POLL: Biggest Problem In the World

[Dukasaur]

Fix overpopulation and all other problems fix themselves.

If we had a reasonable population density of 5 people per square mile, we could all drive around in Sherman tanks and shit and piss and drop our garbage anywhere and the environment would just laugh at us and keep on going about its business. It is only because there are so damn many of us that we poison the environment. Its capacity for absorbing and recycling poisons is enormous; we just need to drop to a population density where we do not tax that capacity.

This is not true. Even a few people can very much create enough damage to destroy the Earth, if they were so inclined, with today's chemicals and today's technology.

To contrast, a lot of people who care and think about the consequences of their actions, think long term would not cause dangerous levels of damage.

If we all become very responsible and re-use everything and cut our waste and consumption in half, and the world's population doubles, are we any further ahead? Nope, back where we started.

Cut your waste and consumption in half again while the world's population doubles again, and once again, back where you started.

Eventually you will run out of efficiencies. You cannot reduce your waste below certain basic minimums, but there is no limit to people's ability to spawn. Eventually some plague or war will restore the balance. I just hope it happens before every last square inch of wilderness has been paved over.

Recommended reading:


Julian Simon. The Ultimate Resource 2
http://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Resource ... 0691003815

Recommended reading:
http://people.su.se/~yvze0888/Model-NEG-Crime-05_April%202013.pdf

1 Introduction
It is well documented that there is more crime in big than in small cities (Glaeser and
Sacerdote, 1999; Kahn, 2010). For example, the rate of violent crime in cities with more
than 250,000 population is 346 per 100,000 in
habitants whereas in cities with less than
10,000 inhabitants, the rate of violent crime is just 176 per 100,000 (Glaeser, 1998).

Conflict is a power function of population density. It's a function of other factors too, of course, but population density is the one that reigns unequivocal. Anybody who has ever raised rodents commercially can tell you that if you put twice as many rats in a cage, you will have four times as many fights. Humans are not that different from other animals. Give them their space and they'll be friendly and relaxed. Jam them into nightmare shitholes and they become aggressive and nasty.

[BigBallinStalin]

I thought we were talking about consumption, production, and population growth---not crime and population density...


I forget where I read it, (it was cited by Thomas Sowell, maybe from Intellectuals and Society). The study showed no correlation between GDP per-capita and population density, which means that---given current levels, population density doesn't affect our best proxy for economy prosperity. If that holds true with greater populations (which may simply move to more arable lands, thus not lead to an increase in population density), then I wouldn't be as worried as you are.

We're talking centuries too. It could simply be the case that very few are concerned because the marginal costs of the perceived problem simply aren't that high--at the moment. As decades and centuries past, then the increases in costs will drive people to seek cheaper means of production (whether it be for food, dealing with population density, crime, etc.). But my concern is that the government will inadvertently block a greater range of potential innovation through its unnecessary control, thus hampering humans within markets from figuring out these problems for themselves.

Humans are remarkable for finding solutions to these problems (and a possible yet bigger and more immediate problem is one suggested by Tyler Cowen - The Great Stagnation). So long as others aren't waving guns around and forcing people under 'one-size-fits-all' "solutions," then I wouldn't be concerned as you are.

[Dukasaur]

I thought we were talking about consumption, production, and population growth---not crime and population density...

All of the above. If you go back to my first post on the subject, I was basically saying that all of the "problems" listed in the poll become non-problems below a certain density. Pollution and resource exhaustion are on that list, and so are genocide and armed conflict. Crime didn't make the list, but I mentally included it in the basket because I thought it should have.

I forget where I read it, (it was cited by Thomas Sowell, maybe from Intellectuals and Society). The study showed no correlation between GDP per-capita and population density, which means that---given current levels, population density doesn't affect our best proxy for economy prosperity. If that holds true with greater populations (which may simply move to more arable lands, thus not lead to an increase in population density), then I wouldn't be as worried as you are.

I'm prepared to believe that there's no strong correlation between GDP and density, yes.

Unfortunately, GDP doesn't correlate well with quality of life, either. Grinding poverty is obviously an obstacle to having a good life, but once one reaches the satisfaction of basic needs, adding more wealth adds only tiny amounts of satisfaction. There are rapidly diminishing returns to adding more materialistic claptrap to your life, and the middle-class showoff with half-a-dozen ATVs in his garage rarely has time to ride any of them, and even then can only ride one at a time.

The negative externalities caused by population pressure -- I would list them except that I already did in my first post -- are not measured by GDP. The guy who has to fight his way into a subway train that compares poorly with the Holocaust freight cars, ride downtown constantly on the watch for muggers and pickpockets, breathe the nitric oxide cocktail that passes for air in the cities, go sit in an artificially lit cubicle in a climate-controlled building, never seeing natural sunlight or hearing the croak of a bullfrog, is in my opinion not much better off than the sharecropper.

