There is something that is not quite right with this narrative that Gladwell spins though. His past examples are about the winners of their era. On the other hand, the contemporary examples are losers who end up killed and squeezed by the police. Presumably, in the earlier mafia era there were also plenty of losers, we just don't hear about them.

The main thesis which I think is sound, though, is that innovation often (usually) involves a certain amount of breaking societal norms (which includes laws). It can take violent forms, such as the mafia, but also less violent law-breaking is often present. Think Napster, as a clear example but why not include Uber and AirBnB as well? Often innovation is not just about new technology, but rather re-negotiating social contracts. For this reason, when technological or social change introduces new economic opportunity, often it becomes populated by people who are willing to violate laws. I think as societies, we should try to figure out how to better utilize the violent and rebellious behvior of people, while limiting the detrimental effects. The same adrenaline addict might kill himself and a few pedestrian on a motorcycle when evading the police, but could instead be allowed to risk his life in some space exploration program or why not a technology startup.

That was the theory pushed fairly successfully by many social reformers in the 60's and early 70's. The net result, or at least the concurrent event, was a massive crime wave.

The fact of the matter is that Americans are not Scandinavians. For homicides where the offender is known, more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/c...

Further, within the US, people tend to behave more similarly to where they come from (even if it was many generations back) than to some American average. I don't have data for any Scandinavian nations, but Tino Sanandaji has some data comparing Swedish Americans (a group which apparently self-identifies enough to be statistically significant) to Swedes:

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o...

So it's very unclear that a Scandinavian approach would work here.

It wasn't even a concurrent event, it was a preceding event -- the rising crime wave began roughly concurrent with the end of WWII, rose in a fairly smooth unbroken trend (With a few interruptions -- which started in the 1970s.) If any result in crime rates resulted from social reforms advocated in the 1960s and 1970s (which is questionable), its more like it was the interruptions in the long-running trend of increasing crime rates, not the increase that started more than a decade before the reforms were advocated.

Demographics in the key criminal age demographic -- both from the demobilizations after the WWII and Korea, and then the Baby Boom, is probably the key factor driving the increase (and subsequent decrease as that demographic bulge passed that age band.)

The US have never invested in social security levels anywhere near the Scandinavian countries.

> more than half are committed by a demographic group that is pretty much nonexistent in Scandinavia.

Except that when you control for factors that correlate strongly with social status, the race effect disappears almost entirely. The US has a poverty problem first and foremost.

How much spending do you believe is necessary to control crime via social security/etc? Is there some consumption level at which crime is expected to vanish?

Note that the US currently spends 60% of it's budget on redistribution and 4% on police protection. What would the optimal spending levels be?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/piechart_2012_US_total

Except that when you control for factors that correlate strongly with social status, the race effect disappears almost entirely.

What factors? Most of the obvious ones that I can think of (poverty, government dependence, unemployment) fail for this purpose since blacks do not make up anything close to 50% of people suffering from them.

Could you please state concretely what these factors are and why you believe the effect vanishes?

Enough to mostly eradicate poverty. I don't know what the cost of that would be in the US, but as long as you have widespread poverty I don't see a reason to assume you have tested the effect this would have on poverty. At least nothing like Scandinavian levels.

The US presently have a poverty rate about 3 times that of Norway (about 15% vs about 4.5%), despite Norway putting the poverty "bar" much higher - in Norway you are officially considered poor if your income is below 50% of the median. In Oslo that currently means about $24k/year. The US official poverty line for a single person in the continental states is $11,670 (which isn't that far from 50% of the median in the US either, but the cost of living in Norway is not twice that of the US), rising to $23,850 for a family of 4. With directly comparable numbers, the difference would be much greater.

Then you have to expect to wait at least a generation for reduced poverty to filter through to increased education levels, even assuming you fund the education system well enough that anyone who puts in the work can complete university for free.

Then you can start to get an idea whether or not Scandinavian level social security and education would make a difference in the US.

> Note that the US currently spends 60% of it's budget on redistribution

The problem is that you've created a system that causes so large differences in the first place. 60% to redress that is little more than window dressing.

Further, that 60% number is nonsense. A large proportion of that 60% - whichever slices you've added up to get at it - provides benefits for at least parts of those that pay into it in the first place, so the actual amount that is net redistribution is far smaller.

> What factors? Most of the obvious ones that I can think of (poverty, government dependence, unemployment) fail for this purpose since blacks do not make up anything close to 50% of people suffering from them.

Poverty rate certainly does account for a substantial part of it, with African-Americans being substantially more likely to be poor than non-hispanic whites, at ca. 27.2% and <12% respectively.

http://www.irp.wisc.edu/faqs/faq3.htm

Tack on education levels, unemployment, family cohesion and you get most of the way there.

Now if you take an absolute definition, you need to explain why a lot of countries much poorer than the US (much of Europe) have less crime. Or why Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have far more crime than India. That's a tricky sell.

If you want to use a relative definition of poverty (e.g. what Norway does), then you need to postulate that the existence of someone earning more than you do within a national boundary is what causes you to murder people. I.e., the existence of someone with a platinum toilet drives people with gold toilets into a homicidal rage.

Poverty rate certainly does account for a substantial part of it, with African-Americans being substantially more likely to be poor than non-hispanic whites, at ca. 27.2% and <12% respectively.

Whites make up about 72% of the population, blacks 12%. Assume poverty is the sole cause of homicide, then multiplication suggests 3.25% of America is poor && black while 8.6% is poor && white. In that case, the black murderer:white murderer ratio should be 1:3. It's 1:1.

