Final Thoughts for 2015
Trivial
I continue to have good luck with weather, having been able to get all my tasks done yesterday while avoiding driving in snow. I'm going to a New Year's Eve party tonight - it's a new to-me venue - so we'll see how successful it is.
Serious
I've stated before that I think the US has a violence problem, not a gun-control problem. I've also stated that this is due to income disparities. Well, Josh Marshall thinks it's a cultural problem.
To over-simplify, 17 of the top 20 countries in the world with high murder rates are in the Americas. Also, US murder rates vary wildly by region. Louisiana is radically higher than anywhere else in the US. Josh's theory is that forced labor created a culture in which one doesn't go to the police. This is because the police aren't very interested in solving problems; rather they are interested in keeping the forced labor situation in place.
In the USA and Caribbean, the forced labor system was slavery, followed in the US by Jim Crow. In South America, the system was encomienda, which was basically serf-driven feudalism. Either way, the police weren't there to help people, they were there to keep them in their place.
Presented as food for thought.
I continue to have good luck with weather, having been able to get all my tasks done yesterday while avoiding driving in snow. I'm going to a New Year's Eve party tonight - it's a new to-me venue - so we'll see how successful it is.
Serious
I've stated before that I think the US has a violence problem, not a gun-control problem. I've also stated that this is due to income disparities. Well, Josh Marshall thinks it's a cultural problem.
To over-simplify, 17 of the top 20 countries in the world with high murder rates are in the Americas. Also, US murder rates vary wildly by region. Louisiana is radically higher than anywhere else in the US. Josh's theory is that forced labor created a culture in which one doesn't go to the police. This is because the police aren't very interested in solving problems; rather they are interested in keeping the forced labor situation in place.
In the USA and Caribbean, the forced labor system was slavery, followed in the US by Jim Crow. In South America, the system was encomienda, which was basically serf-driven feudalism. Either way, the police weren't there to help people, they were there to keep them in their place.
Presented as food for thought.