it was illegal and expensive, you'd also have to attack the demand for them through cheaper and better access to birth control (and a better understanding of its applications). There's ground to be gained on that end. Making abortions cheaper or more accessible doesn't guarantee we'd have more of them at this point because there are social efforts to repress the amount.

I agree though that sort of link was necessary to understand. Population growth is a bitch, especially the "unplanned" population. I didn't actually see him quantify the amount of reduction either, because there were other factors involved. But it surely exists as a correlated feature that we should take notice of as a society.

08 January, 2009 14:08

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