To some degree that's not just my opinion. "Happiness indices" are fraught with hazards, but it seems pretty clear that above the satisfaction of basic needs, wealth does have rapidly-diminishing returns.

We're talking centuries too. It could simply be the case that very few are concerned because the marginal costs of the perceived problem simply aren't that high--at the moment. As decades and centuries past, then the increases in costs will drive people to seek cheaper means of production (whether it be for food, dealing with population density, crime, etc.). But my concern is that the government will inadvertently block a greater range of potential innovation through its unnecessary control, thus hampering humans within markets from figuring out these problems for themselves.

Agreed, but with the same provisos as before.

Furthermore, I would posit that a lot of the government's negative effect is again a function of population density. I'm very fond of Robert Heinlein's quote that, "any planet crowded enough to require identification cards is too crowded for me." That's an acknowledgement, perhaps not perfect but largely true, that certain things are an inevitable result of population. When communities get so big that people no longer recognise each other as individuals, identification cards become an inevitability. Tyrannical governments may push for them a little faster, but the freer countries will get there in time.

Humans are remarkable for finding solutions to these problems (and a possible yet bigger and more immediate problem is one suggested by Tyler Cowen - The Great Stagnation). So long as others aren't waving guns around and forcing people under 'one-size-fits-all' "solutions," then I wouldn't be concerned as you are.

I only read second-hand reviews of the Cowen's book, but if I understand it correctly, it is in many ways supporting what I said. Once everybody has a refrigerator and a washing machine, there is little to be gained by investing in more and better refrigerator and washing machine production. Once your food is cold and your clothes are clean, what is the point? Sure, we now have fridges with clock radios in the door, and there's probably some value to that, but the big jump in standard of living comes with going from no fridge to fridge. Once you have a fridge, enhancing your life with a fridge that sounds the alarm just in case you fall asleep while pouring your orange juice is a pretty small improvement in your standard of living. I propose that your life would be more enhanced by a fridge that costs half the price, so that you can spend less time working and more time laying in a field of flowers admiring the butterflies.

Cowan bemoans the fact that free entertainment on the Internet contributes little to GDP (as opposed to traditional forms of entertainment) but so what? If the people are entertained, and at the same time they suffer from less bill-paying stress, that sounds like a win-win. One has to always be aware that everyone is both a producer and a consumer. When prices fall our producer-component suffers, but our consumer-component benefits.

[BigBallinStalin]

I thought we were talking about consumption, production, and population growth---not crime and population density...

All of the above. If you go back to my first post on the subject, I was basically saying that all of the "problems" listed in the poll become non-problems below a certain density. Pollution and resource exhaustion are on that list, and so are genocide and armed conflict. Crime didn't make the list, but I mentally included it in the basket because I thought it should have.

I forget where I read it, (it was cited by Thomas Sowell, maybe from Intellectuals and Society). The study showed no correlation between GDP per-capita and population density, which means that---given current levels, population density doesn't affect our best proxy for economy prosperity. If that holds true with greater populations (which may simply move to more arable lands, thus not lead to an increase in population density), then I wouldn't be as worried as you are.

I'm prepared to believe that there's no strong correlation between GDP and density, yes.

Unfortunately, GDP doesn't correlate well with quality of life, either. Grinding poverty is obviously an obstacle to having a good life, but once one reaches the satisfaction of basic needs, adding more wealth adds only tiny amounts of satisfaction. There are rapidly diminishing returns to adding more materialistic claptrap to your life, and the middle-class showoff with half-a-dozen ATVs in his garage rarely has time to ride any of them, and even then can only ride one at a time.

No, it's still a good enough proxy for cross-country comparisons--including quality of life. GDP has problems since it omits black market activities (or simply doesn't measure exchanges which are too difficult to calculate), so in this case it can underestimate actual GDP. We can also use life expectancy and mortality rates which are the industry standard for quality of life since they correlate so well with them. I'm not familiar with the data on that, but the research is probably out there if you're interested.

RE: underlined, well, that's just your opinion. You can't really speak for everyone else since value is subjective. The returns diminish quickly for you, but for others they don't, so... how would that affect your analysis?

The negative externalities caused by population pressure -- I would list them except that I already did in my first post -- are not measured by GDP. The guy who has to fight his way into a subway train that compares poorly with the Holocaust freight cars, ride downtown constantly on the watch for muggers and pickpockets, breathe the nitric oxide cocktail that passes for air in the cities, go sit in an artificially lit cubicle in a climate-controlled building, never seeing natural sunlight or hearing the croak of a bullfrog, is in my opinion not much better off than the sharecropper.

To some degree that's not just my opinion. "Happiness indices" are fraught with hazards, but it seems pretty clear that above the satisfaction of basic needs, wealth does have rapidly-diminishing returns.

