In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour (2019)
crimereads.comYeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban, it was completely legal to have a long barrel rifle with 30 round magazines in CA prior to that--they could be open-carried if not loaded back then if I recall correctly, too.
This was around the time of the LA riots in the 90s, too... which in my mind all happened at the same time as I recall being a kid sat in front of the TV not far from it all and being shocked at the level of wanton destruction.
California was always a wild place since its inception and before it was ever a part of the US--many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin.
LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US, so us multi-generationals lived through that and adapted and we are am entirely different breed to the transplants and the rest of the US as fires and earthquakes were also taking place alongside those events, as those didn't stop either.
And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.
I grew up in a leafy village in rural UK. But at one point in the early 90s my dad got an offer to move to SoCal and we went out, I remember visiting schools and stuff, but we never actually went ahead with the move.
Apparently while we were there my dad witnessed the car in front of him being robbed at gunpoint, but decided perhaps that was a one off, don't tell the family, perhaps it's fine... then the exact same thing happened the next night at nearly the same spot.
So that was the end of my potential US childhood.
It's sort of funny how you get used to things and normalize them, especially the violence that occurs in the US. I lived in Chicago for nearly a decade, much of it on the near west side, and it was normal to hear gunshots a few blocks away. Violent crime was normal - a pub restaurant I used to take my kids to along with other families, had a brutal murder where someone got their throat slit. And I wasn't living in a "bad" area either, it was filled with affluent middle class families. This was also with two coal fired power plants puffing away right in the middle of the city (this was in the 2000s even, what a joke!). Everyone just accepted these things as normal for living in Chicago. The US can be weirdly dissonant place at times.
So what you are telling me, all those movies, it's not just Hollywood magic, it's reality? Ugh.
It was for a time. It's not like that anymore, although it is trending that way again in many cities (homicides are up 50%+ in many American cities this year).
Although to be fair, a lot of the crime is in areas the average HN user wouldn't be in. Most people are not worried about getting carjacked or mugged during their commute and have no reason to be. The US is a big place and problems that affect certain parts of it are usually not present throughout the whole country.
Counterpoint: I lived in the North side of Chicago and worked downtown for a few years and I never heard a gunshot. Violence in Chicago is very localized in certain neighborhoods (West side and South side when I was there, not sure about now).
You ever see Taxi Driver? Apparently that movie's depiction of NYC in the 70s was not that far off from reality, and it's jarring.
You can still see remnants of it, e.g. the Port Authority--aka the world's seediest bus terminal. But, as someone who lived in Manhattan for a summer in the mid-80s, it's hard to see things like the "Disneyfication" of the Times Square area as having too much of a downside.
In rx soviet block saying "it's like Chicago" here when there was some sort of crime spree going on was very common and still is. Maybe because of old gangsters, not sure.
But it sure was exotic seeing American music coming and videos talking about murder and shooting like it's a cool thing.
Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time.
It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!
So to clarify that...the federal Assault Weapons Ban applied to semi-auto rifles with certain ergonomic features, including pistol grips, flash hiders, and folding stocks. (Semi-auto is one bullet per trigger pull, full-auto means you can hold the trigger down and spray bullets.)
The North Hollywood robbers had illegally modified their weapons to enable full-auto fire. Since well before 1997, modifying guns like this has been a federal felony that gets you a ten-year prison sentence. That's a prohibition that predates the Assault Weapon Ban, which had nothing to do with full-auto weapons.
The AWB has since expired, and doing your own full-auto conversion will still get you ten years in the slammer. You can buy a full-auto weapon, but only after an extensive background check and approval of your local sheriff, if your state allows it, and only if the weapon was manufactured before 1986.
The movie Heat, of course, also had its robbers using full-auto. Incidentally, the movie came out before the North Hollywood robbery; many people have actually blamed the movie for inspiring the real robbers, one of whom owned a copy of the movie!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout
From wikipedia: An inventory of the weapons used:[7]
A Bushmaster XM-15 converted illegally to fire full auto with two 100-round Beta Magazines A Heckler & Koch HK-91 semi automatic rifle with several 30-round magazines[38] A Beretta 92FS Inox with several magazines Three different civilian-model AK-47 style rifles converted illegally to fire full auto with several 75- to 100-round drum magazines, as well as 30-round box magazines.>approval of your local sheriff
Unless MGs are treated differently than other NFA items in some way I'm unaware of, the new (2016) ATF rules no longer require CLEO (chief law enforcement officer) approval as part of the process, only notification.
Of course certain state laws still have a similar approval restriction in place to comply with state law, but local law enforcement can no longer hamstring the actual NFA process.
>The final rule affects the NFA regulations by:
>...
>...requiring that a copy of all applications to make or transfer a firearm, and the specified form for responsible persons (5320.23), be forwarded to the chief law enforcement officer (CLEO) of the locality in which the applicant/transferee or responsible person resides; and
>eliminating the requirement for certification signed by the CLEO.
https://www.atf.gov/rules-and-regulations/final-rule-41f-bac...
Interesting, I hadn't heard about that.
Where do you even buy those pre-86 full autos? Asking for a friend.
Usually at auction. Even poor quality, worn out registered automatics will run in the high thousands, or low tens of thousands because of constrained supply. This creates interesting dynamics where people take cheap (relatively, still ~$5,000 on the low end) legal automatics like MAC-10s and converting them to 5.56x45mm while retaining the original lower receiver.
Example:
Wait wat?
These are legal somehow in USA? Can you please trace how and prove it with links?
Automatic guns became regulated in the 1930s, and you need approval by the ATF to own them and they need to be registered. They're in a similar category as bombs, rocket launchers, and whatnot. They are strictly regulated and the government basically knows where each one is at all times.
In 1986, they stopped accepting new registrations for automatic guns. So there's a fixed supply of legal automatic firearms that normal people can own.
Read more here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Firearms_Act#:~:tex....
> So there's a fixed supply of legal automatic firearms that normal people can own.
Why do people want them? Is it just a hobby, or is there some utility I'm unware of?
I'd say it's a hobby. Bullets are expensive in quantity. A full automatic can chew through $100 worth in just a minute. There are a few gun ranges near me that keep them available to rent. You can relive your A-Team / CoD dreams for a few hundred dollars.
Outside of the military they have no utility whatsoever.
Full auto on an M16/AR15 will empty a 30 round magazine in a touch over 3 seconds. A few ranges near me will rent you a full auto AR but you have buy the ammunition from them.
The primary benefit of high rate of fire is hitting a single moving target. Machine guns used to be particularly common in air to air combat. When you are a school shooter or bank robber you actually don't want to waste your ammo like that. The downsides of reloading are by far stacked against you. A soldier can just go back to base and reload his guns but a robber whose magazines have run out will just see his targets flee and his only opportunity slip away.
There are a few subgun matches, but IMHO it's mostly just people wanting anything the government says they can't have.
Just a nit pick: the government only knows where each item is so long as the owner has reported it moving around, as required per ATF laws. Wanted to mention this because someone may imagine there is a GPS attached to lower receiver of FA. If you travel with your fully automatic you need to report it to your local sheriff office (stating purpose as well); also when you move to a different city/county/state.
Another nit pick: the approval is not some sort of interview or questionnaire as of why you need it. There is so-called ATF stamp (i.e. $200 for silencer) than you need to submit altogether with FBI fingerprints. These days mojority of ATF applications is registered thru "trust", instead of an individual. This creates all sorts of issues for LE in case they want to run extra background on you etc. So 90-something % of people chose $50 ATF "trust" that Sheriff cannot technically decline over the other option which is petition as individual and getting close to 100% chance of denial. The biggest hurdle is not some LE not liking your tattoo, its that ATF has a year long backlog. So you pay for your FA $25,000 today but its only delivered to your local licensed gun store, and they won't let you pick it up until ATF sends them document with green light. That take sup to 1.5 year these days. You can come and touch it and take few photos but they will not allow you to load it of course, or to take it out (including shooting range).
