We humans are safer than ever

                                                                                  

We think we live in particularly violent times. 

In fact, we live more safely now than ever.

We “think” we’re besieged by unprecedented violence because we assess risk poorly.

Some people never swim in the sea for fear of shark attack, a less likely occurrence than winning The Lottery.

A great many people assume "terrorist attacks" more likely to kill them than, say, automobile accidents or "falls in the home." 

            We also scotomize the past. (Scotomize is a word that deserves greater currency. It means “to blind oneself to truth.”)

            Lulled by oblivion, we cherish “The Frontier" as our collective "home on the range.”

            You know… "Where seldom was heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day." 

In fact, The Frontier was a brutal place. Singularly so. 

For every Laura Ingalls Wilder living a “little house” idyll, there were scores saloons and brothels.

The six shooter was king. (Tellingly, we still worship these “peacemakers.” http://guns.wikia.com/wiki/Colt_Peacemaker)

We also forget that until 1750, half our species died by age 8.

And until 1850, our forebears lived half their lives with the droning pain of toothache. 

A few facts of topical importance…

In the last decade, 2700 Americans have died in terror attacks, whereas 400,000 have died in automobile accidents and 200,000 from falls “in the home” - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year  http://www.cdc.gov/homeandrecreationalsafety/falls/adultfalls.html

Note that violent death from murder-and-suicide is about as frequent as traffic fatality, and that per capita traffic fatalities are approximately twice as high in the United States as they are in Europe. 

Despite plummeting death rates – from both personal and vehicular violence – America is prey to such 9/11 terror that most citizens see unprecedented violence everywhere, when, in fact, the opposite is true - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20896.htm

If we followed Europe’s lead in automotive safety measures, we would cut the current ten year death toll from 400,000 by at least a quarter and perhaps a half. Instead, our national priority is to focus 2700 people who died ten years ago while remaining pin-drop silent about the hundred thousand needless traffic fatalities since. (Thomas Aquinas observed that all “sin” -- from the gospel Greek word “hamartia” meaning “missing the mark” -- is characterized by "loss of perspective and proportion." A strong argument can be made that contemporary America is chiefly characterized by loss of perspective and proportion.)

Despite plummeting death rates – from both personal and vehicular violence – America is prey to such abject post-9/11 terror that most citizens perceive unprecedented violence everywhere, when, in fact, the opposite is true - http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20896.htm

As a nation, we are delusional.

                                                                                              ***

Sundry:

While conducting research for this piece, I was surprised to learn that the U.S. suicide rate is nearly twice the homicide rate – http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5415a1.htm  (See “The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies” from Yale University Press – written before 9/11, during Bill Clinton’s prosperous administration - http://yalepress.yale.edu/book.asp?isbn=9780300091069)


Consider Mexico which, admittedly, is undergoing a horrifying wave of drug-related slaughter. Even there violence is far less than it seems, with Mexico City having fewer violent deaths than Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., New Orleans and Detroit.  http://thecatalist.org/2010/08/violent-deaths-in-mexico-everything-is-not-as-it-seems/

                                                                                               ***

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2011/10/04/pm-freakonomics-crime/

MARKETPLACE


FREAKONOMICS RADIO

KAI RYSSDAL: Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio. It's that moment every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. This time, though, a special treat, the other co-author Steven Levitt. Gentlemen, welcome to the broadcast.

STEPHEN DUBNER: Hey Kai

STEVEN LEVITT: Great to be here.

RYSSDAL: Dubner, you are not in New York. You have gone to the city of big shoulders, Chicago, with your comrade there.

DUBNER: Yeah, I've come out to Chicago to try to persuade Levitt to run for president cause I thought that would be fun.

RYSSDAL: We have a guy from Chicago already, you know?

DUBNER: I know but we've talked on this show about how the president of the United States doesn't really matter that much. So, I figure that even if Levitt stinks it wouldn't be any great loss. And unlike most economists he'll admit that the president can't control or even predict the economy very well. But there are some useful things that he actually does know about. For instance, what causes crime to rise and fall?

RYSSDAL: All right Levitt, do tell. What do you know about crime?

LEVITT: Let me start by saying I absolutely, categorically am not running for president. If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not stand. When it comes to crime, one thing that I think I know that many people seem not to know is that crime has gone down, way down. And while many people are haunted by the thought that crime is high and rising, it categorically is not doing that.

DUBNER: Contrary to popular belief the world is a more peaceful place today than literally at any time in history by a long, long shot.

RYSSDAL: I'm going to need something better than "long, long shot." Quantify for me, Dubner.

DUBNER: So the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has just published a new book called "Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined." And he argues that our rosy view of history is pretty much entirely wrong.

STEVEN PINKER: In tribal societies, hunter-gatherers and hunter-horticulturalists, an average of about 15 percent of people met their ends through violence. In the 20th century, if you try to come up with a highest estimate you can -- combining all the wars, all the genocides, all the man-made famines -- you get to 3 percent.

RYSSDAL: So that's 3 percent of non-natural. I mean people who met their deaths by other means.

DUBNER: Yeah, violent. And he's including, there, man-made famines -- famines caused by civil war and what not. And keep in mind also in the 20th century we had mechanized weapons. So killing becomes easier. That early violence was carried out in much more rudimentary ways. Here's Pinker again talking about 16th and 17th century England.

PINKER: Samuel Pepys, in his diary, talks about going to the town square and watching a general being drawn and quartered. And in the next sentence he talks about going to a pub and getting some oysters. It was such a routine part of his day. In the era of Henry VIII I think 10 people were executed a week.