Well, crime isn't caused by population density. You'd simply get more crime when you have more people around. The fundamental problem is managerial (government), in its inability to correctly allocate various resources and strategies for combating crime. Overcrowding in (government-owned) subways seems to me that the problem is obvious (it's government). If the government owned and/or controlled shoe production, we'd get surpluses and shortages where people seemingly fight for scarce shoes because "population pressure."

Pollution's another issue which I could go on for days, but I'll keep it short. The negative externalities from pollution are fundamentally due to the courts inability to curb what are essentially trespasses of property (i.e. people dumping pollution in your yard and on your body, e.g. air pollution). Instead, the government plays games with voters over "environmental" regulation while wheeling and dealing with select business. Again, government--not growing population--is the main culprit here.

RE: Underlined, again subjective tastes and preferences. Also, perhaps nearly all people who work subsistence agriculture would work in a city, in air-condition, for much better pay then sharecropping. Even the higher paying "sweat shops" (or basic industrial centers) are better deals than busting one's ass in the fields. I think you're romanticizing too much here.

We're talking centuries too. It could simply be the case that very few are concerned because the marginal costs of the perceived problem simply aren't that high--at the moment. As decades and centuries past, then the increases in costs will drive people to seek cheaper means of production (whether it be for food, dealing with population density, crime, etc.). But my concern is that the government will inadvertently block a greater range of potential innovation through its unnecessary control, thus hampering humans within markets from figuring out these problems for themselves.

Agreed, but with the same provisos as before.

Furthermore, I would posit that a lot of the government's negative effect is again a function of population density. I'm very fond of Robert Heinlein's quote that, "any planet crowded enough to require identification cards is too crowded for me." That's an acknowledgement, perhaps not perfect but largely true, that certain things are an inevitable result of population. When communities get so big that people no longer recognise each other as individuals, identification cards become an inevitability. Tyrannical governments may push for them a little faster, but the freer countries will get there in time.

I'm not so sure. We see tyrannical governments ruling small populations (e.g. various small Central/South American and Africa countries) and also the same for larger populations, so just by looking at it, it seems that there's no correlation.

However, even if greater population density caused or was positively correlated with declining quality in government, then... so what? What are the effects of greater population density? Pollution, crime, less romantic work for Dukasaur, more use of government owned/controlled services, but.. again those are fundamentally problems of government. All I could say is that if your suggested correlation was true, then obviously government/central planning is incompetent in handling the issue.

Humans are remarkable for finding solutions to these problems (and a possible yet bigger and more immediate problem is one suggested by Tyler Cowen - The Great Stagnation). So long as others aren't waving guns around and forcing people under 'one-size-fits-all' "solutions," then I wouldn't be concerned as you are.

I only read second-hand reviews of the Cowen's book, but if I understand it correctly, it is in many ways supporting what I said. Once everybody has a refrigerator and a washing machine, there is little to be gained by investing in more and better refrigerator and washing machine production. Once your food is cold and your clothes are clean, what is the point? Sure, we now have fridges with clock radios in the door, and there's probably some value to that, but the big jump in standard of living comes with going from no fridge to fridge. Once you have a fridge, enhancing your life with a fridge that sounds the alarm just in case you fall asleep while pouring your orange juice is a pretty small improvement in your standard of living. I propose that your life would be more enhanced by a fridge that costs half the price, so that you can spend less time working and more time laying in a field of flowers admiring the butterflies.

Kinda, it's about the "low-hanging fruit" becoming less and less. Early, earth-shattering inventions greatly increased our prosperity (cars, planes, medicine, education, etc.), so Cowen asks, Where are the next inventions which will just be as significant? If there aren't any or hardly any, then we'll face a Great Stagnation.

I don't see that supporting your tying population density with all those problems.

Cowan bemoans the fact that free entertainment on the Internet contributes little to GDP (as opposed to traditional forms of entertainment) but so what? If the people are entertained, and at the same time they suffer from less bill-paying stress, that sounds like a win-win. One has to always be aware that everyone is both a producer and a consumer. When prices fall our producer-component suffers, but our consumer-component benefits.

You'll have to quote him on that.

[Dukasaur]

Unfortunately, GDP doesn't correlate well with quality of life, either. Grinding poverty is obviously an obstacle to having a good life, but once one reaches the satisfaction of basic needs, adding more wealth adds only tiny amounts of satisfaction. There are rapidly diminishing returns to adding more materialistic claptrap to your life, and the middle-class showoff with half-a-dozen ATVs in his garage rarely has time to ride any of them, and even then can only ride one at a time.

No, it's still a good enough proxy for cross-country comparisons--including quality of life. GDP has problems since it omits black market activities (or simply doesn't measure exchanges which are too difficult to calculate), so in this case it can underestimate actual GDP. We can also use life expectancy and mortality rates which are the industry standard for quality of life since they correlate so well with them. I'm not familiar with the data on that, but the research is probably out there if you're interested.{It's out there. Let me show you some.}

RE: underlined, well, that's just your opinion. You can't really speak for everyone else since value is subjective. The returns diminish quickly for you, but for others they don't, so... how would that affect your analysis?