Finally, as OT mentions fixed supply, a so-called lower receiver of a fully automatic gun, a piece of metal not much bigger than a door handle (which does not even have any fancy engineering) is literally the most expensive piece of metal that you can buy on American soil. Some examples in extremely good shape go for $35,000 these days (check gunbroker dot com)
Yes, I own a few in fact. Although I don't live in CA. It was quite an arduous journey too, the paperwork was lost twice, once by the local sheriff (who has to sign an affidavit saying he or she vouches for you) and subsequently by ATF who approve the paperwork and send you a tax stamp as proof of this approval. Interesting Americana for an immigrant like myself and I had to get these machine guns just because it is such an American thing to do.
You are living the good life, my friend!
It's simple.
~~The Assault Weapons Ban only applied to new guns.~~ ATF policy change, not AWB. Existing guns were grandfathered in.
Guns have many interchangeable parts. The part of the gun that the government considers to be the "legal definition" is a part called the lower receiver. You can change almost anything about a gun as long as you keep the lower receiver and comply with any other laws.
So if you buy an old MAC-10 lower receiver that was manufactured before the new ATF policy, and add an adapter [1] that allows it to be combined with the non-lower parts from an AR-15, you can create a completely legal Frankenrifle with mostly new parts!
This isn't even the craziest thing you can do with gun loopholes in the USA. "Pistol braces" [2], originally made for war veterans with amputations to shoot small rifles, have pretty much obsoleted restrictions on short-barreled rifles. "Ghost guns" [3], i.e. lower receivers that have no serial number and do not appear in any database, are easily made by anyone with access to CNC tools (including a few hours rental for a few hundred bucks). 3D printed pistols are becoming a thing [4], although they are not very durable.
1: https://aandsconversions.com/2018/11/25/the-next-big-thing-f...
2: https://www.sb-tactical.com/product-category/brace/
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_gun
4: https://www.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/jzik44/magdump_monday...
The automatic weapons ban (specifically the 1986 Machine Gun Act) is distinct from the Assault Weapons Ban. The Assault Weapons Ban was in the 1990s and banned the sale of semi-automatic guns with certain shapes of grip, bayonet lugs, and other features. It did not ban anything based on magazine capacity, as is often stated. It expired in the 2000s since it had a sunset provision that made it last 10 years if not renewed.
It did not ban anything based on magazine capacity, as is often stated.
You are right, it was mostly a ban based on superficial features like the much feared bayonet mount. But there were two bans based on magazine capacity.
It did ban magazines with more than 10 round capacity. It also banned semi-automatic shotguns with more than 5 round fixed magazine or a detachable magazine when in combination with folding stock or pistol grip.
Restrictions on SBRs never made sense anyway: it was a hold-over from the NFA back when they wanted to include pistols as well, but ultimately ripped that out of the legislation.
Impactguns.com is one well known dealer of ATF regulated machineguns and AOWs [0, 1]. Based in UT if memory serves. Be prepared to drop 10k USD+ And obviously the bg check / atf stamps etc. and any fees your local receiving federally licensed firearms dealer may add.
I have zero affiliation with this site, they just have a large, dynamic inventory so it makes for fun browsing for me.
0- https://www.impactguns.com/machine-guns/
1- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_II_weapons#Any_other_w...
You won’t be able to acquire one if you live in CA, NFA items are de facto banned for ordinary citizens.
Not true
Technically legal, but effectively impossible for an average person to get the permit approved from the state. You'd have to be the head of Apple security or something like that.
https://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/firearms/forms...
"De facto banned" for an ordinary citizen is an accurate way to describe it.
More likely scenarios for the issuance of a dangerous weapons permit.
* You're a Hollywood armorer
* You develop or manufacture automatic firearms for government agencies
* You're a security contractor who has been provided automatic firearms as part of a federal contract
* You're a major museum displaying militaria
Gunbroker.com
Be warned that they cost as much as a car.
My family moved to California in 1987. I remember a school shooting in 1989 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_sh... ) that led significant California state law restrictions regarding guns. Just like the later federal assault weapons ban, they didn’t do a great job of just targeting the scary-looking guns they wanted to target while leaving just-as-lethal hunting rifles alone.
> Just a point of clarification for those not familiar with the heist, the weapons used were -not- legal in CA or the US. It was also during the time of the Federal Assault Weapons ban. They were not owned nor able to be owned legally during that time.
Only semi-correct, they had full-auto AK47s and extended mags, all of which at the time could be purchased and legally owned with a special stamp by the ATF [0]. As a child a friend's father had one he would bring out on new years to only short lived amusement in the neighborhood as we all lived in a densely populated suburb near a major freeway.
But without them, yes, you couldn't just go to a store and buy one off the shelf.
0: https://legalbeagle.com/8731203-class-three-stamp-through-at...
The weapons they used theoretically could have been legal had they had the provenance to make them legal.
Converting your own semi-auto to full auto is in now way legal then nor now.
Full auto guns are basically a rich man's toy and have been since well before new ones were outlawed in 1986. The practicality mostly isn't there for criminal use and they're real expensive to feed.
What happened in 1986 and are you saying it’s legal to own an automatic weapon if it was manufactured that long ago? Do you have to register it? And people can modify them and upgrade them?
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25514950
tl;dr - you don't "have to register" them, because by definition the ones that are legal are already registered. In '86 they stopped allowing new registrations for automatic weapons, but existing registered weapons were grandfathered in. US gun law considers the lower receiver to bear the "identity" of the weapon, so some pretty extensive modification can occur while it technically stays "the same gun" in a Ship of Theseus fashion.
Pretty much all NFA items are banned in California, even with a tax stamp. I believe that was already true at the time
> It was also the inspiration for Heat’s shootout!
The North Hollywood shootout was in 1997, Heat came out two years prior.
No, Heat came out Before that heist.
thats right. what it did was giving the police more militarization and most police now carry an ar in their cruisers(used to be shotgun at best) and also lot more military surplus like nraps.
> Yeah, many of us that grew up in SoCal recall the heist that led to the so called 'assault weapon' ban
I always heard it was events in California (and Diane Feinstein being a key player) that created the ban, but I never heard a specific event in SoCal being the catalyst. Wikipedia cites a school shooting in Stockton in 1989 and an office shooting in San Francisco in 1993. Outside of the state, Wikipedia also cites a mass shooting in Killeen, TX.
> LA in the 80s was also Ground Zero for Gang warfare in the US
Might be true, but also: the 1980s was near the peak of violent crime certainly nation-wide, maybe worldwide. Lots written and studied on this topic. Theories about lead poisoning and all that. Probably multiple factors. But a lot of the discussion then was on urban crime. People thought that cities were dangerous. I'm glad that the last 20 years or so has largely seen a reversal of that.
Lately there has been a resurgence, especially in the political right, of the cities are dangerous mantra. It seems pretty odd to me.
> Lately there has been a resurgence, especially in the political right, of the cities are dangerous mantra. It seems pretty odd to me.
Urban violence (such as in Chicago and Minneapolis) might have something to do with it.
[0] https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-police-homicides-murder-repo...
[1] https://www.startribune.com/staggering-surge-in-violent-carj...
