OT Celebration (Not intended to be offensive, possible humor)

From: Jerome Fine <jhfine_at_idirect.com>
Date: Sat Jul 7 14:38:09 2001

>Mike Ford wrote:

> My only great concern is that drug related crime, mostly addicts stealing
> to get a fix, is not compressible. Many forces combine together to keep the
> flow of drug related cash going at the same level or higher, and that
> meanseffective measures don't tend to stop crime, just to shift it, and so
> far each shift is to actually worse crimes. Car theft shifts to carjacking,
> home invasion increases, all the really nasty stuff instead of fairly
> benign property theft.

Jerome Fine replies:

Before anyone suggests any additional solutions to stop "criminal activity", I
suggest that a very detailed study be made of how the US handled prohibition
and its subsequent abolition. From how I understand prohibition was handled,
the first step was to concede that it was impossible to enforce. After that,
everything else was probably mishandled - as politicians are apt to do - and
the end result was a lot of unemployed criminals (bootleggers) who had
made a lot of money and had built up an infrastructure that needed to be used -
to make more money for the ex-bootleggers. Maybe similar to what happened
in Russia after the collapse in 1990. I also think that there is a strong link
between the lack of social justice within so-called democracies and the number
of people who commit crimes. So that while the link between the lack of social
justice in a dictatorship and the number of people who commit crimes is easier
to understand and see in a dictatorship (either the left like communism or the right
like fascism), I suggest that countries which have a higher than average crime rate
(and therefore more people in jail on average than other countries) should look
at their priorities. A repressive and less fare criminal justice system (especially
in Canada for the poor, blacks and native North Americans and in the US for
the poor and racial minorities - I get the impression that there are no longer
enough native North Americans in the US to cause a problem any longer - I
have not mentioned any other countries that are so-called democracies since
I don't know enough about the local conditions) is definitely a substitute for
spending on social justice (access to health care in the US is just one example),
but I wonder if supporting a non-productive prison population is more effective
than providing a minimum of health care?

And while the above observations are very simplistic, I also see the same attitudes
reflected in the activities that Microsoft practices that were found to be illegal.
I don't know which is worse? Illegal activity by the government, by companies
or by individuals?

I do suggest that in many cases, like with drug problems referred to above in the
US, any attempt to suppress just the symptoms rather than the cause is likely
going to fail. Any even with a program that is providing a vital service, such
as with health care - who is checking to see if the service is carefully and safely
delivered? Are there any test cases fed into the system (blind tests would be
absolutely necessary) to determine how effective the system is being run? For
example, do the police ever have to account for having made errors in how
they handle a case or a nurse ever have to account for patient care or a doctor
on treatment options. A 1% to 2% blind test case load for every institution to
determine the extent to which errors are made should be mandatory in my
opinion just as we have checksums on EVERY disk block so that we can
determine if any errors are taking place. If we can checksum every disk block
and insist on error rates of less than 1 in a trillion, why should a hospital be
allowed to refuse to audit all care and accept blind tests for a minimum of at
least 1% ot their case load? Likewise, lab tests, police, welfare offices, vets,
politicians, lawyers, programmers, etc.

Sincerely yours,

Jerome Fine
Received on Sat Jul 07 2001 - 14:38:09 BST