No, it's not just my opinion. This is borne out by study after study.

First of all, Easterlin versus Wolfer:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101213151407.htm

Across a worldwide sample of 37 countries, rich and poor, ex-Communist and capitalist, Easterlin and his co-authors shows strikingly consistent results: over the long term, a sense of well-being within a country does not go up with income.

In contrast to shorter-term studies that have shown a correlation between income growth and happiness, this paper, to be published the week of Dec. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined the happiness and income relationship in each country for an average of 22 years and at least ten years.

"This article rebuts recent claims that there is a positive long-term relationship between happiness and income, when in fact, the relationship is nil," explained Easterlin, USC University Professor and professor of economics in the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.

(The 2010 Easterlin study was a rebuttal to the 2008 Wolfer study, which in turn claimed to refute Easterlin's 1974 study. Bottom line, despite Wolfer's massively-publicized claims that money correlates with happiness, it is not broadly true, and can only be made true by radically narrowing the data set.)

The Diener & Seligman study:
Full study: http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/Documents/Diener-Seligman_2004.pdf

An interesting little study from UBC:
http://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/files/2010/12/Money_giveth_money_taketh_away_-_Sept25.pdf

More important, Fischer and Boer:
Full study: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-1-164.pdf
abstract: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/06/buy-happiness.aspx

One of the most significant findings of Fisher and Boer is this:

“Across all three studies and four data sets, we observed a very consistent and robust finding that societal values of individualism were the best predictors of well-being,” the authors wrote. “Furthermore, if wealth was a significant predictor alone, this effect disappeared when individualism was entered.”

Countries with more freedom also tend to have more wealth. When numbers showing a correlation between GDP and happiness are filtered for freedom indicators, the correlation vanishes. Or put another way, wealth is wrongly getting the credit for happiness created by freedom.

Anyway, I leave you with all four of the above. Read them or don't, but it's definitely not "just my opinion."

Well, crime isn't caused by population density. You'd simply get more crime when you have more people around.

I addressed this already last time, and left you with another citation that you apparently didn't bother to look at:

http://people.su.se/~yvze0888/Model-NEG-Crime-05_April%202013.pdf

1 Introduction
It is well documented that there is more crime in big than in small cities (Glaeser and
Sacerdote, 1999; Kahn, 2010). For example, the rate of violent crime in cities with more
than 250,000 population is 346 per 100,000 inhabitants whereas in cities with less than
10,000 inhabitants, the rate of violent crime is just 176 per 100,000 (Glaeser, 1998).

rate of violent crime in cities with more
than 250,000 population is 346 per 100,000 inhabitants whereas in cities with less than
10,000 inhabitants, the rate of violent crime is just 176 per 100,000 -- that's called a non-linear relationship. A non-linear relationship is evidence of causality. If "you'd simply get more crime with more people around" the relationship would be linear, but it's not. Higher population densities result in more crime per capita, because the dehumanizing influence of the overcrowding is a stressor that causes more conflict.

Conflict is a power function of population density. It's a function of other factors too, of course, but population density is the one that reigns unequivocal. Anybody who has ever raised rodents commercially can tell you that if you put twice as many rats in a cage, you will have four times as many fights. Humans are not that different from other animals. Give them their space and they'll be friendly and relaxed. Jam them into nightmare shitholes and they become aggressive and nasty.

The fundamental problem is managerial (government), in its inability to correctly allocate various resources and strategies for combating crime. Overcrowding in (government-owned) subways seems to me that the problem is obvious (it's government). If the government owned and/or controlled shoe production, we'd get surpluses and shortages where people seemingly fight for scarce shoes because "population pressure."

Sure, bad government exacerbates the stresses of population pressure. That doesn't mean the underlying stress isnt' there.

Pollution's another issue which I could go on for days, but I'll keep it short. The negative externalities from pollution are fundamentally due to the courts inability to curb what are essentially trespasses of property (i.e. people dumping pollution in your yard and on your body, e.g. air pollution). Instead, the government plays games with voters over "environmental" regulation while wheeling and dealing with select business. Again, government--not growing population--is the main culprit here.

You always quote me these sophomoric arguments as if you've again forgotten that I wasted seven years of my life as a full-time Libertarian activist. I know all this, I can quote it as well as you can. Tragedy of the Commons, blah blah blah, entirely manageable through existing tort law if the tort law wasn't hamstrung by legislation, yadda yadda yadda. As a locksmith can pick his own lock, I can shred all these arguments that I once used.

I too will be brief, because I should be sleeping.

Tragedy of the Commons describes land, and on land it works well enough. Land can be subdivided and fenced off, and if I catch you throwing garbage on my lawn I can take you to court. All well and good, but it fails entirely when applied to the air and water.