I haven't looked at data in a while, but I am pretty sure those places are safer than they were in the 80s.
If cities have become more dangerous in recent years, people will notice and change their behavior. It doesn’t matter that today’s cities haven’t matched their historic peak, only that they’re worse than they were ten years ago.
Furthermore, a non-trivial number of people are just looking for reasons to move out of cities right now. Consider that many cities that we consider "elite" were losing population well into the 1990s. There's nothing written in stone about college-educated young people continuing to migrate to cities (which is pretty much the demographic that has moved the numbers) as they have over the past 20 years or so.
> If cities have become more dangerous in recent years, people will notice and change their behavior.
Dubious.
Certainly, behavior is driven by perception of danger, but whether perception of danger generally tracks with actual danger or not is…less certain.
I know for child abduction and child assaults by those outside of the family that has historically not been the case; and perceived danger has increased as media focus increased despite decreasing actual danger, for several decades in a row.
I don’t see why similar (or opposite, if media focussed shifted away while actual danger increased) trends would occur with other forms of danger.
I stated that if cities become more dangerous, people will change their behavior. A case of people changing their behavior even though cities aren’t more dangerous isn’t really a counterexample. A valid counterexample would be a case of cities becoming more dangerous and people not changing their behavior.
> A case of people changing their behavior even though cities aren’t more dangerous isn’t really a counterexample
It wasn't presented as a counterexample, it was presented as grounds for doubting the mechanism for the effect you describe.
Increased danger -> increased perceived danger -> behavior which attempts to mitigate danger is a nice theory, but it relies on deltas in perceived danger corresponding to deltas in actual danger.
If deltas in perceived danger that manifestly do drive behavior are driven by processes that are independent of actual danger, your argument no longer makes sense.
Thats entirely possible and it probably wouldn't be seen to rebut the right-wing narrative that "cities are dangerous" to tell them "you should see how dangerous cities used to be."
You don’t have to compare urban to urban. In the early 90s, rate of violent crime in rural and suburban areas were far higher than what you now see in Chicago and Milwaukee. Not a surprise when you look at figure 1 of https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf
Reply All Podcast, ep 127/128 seemed to claim it's actually not that much better in NYC now. Instead they claim the way of reporting crimes has changed to make the numbers look better than they actually are
I listened to that a few years ago. I don't believe it makes exactly the claim as your summary.
In discussions about New York there is a popular myth that policing caused the crime rate drop, and I think that is what the podcast was challenging. Not necessarily that there wasn't a drop at all. There was across the entire country. Not for the reasons some police departments would like to believe.
IIRC, the reason the LA heist in the early 90s was so important was that it showed how poorly the police were armed compared to the robbers. That led to a lot of policy changes, I believe.
I believe you are correct, but the real issue was not the firearms the robbers were using, but rather the penetrating power of the police firearms against the robbers' body armor[1]. Because they were both wearing body armor, the two bank robbers were shot a total of 40 times without being killed. (One shot himself and the other bled to death).
Police at that point were mostly using 9mm pistols, .38 caliber revolvers, and 12 gauge shotguns, none of which were capable of penetrating the body armor. More heavily armed police such as SWAT were using MP5s, which shot 9mm as well.
The robbery lead to the distribution of higher velocity firearms like the M16 among the LAPD, and a similar incident in Miami lead to the adoption of the 10mm pistol cartridge by thy FBI.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150702091610/http://www.police...
Love it when my local police force gets jealous of the most badass robbery ever televised and decides to go full militarization and then the entire country follows suit.
some cities have been trending upwards in murders over the last decade. Baltimore had almost as many murders in 2019, 2017, and 2015 as it had in 1993, the all time high. the population was significantly larger then, making the 2019 rate the highest it's ever been.
> many who live here don't even realize that California (both alta and baja) pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism by a significant margin.
Alta California was first colonized in 1769, not long before a bunch of British colonies on the other side of the continent that had been settled for quite a while broke off to form the USA; Baja was colonized from 1683. Neither predates British colonization of North America, and the colonization of Alta California only barely predates US independence.
AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century, Cortés, Ulloa and Cabrillo led expeditions and created small settlements between 1530 and 1550.
Sir Francis Drake declared English sovereignty over the area of SF bay in 1579 and named it New Albion (New Britain, from Albion, the old Greek name for Britain).
> AFAIK Spanish arrived in California around 16th Century,
Arrived in? Sure, mostly sailing around the coast and transitory land expeditions. So did the British in North America, on both coasts.
But as for establishing any kind of durable colonies (e.g., “California” as more than a name on a map), that came later, and well after British colonies like Virginia were established, especially in the case of Alta California.
The idea that California was some kind of established European colony earlier than British colonization of North America is what I was taking issue with.
California was officially established in 1850 though
the original post said
> pre-dates the existence of the US and British colonialism
Which is honestly not false, settlements in California formed about one century before the US independence.
Anyway, there were people living in what we call California today long before the Spanish arrived there...
this is still well before us/british colonialism in california though..
> And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID.
> In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.
I'm curious what you mean by this. What would change for you to be tempted to go back and what do the people that are leaving since COVID have to do with it?
California will never be like it was in the 90s again. The nature of the place is to keep changing.
>And while I personally have no desire to live in CA anytime soon, except the occasional visit, I'm glad so many decided to leave since COVID. In a decade or two it may look like and feel as it did when I was a kid in the 90s and I may be tempted to go back.
A bank robbery every hour?
And I thought my nostalgia for the leaded gasoline and burning asbestos tram breaks smells was odd.
> A bank robbery every hour?
More like a reminder that primitive tendencies can revert Society back to its violent mean really quickly and that in turn instilled a need to want to preserve what we have and build resilient communities to that end as we all felt vulnerable to that ever-present danger.
The fact that no one speaks to their neighbors now is a stark contrast to my childhood in the late 80s and 90s where every kid on the block was a part of the after school 'clique' in one way or another and we looked out for each other so we helped one another in times of need with no real hesitation. It was common to have parents drop off the neighbors kids at different school in exchange for a place to hang out after school and place at the dinner table that night while the parents worked OT etc... This was rotational and we often were at each others homes on different days of the week.
Bi-monthly neihborhood bbqs/potlucks were typical things and were way less tense then some mandated HOA sanctioned community watch meeting where people just snitch on each other and was more a casual event to eat and build bonds share a dish from your families native land with our local neighbors. Many of those people had to leave as things got more and more expensive as time went on and it was a somber experience even to this day.
Then, to me, it abruptly went completely away in the 2000s when ignoring your community completely became normal, and I'm guilty of this, too; I no longer wanted to be a part of the new crowds or integrate into the new ones and sought refuge Online instead as those crowds that were made up of 'less interesting people from somewhere else' so unless we had specific and obvious interests aligned I never bothered, and even then it would be short lived as they were built on very fickle forms of self-interest.
And this persisted until I left CA for the first time.
Again, its probably all survivor bias, and I knew way too many kids in the neighborhood or not far away who died due to gang violence (the shootings at the counter strike internet cafes were particular bad in my area [0]) so I"m not trying to glamorize that aspect. Its just that much like in places with incredibly cold and snowy winters you learn to appreciate one another and their roles in your Life, and since SoCal has perfect weather nearly all year around this was the closest thing that made us see past our superficial differences, and somehow latently knowing it could all go away in a flash gave a stark reminder of how valuable and integral that is to one's quality of Life. You hear this a lot amonst the Korean survivors of the LA riots when the Police abandoned them and left them to fend for themselves, that really hit hard for me and was what made me look past my previously held prejudice of foul smelling kimchi and started eating, cooking and enjoying their cuisine.
