I think it proves a lot. Norway actually cares about the quality of life for it's citizens. A very high life expectancy rate. A very low crime rate. Excellent healthcare. One of the best standards of living on earth and this from a very socialist country.
The US on the other hand has the highest incarceration rate in the world, even higher than China, 1 out of 7 of us now live below the poverty line, our primary education system is a joke, healthcare is there...IF you can afford it. It isn't our population size, it's our approach to how we run our society.
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By that logic, there's nothing wrong with the gulags as they were "just prisons". Obviously there is something to be said for trying to make it as humane as you can.
You really think population size has anything to do with it?
The HDI, social policies, and mentality of the people have everything to do with it. Yes, that's the end. Population is no where in that.
The HDI is a derrivative of the social policies and mentality of the people.
The HDI is the END result, not the cause.
Could you argue per capita income?
Nope! Because Norway used to be lower, per capita, in income than the US just 3-5 decades ago. So what happened? They did better at governing than the US did. It is possible to obtain the same HDI as Norway, in the US. We just have to be smarter.
I think you would be hard pressed to argue that population size has nothing to do with crime rate and seriousness
I don't believe it is as important as stuff like the racial demographics of America, or the history of slavery/second class citizens, but even comparing rural and urban areas within a nation would seem to indicate that there is more crime with more people (per capita, of course).
You're not serious, are you? Cause Japan takes a shit all over the idea that population and/or population density are primary contributors to crime rates.
Sure, it's harder to provide for 310,000,000 people rather than 4,900,000 million people, but I reconciled that difference by referencing Norway's previous state as a smaller "per capita" country than the US just a few decades ago. I then explained why the per capita income argument is not sustainable, longer term.
I don't really think population density has anything to do with crime rate - it's just factually true that crime is not a function of population density or even "population" period. Sure, it's a small portion of the "crime" pie, but it's not even close to representing the differences in criminal activities of each nation.
Edit - If population density were the "answer" then crime should be half as much as it is, per capita, in Norway. It's not. Control for per capita income because we know crime decreases with social strata. They mame roughly four times as much as the people in the US. Doe they have four times less crime per capita than the US?
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Last edited by dadudemon on Jun 13th, 2011 at 04:59 PM
no it doesn't. I don't have the data in front of me, but I'd be willing to bet crime is higher in urban centers in Japan than it is in rural...
you can't compare across cultures here, as I said above, there are things that are much more important than simply population density, but living in a place with high population density in a lot of ways simply a) brings you in contact with other people more often (independent of any "per capita" correction too, living conditions in urban areas simply cause more interaction above what you would expect from simply there being more people, this is intro social psych [ie: why I can't source it, textbooks and all]) b) provides more opportunity to commit crime, and in some ways that aren't available in rural areas and c) has a greater safety net for people who engage in criminal activities ("ghettos", homelessness, services like that, criminal infrastructure, etc). We can also talk about wealth disparity in urban centers compared to rural, which again, is more a byproduct of population size, and totally drives types of crime.
Ideally, you would want to compare a small rural community with large urban centers very close to each other, but then there are always issues with how much funding and mandates local police services have, and urban centers almost always have much greater population diversity. For instance, Winnipeg is a much smaller city than Toronto, but has a much higher crime rate. However, it is issues of employment, population diversity, ethnicity, etc, rather than simply population. However, a city with the same demographics as winnipeg, with a smaller population (all other things being equal) would almost certainly have a lower crime rate
how are you concluding "factually true" here? what facts are you basing this on, the fact there is less crime in Tokyo than New York? that type of comparison is nonsense. There is more crime in Chicago than Winnipeg, and more in Mexico City than both. These simple apples to oranges comparisons are not really appropriate, and you know that
I said above that population doesn't play as much of a role as do demographic or social issues. That certainly shouldn't insinuate that I think it is an "answer" to any problem.
Think of it like this: it is something like a 90% chance that the person who commits a crime against you is someone you know. You have 10 people, in one scenario they live in different homes and have few interactions during the day. In the other, some share rooms, and all live in a single building where they see eachother frequently. basic probability would suggest people in the latter situation would commit more crime against one another, and this is supported by a host of criminal and psychological data
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Jun 10th, 2011 09:34 PM
