Re: timmy waxes a widdle on AP

At 08:11 PM 9/17/96 -0700, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
> but I'm still a bit confused about those prices. what determines
> them, anyway? risk to the assassin? it seems that it ought to be
> as easy to snuff out one person as it would another. e.g. everybody
> walks alone out at night at different times, it seems.

Although government services to the rich and poor cost about 
the same, the quality is radically different.  Thus the risk
involved in killing a poor person is vastly less than the 
risk involved in killing a middle class person.

This is most noticeable in education, where black children
are kept in holding pens with leaky roofs, masquerading as 
schools, for a cost that would suffice to build classrooms 
with a hot tub in each classroom and a pentium on every desk, 
even if we burnt the classroom down with the equipment inside 
every year and and replaced it every year.

On the other hand, food, clothing, and transport, being
provided for money by the free market, tend to be roughly 
equal for rich and poor.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
              				|  
We have the right to defend ourselves	|   http://www.jim.com/jamesd/
and our property, because of the kind	|  
of animals that we are. True law	|   James A. Donald
derives from this right, not from the	|  
arbitrary power of the state.		|   jamesd@echeque.com

On Sat, 21 Sep 1996, James A. Donald wrote:

> At 08:11 PM 9/17/96 -0700, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
> > but I'm still a bit confused about those prices. what determines
> > them, anyway? risk to the assassin? it seems that it ought to be
> > as easy to snuff out one person as it would another. e.g. everybody
> > walks alone out at night at different times, it seems.
> 
> Although government services to the rich and poor cost about 
> the same, the quality is radically different.  Thus the risk
> involved in killing a poor person is vastly less than the 
> risk involved in killing a middle class person.
> 

I think it is more likely an us-vs.-them mentality, rather than the cost 
of educating the person in question. If someone much poorer than you is 
killed in a poor neighborhood, you don't feel as threatened - it is one 
of "them" - If someone of equal or greater socio-economic background 
suffers a violent death, you begin to think "it could happen to me, too." 
Now it is a matter of "us." The higher up the scale you go, the more 
people on the "us" side of the coin, with more money/political clout as 
well. This increases the demand to apprehend the killer, which increases 
the risk to the killer, hence, a higher price for a hit on a target in a 
higher socio-economic position.

It is not unusual for the investigation of drug-related murders to be 
lax; the "tax-paying" majority often says "let them bump each other off." 
With lax enforcement, lack of public outcry, there's less risk. The price 
is lower. Now if it is the lawyer that lives just down the street ...

Ooops. Bad choice of profession.   :)

Bad wombat. No biscuit.

g'nite, all.

Rabid Wombat <wombat@mcfeely.bsfs.org> writes:
> I think it is more likely an us-vs.-them mentality, rather than the cost
> of educating the person in question. If someone much poorer than you is
> killed in a poor neighborhood, you don't feel as threatened - it is one
> of "them" - If someone of equal or greater socio-economic background
> suffers a violent death, you begin to think "it could happen to me, too."

I was reading the other day about the lessons learned from the one-time
tax refund in 1975. Most consumers realized that this is a one-time deal
and saved most of it, rather than spent it. On the other hand, after Reagan's
tax cuts the consumers spent much of their newly retained income because they
believed that the lower tax rate would continue for a few years.

Likewise once an occasional gubment official in Mexico is assassinated
often enough for the population to perceive public service as being a
hazardous profession, they'll have trouble recruiting the replacements.
Assassinations won't work as long as they're perceived by the public as
zero-probability events. The public perception depends on other factors
besides the numbers or the frequency of the hits.

---

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM
Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps