Post by halonachos on Apr 27, 2016 13:22:39 GMT
I was browsing the web and came upon an image that captured a wall of text containing how various things in the US would change if the presence of African Americans was reduced to 0% versus the 13% it currently is. For example a raise in IQ to tie for 3rd in the world, decrease in crime by a large percent, etc.
Now the easiest thing to say is that it means we can get rid of all African Americans in order to easily boost the US's standing in the world, this is something that would probably fall in the lines of something a KKK grand wizard would say.
The reality of it is that there's an issue within the community that is causing them to lag behind the rest of the nation. I know, I know, it was the white devil correct? And to that answer we can say no as the Chinese workers who came over were treated almost as poorly as the African American population of the time yet Asian Americans tend to perform better than Caucasian Americans. To that end we can say that poor treatment contributed to a lag but should by now be insignificant to current trends.
The main issue lies within the black community because the black community is often centered in the middle of a city. The main issue in a city is that the amount of jobs and opportunities to provide for ones self are severely limited and with so many individuals within the city there is a high amount of competition for these jobs. In fact when an individual has to work multiple jobs just to scrape by with a living then it can be guessed that those without a job are of course not living at all. Money makes the world go round and Wal Mart doesn't accept a family's love as payment after all.
I bring this up to look at the prison and crime statistics first brought up. When it comes down to basic behavioral psychology individuals are willing to take a high risk in order to gain a high reward, it's used in gambling and in many shows to get people to take that risk for the chance that they will gain a lot of wealth. Another theme found in behavioral psychology is the willingness to repeat a behavior that has gained someone a reward, a mouse will learn to press a lever if doing so gets them cheese. An individual who commits a robbery and gets away with it will continue to rob because it is reinforcing the fact that he can rob and can do so without any negative repercussions, someone who decides to join a gang also gets negative actions reinforced through both this repetition and social modeling.
Then we add in the same psychology for every teen and we have the idea of the personal fable. The personal fable is the idea that the individual is the center of the world, that they are not going to suffer the same results as someone else because they are different, it is this idea that contributes to teens doing incredibly stupid things from trying to jump a gap to having unprotected sex after drinking illegally in the shady part of town. A teenager who is selling drugs is told that someone else selling drugs was shot, that teen is most likely to think "well I'm not going to get shot, I'm not like that guy" despite the fact that he is nearly 100% like that guy. Continued success with deals continues the behavior's reinforcement and the individual is more likely to continue selling drugs until they are incarcerated or shot. If arrested as a teen they are more likely to shrug it off and continue to do the same behavior as punishment is not as effective a motivator as reward.
To side track for a bit, reward can both be positive and negative. A good example of this would be a drill instructor in the military; the DI constantly shouts at recruits and if the recruit does well the DI shouts at them less(negative reward) or can give them a rest period(positive reward).
The sale of drugs is a great positive reward as the individual in question is getting income that can be used to buy other things. The fact that there are risks with this income don't matter as much as the rewards. The reward in question is also far greater than the one they could receive through a steady income in a starting position at a retail chain or fast food restaurant despite the relative lack of risk.
Crime in an inner city environment does pay and it remains a better source of income than a steady job. This leads to detrimental effects on the environment in which children are growing. These children do not get the best because there is no funding for their education, income from crime related activities is nontaxable so the infrastructure suffers tremendously for this. With violence all around the children model this behavior and will continue the trend in those communities which will send them into a death spiral. They will fail to be as educated as those outside the inner city and will see a choice between a low risk/low income job or a high risk/high income activity and many in their teens will choose that high risk activity because unlike every other dead teenager, they won't be killed.
So with these statistics you have to look at the cause of them and that cause is more than just "black people are holding us back", given the same level of detriments as inner city residents we can expect the same activities from any race or gender in America. So instead of saying that we should get rid of these communities we need to look to see how we can improve them.