Air and water cannot be subdivided and fenced off, and even though tiny portions of them can be, those portions cease to be part of the air and water. The point of the atmosphere and hydrosphere is that they circulate freely. They move solar heat, fresh water, and numerous essential elements from places on earth that have a surplus to places that have a shortage. Even if by some great expenditure you could fence off the air above your land, it would cease to be part of "the atmosphere" as we know it. By not circulating freely, it would fail to move moisture from the oceans to the land, it would fail to move heat from the tropics to the poles, it would fail to move oxygen from the jungles to the cities, and so on.

We can refuse to have a "Commons" on land, but we cannot refuse to have a "Commons" in the air and in the water, so Tragedy or no Tragedy, that is what we have to work with. It has to be treated as communal property because any non-communal use of it destroys its function.

Furthermore, assaults on this Commons cannot be assessed with any reliability. A molecule of sulfur dioxide from a Russian steel mill is exactly the same as a molecule of sulfur dioxide from an American steel mill. A molecule of benzene from a Chinese chemical plant is exactly the same as a molecule of benzene from a French chemical plant. So, while there might be some liability under tort law in a few extreme cases (someone directly downwind from a steel mill that is extraordinarily careless with emissions) most of us will never know, and can never know reliably, where the pollutants that are destroying our Commons are coming from. Tort law can never address this, because within any reasonable rules of evidence you will never be able to show that the molecule of benzene which gave you brain cancer came from a plastics factory in Shanghai or from my truck. This Commons will always be Common and a Communal solution will have to be found.

[BigBallinStalin]

Unfortunately, GDP doesn't correlate well with quality of life, either. Grinding poverty is obviously an obstacle to having a good life, but once one reaches the satisfaction of basic needs, adding more wealth adds only tiny amounts of satisfaction. There are rapidly diminishing returns to adding more materialistic claptrap to your life, and the middle-class showoff with half-a-dozen ATVs in his garage rarely has time to ride any of them, and even then can only ride one at a time.

No, it's still a good enough proxy for cross-country comparisons--including quality of life. GDP has problems since it omits black market activities (or simply doesn't measure exchanges which are too difficult to calculate), so in this case it can underestimate actual GDP. We can also use life expectancy and mortality rates which are the industry standard for quality of life since they correlate so well with them. I'm not familiar with the data on that, but the research is probably out there if you're interested.{It's out there. Let me show you some.}

RE: underlined, well, that's just your opinion. You can't really speak for everyone else since value is subjective. The returns diminish quickly for you, but for others they don't, so... how would that affect your analysis?

No, it's not just my opinion. This is borne out by study after study.

First of all, Easterlin versus Wolfer:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101213151407.htm

Across a worldwide sample of 37 countries, rich and poor, ex-Communist and capitalist, Easterlin and his co-authors shows strikingly consistent results: over the long term, a sense of well-being within a country does not go up with income.

In contrast to shorter-term studies that have shown a correlation between income growth and happiness, this paper, to be published the week of Dec. 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined the happiness and income relationship in each country for an average of 22 years and at least ten years.

"This article rebuts recent claims that there is a positive long-term relationship between happiness and income, when in fact, the relationship is nil," explained Easterlin, USC University Professor and professor of economics in the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.

(The 2010 Easterlin study was a rebuttal to the 2008 Wolfer study, which in turn claimed to refute Easterlin's 1974 study. Bottom line, despite Wolfer's massively-publicized claims that money correlates with happiness, it is not broadly true, and can only be made true by radically narrowing the data set.)

The Diener & Seligman study:
Full study: http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/Documents/Diener-Seligman_2004.pdf

An interesting little study from UBC:
http://dunn.psych.ubc.ca/files/2010/12/Money_giveth_money_taketh_away_-_Sept25.pdf

More important, Fischer and Boer:
Full study: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-101-1-164.pdf
abstract: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/06/buy-happiness.aspx

One of the most significant findings of Fisher and Boer is this:

“Across all three studies and four data sets, we observed a very consistent and robust finding that societal values of individualism were the best predictors of well-being,” the authors wrote. “Furthermore, if wealth was a significant predictor alone, this effect disappeared when individualism was entered.”

Countries with more freedom also tend to have more wealth. When numbers showing a correlation between GDP and happiness are filtered for freedom indicators, the correlation vanishes. Or put another way, wealth is wrongly getting the credit for happiness created by freedom.

Anyway, I leave you with all four of the above. Read them or don't, but it's definitely not "just my opinion."

There's conflicting reports about happiness indices. I thought we were talking about GDP, not income, so <shrugs>... I'm not that interested in pulling up articles which contradict yours, or to provide other findings. I've seen plenty of them; they vary tremendously, which is why I don't find happiness indices to be useful.