I don't know what you mean by "tack on". Do you have a coherent theory, or are you just hoping?

No, I don't, because I'm not postulating that poverty is the only reason for crime, merely that it is a substantial factor.

Another obvious factor is difference in legal systems that makes general crime rates extremely hard to compare (consider that the US has the highest percentage of its population in prison in the world)

Further, you're being imprecise. Many countries that are considered rich have high poverty rates. Such as the US.

> Or why Brazil, Mexico and South Africa have far more crime than India.

Apart from what I wrote above, all of these countries have massive poverty rates. I haven't checked all three, but South Africa's poverty level is at least under some measures at similar levels to India. Mexico also have a massive US-fueled drug war that accounts for a substantial proportion of all crime to the extent that it mostly swamps out most other factors.

But of course, this alone is not very relevant unless you - unlike me - assume poverty is the only factor.

> If you want to use a relative definition of poverty (e.g. what Norway does), then you need to postulate that the existence of someone earning more than you do within a national boundary is what causes you to murder people.

No, I don't. You're making up strawmen again.

The reason for pointing out the relative definition was to make it clear that the US definition (which is also relative - the specific numbers are adjusted regularly) and Norwegian definitions are not directly comparable, and that Norway's 4.5% number is vastly higher than it would have been under a US definition.

As such, we can not with confidence say that if the US brought poverty down to 4.5% after the US definition, even all else being equal, it would provide sufficiently stable living conditions to make it possible to reap whatever level of benefit the Norwegian system does from reduced poverty.

This was to address your issue of how much social security would be enough, after the ludicrous claim that the US tried to provide social security in the 60's and 70's, and that it didn't have any positive effect on crime rates, and my counter-claim that the US have never seriously tried to provide proper social security.

Also, despite your aggressive and rude way of asking for me to support my claims, you've provided nothing but that in defence of your claims. I take your aggression and rudeness and lack of support for your own claims as a good indicator that you have nothing.

> Assume poverty is the sole cause of homicide

Nice strawman. Pretty much your entire line of reasoning appears to be founded on setting up strawmen. Has anyone suggested poverty is the sole cause of homicide? No. I suggested that differences in poverty levels was one major factor confounding the claimed link between homicide and race. The rest is your own invention.

> I don't know what you mean by "tack on". Do you have a coherent theory, or are you just hoping?

By "tack on" I meant that, unlike what you seem to believe, I have never claimed poverty to the be the only factor. In fact, I originally pointed to social status specifically of those other factors.

I don't see the point in continuing this discussion and trying to explain anything to you, as you seem intent on misinterpreting every word, or you would have seen that "my" two theories are quite simple:

1) Poverty level (your own, and that of your immediate community, though they are usually largely the same) has a substantial effect on crime rate. You can falsify this theory by correcting for poverty levels in crime rate data, and see what difference it makes to the crime rate in the population reviewed.

2) If you adjust for factors that influence social status, the vast majority in the gap between crime rates for African Americans and white Americans will disappear. These factors include poverty, but also other factors such as education level and family cohesion.

The main point is not the specific set of factors, but that there are confounding factor that needs to be corrected for, that has dramatic effect on levelling the inter-racial differences in crime rates.

To falsify this, I don't need for there to be evidence of the specific effects of poverty on crime, as controlling for poverty and other such factors when looking at crime rates broken down by ethnic groups will either yield a result or not.

What does that mean? A homeless person today can afford food, often (temporary) shelter, frequently a cell phone...

I'd say poverty has effectively been "mostly eradicated" already by production technology.

But even on the first point, I don't think we've really eradicated poverty at all. There are millions of food-challenged people in the US, millions of people without insurance, millions of homeless. To say these people do not live in poverty because not all of them literally die of starvation is extremely myopic in my opinion. And that's in one of the richest and the most powerful country on the planet.

Further the vast majority of that goes to the elderly not the poor. Subsidizing the medical costs for a retired person living on 200k/year is hardly the type of social insurance suggested.

Edit: I assumed you got the 60% from the federal numbers aka 24 SS, 22 Medicare Medicare etc, Safety Net 12% = ~58%. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

> Further, within the US, people tend to behave more similarly to where they come from (even if it was many generations back)

Is your implication really that black/brown people everywhere are (or would be) inherently more murderous? Perhaps I am incorrectly reading between your lines.

I'm simply rejecting the idea that differences in crime rates between the US and Scandinavia are due solely to policy. Demographics matter too. A little googling suggests there are wild disparities in crime rates based on demographics even in Scandinavia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_crime

And to this point, we all agree, there is a correlation. But what most of us don't agree with, but it almost seems as if you're implying it, is that there's something inherent about the ethnicity that makes one prone to crime. As if there's a genetic predisposition to theft, violence, rape, murder.

So you've left at least me curious as to what you're really saying.

There are many traits which are correlated with ethnicity, and hereditary, but not genetic - religion and accent for example. I'm not opposed to a genetic explanation, I just don't think the evidence strongly favors it.

It's also irrelevant to the policy question unless the policy directly addresses those traits. For example, if the trait is genetic as you hypothesize, then adopting a socialized genetic engineering policy might help. Or if the trait is, e.g. Islam, then a policy focused on converting Muslims into Buddhists might help.

