Given enough people enough guns and school shootings are inevitable.

Allow a handful of people that grab the economy and all means of production and violence will be the result.

At this point in time it is simply cause and effect, the surprising thing to me is how long it is holding together. But at the rate the economy is being wrecked I fail to see how it will do so for much longer.

Effectively the French elites started the French revolution by being a little bit more greedy than the population would have tolerated. That set off an avalanche of what were effectively a series of mini revolutions ultimately resulting in modern France, which is in many ways unlike any other country in the world. The United States had its war of independence (aided by France, by the way), and then its civil war. But it never had a class war - yet - and this article presages that class war.

It could well be that the small number of rich people that are currently effectively a government outside of the government genuinely believe that their wealth and power insulate them from the consequences of pushing their greed and wealthy to ridiculous levels. But I suspect the author is right in that this is approaching some kind of threshold and I have no way of seeing across the divide, I'm hoping for another France rather than another Somalia.

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skybrian 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Crime isn't a simple cause and effect relationship just because you say it is.

For example, in the US, bomb threats were very common in the early 70's and then they stopped and nobody really knows why.

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jacquesm 2 hours ago | parent [-]

These two things don't have a whole lot to do with each other.

Sure, crime isn't 'simple cause and effect'. But it is still as simple as 'means, motive, opportunity' and if means are plentiful that reduces the friction on the way to crime.

As for the bomb threats, I have no idea, but I also don't see them as the kind of crime that we are discussion here (violence, in particular). Bomb threats are a denial of service attack, actually killing or wounding people is on another level (at least, it is for me).

One suggestion: the widespread use of ANI + mobile phones and the disappearance of pay-phones + cameras on every street corner make it a lot harder to call in a bomb threat without getting caught.

	▲	skybrian 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		"Means, motive, opportunity" is a helpful framework, but that doesn't make violence predictable. For example, there are many religions and ideologies that people can latch onto and which crazies get motivated by what ideology doesn't seem all that predictable? It could come from any political point of view or be based on something obscure.