"There are rapidly diminishing returns to adding more materialistic claptrap to your life," and that's still your opinion. People value things subjectively, and nothing within those reports denied that. You can look at correlations and aggregates all day, but even by swapping "income" for "materialistic claptrap," you'd still need to graph everyone's (or some large sample's) utility per "claptrap" over time. None of those studies do that, so you didn't provide any evidence which demonstrates that your opinion is true. I don't know why you're arguing that value is objective.

Well, crime isn't caused by population density. You'd simply get more crime when you have more people around.

I addressed this already last time, and left you with another citation that you apparently didn't bother to look at:

http://people.su.se/~yvze0888/Model-NEG-Crime-05_April%202013.pdf

1 Introduction
It is well documented that there is more crime in big than in small cities (Glaeser and
Sacerdote, 1999; Kahn, 2010). For example, the rate of violent crime in cities with more
than 250,000 population is 346 per 100,000 inhabitants whereas in cities with less than
10,000 inhabitants, the rate of violent crime is just 176 per 100,000 (Glaeser, 1998).

rate of violent crime in cities with more
than 250,000 population is 346 per 100,000 inhabitants whereas in cities with less than
10,000 inhabitants, the rate of violent crime is just 176 per 100,000 -- that's called a non-linear relationship. A non-linear relationship is evidence of causality. If "you'd simply get more crime with more people around" the relationship would be linear, but it's not. Higher population densities result in more crime per capita, because the dehumanizing influence of the overcrowding is a stressor that causes more conflict.

Conflict is a power function of population density. It's a function of other factors too, of course, but population density is the one that reigns unequivocal. Anybody who has ever raised rodents commercially can tell you that if you put twice as many rats in a cage, you will have four times as many fights. Humans are not that different from other animals. Give them their space and they'll be friendly and relaxed. Jam them into nightmare shitholes and they become aggressive and nasty.

Correlation != causation, even with "non-linear relationships" (is that the right term?)

If the crime rates rise exponentially, then so what? There's "network effects" at play, or the government is worse at dealing with more significant problems. Population density itself isn't the 'end-all-be-all' of causes here because one probably can't control for relevant variables (e.g. all the ones I've been mentioning).

The fundamental problem is managerial (government), in its inability to correctly allocate various resources and strategies for combating crime. Overcrowding in (government-owned) subways seems to me that the problem is obvious (it's government). If the government owned and/or controlled shoe production, we'd get surpluses and shortages where people seemingly fight for scarce shoes because "population pressure."

Sure, bad government exacerbates the stresses of population pressure. That doesn't mean the underlying stress isnt' there.

I wouldn't call it "underlying." Underlying your concern is a managerial problem, government. As I said, "If the government owned and/or controlled shoe production, we'd get surpluses and shortages where people seemingly fight for scarce shoes because "population pressure."

That wouldn't be "growing population" causing the inefficiency (which we see with larger cities), because "growing populations" in cities don't cause mass problems with clothing. It's the process; whether it's political or market. That's the fundamental point.

Pollution's another issue which I could go on for days, but I'll keep it short. The negative externalities from pollution are fundamentally due to the courts inability to curb what are essentially trespasses of property (i.e. people dumping pollution in your yard and on your body, e.g. air pollution). Instead, the government plays games with voters over "environmental" regulation while wheeling and dealing with select business. Again, government--not growing population--is the main culprit here.

You always quote me these sophomoric arguments as if you've again forgotten that I wasted seven years of my life as a full-time Libertarian activist. I know all this, I can quote it as well as you can. Tragedy of the Commons, blah blah blah, entirely manageable through existing tort law if the tort law wasn't hamstrung by legislation, yadda yadda yadda. As a locksmith can pick his own lock, I can shred all these arguments that I once used.

I apology profusely for not typing 20 paragraphs for you.

I too will be brief, because I should be sleeping.

Tragedy of the Commons describes land, and on land it works well enough. Land can be subdivided and fenced off, and if I catch you throwing garbage on my lawn I can take you to court. All well and good, but it fails entirely when applied to the air and water.

Air and water cannot be subdivided and fenced off, and even though tiny portions of them can be, those portions cease to be part of the air and water. The point of the atmosphere and hydrosphere is that they circulate freely. They move solar heat, fresh water, and numerous essential elements from places on earth that have a surplus to places that have a shortage. Even if by some great expenditure you could fence off the air above your land, it would cease to be part of "the atmosphere" as we know it. By not circulating freely, it would fail to move moisture from the oceans to the land, it would fail to move heat from the tropics to the poles, it would fail to move oxygen from the jungles to the cities, and so on.

We can refuse to have a "Commons" on land, but we cannot refuse to have a "Commons" in the air and in the water, so Tragedy or no Tragedy, that is what we have to work with. It has to be treated as communal property because any non-communal use of it destroys its function.