We should start by saying that welfare is actually a harmful thing in a lot of cases. It's been chronicled by psychologists as being too easy of a schedule of reinforcement and it also damages the ego of those who receive it, in some cases it may be helpful but it is something that should be avoided.
Side note: Schedules of reinforcement vary greatly. Continuous patterns give a reward after every action to be rewarded, Intermittent gives them in ratio(after every so many actions) or interval(after doing the action for a certain time period) periods. Ratios and intervals can be fixed(same number or time) or variable(different ratios or time). Important to note is that variable-ratio patterns are the best at preventing extinction(unlearning) of a behavior with variable schedules being overall better at preventing extinction than fixed schedules.
Welfare is a fixed interval schedule so it shouldn't be as good a choice, but it is also a choice that requires zero risk or effort. Selling drugs would be considered a variable schedule and most likely a variable interval schedule. Assuming they make $100 a day on average they can have days where it's all earned at the start of the day and days where it's more spread out through the day. Either way, it is a reawrd schedule that resists extinction of the learned behavior. The same applies with most criminal activities, they are variable reward schedules that resist unlearning of that behavior.
The best way to combat that would be to reduce the power of those rewards through the devaluation of the reward given. Legalization of drugs is usually the quickest way to hit the price point as it floods the market. We have to be wary of this practice as some drugs are indeed incredibly destructive.
Housing values are also incredibly subjective and it can be argued that the government could do something to coerce lower values for houses that would allow someone to better afford a home.
In cities with high levels of crime it may also be best to impose a sales tax versus an income tax as the main point of income for the city. While not everyone in the city is making a taxable income, they are all buying things. If you avoid this tax on most foods and place it on most luxury items then you can attempt to make up for deficits for the city's education and infrastructure.
Increasing the wage is seen as an alternative but this can also be a detriment if not used in combination with other methods. Magically making the minimum wage $15 an hour will not help as it reduces the amount of employees a business is willing to hire and also makes other positions question their own wages. If a job already pays $14 an hour then they get that raise to $15, however if that individual has done more to earn that wage(certification, training, out of pocket expenses for education) then they will begrudge the fact that the now make the same as someone who had to do none of that in order to get their position. That person will most likely ask for a higher wage, change positions, or begin to have high dissatisfaction with their current job. The best way to solve this issue is to increase the number of jobs in a city. If a city can reduce the risks involved with owning a business then more people may be willing to create more jobs, this increases the amount of available income in a city and protecting these businesses should be a top priority. Tax deductions are good in this case.
Increasing the overall income, reducing the rewards from criminal activity, and creating opportunities for employment and betterment of one's social standing will also lead to improved educational facilities and will improve social modeling of the children growing up in these environments. This method is costly as it expects the government to take the hit for certain risks made by smaller businesses but in the long run this can be seen as an investment that will improve these cities and the lives of those living in those cities.
The issue with the statistics given is that they don't take into account the community as being something greater than just skin color. A community consists of people and the environment around them and while people may see those statistics and blame the people it really is the environment that is the cause for these statistics.
Now the easiest thing to say is that it means we can get rid of all African Americans in order to easily boost the US's standing in the world, this is something that would probably fall in the lines of something a KKK grand wizard would say.
The reality of it is that there's an issue within the community that is causing them to lag behind the rest of the nation. I know, I know, it was the white devil correct? And to that answer we can say no as the Chinese workers who came over were treated almost as poorly as the African American population of the time yet Asian Americans tend to perform better than Caucasian Americans. To that end we can say that poor treatment contributed to a lag but should by now be insignificant to current trends.
The main issue lies within the black community because the black community is often centered in the middle of a city. The main issue in a city is that the amount of jobs and opportunities to provide for ones self are severely limited and with so many individuals within the city there is a high amount of competition for these jobs. In fact when an individual has to work multiple jobs just to scrape by with a living then it can be guessed that those without a job are of course not living at all. Money makes the world go round and Wal Mart doesn't accept a family's love as payment after all.
