This question will require some explaining, so bear with me (I phrased it how I did because I wanted to emphasize one of the connections). I ask this here because economics seem to be a huge topic here, especially when it comes to certain schools of thought (not that I’m judging, you have your reasons).
So here is me trying to explain my question.
First, I must admit I find the concept of a minimum wage to be, for a lack of a better word, incomplete (weird? not well-oiled? I couldn’t find the word). While being based by the hour albeit not factoring in the amount of work done, I understand basic existence amounts to a certain etimated value, and you don’t want overhaggling, so a glass floor is made. But a glass floor can break under pressure. But I digress.
Anyways, I was talking to someone about the concept, and we started using analogies using letters in place of concepts: “W cannot pay X a certain amount of Y so in order to pay to live she goes to Z.”
It was one of those no-context moments, so our minds were drawn to a third friend who related to it platonically, this person wasn’t mentally compatible with most social groups, so then criminals (the Z) would come and say “come join us, we have the friends you’re looking for”.
He added, “police consider ‘bad crowds’ a huge problem, but nobody pays the involuntary loners any minimum due, no glass floor provided by the public sector, no nothing, and the wrong people get the upper hand here because they’re there to farm you while you just want someone to value you enough in a way that translates well to you, and our bedroom community becomes a gossip-cursed cesspool because there is no adhesive”. Should point out this isn’t a new thought process, in fact it’s relevant to me occupationally.
Promoters of universal basic necessities of Lemmy, why is there a lacking here? Is it not weird we (officially) have it out for one aspect but not the other?
I think you are confusing the concept of minimum wage with the glass floor. These are not the same things.
That reddit post is a charitable interpretation, but if it’s what you are saying, then first comment summarizes it best with ‘state mandated friendships’. In which case, I would argue that isn’t going to solve crime. Let’s take the US which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world as an example. People aren’t becoming criminals just because they don’t have friends, they become criminals because of a lack of social safety nets such as universal healthcare, accessible housing, homeless shelters, livable wages, public transit, progressive taxes, affordable childcare, drug addiction treatment safe spaces. They are also pushed into being criminalized by for profit prisons, the war on drugs, lack of gun control, police brutality, redlining and racism.
There is so much more than that the lack of friendships that goes into why people become criminals. We need to stop looking at it as just a matter of moral failure of individuals, and start looking at the systemic reasons to why people commit crimes.
You say that like the reason people become criminals doesn’t vary between people. Is what’s described not itself a form of social safety net? What then is the point of what it’s based on if that itself isn’t significant enough to matter in the grand scheme?
I just listed a myriad of reasons why people might become criminals, and I never said that lack of friendships isn’t one, I said it’s not the only one. Friendships are hardly a social safety net. Having friends doesn’t guarantee you food, shelter, or safety.
Hence my point. I’d say treat all the reasons the same. Whether that means no accommodations or all possible accommodations.
Lack of friendships isn’t a systemic contributor to crime though. Even if it were, trying to prevent crime through legally mandated friendships is as futile as going up to people and saying ‘ok kiddo, don’t do crime now’ because that’s not how people work. Having friends, let alone ones forced upon you, doesn’t mean much when you’re struggling to make ends meet or if you grew up in low income neighborhoods and have few alternatives.
How would you define “systemic” if criminals are demonstrated to use it against the disadvantaged (I’m wondering if you’re visualizing older criminals or younger criminals, of course it’s an age-biased thing) on a cyclic/catch-22 level? That would imply a kind of importance, no?
The article that you linked is about how social isolation is linked to drug use, which is linked to criminal activity.
First, not all criminals are drug users. Second, not all drug users are criminal in nature. Part of the war on drugs that I mentioned is the overly harsh sentencing of ‘criminals’ over possession. Until recently in most parts of the world, possessing marijuana is a grave legal offense and punishable with jail time. Now it has been decriminalized and turned into a hobby in many countries like Canada, Australia, Thailand, Mexico to name a few. The definition of ‘criminals’ relative to drug use is changing.
Addressing social isolation is a bandaid fix to a much larger problem of not providing social safety nets to people and forcing them to turn to drugs as a mean of coping with the shitty times we live in. When people are housed, fed and clothed, they will have time to make friends. Right now, making friends is on the bottom of most people’s priority while making rent and not starving to death is on the top.
The words “are” and “demonstrated” both have a different link.
Extremism and crime are not the same thing. Just like what I said about drug use, not all criminals are political extremists and not all political extremists are criminals.
Criminals are not a homogeneous group. They aren’t all caricatures of evil that we see in cartoons, they aren’t all lonely, and they may not even be destitute. Crimes can be vaguely grouped into violent crime, property crime, white-collar crime, organized crime, and consensual or victimless crime. Think of the types of people who may commit crimes in each category.