RYSSDAL: Ouch. So Levitt, what's the trend though? I mean, in America in the 20th and 21st century, how are we doing?

LEVITT: Well, we've been doing pretty well lately. There was a very inauspicious trend from the '60s to roughly '90 with crime going up and up and up. But, over the last two decades crime in the U.S. has fallen in half.

RYSSDAL: How come?

DUBNER: I think there are three factors that explain most of it. The first is we've dramatically increased the prison population. There are now 3 million people behind bars in the United States up from maybe 500,000. We've hired a lot of police as well. That's another factor as well that matters. The third factor people think a lot about that seems to be important is the rise and fall of the crack cocaine markets and the violence associated with that. That the rise in the late '80s led to a lot of increase in crime and then the decline with the falling apart of those markets. I have my own pet theory. Not that many people agree with me but I do think the data support it. The legalization of abortion in the 1970s led many of the people most at risk for crime never to have been born. And so when they would have been grown up 20 years later they just weren't here to do the crimes. (A.A. By way of counterpoint, I draw readers’ attention to the first “User Comment” below.)

RYSSDAL: All right, but Dubner make the connection for me between a lousy economy and crime. Cause you would think that it would go up.

DUBNER: You would think. And even though the evidence argues against it over and over again. Smart people still think that it will. Crime actually fell during the Great Depression when the economy was in the toilet. Now, that was in part because prohibition had ended. Crime spiked during the 1960s when the economy was booming. And this most recently recession, despite a lot of predictions to the contrary, violent crime has continue to fall. Against, really, all the smart money bet against it.

LEVITT: If there is one bet you know you will win, it is the bet that the next time that crime falls when the economy is bad, the headline of the New York Times article that talks about crime falling will say: 'In spite of everyone's prediction because of the poor economy that crime would rise, crime has fallen.' You can see the same sentence written 14 times by The New York Times.

RYSSDAL: Levitt, let me ask this question though because if you go out there and ask people today -- ask 10 people on the corner of the street outside my studio here in Los Angeles today -- they will probably say that year over year crime is getting worse. And yet your data shows its not. What's that about?

LEVITT: I think people in general are terrible at assessing risk -- that we very naturally over estimate dramatic things. So come to death, as an example, things like airplane crashes or terrorist attacks are very vivid and attract a lot of attention, whereas, we systematically understate the likelihood of dying from those kinds of deaths which are slow and silent and involve wasting away. Those don't make the headlines and so we don't really think of the risks associated with, say, eating way too many cheese burgers, the same way we do as being shot out of the sky by missiles hitting airplanes.

RYSSDAL: FreakonomicsRadio.com is the website. Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, guys thanks a lot.

DUBNER: Talk to you soon Kai.

LEVITT: Thank you Kai.

User Comments

·         Paul Castel10/04/2011

I share John Woods concerns. When I heard this driving home, I almost had to pull over. What an outrageous proposition. Sadly, this is common "progressive" opinion. It was held when Margaret Sanger started Planned Parenthood. It is (more surreptitiously) held now. That is until some advocate blurts it out like Dubner. Black America, where are you that you are not threatening to boycott APM for producing and NPR for hosting this horrible message? Wake up people! This is why abortion clinics are located so often in poorer neighborhoods.

·         Toby Saunders10/04/2011

BUT the US locks up more people than Europe while also having more human on human murder than Europe; the US locks up far too many, especially for illegal drug related 'crimes'. The trend is not in a US bubble: the trend of ethical progression has been going on since humans evolved... education is far more a contributing factor than prison. Prison sentences in the US are, maybe more often than not, tyrannical.

·         larry darnell10/04/2011

here's a tipping point, the head banging, suicidal, economic stress [listen to the Greek story today], it's GOING to happen - check out what's been going on in Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and Russia - read the SHOCK DOCTRINE

·         John Wood10/04/2011

I am horrified that Dubner would suggest a correlation between abortion and reduced crime rates. The studies that were done are far more complex, include several variables that have been repeatedly ignored or in this case clearly glossed over.
Abortion proponents have always said that it is better that children not be born rather than be "unwanted." Abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood have been peddling abortion to minorities and less desirbales as a means of reducing births among these groups. Abortion is a modern, politically correct form of eugenics - elimination of undesirables, such as minorities who are more likely to commit crimes. If you are a minority, you should be outraged that the system has convinced your teenaged daughters that abortion is the solution to irresponsible behavior.
Look, Hitler had a long list of undesirables and the German people went about following his gloriuos vision. When they found out what he was doing with those who weren't Aryan they too were horrified. When will the American outrage begin?

·         Meg Wilson10/04/2011

Why, when talking about violent crime going down, does no one talk about the fact that over 40 states now allow concealed carry? Every time a state has allowed it citizens to carry firearms, its violent crime rate goes down. Yet, I never see this information included in any mainstream media reports. Why ignore such a substantial trend? It doesn't negate the other points, but is a factor that contributes to a safer environment! (A.A. Ms. Wilson’s question begs a number of questions, perhaps most significantly: “Why do cultures with strict gun laws – like Japan and England --have so little crime?” For additional information on Wilson’s disputed claim, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States  It seems clear that fearful people are heavily invested in arguing the advantages of widespread gun ownership. It is ironic that many such Americans see themselves as “good Christians” even though John’s first epistle reads http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%204:18&version=NASB)