i think politicians have seriously underestimated how much people don't like crime, and most people would take constant surveillance if it could actually improve feelings of safety in urban environments.

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eitally 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think it's also true that many people are wildly out of touch when they think about how "safe" their local municipality is.

The Bay Area is objectively safe, for example, yet I constantly run into neighbors in affluent neighborhoods who are afraid of venturing various places, letting their kids play outside or bike to school, or just generally exploring around.

I was at a BayFC match last weekend, for example, and ran into the family of an acquaintance from my elementary daughter's school. They have an 8th grader and are trying to get an intra-district transfer approved for high school so she doesn't have to go to the neighborhood school where a student brought a ghost gun on campus 3 years ago (he was arrested and successfully prosecuted, and no one was hurt)... and instead go to the local school where a handful of kids arranged their bodies in a swastika pattern on the football field (and photographed it!) several months ago. My point isn't that either of these crimes is acceptable, but that people tend to be irrational and ignorant of statistical analysis. Both of these are good schools with better than average student outcomes, but families consistently bring their own prejudices into analysis and it creates mild chaos & havoc across the system overall.

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ryandrake an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The US media has completely fooled the public into thinking their town is a violent hellhole, and that a trip to the grocery store is endangering their lives. Fact is, violent crime has been plummeting for decades, and unless you live in one of a handful of very small hotspots, Americans live in one of the safest times in the country's history. Yet, people's perception of crime as a problem has been going up and up.

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anthonypasq 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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dmoy 3 hours ago | parent [-]

San Francisco homicide rate is like what, 2x Berlin and 3x London, so Berlin is half a Mad Max?

	▲	anthonypasq 10 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		you think people in those cities didn't wish they were as safe as Tokyo? maybe i was a little too focused on America specifically, we are just by far the worst. but also imagine thinking the richest city on the entire planet should just be fine with 3x the homicide rate of other comparable cities and 20-30x worse than Beijing or Tokyo. I mean its just embarrassing that you think your comment is defensible. We've completely resigned ourselves to living in the most dangerous developed country by a long shot for no good reason.

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energy123 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Enforcing public safety effectively is one of the most pro-democracy things you can do. Otherwise people use democracy to elect public safety authoritarians like the wildly popular Bukele and Duterte.

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cucumber3732842 4 hours ago | parent [-]

So we should 1984 the crap out of ourselves because if we don't we'll elect an authoritarian who'll 1984 the crap out of us?

Reminds me of this classic: https://static.poder360.com.br/2020/11/2020-11-07-22.31.49.j...

Yeah, I'm all for public safety in theory but seems like these days that's just a dog whistle for "go hard on whatever sort of petty deviance I don't like" and so I'm unwilling to support things like that in the default case. It's all just so tiresome.

	▲	krastanov 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I read OP differently. I thought they said "we should invest in non-dystopian public safety[1] to avoid dystopian populist creating a 1984 version of public safety". [1]: I imagine this includes things like mental heath help, housing, and other related social safety nets.

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an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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chermi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's been both normalized and suppressed. I'm old enough to remember not being to able to point out SF crime problems without being called a fascist. It's denial, it's perverse. Noah smith claims that our(USA) "solution" to it, besides just ignoring it, was basically giving up on cities and moving to suburbs.

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yabutlivnWoods 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Often what we criminalize is stupid.

Giving away food to homeless is a crime in many places. Bad capitalism.

Feelings of insecurity are manufactured relative to the danger posed:

https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die...

	▲	StackRanker3000 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Giving away food to homeless is a crime in many places. Bad capitalism. How is this due to capitalism? I mean, I can maybe see how you can tie it to NIMBYism, and from there to capitalism through the desire to maintain or increase property values. But that's a stretch, and only one mechanism There are many drivers for this type of regulation, some more well-meaning than others. Most of them would not go away simply because we ceased private ownership of the means of production
	▲	Nasrudith 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		It is antithetical to capitalism as well. The whole basis of capitalism is property rights, and it generally encourages the public doing things themselves instead as private individuals instead of relying upon a bureaucrat or public agency to do everything unless there is a major reason not to. And here they are telling you that you cannot use your own property to help alleviate issues in your community. That sounds more like an exaggeration of Communist attempts at division of labor and to 'organize' a civilization.
	▲	anthonypasq 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[flagged]