> And I thought my nostalgia for the leaded gasoline and burning asbestos tram breaks smells was odd.
I'm a big proponent of EV in a large part because I recall how light headed and nauseating I'd felt riding in the tailgate of a 70s pick up truck on the way to the local to in-n-out or to AM/PM as well as seeing images of the smog of LA would creep in on bad days and the poor air quality all year round was most of my Life as a kid. I don't desire for any of that, despite a large part of my career being tied to the Auto Industry I'm glad we're seeing EV taking over as I remember how orange and brown the sky looked back then.
0: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/02/usa.duncancamp...
> More like a reminder that primitive tendencies can revert Society back to its violent mean really quickly and that in turn instilled a need to want to preserve what we have and build resilient communities to that end as we all felt vulnerable to that ever-present danger.
Or, you know, not live in perpetual fear of society breaking down, which is something afforded to us by thousands of years of progress and innumerable sacrifices.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”- G. Michael Hopf
Any proof for that platitude?
Yea tbh that quote never made much sense to me. Wouldn't the Congo or Somalia be a paradise if that were true?
The whole thing hinges on the definition of Strong/Hard/Weak/Good and how you define them.
For example who is stronger, a turn the other cheek reverend or an eye for an eye preacher?
In my experience the kind of people posting that quote are the strongman, eye for an eye type.
Not being in perpetual fear of society breaking down seems like a good way to see society break down. What else motivated millenia of sacrifice?
Being aware and rational?
I would say that 'aware' is rhetorically the same as 'terrified', and 'rational' just means 'act optimally', so it's implied.
I'm aware that at some point the Sun will expand and engulf Earth, but I'm not terrified of it.
> I'm aware that at some point the Sun will expand and engulf Earth, but I'm not terrified of it.
Mainly because you won't be there when it happens when it happens, but would you feel the same if you felt earthquakes, nuclear effluence spikes, droughts or landslides from the few times it rained, plus all the aforementioned calamity? It's a visceral feeling that you carry with you for the rest of your Life, and it manifests in different ways depending on the person one of the most prevalent being depression and anxiety as I've seen far too many succumb to alcholism, drug abuse and SSRIs just to cope with the antipathy and eventually apathy towards World around them.
That's what I (and many more like me endured in that period in CA) saw and lived while I lived there until my early 20s, so we adapted (as I'm multi-generational) and I personally sought to apply my skill-set to what I felt had the best chance of ensuring we as a Species transitioned to a sustainable system that spanned: Renewable and sustainable Ag, Farm to table seasonal cuisine, Energy (solar), EV, Currency/Monetary system (Bitcoin) and then I got stupidly ambitious and almost made it to SpaceX this year.
Again, you can take your placid (in my view monotonous and short sighted) and insular existence but the truth is I always wanted to live my young adult Life this way and I have inspired more to pick up where I left off. I wanted what I went through to be for something in order to be a part of something that helps us transition out of this horrid system that has devastated our ecosystem and now looking back on it all I know I did something right.
Regardless of what one thinks of guns, it is technically is still legal to both keep and bear the arms that include a long barrel rifle as well as any amount of ammunition one wants, it is actually the state government in this case that is in gross violation of the Constitution’s law prohibiting the government infringing on the right to keep and bear arms. Just because an illegal law is passed does not nullify and superior law or right; for example, just because CA were to one day decide that freedom is illegal or, inversely, involuntary servitude is now legal, does not only not negate the God given right to freedom, nor does it even negate an inferior amendment to the Constitution barring such an abuse of freedom.
Are there any reasonable curtailments of that right? I'm sure its a cliche but whats the difference between owning a LMG and a bazooka?
I think you can still own both. The bazooka will need a tax stamp for each round if I’m not mistaken. I believe there are still transferable m79 grenade launchers and there are definitely M16 under barrel attachments you can buy.
From a legal standpoint, has any limit been placed on the second ammendment? could someone/has someone sued on the claim they should have access to WMDs?
There is a distinction between a “device” and an “arm”. This is why there is no constitutional right to own a WMD like a nuclear bomb or chemical bomb. Rocket launchers are considered “destructive devices” and you can buy those as well as the munition for it. Good luck getting one though.
However, if you go through proper channels it’s amazing what you’re allowed to own. In some states you can not only own a tank (that’s the easy part - you can even import one if the guns are disabled) but could also have it stay equipped with its standard issue .50cal gun! You won’t be allowed to drive it on public roads though. They are also cost prohibitive.
Hell, you can buy fighter jet if you’d like. But it has to be demilitarized which although still fun to fly would sort of limit your ability to maintain air superiority against a properly provisioned force.
Chemical, biological, nuclear, and anti-aircraft weapons are off-limits according to federal law. These rules have been enforced against people with terrorist intentions, but I would imagine any private citizen who believes they should be able to have them and can actually acquire them doesn't really feel the need to bother with fighting the law so long as they don't use them.
You could be right. The problem is to get there, you’ll need to endure a lengthy court process and enormous legal bills, plus you’ll live a long time in uncertainty.
What California in the 90s feeling are you referring to?
When pundits --on either side of the pollical spectrum--talk about how bad America is or how things are on the verge of collapse societally, show them stats such as this. By almost every metric, as bad as things may seem, they were objectively worse decades ago. Yeah, it feels like people are angrier than ever, especially online, but Twitter is not real life.
A combination of increased tech surveillance, longer prison sentences, and bank tellers holding very little cash--all of these factors make bank robbery much less lucrative than it was in the past.
It's not just bank robbery. Every crime category is now much lower than it was in 1990, in every jurisdiction of the USA. Even if you take a city that people think is ridiculously dangerous, like Camden, New Jersey, the homicide rate was triple 25 years ago.
Not just in the US. Also in Europe and most of the developed world. Violence peaked in 80's - 90s and then started to decrease dramatically.
Lead–crime connection is the strongest explanation. Past lead exposure functions as a predictor for criminal activity. Crime starts to drop in every country after the use of leaded gasoline is forbidden.
New evidence that lead exposure increases crime https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2017/06/01/new-evide...
More interestingly, we also have cross-national natural experiments, where different countries banned lead gasoline at different times, and the timing of drops in the crime rate is pretty spot-on
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/08/murder-rate-d...
Another possibility, discussed at depth in Freakonomics, is that reducing unwanted children reduced crime rates. There is some controversy about this, but it may be one of the factors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...
That possibility can't be the main explanation.
Allowing abortion in the US did not change anything in other countries. Crime rates have dropped in every country shortly after leaded gasoline was phased out.
Yeah, but given choice, I will go for scientific explanation and for what sociologists say then for pop book that was not even peer reviewed.
Here are the peer reviewed papers from one the authors of the pop book:
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/116/2/379/1904...
https://law.stanford.edu/publications/the-impact-of-legalize...
The peer-reviewed science says that legalized abortion accounts for about 20-30% of the crime reduction we have seen. (Reference: The Wikipedia article I already linked to in the grandparent post)
While the lead theory may indeed be true, one other thing has changed in almost all areas of the world.
Birth rates.
And with declining birth rates, comes a decline in the number of youth, meaning "more of the population" is of an older age. Men are typically at their most aggressive when young adults, and those which have started families, have a different perspective on life.
Note: not saying the above is the cause, but I do believe it to be a valid theory.
edit: it is also plausible that multiple things cause one effect.
Young people are less violent, less likely to get pregnant as teens, drink less and take less illegal drugs then they use to - all per capita.
> less likely to get pregnant as teens
That's caused by providing at least somewhat decent sexual education in schools, although the US is still lacking in mandating sex ed or mandating medically accurate sex ed (=banning "abstinence only").
