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jackp96yesterday at 10:26 PM2 repliesview on HN

Not trying to defend our national dystopian nightmare of a surveillance state — but I'm pretty sure this is wrong?

Crime's been decreasing for years, and (from what I understand) this year is tracking to be one of the safest years on record?

Definitionally, there absolutely has to be a correlation (not causation) between those two factors you listed.

https://ourworldindata.org/us-crime-rates


Replies

edoceoyesterday at 11:01 PM

Didn't freakenomocs claim it (crime rate) was (primarilary) about abortion in the 1970s and less unwanted (and unsupervised/undisciplined) children growing up?

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Grombobuloustoday at 1:10 AM

These charts make the exact point I was making.

Most of the crime decrease from its peak happened before the year 2000.

That means back in the days of law enforcement needing to do low-tech wiretapping techniques, crime was still rapidly decreasing.

There’s just not even a correlation. And, as a reminder, correlation is not causation even if it was there.