Oh, no, to the contrary. I was merely saying it felt as if YOU implied this. If you want to know my position, no, I completely reject the notion that e.g. Somalians carry genes that make them more prone to violence, murder, theft, rape etc. There are barely any studies that support it, the few that do are from notorious researchers that pretty much everyone regard as blatant racists (e.g. look up Rushton). While there is evidence to suggest the contrary. (e.g. when comparing an adopted child from a minority background into a majority family shows the impact of socioeconomic status rather than DNA.)

> The data suggests there is some trait which is correlated with ethnicity and also with crime

Anyway, back to my point... You still don't seem to be at all open to the notion that there may be no 'traits' or that their influence aren't very great.

That is, where traits describe (usually genetic) characteristics of a person, which could explain a person's behavior in his environment, have you considered the opposite? That the environment's characteristics affect the behavior of the individual? That's overwhelmingly what sociologists have concluded (studied sociology in undergrad, my gf in grad). Fact is, a lot of immigrants in Europe came for menial labor in the 60s and 70s, were put in housing next to the factories they worked in, besides having barely been educated (overwhelmingly illiterate) as children, receive no form of education after their arrival in Europe (e.g. language or cultural education). Hundreds of thousands grew up isolated from any natives, worked daily in the factories, and at some point after 10-20 years moved to the cities when the industry shifted away from menial labor in Europe and the jobs dried up. So now you have people with absolutely no skills fit for the modern economy, no ability to read or write, no affiliation with local culture etc. That creates unemployment, poverty, it creates tensions, it creates conflicts. These people had zero political representation in government, zero representation in the media, no voice, and absolutely no competitive position in the marketplace. People with a gigantic social, financial and human capital disadvantages, and anyone from this minority who tries to escape from situation is met with stigma, with the stereotype views, which often leads to discrimination in the workplace even for highly educated individuals with that ethnic background. Indeed to the extent that there are lots of people walking around with an unsubstantiated notion that immigrants are genetically less able, less intelligent, less moral, the very definition of the nazi untermensch doctrine, which feeds into the discrimination, isolation and ostracizing of members of this minority, in school, work, politics, media. And this is what perpetuates the problems. The next generation of kids are born to illiterate unemployed parents with very limited financial means for education, self-exploration, extra-curricular activities, creative materials (toys, computers), no books or newspapers in the house, a language deficit etc etc. These kids don't have a fair shot and by age 6 they already are behind in school, and if you know one thing about education is that when you are behind on this week's homework, then understanding next week's becomes more difficult, and the deficit becomes greater and greater, to the point a kid isn't learning anymore, doesn't feel comfortable in school, loses confidence. That's when you see the dropout rate spike. Now you have kids 14 years old who barely go to school, aren't able to land a job a few years later.

THAT is what causes so many issues. Bad policies for people of the lowest socioeconomic class that starts a cascading effect and perpetuates throughout multiple generations. This isn't controversial among the sociologists that research it. What is extremely controversial is the notion of the untermensch, that some ethnicities are genetically lesser than others, and some ethnicities are superior. It's inherently racist, and time and time again we see these things come out of the mouths of extreme right-wing political leaders of various parties in Europe.

Now given the above, it's clear that of COURSE there's an explanation for the obvious correlation between the average immigrant and crime. And the data shows it's rooted in things like financial, social and human capital. Not genes. And guess what, policies are THE instrument to improving that. e.g. providing language and networking opportunities for illiterate immigrants helps. Providing extra language classes and reading sessions for kids with illiterate parents, helps. Removing the financial barriers to education for financially disadvantaged kids, helps. All of these things are pretty elementary, right? So yes, countries with better policies to crime get less crime than they otherwise would, and that has nothing to do with that country having less people from an ethnicity that has a genetic disposition to violence, rape, theft, murder. Why is this even a debate?

Indeed to the extent that there are lots of people walking around with an unsubstantiated notion that immigrants are genetically less able, less intelligent, less moral...perpetuates the problems.

Some immigrant groups (e.g., Vietnamese refugees) don't seem to need a "fair shot". They do well all by themselves. Why is that?

Scroll up - the numbers just don't add for poverty as an explanation. If you think your other factors do explain variation well, lets see some numbers.

Racism by the rest of society doesn't work well as the sole additional variable, since African and Caribbean immigrants tend to outperform African Americans. That also cuts against genetic explanations, BTW.

I just don't think the story is as simple as you or the OP are making it out to be - too much unexplained variation.

Not aware of any grand genetic behavioral traits to things like theft, murder, violence, rape discussed in this book. Nor does it particularly concern itself with the effect of socioeconomic status or the environment(low-income, illiterate parents, lack of books/newspapers in the home etc, stigma of members of certain minorities etc). It really only concerns itself with parenting style ('tiger mom' vs 'sure you can watch TV and eat pizza') and even here he suggests that there are indeed effects of parenting on intelligence up to a certain age. And within even this limited frakework it's quite a contrarian view that many sociologists don't share, most I would even say from my experience in the field.

But beyond that, it doesn't provide an argument for the case that entire ethnic groups are genetically lesser persons. I mean really, what are we debating here. Just say it straight up, do you really believe in this idea of the untermensch ubermensch, because that's what it comes down to. I reject such a notion that one ethnic or racial group is better than the other, I'm curious if you don't.

Some immigrant groups (e.g., Vietnamese refugees) don't seem to need a "fair shot". They do well all by themselves. Why is that?

