The decline in US crime since 1990 has been attributed to the vigorous incarceration of pot-smokers as Stirling says, and also to the liberalization of gun laws in most states since 1986, and also to the abortion since 1973 of large numbers of babies who were destined to be no-hopers.

Edited by author 07-10-2005 08:51 PM

It turns out that there's a specific set of brain activities associated with "intent to deceive", and that they can be detected.

Do you have a reference for that? Only I suddenly had this delicious thought that anyone with the skills of writing fiction would be able to deliver untruths without using that area of the brain, simply by presenting the matter as a story ... novelists as undetectable master criminals.

I'll return to the ID cards issue another time; I've checked in late after clocking up a couple thousand words and the above is indicative of the condition of my brain right now.

It turns out that there's a specific set of brain activities associated with "intent to deceive", and that they can be detected.

That'll be fun - we'll see people accused of lying because they tried to hide the fact that they were admiring the interviewer's ass.

BTW, it looks as if we'll have a _real_ lie detector soon, one that works with a virtual 100% efficiency.

It turns out that there's a specific set of brain activities associated with "intent to deceive", and that they can be detected.

Now, won't _that_ put the cat among the pigeons...

>Yes, but you've moved the goalposts.

-- you've got a point there, but we were discussing ID-cars-in-general, or possibly the Platonic Ideal of ID cards, not merely a specific proposal, weren't we?

>abolition of cash

-- no, that didn't come into it. However, cash is gradually becoming less important anyway. I hardly ever use it except for some vending machines anyway, for example -- all my usual shopping is done via debit card.

What I was speculating about was consolidating all identity documents into one; an ATM card is an identity document, after all, simply a private one.

And ATM cards are set to aquire biometric identification rather soon; the companies are already running trial programs. No PIN number; just in with the card and then a retina and/or fingerprint scan -- eventually an instant DNA analysis too, I suppose.

>regulations

-- well, if we had infinite transparency, it would be a strong incentive to eliminate regulations which only survive because everyone knows they can't really be enforced.

Yes, but you've moved the goalposts.

What you're suggesting isn't an ID card scheme, it's an ID card scheme as the lynchpin (if we were going to go into this in detail, point-failure-source) of a massive amplification of the state's role in everyday life, a restructuring of consumer credit and retail banking, abolition of cash and pervasive surveillance. (The driver's licence is already a photo ID document).

Those things _would_ help prevent and detect crime, but not to an extent that justifies either the massive reorganisation cost or the massive hit to civil liberties they would entail. And for me, the line on that one is that it had better reduce crime by more than an order of magnitude and cost less than an hour's wages per head per annum before I think it's worth sacrificing any liberties to get it.

And, of course, I make this concession taking the following as assumptions:

1. that all of the above will work perfectly, first time,

2. that the measures required to force every single bank and credit-card-issuer to comply, retool every small business to not need cash, retool every single vending machine in the country and otherwise completely rebuild the economy from the ground up don't wreck everything to the point where the economy can't afford to run the panopticon,

3. That the measures required to make the cards difficult and expensive to forge don't make them so difficult and expensive to make that they become uneconomic,

4. That the infrastructure required is within the amount that HMG can extract by way of taxation without ruining the economy,

5. That the ongoing cost of running the thing wouldn't divert so much productive capital and labour from the economy that we ended up unable to do anything *but* run the panopticon, and

6. That the elimination of the black economy isn't also the elimination of something vital to the economic health of a nation. Not thieves and fences, here, but the ability of ordinary people to sidestep unnecessary regulations and bring things within their budgets by dealing off the books in cash and leaving the taxman in the dark. If every business has to carry all of the adminsitrative overhead required to comply fully with all regulations all the time (because their entire trading is visible to the authorities all the time) you potentially suppress a massive pool of entrepreneurship and future competition for large businesses. This last is, I think, probably the biggest and most harmful unintended consequence of the scheme you propose.

>ID cards don't work to reduce crime or assist in its detection.

-- actually, I can think of several areas they'd help with. Illegal immigration, for example. If they were linked to a national database and impossible (or at least difficult and expensive) to forge, and made necessary for everyday life, they'd make an illegal resident's existance impossible.

That would mean one document serving as your driver's license, credit/debit card, etc., which would be a massive simplification and convenience in itself.

Ideally it would contain biometric information which could be checked against the person carrying it easily and quickly, and referenced back to the national database.

There are other areas in which an identity card could help, as well.

For example, if someone was suspected of a crime, you could alert the national system to flash his location whenever the card was used. If he didn't use the card, that would restrict his movements and actions and make him easier to flush out, since he couldn't get money from a teller machine, check into a hotel, use public transit, and so forth.

People on parole (is there a parole system in the UK?) could be tracked the same way to make sure they're not going anywhere naughty.

In fact, you could have hidden scanners in many places which would query ID cards automatically and spot people on the wanted list, terrorist suspects, and so forth.

I postulated a system something like that in my novel "Conquistador".

>The objection is that they'll completely fail in their stated purpose, the prevention and detection of crime, and to the extent that they do work, they will only do so to curtail civil liberties.

-- yeah, and I think that's dishonest. It's like PETA types saying animal testing isn't necessary for biomedical research because there are other methods that work just as well.

If they were _honest_, they'd say that animal testing does help research, but they don't care because animal rights are more important to them.

Likewise, if the anti-ID people were _honest_, they'd say that ID cards probably _would_ reduce crime, to some extent at least, but that they don't care because the damage to civil liberties is more important.

The two aren't comparable. Animal testing does actually achieve something; whether or not you think that is worth the cruelty to animals when there are alternatives that are, in some cases, nearly as good is, as you correctly identify, the real argument.

ID cards don't work to reduce crime or assist in its detection. They wouldn't even if you could absolutely guarantee that every person had one and that every single one was genuine. They are a token that some authority certifies that the person whose image (or biometric, or whatever) is on the card has the details recorded on or against that card. This absolutely _does_ _not_ _help_ prevent crime. It closes off some small subset of fraud techniques, but there are others which don't depend on establishing a false identity, and those other techniques will be used instead.

It does not provide evidence that the holder was present at the scene of a crime, that he committed the act complained of, or that he acted with the necessary intent. Those problems remain exactly as they were before ID cards. It does nothing to establish the holder's current location. It certainly doesn't magically cause the holder to Mend His Ways.

And that's assuming that they're guaranteed unforgeable.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, a national ID forged well enough to pass unaided naked-eye inspection makes those crimes which require a false ID to be established a great deal easier, because your average ovine-in-the-street will see National ID and trust it.

This is for their stated primary purpose, the prevention and detection of crime. They don't work, and there is no mechanism whereby they /can/ work. In a small subset of circumstances, they will be actively counterproductive.

If they could work, there might be a worthwhile argument about whether or not that was worth the price in civil liberties. They're not worth it, and anyone who thinks they are is a puling coward who, to mangle Franklin's dictum, deserves neither liberty nor safety (getting my ad hominem retaliation in first, there).

In the meantime, HM Government is planning to piss at least £300 of my money (which is my share of the projected minimum cost of the wretched thing) up the wall on a scheme to curtail my civil liberties in return for no possible benefit to me in reduced crime. I am Not Happy about this. I fail to see any dishonesty in that position.

As to crime in Britain, I can modestly point out that crime in the US has been dropping sharply all over the country for the past decade and more, and is now back down to the levels of the early 1960's.

The entire post-1964 increase has been repealed, and rates are continuing to drop at around 10% a year for serious crimes involving violence.

There are a number of reasons for this (eg., crack dealers killing each other off during the 90's, demographics, etc.), but the main one seems to have been a sharp increase in the incarceration rate, which has gone up in tandem with the decline in crime.

This is due to more aggressive policing, and also to harsher sentencing -- "three strikes" laws and so forth.

The moral: if you find criminals and lock them up in iron cages until they either die or get so old and feeble they're harmless, you will have less crime.

There's tremendous resistance in some quarters to this; Ghu alone knows why. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

There also seems to be a distinct inverse relationship between gun ownership and certain _types_ of crime, particularly burglary when the residents are home.

In the US, the overwhelming majority of burglaries occur when the people who live on the premises are out; this apparently based on a rational fear on the criminals' part that if they try it when the people are home, they'll get shot and killed.

It's notable that when New Zealand dropped its agricultural subsidies, one result was a sharp drop in the use of chemical fertilizers. Without the subsidies, they didn't pay.

>The objection is that they'll completely fail in their stated purpose, the prevention and detection of crime, and to the extent that they do work, they will only do so to curtail civil liberties.

-- yeah, and I think that's dishonest. It's like PETA types saying animal testing isn't necessary for biomedical research because there are other methods that work just as well.