You do know that bodies of water have been privatized, right? So, your argument on water falls apart--especially the underlined. Also, treating oceans/fisheries as "communal property" (or rather government controlled/owned) leads to its depletion--it depends on however you wish to define your terms. If you're interested, there's Governing the Commons to read.

There's a book forthcoming on oceans by Dr. Block.

RE: air, sure, but it's not like one can't engage in forensics to find culprits, and it's not like some of the main producers of air pollution (e.g. motorists) are being enticed with incentives to greatly curb their consumption (again, government-caused problem). You don't see the courts fining the owners of highways, do you? Simply because property rights of air aren't being enforced by centrally planned courts, it doesn't mean that in all cases it is impossible (as you've been suggesting). It only means that obviously the centrally planned solutions fail miserably.

You're pointing to an outcome which was caused mainly by central planning, and then conclude that no one can innovate their way outta water/air matters. That's a self-serving argument, which simply complements mine about government and fails to reject other possibilities (e.g. without central planning, or with significantly less central planning, etc.).

Furthermore, assaults on this Commons cannot be assessed with any reliability. A molecule of sulfur dioxide from a Russian steel mill is exactly the same as a molecule of sulfur dioxide from an American steel mill. A molecule of benzene from a Chinese chemical plant is exactly the same as a molecule of benzene from a French chemical plant. So, while there might be some liability under tort law in a few extreme cases (someone directly downwind from a steel mill that is extraordinarily careless with emissions) most of us will never know, and can never know reliably, where the pollutants that are destroying our Commons are coming from. Tort law can never address this, because within any reasonable rules of evidence you will never be able to show that the molecule of benzene which gave you brain cancer came from a plastics factory in Shanghai or from my truck. This Commons will always be Common and a Communal solution will have to be found.

I think you're mixing up the terms "The Commons" with "Communal." The tragedy of the commons is that no one can be excluded from using a resource, which then permanently becomes damaged. The issue is excludability--which can be attained "communally" or even "privately" (which are two phrases that aren't useful, e.g. a 'private' company could be 'communally' owned, so <shrugs>).

I don't think your standard must be the only one for determining guilt, do you? If not, then that leaves open plenty of innovation. The problem is whether or not the centrally planned courts and legislature are innovative enough to accommodate the demands of the market and civil society (since they aren't, then I don't see why you keep leading yourself to your main conclusion about the 'communal' or 'communal property'---which if defined as "government property," led us to the problems which concern you....)*

*If by 'communal', you mean "the community owns it" (whoever the community is... e.g. members). If it's members, then it's private property since it's excludable (must have membership). If it's not excludable, it's "communal" or "everybody 'owns' it." Again, most of this hinges on how you define your terms.


I assume you have no disagreement with the ommitted responses from my last post? Those were more interesting, tbh.

[mordigan]

western countries have far higher rates of suicide than countries such as syria, pakistan, venezuela, haiti and azerbaijan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... icide_rate

[Lootifer]

You are correct. But what are you implying?

[BigBallinStalin]

That he enjoys trolling.

[Lootifer]

Maybe, but I read some interesting (albeit subjective) implications into that statistic.

The main one being that the closer we are to acting like animals (not literally gnawing at bones and throwing poop around, but fighting for ones life, alpha-male dominated society, etc etc) the more psychologically comfortable we are. Dont get me wrong, I am a liberal through and through and believe that moving away from animalistic instincts is a rather good thing; I just believe we should recognise this issue and work to try and understand it (maybe we are...?).

[nietzsche]

Maybe comfort allows some of the individuals to spend quite a lot of time in their heads, and the conflicting ideas make some commit suicide.

I've also noticed that with comfort people tend to spend a lot of time alone, missing spending time with others that has huge therapeutic effects.

We don't have to wait for a study to say "this is the only cause". Once these studies are available, people tend to encase everyone into those causes and they themselves tend then to buy it.


Suicide ideation is a great source of illusion of power, those who are depressed are excercising their right to stop suffering. In some countries this is not available in the mind of some (until greater despair) because of the religious and cultural environment.

Just a bunch of possibilities.

[BigBallinStalin]

Maybe, but I read some interesting (albeit subjective) implications into that statistic.

The main one being that the closer we are to acting like animals (not literally gnawing at bones and throwing poop around, but fighting for ones life, alpha-male dominated society, etc etc) the more psychologically comfortable we are. Dont get me wrong, I am a liberal through and through and believe that moving away from animalistic instincts is a rather good thing; I just believe we should recognise this issue and work to try and understand it (maybe we are...?).

Huh? How'd you come to that conclusion from looking at suicide rates?

Are you implying that some countries have more "animalistic" denizens than others? If so, would you prefer the word "barbaric"? How about "savages"?