There are many reasons, because they are genetically better is not one of them according to me. And this is the overwhelming view in academia. You keep leaving me curious where you stand with questions that seem rhetorical, so as to continuously imply 'why is that? well it must be that some ethnicities or countries have better genes', not asked merely in curiosity of an answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_minority

> Racism by the rest of society doesn't work well as the sole additional variable

Agreed, nobody said it was the sole variable. But to go against decades and decades of conclusions of the effect of discrimination is laughable, even to imply it or hint at it. Of course it doesn't mean there's zero success in people from minority backgrounds, and that the moment there's one segment of a minority who succeeds you can claim 'oh, but then racism didn't matter at all'. Why even bring this up if you know better. This will probably be my last post.

Especially as you've essentially agreed and raised the final point I wanted to make, that this indeed cuts against genetic explanations. As does the earlier wiki link I posted, where you see that each society has a model minority and they're wildly different, and are generally explained by socioeconomic status or attitudes towards e.g. education, the family etc. Again, I've lived in Europe all my life, born and raised here, I've lived with the North-African immigrants who were illiterate and uneducated people who live in little moutain villages isolated from modernity. The Arab equivalent of the stereotypical redneck with all due respect, only without literacy or any education. Of course they'll perform poorly in the city-life of a different country, culture. But I've also lived with North African immigrants with similar genes, who were university schooled and lived in cities, and they perform very well here, with no difference in genes.

>> I just don't think the story is as simple as you or the OP are making it out to be

That's fine, it indeed is a very complex subject and any posts totaling 2 pages of text of course aren't enough to explain the complete economic, cultural, social, financial and political success of natives and immigrants in tens of countries and wildly different situations. To say anything about such a large group of people in such a large set of different situations in one or two pages of text requires an oversimplification!

I agree with you here. I've merely tried to hint at some of the ideas that sociologists in my experience and study seem to overwhelmingly hold, which is simply NOT a race-based theory of genetically inferior and superior races/ethnicities/countries, I hope that much is clear.

Anyway thanks for the chat :)

The racists have come out to play.

If it isn't possible to go out and look at the world to see if the average IQ is 85 then it isn't possible to see that it isn't 85.

Now, I wonder if somebody has done that and what the results were...

P.S. I do understand that this is an empirical statement/question. But so is the assertion that there is a teapot on the moon.

You can certainly argue that IQ is a flawed measurement of intelligence, or that the IQ gap stems solely from environmental factors, but just flat out plugging your ears and denying that studies have found the mean black IQ to be 85 is an absurd display of intellectual dishonesty.

[1]http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/jason-richwine-race-iq...

You must be familiar with Rushton then, the author of the study he cited. I'd be hard pressed to name a more blatant racist than Rushton in academia... I really can't take that study seriously.

I apologize if I'm misinterpreting you, but do you not see something incredibly tautological with that line of reasoning?

As such it becomes at best disingenuous to interpret the fact that he called Rushton a blatant racist as implying merely a belief in biological differences in general.

Further he did not say it is wrong. He said he can't take the study seriously when coming from a blatant racist. Presumably because he does not trust that Rushton is able to put aside that bias and treat the subject seriously and honestly. While one can try to let the work stand on its own, the problem with that if you don't trust the intentions of the researcher is that it is tremendously easy to fudge data, or be selective with your data, to get whatever result you want.

Anyway, I'll return the question... Did you read and believe in the validity of his data, theory and conclusions in this paper or in a general sense? And do you believe that the majority of scientists in relevant fields agree with his conclusions? You have my answers on these two (no and no), I'm curious to hear yours.

E.g. physical activity has an effect on testosterone, thus you might expect to see increased average levels of testosterone in a population that is more likely to have manual jobs, as you would expect in a population that on average is poorer. This effect may very well be drowned out by other things, but it is but one in a huge list of potential confounding factors.

When you then further break that data down by race, the purported intelligence differences and testosterone differences you claim either have no effect, are non-existing, or they have fallen away as a side effect of removing the other confounding factors, as eradicating socio-economic factors mostly erases racial differences in crime rate.

If they are real, have an effect, but fall away when correcting for other factors, then that suggests that these effects themselves are caused by the same confounding factors, and are not down to ethnicity after all.

E.g. it'd not be surprising at all if IQ test results in a poor, uneducated subset of a population where parents have less resources to invest in their childrens wellbeing, and where the chance of malnutrition is higher, are worse than in wealthier parts of a population. But the obvious place to look for causes are in the many known causes of low performance of IQ tests, several of which co-occur fairly frequently with poverty.

Any study that tries to pin such a difference on ethnicity is outright trash if it has not controlled very carefully for a rather extensive set of other potential factors. Including directly controlling for factors such as nutritional differences.

Another part of the reason for the outrage at claims like this, is that trying to pin down "black Americans" as an ethnic group is hopelessly flawed from the outset, given that "black Americans" genetically range from mostly European descent to entirely African descent, but with the vast majority being substantially mixed, and that discourse on that in the US is largely dictated by a combination of racism and cultural factors that one one hand makes it impossible for most mixed people to "pass as white" even if they have far more European than African ancestry, and on the other hand makes it culturally hard for a mixed person to identify as white without being considered a sell-out by the black community.

E.g. Obama is no more black than he is white, yet he is automatically considered black in the US by pretty much everyone, and would face flack from both "sides" if he were to try to describe himself as white.

