Fewer crimes happen these days yes, but that just means that the media can cover more of them that do happen, so we are more informed of crime than we ever have been in the past.

Thus, the news sources end up propagating this false idea that crime is actually on the rise because they work hard at keeping this news always at the forefront of people's minds.

multiculturalism makes people more suspicious and distrustful, regardless of the actual state of physical safety and security. sucks, but our brain is wired that way.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-06-25jl.html

    Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
    Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.

As the depression deepens, you'll see states start to close down detention facilities. Add to that a huge unemployment rate among the young and poor, and you're just asking for fireworks.

On a related note I saw the other day that one percent of the us population is in jail. A huge amount of basic bits and bobs like military gear and paint (90% of domestic pain production for example) are made by prisoners (some might say as slave labour!). One in ten black men are in prison. 2 in ten have been in prison at some point. This numbers gobsnacked me (passed on for informational purposes only :-))

Media hype of "orange alerts," "red alerts," etc. is just a clever way to get people to accept $1.5 trillion/year of military related spending each year (in the USA).

Sure, crime, terrorism, rogue governments like Israel and Iran, etc. are some danger to the world population, but I believe that the trend is towards a safer world.

First of all, lower crime rates doesn't necessarily mean that less crime is happening. It means that less crime is getting reported. There is a huge difference. For instance, you may notice that crime rates in Britain skyrocketed the same year they passed a handgun ban. As it turns out, they also switched to a more accurate crime reporting system that same year which caused the spike.

Secondly, crime rates are difficult to analyze. Saying "crime is going down" is like saying "sickness is going down". There are lots of different kinds of crime with lots of different motivations behind each, and those kinds of broad generalizations are rarely useful.

So while I do feel that the media is playing games with the American public, I also can't blame the public for not being more educated on crime rates.

For an example that many consider trivial, cursing is at an all time high. Cursing's purpose in life is to convey and share anger: it is not conducive to high quality, cheerful life. There is research in psychology that shows that expressing anger leads to more, not less, of it. I actually consider quitting HackerNews entirely due to the poor quality of auto-removal of cursing in titles, text, and remarks. I am very repulsed by the ruby community for the same reason. For exaple, ruby sub, an email client has an homepage that features cursing. I just feel ick and don't even want to try it any more.

A second glaring example, imho, is vandalism. Nowadays, when I accosted a vandal in NYC, he gave me the NY Times' justifications for his crime. He said "it's art!" and "I'm black and I'm angry!" He has absorbed all the anti-capitalist myths; I am sure he never read Atlas Shrugged! The amount of property destruction is enormous. That is crime and that is way way up.

In some ways, the world is getting alot better: Ayn Rand's philosophy is being developed and publicized. Those who uphold her ideas of independence, rationality, etc, are very civilized. Thus it's a race between her ideas and those of Kant.

Basically, in the US, states that legalized abortions after Roe v Wade 1973 noticed a drop-off in crime starting around 1990, whereas states that did not legalize abortion did not see a drop. He claimed that changes in police methods around the same time were not so statistically significant in altering the crime rate.

Their two main explanations are:

1. Increasingly nationalized "local" news means that when rare but gruesome crimes happen, instead of just the city or county where they happen being outraged, now the whole country is outraged.

2. A lot of the decrease in violent crime, for the UK at least, is a decrease in violent crime by people known to the attacker, like domestic violence. Crime by strangers is not down nearly as much, and is the kind people mostly mean when they're worried about crime--- they're worried about some guy on the street mugging them, or a robber breaking into their house.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...