If they were _honest_, they'd say that animal testing does help research, but they don't care because animal rights are more important to them.

Likewise, if the anti-ID people were _honest_, they'd say that ID cards probably _would_ reduce crime, to some extent at least, but that they don't care because the damage to civil liberties is more important.

They're trying to have it both ways, and it makes me less inclined to take their civil-liberties arguments seriously. (And of course words cannot express my contempt for PETA and animal rights in general.)

They should take their stand on principle, not on technicalities.

>Because people living in cities, and getting their food through companies such as Walmart or Tesco, have collectively driven the prices paid to their suppliers, and ultimately to the farmers, below the cost of production.

-- if you think about it, this is a nonsensical statement. Prices, over the long term, _cannot_ drop below the cost of production because nobody can afford to sell to you at that price. They'd go bankrupt.

Obviously, if the farmgate price is below the cost of production for long, someone is sticking a thumb on the scales.



>Times have changed, and food is now flown half-way around the world, and if the farming industry supplying exotic fresh vegetable from Zimbabwe should collapse, because of stupid or corrupt politicians, the supermarkets go somewhere else.

-- a thoroughly good thing.

>And globalisation means that local shortages do not push prices up.

-- in plain English, this translates as "no famine". It's notable that places dependent on local peasant farming have famines; cities drawing on the whole globe don't.

>might as well be sold, at insanely high prices, for building land.

-- a splendid idea, which would reduce housing prices.

Mind you, as population declines they're going to go down anyway.

>Inefficient farmers, Mr. Stirling?

It depends on how you measure it.

-- no, it depends on whether they'd make a profit at undistorted market prices.

(American farm subsidies are just as bad, though not as big, relatively speaking. The ones for sugar production are particularly ridiculous; they're what keep large sections of the Everglades in sugarcane instead of swamp grass.)

Subsidies Are Bad. They're a tax, and a crude, regressive tax as well. They transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.

>How many tonnes per hectare do your American farmers produce.

-- this is totally irrelevant. The figure to look at is the value of inputs vs. the value of output.

Getting an extra couple of bushels per acre at a cost which exceeds what anyone will freely pay for those bushels is... well, "inefficient" is the word that comes to mind.

Not to mention "perverse" and "dumb".

>How many square kilometres of potential wilderness part are being sterilised by your country's low-yield wheat monoculture?

-- well, considering that there's more forest and more deer in the US than there were in the equivalent areas in 1492...

BTW, it only makes sense to maximize per-acre yields if you're short of acres. If land is abundant relative to capital and/or labor, then it's efficient to use land extensively. Chinese and Indian farming uses a lot more hand labor because it's cheap and abundant.

>Cut out Europe, convert us to wilderness, and you'd hear Walmart screaming from Tampa to Anchorage.

-- if there's sufficient market demand, European grain producers will stay in business without subsidies, and therefore the subsidies are useless.

If there isn't sufficient demand, the subsidies are harmful.

QED.

Charlie, a definite point -- I guess I'm a lot more tired and cynical than you. But it'll come...

Edited by author 06-24-2005 09:27 AM
Looks like the first inane use for this is being trialled. See, it starts with road tax. And although this starts as a good thing, how long before -insurance company- increase your inurance because your GPS box tells them you drive through a 'bad' area on your way home twice a week?

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/news/s/1...nsurance_pilot.html

Actually, it's the wrong /kind/ of cynicism that's corrosive. Positing that they're all one or more of a. crooks, ii. incompetents or 3. acting from ulterior and inimical motives says nothing about how one ought to respond. Extending that cynicism with the rider "... and there's fuck all we can do about it." is where it starts to be a problem. (The other version of the same problem occurs where a culture develops a meme of deference to the office, demanding respect for the holder of it; if it ever becomes unacceptable to call, for example, Tony Blair a canting sanctimonious trimmer who sold out his country to a foreign power and was too stupid to see that he got all thirty pieces of silver in return, I shall know this country is going to the dogs.)

Also:

The problem with the objectors to ID cards in the site you linked to is that they can't seem to decide whether they're against ID cards because they will work, or because they won't.

The objection is that they'll completely fail in their stated purpose, the prevention and detection of crime, and to the extent that they do work, they will only do so to curtail civil liberties.

While I'm happy to have the public purse spent to reduce crime, I fail to see the merit in spending it to inconvenience me and every other law-abiding person in the country without affecting criminals even slightly.