Because racial designation is mostly a social construct that is largely down to peoples immediate knowledge of their ancestry, skin colour and social considerations rather than genetics (I'm reminded of the difference with the Portuguese, who during their colonial era and a higher willingness to openly intermix with the local populations had an intricate system of something like 12 different distinctions of levels between white and black that affected your social standing, which anyone who knows people with mixed children knows would be largely "luck of the draw"), it is highly geared towards being easy to manipulate (don't get the numbers you like? redefine "black" to find a definition that moves the delineation between groups in your study, and odds are you can find some dividing line that fits your agenda) which in itself makes any numbers suspect.

But even with a researcher without an agenda, without extensive genetic testing, result would at best tell you that people who self report as black fall in one group, and everyone else fall in another. Of course then you don't know if - assuming you had in fact isolated a trait that actually has a genetic component - the trait you are reporting on is actually a result of a genetic trait tied to "being black", or if it stems from the European intermixing into the "black" population that just isn't significant enough to affect the overall white population the same way.

I've yet to see anyone come up with research that claims such differences that does not fall flat on its face either by failing to address sufficient confounding factors, or by failing to at the very least discuss the considerations of how it ethnically delineated the population and why.

Didn't downvote, but I have the same opinion as those people.

I think it's likely. In fact, by default policies should scale linearly from 10 millions upwards.

Policy that works great in NYC isn't guaranteed to work great in LA. Laws that work well in Dallas or San Antonio might have negative effects in Detroit, Chicago, or St. Louis.

That's why you see huge differences for example between states even in things we expect to all agree on. There's very few national policies that simply scale to all states exactly the same, the military probably being a big one. But things like education, police or fire departments, housing, healthcare or even marriage, can be radically different. But here in the Netherlands? On tons of topics like education, police, healthcare or marriage, it's exactly the same in every single province, because we're pretty much one big state, despite quite large differences between provinces. e.g. 2 hours north-east, I can't understand the local language, here it's mostly protestant but two hours south is mostly catholic. But despite big differences in culture, language, religion, but also industries and demographics, it's extremely homogeneous in policies. To me that says that you can't just scale a policy to 300m like you can to 17m.

Wealthy people are the ones who relocate and they don't benefit much from social welfare programs (if you ignore tangential benefits like not getting your car broken into by someone who needs money to eat).

Sincerely Swede

Also closing gaps in income inequality, and continued spending by that larger percentage of middle-class population.

Or so history teaches us, which we're rather happy to ignore now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenu...

What they had in common with others in the upper classes is that they found a way to make other peoples labour work for them. Maybe that's called "working hard" but it could also be called "getting others to work hard for you." It's how wealth is amassed and it doesn't matter whether it's on the legal or illegal side of the law.

It would seem the point of the article was exactly to make the point that many of these people were not gangster to be gangsters, but to build wealth and gain social respectability. And so becoming gangsters was something many of them chose because they found other avenues inaccessible, and for some of them once they had sufficient success that meant looking for ways to legitimise their businesses to various degrees.

My point was that it is roughly equally hard no matter which side of the law - you need to be able to exploit someone elses labour. The average hourly wage of a crack dealer (according to Freakonomics) is $3.30, so obviously, not everyone is going to get rich of it.

If it was not hard work to get others work hard for you, it would be more prevalent.

The most dangerous people are those who have nothing to lose. Give them something to lose, (their hopes, their future), and you will not only improve their lives, but also avoid revolutions.

That's an utter and complete lie.

Even if you believe it explains the Arabs who join the ISIS (which it doesn't), it certainly doesn't explain why the European converts do.

First, it's not "the European converts" that join ISIS, it's the Muslims that live in European countries (so no converting necessary, in the religious sense).

Second, I haven't had much contact with this immigrant minority, but from the media, I get the feeling that they are not really "respected" - their culture and heritage is demonized left and right, they are "foreigners" and "people of color". Probably, this got much worse after 9/11 and other terrorist attacks (e.g. in the UK), and was quite bad even before (e.g. in France, from what I hear).

Thirdly, the economic melt-down. It affects all people, but it affects the youth disproportionately, and I assume the immigrant population also. Immigrant youth -> affected really really badly. They see that people from the older generations got it much better (essentially, for most of their lives, things were getting better), while their (our?) future is full of problems (unemployment, both from the recession and from automation; climate issues and ecology; terrorism; dwindling natural resources). Is it really so hard to believe that they feel really disillusioned?

Anyways, you say it's a lie, what's the truth then, in your opinion?

I'm part of this minority (immigrant father, look like an immigrant, arabic name) and this part is completely true. And I can say this despite having a Dutch mother, being an atheist, having plenty of economic opportunities, a jewish girlfriend and having no affiliation with islam. The way people who look like me, or that have my father's religion, are treated here in the EU, is downright nasty. It stings my heart, again, even though I have limited affiliation with my heritage that's so vilified here. If I actually identified myself with islam it'd be very easy to feel as if it's 'us vs them'.

But the economic melt-down. Look, I hear what you're saying, it does affect immigrants more harshly as they're generally in a socioeconomic position that's less well equiped to deal with economic hardship. (from the lack of a professional network, culture divide to the illiteracy of many first generation immigrants). And I've experienced my fair share of economic hardship, too, like picking the leftover damaged potatoes and tomatoes from the street after marketmen close up shop at night. but I don't really see this as a deciding factor at all. The story of Casablanca slums just don't apply (watch Horses of God if you're interested!), in my experience and opinion, to Europe. It does generate a certain sentiment, a pessimism, it can take away pockets of dignity, that make a person more susceptible to a crazy imam's rhetoric, but at the end of the day Europe is a pretty brilliant place to live when you're poor. I can't imagine a better place after Scandinavia. I think it's far from a deciding factor. If the above (cultural demonization and rash foreign policies) hadn't happened, even if there was twice as much unemployment, I don't think EU youth joining ISIS would've really been a problem.