Using excel, here's the top 20:

Country, Year, (if single digit, imagine a 0 before it), Males, Females, BOTH

LITHUANIA 9 61.3 10.4 71.7
RUSSIAN FEDERATION 6 53.9 9.5 63.4
REPUBLIC OF KOREA 9 39.9 22.1 62
SRI LANKA 91 44.6 16.8 61.4
BELARUS 7 48.7 8.8 57.5
GUYANA 6 39 13.4 52.4
KAZAKHSTAN 8 43 9.4 52.4
HUNGARY 9 40 10.6 50.6
JAPAN 9 36.2 13.2 49.4
LATVIA 9 40 8.2 48.2
UKRAINE 9 37.8 7 44.8
SLOVENIA 9 34.6 9.4 44
BELGIUM 5 28.8 10.3 39.1
FINLAND 9 29 10 39
SERBIA 9 28.1 10 38.1
ESTONIA 8 30.6 7.3 37.9
CROATIA 9 28.9 7.5 36.4
SWITZERLAND 7 24.8 11.4 36.2
REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA 8 30.1 5.6 35.7

Looks like the former Soviet Union maintained a nice legacy there.

[Woodruff]

Maybe, but I read some interesting (albeit subjective) implications into that statistic.

The main one being that the closer we are to acting like animals (not literally gnawing at bones and throwing poop around, but fighting for ones life, alpha-male dominated society, etc etc) the more psychologically comfortable we are. Dont get me wrong, I am a liberal through and through and believe that moving away from animalistic instincts is a rather good thing; I just believe we should recognise this issue and work to try and understand it (maybe we are...?).

I don't know if "comfortable" is the right way to look at it. It seems to me that the more "animalistic" one's life is, the more likely one is to not really consider suicide, as they're too busy simply trying to stay alive. I know it sounds as if it would be oxy-moronic, but I don't believe it is.

[BigBallinStalin]

Here's some guy from the MotleyFool forum, ranking economic freedom, GDP, and Forbes' measurement for happiness:

[*]Country IEF GDP FHR
Austrl. 1 5 9
NZlnd. 2 20 6
Switz. 3 3 10
Canada 4 9 7
Ireland 5 10 16
Denmark 6 4 1
USA 7 7 11
Chile 8 32 20
Lux. 9 1 18
Estonia 10 29 32
Neth. 11 8 5
U.K. 12 18 14
Finland 13 12 2
Japan 14 13 31
Austria 15 11 12
Sweden 16 6 4
Germany 17 16 19
Czech 18 27 21
Norway 19 2 3
Spain 20 21 23
Belgium 21 14 13
SKorea 22 26 27
Slovk. 23 28 30
Israel 24 22 8
Iceland 25 17 17
Mexico 26 34 15
Hungary 27 30 33
France 28 15 24
Slovn. 29 24 28
Turkey 30 33 34
Poland 31 31 26
Port. 32 25 29
Italy 33 19 22
Greece 34 23 25

(not sure how to make it look nicer), but it's interesting.
http://boards.fool.com/economic-freedom-vs-gdp-vs-happiness-29361404.aspx?sort=whole#29361404

[nietzsche]

(not sure how to make it look nicer), but it's interesting.

So you admit to be trying to manipulate us.

[BigBallinStalin]

(not sure how to make it look nicer), but it's interesting.

So you admit to be trying to manipulate us.

Are you feeling suicidal, nietz? Don't do it!

[john9blue]

Maybe, but I read some interesting (albeit subjective) implications into that statistic.

The main one being that the closer we are to acting like animals (not literally gnawing at bones and throwing poop around, but fighting for ones life, alpha-male dominated society, etc etc) the more psychologically comfortable we are. Dont get me wrong, I am a liberal through and through and believe that moving away from animalistic instincts is a rather good thing; I just believe we should recognise this issue and work to try and understand it (maybe we are...?).

i think you're right. there is scientific evidence which suggests that intelligence correlates with maladjustment and depression.

[Lootifer]

I analysed the two wikipedia articles (standard of living and suicide rates) and it showed a very weak positive correlation. This was largely affected by the countries above 15 suicides per 100,000 people where there seems to be no correlation.

If you assume that those very high countries are outliers and only look at those countries with less than 15 suicides per 100,000 then you get a pretty strong relationship indeed. Of course there is no objective reason for this assumption, my only rationale is that maybe at the high end there is some cultural distortion (e.g. Japanese culture has long had a more accepting* view of suicide).

* relatively speaking

ps:
full set: suicides=1.11(std of living)+3.02 (R2=0.02 <- LOL)
taking out above 15/100000: suicides=2.06(std of living)-6.33 (R2=0.26 - ugly but pretty strong)

[mordigan]

the correlation you found is that the more developed countries have higher suicide rates?

[Lootifer]

Kind of. At the high end of the scale there seems to be no relationship. However if you take out the countries with high levels the relationship does become apparent (nad is as you say).

However it comes with a HUGE level of uncertainty/error, boardering on being so high that you cant really make any firm conclusions (without subjective assumptions).