Are you sure? It could just as well be because of the internet catching our attention so boys and girls don’t spend it on each other like they used to. No evidence for either claim although both sound plausible
Teen pregnancy is heavily studied, it is big social issue. It has pretty large impact on mother, child, father and extended family. The articles I have seen strongly associated sexual education with both less sex and safer teenage sex.
Basically, if you teach kids about sex and anticonception and condoms, they are less likely to do it and more likely to use this condoms and generally behave more safely.
On the other hand, abstinence only education is associated with more pregnancies.
That parenthood out of wedlock is a tragedy is true, but how can you or said articles authors be sure the link between teens today not having them being because of sex ed in school? I’m not saying it’s unlikely, but I’m wondering if there is any evidence showing the correlation, or if the effect is due to any other reason?
Maybe this has something to do with it?
https://uk.reuters.com/article/health-testosterone-levels-dc...
I keep hearing that crime in rural areas has been going up and that now even cake wrangling is a problem liked in old wild west movies. Your general point that on a lawyer scale we are safer than ever stands
Best source short googling could find: https://www.wsj.com/articles/nothing-but-you-and-the-cows-an...
What's cake wrangling?
Maybe an autocorrect from cow rustling? I can’t find anything online about cake wrangling, exciting as it sounds.
A rural pastry heist?
You always hear about Chicago gun violence but that's because Chicago is a dense city. If you correct for population density, rural America is a blood bath.
Nothing like Baltimore and St. Louis but Chicago is still in the top 10 for murders in at least some measure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
the per capita homicide rate for baltimore in 2019 was an all-time high. the previous record was set in 2017, and the record before that in 2015.
Unfortunately, this talking point (one I’ve put to good use over the last 20 years) is on shakier ground recently. Crime rates have have been rising for several years now in many U.S. cities and in some cases they’ve eclipsed the 90s highs.
https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft...
Have you read your own article?
Numbers are spiking for 2020.
I wonder why? A global pandemic, mass unemployment, lockdowns, political tensions.
Please don’t ask people if they’ve read the article. It’s obnoxious.
And, no, it isn’t just 2020. The homicide rate in St. Louis bottomed out in 2003 at a rate of 21.8 per 100k. By 2014 it had more than doubled to 49.9. By 2015 it had nearly tripled to 59.3 per 100k.
And it’s even higher now. It’ll end this year in the 70s per 100k, eclipsing the 1993 high. It’s been a steady march up from the bottom.
And the trend is similar in other cities.
You kept spamming the same comment.
Regarding crime, there is one obvious answer. Inequality. The US Gini coefficient has been going up for 3 decades, I think.
The reduction effect from getting rid of leaded gasoline could only outweigh this for so long...
Poor people commit more crimes and you're starting to have more and more poor people.
“It’s uniquely lead.”
Maybe, but rates are back up decades after we banned lead.
“Ok, well it’s uniquely the St. Louis police.”
Nope, sorry. Rates are up everywhere.
“Well then it’s just 2020! What a weird year!”
Nope. Rates have been rising for years.
“Ah, well then it’s obviously inequality.”
Why do people think not only that there has to be an immediate and obvious explanation for this trend, but also that they know exactly what it is?
For that matter, why are people so anxious to explain this away? It’s very confusing.
The fact is we don’t know why it’s happening. It’s complicated. It’s definitely happening. And we don’t know why. It’s ok to say, “I don’t know.”
I don't know but my money is on inequality. All the countries with high levels of inequality have this problem.
For example Eastern European countries generally have moderate to low inequality levels and low GDP per capita. South American countries have high to verify high inequality and comparable GDPs per capita. Eastern Europe is much safer statistically than South America.
Ignore this at your own peril...
It’s surprisingly hard to find good charts on this topic, but I stumbled across this thread today:
https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496?
These charts very clearly show an uptick in the nationwide homicide rate starting in 2014. It then levels off. And then there’s a big jump again this year.
This is entirely consistent with my claim that rates are way up nationwide and that they started going up before 2020.
St. Louis is an interesting case because while their homicide rate (not overall violent crime, which is still way down, like every other city) approaches record highs, their homicide clearance rate has never been worse. The St. Louis cops are just historically bad at their job, which might not generalize to a trend.
Bad as they may be, an explanation that focuses on the ineptitude of the SLMPD doesn’t cut it. Homicide rates are way up all over the country.
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting...
> When pundits --on either side of the pollical spectrum--talk about how bad America is or how things are on the verge of collapse societally, show them stats such as this. By almost every metric, as bad as things may seem, they were objectively worse decades ago.
Don't forget that you're only looking at LA right now and your claim that things "were objectively worse decades ago" only generalizes to the cities on the West/East Coast. In contrast, rural areas are worse off economically compared to 30, 40 years ago.
Ransomware, hacking, etc. should be counted in those numbers to compare. I'll bet that it is way more lucrative and way easier to get a big payout today than when you had to go there with a gun.
I think prison sentence length has generally been shown to be not very effective as a deterrent? My impression is that for most crimes the marginal effect of increasing the penalty by an additional year in prison is just to remove potential offenders from the free population without much decreasing the risk of any particular person offending. (And the sentences for bank robbery are long enough that by the time you get out you're too old to want to commit again anyways.)
Yeah, they now rob you safely from their computers.
There is just too much, too detailed information for an average person to process. The democracy of the 1800s, or rather the assumption that a voter can even begin to understand the impact of their vote (or apply any basic filter to whom they are about to mimic), does not scale well into 2000s. Subtler feedback loops would be more efficient.
But they were objectively better 1-2 years ago. E.g. violent crime is up significantly this year.
It’s interesting as an older person to realize that Americans born in the 90s and later have no real concept of the amount of crime and violence that was widespread in US.
Also interesting that as a kid born in 1980 at the start of the drug violence epidemic, we were allowed to roam as we pleased as long as we were home for dinner. Contrast that to today's vastly safer world, and kids are not allowed to walk the neighborhood unsupervised.
Is there a chance for causal relationship?
Unfortunately, pault is already in a happy and committed relationship.
Whenever the high crime rates in the 70s-90s is brought up I like to remind folks this was likely an aberration with a specific environmental cause (lead), rather than representative of human nature.
This [1] is an eye-opening roundup of ~25 major studies that support the lead-crime hypothesis, including comparisons across countries & cultures. The evidence is pretty overwhelming and certainly changed my perspective on human nature, which for me had previously been influenced by both growing up around the violence in CA in the 80s-90s and the media culture that depicted and sensationalized it.
If you walk away from this thinking 'oh, humans are a lot less violent than I thought they were', you might find other beliefs built on top of that assumption also follow. These types of perspective shifts in life are rare, and very powerful.
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-le...
Now consider the lead politics hypothesis. If lead exposure lead to brain damage that resulted in the murder rate tripling, what is that doing to civic politics? Because while that generation has mostly aged out of the higher crime demographic. It's smack in the middle of the voter demographic.
Never had thought of that consequence. Quite a disturbing thought indeed.
> It's smack in the middle of the voter demographic.
Not just voters, large portions of our representatives are also from that demographic.
Yep, this is a worrisome thought.
Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs. As I often do, I’ll use St. Louis as an example here, because it’s the city I happen to be most familiar with, but this is happening all over. I completely bought the story you’re telling and never thought we’d ever see homicide rates matching the gang-war carnage of early 90s St. Louis, but we’re blowing past those rates, in fact.