That having been said, in my opinion the whole eu youth joining isis is way overblown, but that's another discussion I won't invite myself to have! I'll be happy to discuss though if you want.

Your second point is not even wrong. There's plenty of respect for decent people who treat others right. There is a growing dissatisfaction with religious nutcases and criminals and layabouts. There is outright fear and hatred for those who terrorize their neighbourhoods. And why shouldn't Islam be disrespected? Is it a good religion? Is it tolerant? Is it really the religion of peace? And why should honour killings and clannishness be respected?

Besides, schools are free, secondary and tertiary educations are free or heavily subsidized.

As to your third point, the economic meltdown and the enormous youth unemployment is mostly a Southern thing. Having a large unofficial economic sector is also mostly a Southern thing -- so the real unemployment rates are thankfully lower. The youth unemployment has more to do with rigid and stupid labour markets than with the global finance crisis or the Euro crisis. At least those who speak English (or a Northern language) have a chance to emigrate. The migrant workers in the South who are hard hit by the crisis are mostly Africans, not Arabs. The ISIS terrorists are mostly Arab. I haven't heard of a single Sub-Saharan African in ISIS.

The truth is that the (economically) Western European countries have been bending backwards for years (decades) to help them and that we have been treated badly every step of the way. The truth is, unfortunately, that not everybody is a good person, not everybody is equally aggressive and violent, not everybody is equally intelligent, and not every culture is good. And what's worse, aggression, violence, trust, and intelligence are all partially inherited.

There are many peaceful and tolerant Muslims, just as there are many peaceful and tolerant Christians. Of course, you rarely see these people in the news; but even a small amount of research will show this to be the case.

> And why should honour killings and clannishness be respected?

They shouldn't, of course; but I think you'll find that very few western Muslims do.

You may also find that a lot of the problems stem from the fact that many people consider them stupid, aggressive, violent, murderous, and not worthy of respect.

Bending backwards how, helping who and being treated badly how?

> aggression, violence, trust, and intelligence are all partially inherited.

As we're talking about cultural and societal conflicts, are you suggesting that genetic aggressive or violent tendencies are part of arab/muslim DNA? It's this level of nonsense that seems so pervasive, sometimes spoken out literally, but often merely implied. It fits perfectly in the creation of the 'other' as edward said puts it, or the untermensch we're all familiar with. If you're not saying it, it definitely seems you're implying it. And there's tons of this in Europe, e.g. a quote from Rushton's wiki:

>> In 2009 Rushton spoke at the Preserving Western Civilization conference in Baltimore. It was organized by Michael H. Hart for the stated purpose of "addressing the need" to defend "America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and European identity" from immigrants, Muslims, and African Americans.[36][37] In his speech, Rushton said that Islam was not just a cultural, but also a genetic problem. He thought the religion and issues associated with it were not just a condition of the belief system. His theory was that Arabs have an aggressive personality with relatively closed, simple minds, and were less amenable to reason.[38] The Anti-Defamation League described the conference attendees as "racist academics, conservative pundits and anti-immigrant activists".[39]

As for the first point on plenty of respect for decent people, are you an immigrant minority? Well I can see you're not. (where are you from, btw?) I am. I've been cussed at in the street, spit on and told to go back to my 'own country'. I'm Dutch born, Dutch mother, jewish girlfriend, atheist, university educated, entrepreneur, but as I'm also an arab and look like one, I get 'plenty of respect'. And there's literally not a single arab I'm friends with or a relative to who hasn't had this experience (although I don't know THAT many). In fact my neighbour isn't my neighbour anymore, he was a teacher here but he and his family moved back to North-Africa after his wife was spit on years ago. As for your other points on islam, what islam? You say it as if it's a singular thing. I'm not a muslim, an atheist in fact, but for me to talk about 'islam' without any context is as ridiculous as saying we should criticize water because it's the leading cause of drowning. Without context asking if 'water' is 'good' or 'islam' is 'good' is laughably silly.

(I'm not sure how George Washington is relevant, though.)

They were getting taxed a lot, but they were still quite well off. George Washington had a huge estate. Most of the founders owned lots of land, and many of them owned lots of people. They were far from desperate, but still risked their lives.

Imagine if, say, Bill Gates decided he didn't like giving the US federal government billions in taxes and decided to lead an armed insurrection to make Washington (state) an independent country.

He fought in the colonial militia during the French and Indian war. He held the rank of Colonel, but being a Colonel in a provincial militia is a far cry from even a low-level officer's post in the British Army.

He yearned to serve in the British Army but never received a commission. So he went back to his family farm and became over 16 years a wealthy, politically-connected planter, over time coming to share the general colonial opposition to Parliament. When war broke out between the colonies and the homeland, he showed up at the Second Continental Congress in his old militia uniform, and they picked him to lead the army.

I relied on my memory in this case because I, quite frankly, was lazy, hungry, and about to make dinner.

I have definitely seen him described as a General before the war, in texts written by Americans, though, which is where my mistake comes from. Damn, I don't like making mistakes.

Osama did have a lot to lose, but his supporters didn't.

But still - 'except when they were killing people, the PSI was an example of American exceptionalism' won't fly with me.

However, some things don't fit the narrative. Gladwell mentions the various waves of immigration (Irish, Jewish, Italian) and suggests that crime is a way to get up the ladder.

