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Comment by janice1999 | Hacker News Reader

janice1999

The idea authoritarianism reduces crime or increases efficiency or put more bluntly "at least Mussolini made the trains run on time" is a fallacy. Crime still happens, it's just that those connected to the regime are protected from consequences, see for example the blatant corruption in Russia or the untouchable "Princelings" (CCP officials offspring) in China.

And no, Mussolini didn't make the trains run on time - he took credit for rail improvements started before he took power and then led his country into disastrous wars that destroyed it.

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Do you dispute the homicide rate I mentioned? To be more specific, homicide rates are 60x higher in NYC.

To put it another way, it would take two months of living there to match a single day’s risk of being murdered in NYC.

Of course this does not mean fewer rights leads to more safety. Under a bad government, you get nothing in return for your rights. But we should be explicit that there is a tradeoff to be made.

1. Comparing a city-state to a city in a large country is kind of a silly exercise. There is no hard border at ("everything's legal in") New Jersey, for example.

2. Singapore has a very different firearm regulation regime than the US (or even New York State or NYC). Your argument could make sense as an argument in favor of more tightly restricting firearm ownership in the US.

3. Your argument doesn't even attempt to generalize to other authoritarian regimes. One could equally compare NYC's murder rate with that of Japan or Switzerland, which did not have to use authoritarianism to achieve low homicide rates.

It's not silly to compare, but it is silly to draw causal relationships. Especially when cherry-picking

  - Singapore is authoritarian and has a low homicide rate
  - Venezuela is authoritarian and has a high homicide rate

Huh... maybe authoritarianism isn't sufficient to conclude the homicide rate... I mean Saint Kitts and Nevis is a constitutional monarchy and has the highest homicide rate in the world.

But let's also compare Homicide and GDP[0]. There's multiple interesting things to say from graphs like this. Though I still wouldn't conclude a causation here.

People love data when it confirms what they already believe but people don't like putting in the work needed to interpret data. Granted, the latter is not easy. But maybe if we're not math lovers we probably shouldn't claim to also be data lovers.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/homicide-rate-vs-gdp-pc?x...

Maybe the dichotomy here is between governments that invest in their people intelligently vs those that don't.

The most valuable commodity is trust.

1. The city vs country distinction cannot account for a 60x difference in safety. There are many other countries which are also orders of magnitude safer than both NYC and the US.

2. One person’s “firearm regulation” is another’s authoritarianism. A regulation simply means one’s ability to have a firearm will be taken away in some cases i.e. fewer rights.

3. There is no point where freedom ends and authoritarianism begins. It’s a matter of the types and number of rights which are protected by the government. Anyone who believes removing the right to bear arms in some circumstances agrees that there can be a tradeoff between freedom and safety which was the core of my argument, that the US is becoming less free while becoming no more safe.

> But we should be explicit that there is a tradeoff to be made.

Did you read what I wrote? There is no "tradeoff". Authoritarianism doesn't guarantee crime reduction and it certainly is not the only way to achieve it. I live in a vibrant democracy with low crime and an almost totally unarmed police force (thanks to strict gun control and a public health care system).

> Do you dispute the homicide rate I mentioned?

You didn't mention any rate prior and you provide no supporting evidence, multiple sources for each is preferred. Is this supposed 60x higher rate per day or per person?

and as others have said, comparing a city (urban) to a whole country (mixed) is silly

The rate is per 100k people over a year, which is how homicide rates are usually reported. To my understanding, these numbers aren’t disputed.

Singapore is a city and NYC is a city. Of course no comparison will be perfect, but the significant difference in safety will not go away through clever accounting.

you haven't provided any citations for "significant"

not going to believe a stranger from an internet forum saying 60x

severe punishments are more likely the defining factor than gov't type

There you go, It took 3 seconds to google it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

I guess it depends what you consider a crime to be. Like suppression of human rights, corporal and capital punishment, and so on.

The homicide rate for Japan, a democracy, is very low. It is very high in Russia. About 30 times higher.

You are just cherry picking. There is very little correlation between democracy and homicide rate, no matter how much you might wish it.

Illiberal government moves the ceiling of what is possible, in particular for crime fighting but not only, without a guarantee of success.

At this level it's almost a tautology. Liberal governments choose not to do things because they would be illiberal, and illiberal governments don't mind.

It doesn't mean illiberal governments are better - on average, data would probably say otherwise, causation or correlation.

But undoubtedly, there are illiberal governments that achieve very good outcomes for their residents through illiberal means - surveillance, "streamlined" decision making etc. You can push the envelope of what the gov can do, at the expense of liberal values, and still achieve something else that's objectively good.

And the US is pushing this envelope for no benefit for its citizens, it would seem.

Elected authoritarianism is arguably worse than many other forms of authoritarianism. A King has a continuing interest in building and maintaining the value of his Kingdom as well as an interest in a multi-generational outlook on investment and strategy. Trump has 3 years left to plunder everything he can with no incentive of ownership to maintain anything.

Classic straw-man.

Yeah okay but Singapore is great and if the crime still exists but hidden from the public, that's good for the public!

Also, you're the only one talking about Mussolini.

> The idea authoritarianism reduces crime [...] is a fallacy. Crime still happens

There's a whole range between "reduces" and "eliminates", and introducing the "elimination" argument is a strawman.

Authoritarian regimes do cut down on crime committed by the oppressed masses. It's a side effect of the heavy handed control that allows those in power to stay in power. Severely punishing crime is one more means of exerting more power and control over that population, the leaders can't afford to let regular people get away with flaunting authority. But the upper echelons will always commit crimes or abuses especially against those they control because they can afford to get away with it.

Explain Russia.

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