That’s not to say the lead story is bunk, but, sadly, I don’t think you can draw the conclusion that those earlier rates were uniquely aberrant.
https://www.officer.com/command-hq/technology/computers-soft...
Edit to add this link: https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21334149/murders-crime-shooting...
Don’t get too focused on St. Louis, in other words; as I said, homicide rates are up all over the country.
My point was that if you baselined how good or bad you thought humans were by the crime rates in the 80s, you'd come away thinking humans were way more violent than they are. I think the same holds for 2020 - if you assess human nature by how people act when they're in the midst of a global pandemic, you'd come to the same incorrect conclusion.
Another way to put it is that much of our behavior is dictated by our environment, and if we create an environment where extreme chemical, biological, psychological, and economic stressors are kept at bay, then humans are just not prone to a great deal of violence.
> I think the same holds for 2020
The homicide rate in St. Louis bottomed out in 2003 at a rate of 21.8 per 100k. By 2014 it had more than doubled to 49.9. By 2015 it had nearly tripled to 59.3 per 100k. (It’ll end this year in the 70s per 100k). The rates have been rising for a long time. It’s not just 2020.
And the trend is similar in other cities.
Homicides nationwide are well off of historic highs [1].
The Vox link you previously posted shows the large spike (+~30%) being 2020 related.
The 21.8/100k you cite for St Louis in 2003 was also abnormally and suspiciously low, as 2002 and 2004 were in the 30s/100k. I wouldn't baseline anything off a single local outlier that's 50% off from other years. Perhaps a statistical / data collection anomaly? You can see in 2004 the rate was about 35/100k, while in 2013 it was 38/100k, a scant change.
You can see that data in context within a chart in this NYT article from 2015 [2] which discusses some possible factors in St Louis' persistently high crime. 2014 and onwards is likely skewed considerably by the Ferguson unrest, and it sounds like St Louis might still be dealing with that alongside other factors.
Outside the local context, none of this data at a macro scale looks like the trend we see in the 70s-80s that the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to describe though. Crime nationwide has indeed been growing slightly since 2015... to hypothesize about why we're seeing this, I'd guess it's largely due to loss of opportunity and rising income inequality leading to poverty and desperation, which our recent economic policies have only been worsening. But I'm absolutely no expert in the subject, just trying to figure things out like you are.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/us/st-louis-puzzles-over-...
It’s surprisingly hard to find good charts, but I stumbled across this thread today:
https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496?...
These charts very clearly show an uptick in the nationwide homicide rate starting in 2014. It then levels off. And then there’s a big jump again this year.
This is entirely consistent with my claim that rates are way up nationwide and that they started going up before 2020.
Thanks for the followup, just seeing this now. I think perhaps we're not on the same page about the central hypothesis.
1. Is nationwide crime up 2019 -> 2020? We agree, yes it is, and quite a bit! This link, as well as previous ones show that. My hunch is covid and its economic fallout is likely the primary factor.
2. Is nationwide crime up in the last 10 years? We agree, they are somewhat.
3. Are local crime rates in St Louis up? Sure, but thats a bit besides the point I was originally making, which was related to nationwide crime and the lead-crime hypothesis, as local factors can add noise to analysis.
4. Do recent nationwide crime trends look anything like the massive bump in nationwide crime the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to explain, thus potentially invalidating the hypothesis? This is the question I was asking. I believe recent crime trends do not invalidate it.
As I stated before, "none of this data at a macro scale looks like the trend we see in the 70s-80s that the lead-crime hypothesis seeks to describe". Later [1] in the tweet thread you just posted, the author shows a chart of murder stats going back to 1960. It shows a massive bump in the 70s-80s (up to 10 murders per 100k) followed by a sharp drop through the 90s (down to fewer than 6 murders per 100k). This has not been replicated since, ergo, current crime trends are not sufficient to refute the hypothesis.
[1] https://twitter.com/Crimealytics/status/1343955297073770496
> I think perhaps we're not on the same page about the central hypothesis.
Yes, I agree. I think your response here shows that we're actually closer in agreement than it first seemed. That's my fault, I think. I don't think the lead hypothesis is bunk. (My initial comment perhaps made it seem like I was saying otherwise.) It has a lot of explanatory power. I also don't think we're in exactly the same position we were in the 90s, for lots of reasons.
But I do think the lead hypothesis lulled a lot of people into repeating the claim about falling crimes rates for so long that many of them have forgotten to check to see if it's still true. And while there are lots of interesting debates to be had about why homicides have been higher recently, the fact is that they have been!
> Unfortunately, homicide rates in some U.S. cities are nearing (and in some cases eclipsing) their early 90s highs.
In 2020. Year of infamy.
It does remind me of Point Break:
HARP
This is us. Bank Robbery. And
you're in the bank-robbery capital
of the world--
UTAH
1322 last year in LA county. Up 26
percent from the year before.
HARP
That's right. And we nailed over a
thousand of them. We did it by
crunching data. Good crime-scene
work, good lab work, and most importantly
good data-base analysis. Special agent Utah.
Are you receiving my signal?
UTAH
Zero distortion, sir.Not that it drastically improves the statement, but the tagline for the article
> a bank was robbed every hour of every day.
But the article itself clarifies they mean "each banking day" and the worst year had about seven robberies a day. Still a shocking amount, but not the 24 a day implied.
Moreover, the worst year was 1992, which isn't in the 80ies last I checked...
The 80's still could have averaged one an hour even if the worst year was 92.
Except it didn't even average one an hour in the worst year
*hour the bank was open. Thought my first post made that clear.
The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.
> televangelist and cult scams
Well... I agree that at least Scientology has died down a little (even though Shelly Miscavige is still missing), but televangelists are as strong as ever, and not just that Kenneth Copeland guy.
What? Scientology has never been stronger. They're on their way to literally owning an entire downtown city in Florida (forget which one).
You're referring to Clearwater? Yes, I agree, but the influence of Scientology to the large world is... just who gives a fuck about them any more?
Most of Europe sees them either as a business or as a cult (France) or as a threat to democracy (Germany, applicants to public service have to declare they're unaffiliated with the bunch). Worldwide, it's membership numbers are falling (https://www.ualberta.ca/folio/2018/01/once-thriving-church-o...).
Many popular front people have either died off or deserted Scientology.
Clearwater
Then came the police state and the party was over.
It's debatable if the police state was actually responsible for that drop in crime.
Afaik Canada saw a comparable drop in crime, over the same time-period, without starting to mass incarcerate people [0]
[0] https://youtu.be/wtV5ev6813I (Relevant stats and discussion start around 6:45, but the whole talk is rather worthwhile to watch)
It sounds like the 80s were more fun.
We had Miami Vice, MacGyver, The A-Team, Knight Rider, and Battlestar Galactica back then.
And homes were still affordable places to live in.
That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%.
My entire extended family mostly bailed out of NYC because they bought houses for $10-25k in the 70s and sold for 20x in the late 80s. That profit gave that generation a vault up the ladder and the prime the pump mortgage policy made a few rich.
> That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%.
With a decent down payment (lets say ~15%) that's still less than 5 years salary even with interest, which would be completely acceptable terms especially since cost of living was way more affordable back then and the population had ~10 million people less than today in the 90s. Just to give you context that's more in population increase than many US states have in totality!
The problem comes from the fact that even with most FHA loans, decent down payments and average(non-FAANG) middle class income wages you're still looking at 15+ years of salary with a home with no repair clauses from banks that bought distressed proprieties on the cheap in the 2008 housing crises, and are selling far above their ATH. And that's assuming you can even get a home into escrow before external demand or Chinese investors fleeing the mainland pay cash for it sight unseen for something they will just at best rent out on Airbnb or let decay as its better than the alternative of keeping it in fiat before the CCP takes it.