But weren't the African-Americans there long before these groups? Shouldn't they have been the first to do this journey?

He mentions Merton's 6 ways and suggests crime is innovation. But how innovative is it really, crime? Is forming and running a cartel not something that has occurred quite often in the minds of people who compete? Is bootlegging innovative? To my mind, it's not innovative. It's just taking more risk than the average person takes.

I think a lot of African Americans are getting a bum deal out of life. Murder and drug dealing are wrong, but society doesn't give them a lot of other realistic options. But this is just feeding into the pessimism that David Brin was complaining about.[0] There is no silver bullet.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332614

I think this is bullshit. I am living in an eastern European country (Hungary), do you think it is a place where poor people can advance more easily than in the USA? And we don't have the kind of brutal gun violence that is present in the USA. This is very much a cultural thing. It has nothing to do with being poor, or having few opportunities to 'advance'.

These people are making their own life miserable due to very very bad cultural influences from their peers. It is not the case that someone could starve in the USA or anywhere in the first world. They could live a very modest but relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village) if they would have that kind of culture...

Now avoiding the cultural influences of your environment is hard. Very very hard.

Did you read the article?

This kids grew up in partially-destroyed houses, to drug-addicted, low income parents. They were probably never given good guidance about what's important in life, might have been physically abused. Their upbringing showed them that you should use violence to solve any kind of problems. No wonder they can't see the benefit of school and hard work, they can't sit still in the classroom and fight other kids in the yard. Then they fall behind, get penalized, the school system spits them out. Their only legitimate possibility for advancement is taken away from them, and they are back to their basements getting bitten by rats. No wonder they seek any kind of escape, including organized crime. Getting killed doesn't sound so bad when you have nothing to live for, no hopes for the future. The only way out is to earn enough money (via crime) and physically move away (into safer neighborhoods, better houses).

The difference between this and formerly-communist countries is that under communism, people didn't really live that bad. Sure, we didn't have the latest technologies, and we couldn't talk about certain things, but we all had a place to live and food to eat, and there were no significant social differences, no one to look up to. No wonder so many people nowadays feel nostalgic for the "good old days". (Not sure if that was also the case in Hungary, but it was in Slovenia.)

The National Geographic ran a story on hunger in the USA last month. It was fascinating, and talked about the 40M (really!) who are foodily-challenged or whatever the term is. If those people took a longer term vision and started growing vegetables etc, as one the Nat Geo story interviewed did, their lot would improve dramatically.

The part about "relatively happy life with full of love (on a farm or in a small village)" is very out of touch with what the life of poor is. Being poor is about not being able to afford farm, healthcare and living in a bad school district. It is also about being disproportionaly targeted by law enforcement (up to asset forfeiture) and not being able to pay for lawyer or navigate the system. How much would you appreciate being arrested over loitering or similar charge that amounts to "existing and being poor"?

All that creates structural barriers that block you even if you manage to overcame "cultural problem". Which in turns makes people more likely to give up and not even trying. Which in turns leads to even bigger disdain against poor and more targeting and punishment. And so on and so forth.

War on drugs is nice example. If you have been caught with marijuana, you not only get conviction, you also loose the right to work in many licensed professions (such as barber), the right to government help with school tuition or living. It is punishment that matters only to poor and only makes it harder for them to put lives back together after they made mistake. Comparatively, if your poor in Hungaria have easier time to get back into normal live.

Doesn't look to me that young African Americans are given the same employment opportunities. They are disadvantaged from the start.

If you go to a store to buy something, do the police gun you down because of the product that you choose? That happens to black people in the USA:

http://bearingarms.com/ex-marine-swatted-black-shopper-death...

If you are walking down the street, do the police kill you because of the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/08/14/michael-bro...

If your family owns a farm, does the government steal it from you whenever a white-owned business wants your land? That happens to black people in the USA:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/auxiliary/srsa/pages/Articles/SRS%2...

If your family owns land, does the government steal your land because of the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.castlecoalition.org/index.php?option=com_content&...

If you commit a crime, does the government lower or increase the years you will spend in prison, based on the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/08/03/data-show-rac...

If you peacefully walk down a street, and someone decides to kill you, are they allowed to kill you based on the color of your skin? That happens in the USA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin

When the government builds a school, does it offer more funding if the children are white, and less funding if the children are black? That happens in the USA:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/06/business/a-rich-childs-edg...

I don't think this is helpful.

The big problem isn't oppression. It's a problem, but it hasn't been the main one for a long time. The big problem is the poverty cycle.

White flight is another problem. Peer effects (black kids bullying black kids who "act white") is a problem. These are not racial oppression.

Prejudice and oppression (from teachers, employers, police) is still a problem, but it's not the big one. And pretending it is will encourage people to fight black poverty in ways that probably won't actually work very well.

The poverty cycle IS a part of the continuum of oppression for black people. Economic advancement has been denying and outright destroyed for these folks ever since being forcefully brought to the US as slaves.

> White flight is another problem. Peer effects (black kids bullying black kids who "act white") is a problem. These are not racial oppression.

White flight is entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. Peer effects are also entirely about anti-blackness and racial oppression. These have been studied in such great detail.

> Prejudice and oppression (from teachers, employers, police) is still a problem, but it's not the big one. And pretending it is will encourage people to fight black poverty in ways that probably won't actually work very well.

This is total nonsense and is entirely divorced from the reality of racial oppression in the United States, both in the past and today.

Does international research really support that middle class people leave areas where the crime levels go up only where crime is from people of a different colour?

Not American. I can tell you that the "white flight" efects in Sweden is at least hard to distinguish from flight from bad areas; I lived in a couple of those areas (Gottsunda and Akalla). The main differences were the food prices and the crime levels. Not close to the US ghettos -- yet.

You're citing a case where the defendant was found not guilty of 2nd degree murder. How are you so sure it proves anything? Do you have a better handle on the situation than the jury did?

The fact that Zimmerman was found not guilty is the perfect example of how racist our nation remains. Had Martin been a white kid, Zimmerman would be in prison (possibly even facing the death penalty, since Zimmerman is Hispanic).

Edit: I feel like I should be more clear here...Zimmerman's defense was the Stand Your Ground law. However, Zimmerman was the armed adult who stalked and approached an unarmed teenager; Martin was on his way home. In what bizzaro world does the jury, the police, and a whole lot of white Americans, live in that the aggressor could ever be interpreted as the kid? Even if Martin responded with force to the aggressive armed adult, the "Stand Your Ground" right belonged to Martin. Not the armed adult chasing him. If Martin had successfully defended himself from the psychopath chasing him, he'd likely be in jail today. Which is what a racist system and culture looks like.

An armed nutbag stalked an unarmed teenager who was walking home from the store. And, somehow, according to police, judge, and jury it was the teenager's fault he ended up dead and his killer walks free. Only in a deeply racist society is a guy with a gun given the right to kill children for no crime other than being black. The "suspicious" behavior that Zimmerman used to justify him grabbing his gun and chasing Martin: he was wearing a hoodie (it was raining and he was covering his head like any sane person would do), he was "looking around" (wearing a hood restricts your peripheral vision...I look around quite a bit, too, when I wear a hoodie), and he took a shortcut through someone's yard (something I did literally thousands of times in my childhood, without ever being murdered for it).

Racism is alive and well.

>Avellino’s mission was to rationalize the industry, to enforce what was called a “property rights” system among the carters. Individual firms were allowed to compete for new customers. But, once a carter won a customer, he “owned” that business; the function of Avellino’s P.S.I. was to make sure that no one else poached that customer.

It kind of reminded me of Peter Thiel's monopoly theory. At some point, competition for certain things becomes counter-productive. If the need is simple enough and adequately served, better to let it be served than waste energy undercutting and re-negotiating customers. There's a bigger world out there anyways. Obviously this colusion is all in the interest of the businessmen, rather than the customer.

But the point stands in (at least how I interpret) Peter's mafia theory: don't get into a line of business where it's easy to poach customers and competition is incredibly fierce. Like the restaurant business in San Francisco. The antithesis of this is something like Palantir I suppose, selling specialized solutions to governments.

The US is in desperate need of a mind shift from seeing all criminals as hopelessly dangerous people that can only be dealt with by force. When the same problems come up in every single poor community, it's a reflection of deeper social issues. These sort of well written stories showing the humanity involved can help with that.

I just searched for the other book mentioned in the article and the ONLY copy available for sale (as in there's exactly one book) is $59 on amazon. The publishing industry strikes again.

I saw children give up running and simply stick their hands behind their back, as if in handcuffs; push their body up against a car without being asked; or lie flat on the ground and put their hands over their head. The children yelled, “I’m going to lock you up! I’m going to lock you up, and you ain’t never coming home!” I once saw a six-year-old pull another child’s pants down to do a “cavity search.”

Do we really want to be teaching this?

Still, I'm not convinced that all those guys selling crack on the corner are trying to help their poor mother - its the draw of easy money.

If you've ever tried to succeed during a busy week at work when there's a massive loud construction project outside your window and felt a little under capacity, imagine living in the same one room apartment with a crack addict for 15 years.

These criminals only wanted respect and the same things other Americans had a birthright to. They believed organized crime was the only way to achieve the same standard of living.

The ~99% white male meritocracy, apparently they're the only ones who are where they are due to merit.

a) those who can compete, succeed by merit b) everyone can compete, and those who compete, succeed by merit

It's clear that Silicon Valley doesn't fit the latter definition, but it's possible that it fits the first definition.

Even if 100% of American citizens could compete in the Silicon Valley's start-up culture and it would be a 100% perfect meritocracy, it still wouldn't necessarily be a global meritocracy. Just being born in the United States increases one's probability to gain access to this market.

The problem would be two fold: there are numerically few black developers due to problems with the pipeline for education, which disproportionately affects black people, and in general hiring practices have a bias against black people.

The impression that IT is more open and socially conscious is just that, an impression. There is nothing that demonstrates IT as a profession or as individuals are more socially conscious than any other group of people. In fact, many of the current problems with regards to IT culture mirror the same problems in other aspects of business in society.

IT sector is in a golden age, the times where there's more demand for programmers than people available for the job. The field so desperate for even mediocre workers that it gets its recruiters to keep cold-calling and spamming people in hope someone will change a job. It's extremely hard to find talent, even harder to retain it, so companies just can't afford stupidities like discrimination. Being socially conscious is actually a signalling method - "yes, we don't discriminate; yes, we're that awesome! yes; you should come to work at our place".

But wait a generation or two, when there will be more talent than jobs available - IT will start looking like every other sector. Recruiters will stop calling and we'll all be subject to the same amount of discrimination, politics and overall workplace-abuse as everyone else.

Now running a little store by yourself will not get you the same respect as having your daughter ride horses in some rich part of town, but seriously - does that make it suddenly ok to become a criminal?