Personally speaking NY is exactly what I didn't want CA to become, and slowly it started to resemble it more and more in all the negative ways; the recent lockdowns from incompetent politicians with deluded presidential aspirations only highlighted how much they have in common now.
I'm not a protectionist and I welcome(d) people to come work and live in CA, by my issue is that in the process it stripped a lot of what was good about it away and enhanced a lot of the worst parts instead.
Personally speaking with all of that culture and atmosphere lost I don't think it's worth it. And I think that one guy below was right, California will probably never go back to what it was back in the 90s and I should probably just be satisfied I got to experience it all.
I reckon you can find tons of ex-hippies who would say “California will never go back to what in was in the ‘70s”, when they were already onboard Janis Joplin’s Big Yellow Taxi (written in 1970 and inspired by Hawaii, but massively popular in 1974 California too) and decrying the loss of “Steinbeck’s California”.
Places change, and places with little historical roots as most of the US tend to change even faster. That’s just how it is.
> Janis Joplin’s Big Yellow Taxi
Joni Mitchell :)
>With a decent down payment (lets say ~15%) that's still less than 5 years salary even with interest
I recently started a mortgage and the guidance I regularly saw was that your home price should not exceed 2.5 years of your income. And, this is with very low interest rates, esp compared to the 80's.
I don't think I couldn't afford the monthly payments on a house that was 5x our household income, even after 20% down and only 3% APR. Then again, maybe I could, but I'm more conservative with my wallet and prefer to have more cash on hand and other investments.
Your cost of living comparison is apt though. Maybe I'd be more comfortable with my mortgage being a larger % of my take home if everything else were significantly cheaper....
> That $40k home isn’t so cheap when you make $13k and interest rates were 11-15%
-However, if interest is at 11-15%, chances are inflation was in the high single digits - so as long as wages stayed reasonably level (in real terms), you weren't too bad off.
(In 80s Norway, my parents paid nigh on 20% interest on their home loan - but inflation hovered around the 10-12% mark and you got a 100% tax deduction for interest payments, making debt a good deal for a lot of people. Hence, people borrowed more money than ever before as credit was effectively free. Stop me if you've heard this one before.)
What could possibly go wrong? Sigh.
Interest rates and home prices move in opposite directions.
> And homes were still affordable places to live in.
So does this mean the “crime paradise” was a better more prosperous time for people to live in than tech? If so, what does that say about modern society that our most depraved decade was actually better?
Withuot knowing nothing about California in the 80s besides what's in this thread, it seems you're saying gang shootings and bank robberies is an acceptable trade for affordable housing.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking.
There’s people literally pooping on the streets in California. Do you think those people would be able to afford a toilet of their own if this was the 80s? Was homelessness then as bad as it is now? In our progress forward in technology has tech actually made California worse for people as a whole?
Homelessness has always been a problem in this country; it just wasn't as visible as it is now. That visibility is from a bunch of reasons (the Internet makes all things more visible, cities became more popular instead of "white flight," sprawl in more areas). All the way back in 1995--jesus, that's 25 years ago, I feel old--Star Trek: Deep Space Nine had a two-part episode on "Sanctuary Districts" and staggering wealth inequality. Those were depicted as having gotten particularly bad in the year 2024 (the year our heroes were transported back to) but the episode was commenting on the state of society around the late 80s and early 90s. We've had hobo slums, tent cities, and the like as long as I've been alive.
It's not a California-specific problem. Dallas had tent cities in the mid-90s that the local news would occasionally report on. Seattle has had a variety of encampments, from "the Jungle" to "Nickelsville" to "Skid Row" and older.
We see the problem more now. We don't like it, but we also don't do much to deal with it. So it festers, because we're too self-centered to spend the tax dollars at the state and federal levels to do programs like Housing First, but too polite to just round up the homeless population and drop them in a woodchipper like most people on Nextdoor seem to want. Instead, we leave cities and counties to work it out for themselves while their suburban neighbors spend tax dollars on luring businesses out of the urban core because it is "so dirty."
I can’t find anything on a quick Google that shows differences between 1980 and present. I did find this though: https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...
That site states homelessness across the country is down 12% from 2007 - 2019, but it is up 9% in California in the same time period.
I think this validates asking the question of whether or not tech has been detrimental to general human welfare in the state of California.
Mentally ill thrown out on the streets, and scarcity of housing are the major factors.
Mental illness is something that gets regurgitated a lot and it is a part of the problem, but it’s ignoring the working homeless. The social contract in society is if you work hard and have a job that you’ll prosper, or at least have food, water, and shelter.
https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/652572292/working-while-homel...
Housing was affordable because it could still be built.
Maybe, developers could still build high density housing though. From what I’ve been told, developers prefer McMansions because of the profit margins.
That’s an equation with a bunch of factors. As soon as average land costs go over a certain threshold and apartment living is normalized, it becomes much more profitable to build up several units over the same plot of land.
Homes were affordable, but interest rates were like 13%.
Homes were also much smaller. The median home size has almost doubled since 40 years ago.
Thats because interest rates and home prices have an inverse relationship.
Yes, obviously.
I think this was at least partially a result of the high crime rate in the cities.
When I lived in East Palo Alto, it was the murder capital of the US. With a carjacking attempt 75' from my front door (foiled by returning with a pistol before they could restart my car) I miss that time not at all.
> When I lived in East Palo Alto, it was the murder capital of the US. With a carjacking attempt 75' from my front door (foiled by returning with a pistol before they could restart my car) I miss that time not at all.
Yeah, I remember the Valley in the 90s... a lof of it looked a lot like downtown LA which I'm was never exactly a fan of.
But being in San Jose back then in the 90s looked and smelled like Chinatown when it was buzzing, Sunnyvale and Mountain View had a certain feel that is completely gone now it felt electric for reasons I didn't full understand and would only come to realize how significant what was happening there was a decade or so later.
I never went to the East bay until recently, but that feels like a very watered down version of what it was back then to me.
I guess it's survivor bias guiding my words, especially since I had close encounters with stuff like that growing up too; but having a choice of which one to deal with I'd stay with 90s CA to raise a family then somewhere like modern Geneva with all its amenities and manicured existence.
I think the thing about the Valley is that it was forged in a context where it was the rational mode of development for a high tech urban center: car-centric office parks and factories, big-box stores and malls, vast housing subdivisions with some toxic waste buried here and there. Although the players in SV were all building "next big things", everything still ultimately ran on physical presence - real venues that you could go to and make connections in, and the landscape was eminently suited to that between ~1970-2000.
It was with the opening of the commercial Internet in the 90's that it all started changing. The new companies weren't in boxed products destined for retail: they started replacing retail. You didn't go to a users' group to learn, you subscribed to Usenet or email. And so on. So even by the early 2000's, things started to feel hollowed out in SV.
Sounds like rosy retrospection to me.
Not in CA
Considered acceptable in the 80's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOV5WXISM24
> The 80s were a crime paradise.--drug gangs, mafia, wall st white collar crime, informercial scams, televangelist and cult scams --you name it, it all thrived in the 80s.
All of which you saw in a 30 min episode of CHIPS, which aired in the 70s to the 80s, right? I'm not proud of these seedy days, in fact its something I think most of us are ashamed of entirely and would prefer to be solely known for tech, beaches and sunshine. But it isn't true, and it baffles me as a person who lived through that to see many people claiming this the worst CA has ever seen. It's definitely bad, and perhaps underscores why California should be its own Country in my opinion.
But we've been here and done that and to a much worse degree then proceeded to make a place for outsiders to come when it all went well, and they then jacked up the cost of living and made it a worst place to be and raise children only to flee in hard times so many times we should be used to it, but it still sucks to see California like this after all we did.
I've lived and worked all over the Western World, but California in the 90s was a magical place despite all the crazy stuff that actually would instill resilience and problem solving skills out of necessity in me since I was a child just to survive. Skills that I know I would have gotten if I grew up in Zurich, Vienna or Bavaria or some other placid place.
I just hope we get to see it once more as every time I go back it looks further and further away from the place I knew and loved.
I guess you’re a subscriber to the famous quote (from Orson Welles, I believe) that goes something like “Italians saw centuries of wars and pestilence, and produced the Renaissance. The Swiss lived peacefully all that time, and only produced the cuckoo clock.”
> The Swiss lived peacefully all that time, and only produced the cuckoo clock.”
No, mainly because I lived in Switzerland and they have a long history of warfare and starvation as well; most don't realize the Swiss Pikemen/Mercenaries were the best of the Western World and were recruited for many other foreign militaries.
They were so well known for this craft in warfare that they still guard the Vatican to this day. Furthermore, up until WWII Switzerland has been a poor, mainly agrarian civilization that lived hand-to-mouth and were mainly made of of hardy, tough 'mountain folk' until the 19th Century. I lived in the Bernese Swiss alps in what I called my 'unabomber shack' during the Spring and Summer to prepare to move the cows up the Alps that only had a small oven, no running water, no electricity and no insulation. All it really was is just a single room attached to a barn; it was built really well and had been there for over a 100 years old, no one knew for sure, but what struck me is that this is how entire multi-generational families lived for centuries there. There were no lofty lives as Welles, and many like to think, for the majority of Swiss History until recently, and now youth suicide is a massive issue there, but I won't get into that now.
Orson Welles, like so many who have only read or stayed for short visits, took a very ignorant and narrow view of Swiss History if really believed that. I also lived in Italy which I could go even further in depth about, too.
> In 1980s Los Angeles, a bank was robbed every hour of every day.
> 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day. On a particularly bad day for the FBI that year, bandits committed 28 bank licks
these are not the same statement. 'average ~1 per hour while banks are open' isn't the same as 'minimum 1 per hour', nor is it the same as 'every hour of every day'
Man, I definitely wouldn't want to be a customer at that bank!
I have second hand memory of an SNL sketch from the 80s(?) about this phrasing, but for man, mugged, and five minutes.
Second hand because it was told/ re-enacted to me in lieu of recorded on vhs or similar.
That's how I read the title; that's what I'm going with.
Wonder how much legal abortion and removing lead caused this to decrease.
Freakonomics ! : )
I grew up (in the 80s) by a bank that was routinely robbed. It was conveniently located by a freeway on ramp and had a drive thru.
Over time they closed the drive thru and eventually removed direct street access to the bank to try to discourage robbers.
Ah the good old days.
In present day Los Angeles people that work in banks take their computers off their desks and lock them away because they know they'll be broken in to. I did support for some of them.
You mean like the computer will be stolen or like the Evil Maid attack?
With the massive unemployment and SBA fraud these days [1,2,3], the "banks" are being robbed every minute just in a quieter way.
[1] https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/05/u-s-secret-service-massi...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-bus...
[3] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-12-21/californ...
I'm in the middle of the book Days of Rage, which is about some of the violent protest movements in the 70s. Really amazing how many bombings there were back then too. Thousands per year in some cases IIRC. Most were small and did not do much damage or kill anyone however.
> By 2013, the number was down to 212, one tenth of what it had been in its worst year. For the first time since the early 1960s, L.A. officially lost its title to the San Francisco Bay Area.
The real interesting tidbit was at the end I found... I wonder why SF?
To quote the great Willie Sutton, 'Because that's where the money is.' SF was and is the financial capital of the west coast.
> 1992, the worst year of all, there was an almost unimaginable 2,641 heists, one every 45 minutes of each banking day.
Point Break came out in 1991. I wonder if that inspired some people.
For those that don't know, the plot is that a bunch of LA surfers knock off banks so they can spend the rest of their time surfing, and get away with it for a long time.
It's interesting how the Werther-effect has been a topic for speculation, and even governmental action, for literally centuries, yet we don't seem to be any closer to acknowledging it, if it's actually a thing, or coming to any solid conclusions as what to do about if it actually is a thing.
It's also kind of weird how in the English-language sphere it's apparently only known/relevant for "copycat suicide" [0], when the implications for such a dynamic being true would be far more wide-reaching.
You could look to the UK for examples of action being taken specifically around suicide. Broadcasters have self-imposed guidelines that they follow. The regulators are aware of these guidelines and the need for them.
Journalist unions have created a set of guidelines that attempt to balance freedom to report with the need to protect the public. (For something more specific: when you report someone has died in a public place do not give detail information about where they died. If they jumped off a particular bridge do not name the bridge. (We have a little bit of research from survivors about how they pick locations and some of them say they're influenced by news reporting)).
On your wider point, all our broadcasters are aware of "imitative acts" and so they're very careful when showing children doing violent or dangerous things. Our advertising regulator will also ban some ads that show these things. There was an example from some time ago of a soft drink called "Tango". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Man_(advertisement)
> Nonetheless, Orange Man soon sparked large controversy in the media and in public after it was discovered children had copied the events of the advertisement in playgrounds and injured themselves; Rupert Howell, a Tango advertisement executive, stated in 2000 that Orange Man "sparked a playground craze" where "people used to go round sort of slapping each other and saying 'You've Been Tango'd', and it was all very entertaining and great fun. There were no problems until we got a phone call once from a surgeon who said 'look, I'm not the complaining type but I thought you'd like to know that I did an operation on a child this morning with a damaged ear drum, and I was wheeling him in to the operating table, and said to him 'what happened to you then?' and replied 'I got Tango'd.'"[6] As a result, Howell pulled the advertisement from television that afternoon,[6] although other reports erroneously state that the advertisement was banned
> You could look to the UK for examples of action being taken specifically around suicide.
But taking actions alone is not really a good indicator for how effective these actions actually are, particularly on such complex socioeconomic topics like suicide where most likely a whole slew of factors play a role.
So while one could look at the UK, what's missing there is something to compare it to, as just comparing to other countries alone doesn't really say much about how much these actions actually factor in the differences.
> On your wider point, all our broadcasters are aware of "imitative acts" and so they're very careful when showing children doing violent or dangerous things.
Is that also why a Star Trek episode, that mentioned Irish unification as an example of "terrorism working", had that scene cut from being broadcast on UK TV? [0]
Those are the kind of consequences where the waters suddenly become very murky: Most people would probably agree with protecting vulnerable populations from something like suicide. But what if that logic is extended to trying to protect even not so vulnerable populations from the "wrong ideas"?
[0] https://www.irishpost.com/news/star-trek-the-next-generation...
Reminds me of the Somalian pirates of five-ten years ago, who were also eventually stopped by defending the targets.
I think this aspect is also worth considering: https://www.thebillfold.com/2012/05/only-an-idiot-would-rob-...
Reading this reminded me of the Clint Eastwood monologue in Dirty Harry. Do you feel lucky, punk?
Traffic nowadays... ain't worth it no more.
It's harder to steal cars now too, which is how Cali's most successful bank robbers got away with it for a long time.
Hell or high water is a good movie about that.
(2019)
Imagined myself injected into a Michael Mann film while reading that.
Ah, makes me think of "Point Break".