I bring this up to look at the prison and crime statistics first brought up. When it comes down to basic behavioral psychology individuals are willing to take a high risk in order to gain a high reward, it's used in gambling and in many shows to get people to take that risk for the chance that they will gain a lot of wealth. Another theme found in behavioral psychology is the willingness to repeat a behavior that has gained someone a reward, a mouse will learn to press a lever if doing so gets them cheese. An individual who commits a robbery and gets away with it will continue to rob because it is reinforcing the fact that he can rob and can do so without any negative repercussions, someone who decides to join a gang also gets negative actions reinforced through both this repetition and social modeling.
Then we add in the same psychology for every teen and we have the idea of the personal fable. The personal fable is the idea that the individual is the center of the world, that they are not going to suffer the same results as someone else because they are different, it is this idea that contributes to teens doing incredibly stupid things from trying to jump a gap to having unprotected sex after drinking illegally in the shady part of town. A teenager who is selling drugs is told that someone else selling drugs was shot, that teen is most likely to think "well I'm not going to get shot, I'm not like that guy" despite the fact that he is nearly 100% like that guy. Continued success with deals continues the behavior's reinforcement and the individual is more likely to continue selling drugs until they are incarcerated or shot. If arrested as a teen they are more likely to shrug it off and continue to do the same behavior as punishment is not as effective a motivator as reward.
To side track for a bit, reward can both be positive and negative. A good example of this would be a drill instructor in the military; the DI constantly shouts at recruits and if the recruit does well the DI shouts at them less(negative reward) or can give them a rest period(positive reward).
The sale of drugs is a great positive reward as the individual in question is getting income that can be used to buy other things. The fact that there are risks with this income don't matter as much as the rewards. The reward in question is also far greater than the one they could receive through a steady income in a starting position at a retail chain or fast food restaurant despite the relative lack of risk.
Crime in an inner city environment does pay and it remains a better source of income than a steady job. This leads to detrimental effects on the environment in which children are growing. These children do not get the best because there is no funding for their education, income from crime related activities is nontaxable so the infrastructure suffers tremendously for this. With violence all around the children model this behavior and will continue the trend in those communities which will send them into a death spiral. They will fail to be as educated as those outside the inner city and will see a choice between a low risk/low income job or a high risk/high income activity and many in their teens will choose that high risk activity because unlike every other dead teenager, they won't be killed.
So with these statistics you have to look at the cause of them and that cause is more than just "black people are holding us back", given the same level of detriments as inner city residents we can expect the same activities from any race or gender in America. So instead of saying that we should get rid of these communities we need to look to see how we can improve them.
We should start by saying that welfare is actually a harmful thing in a lot of cases. It's been chronicled by psychologists as being too easy of a schedule of reinforcement and it also damages the ego of those who receive it, in some cases it may be helpful but it is something that should be avoided.
Side note: Schedules of reinforcement vary greatly. Continuous patterns give a reward after every action to be rewarded, Intermittent gives them in ratio(after every so many actions) or interval(after doing the action for a certain time period) periods. Ratios and intervals can be fixed(same number or time) or variable(different ratios or time). Important to note is that variable-ratio patterns are the best at preventing extinction(unlearning) of a behavior with variable schedules being overall better at preventing extinction than fixed schedules.
Welfare is a fixed interval schedule so it shouldn't be as good a choice, but it is also a choice that requires zero risk or effort. Selling drugs would be considered a variable schedule and most likely a variable interval schedule. Assuming they make $100 a day on average they can have days where it's all earned at the start of the day and days where it's more spread out through the day. Either way, it is a reawrd schedule that resists extinction of the learned behavior. The same applies with most criminal activities, they are variable reward schedules that resist unlearning of that behavior.
The best way to combat that would be to reduce the power of those rewards through the devaluation of the reward given. Legalization of drugs is usually the quickest way to hit the price point as it floods the market. We have to be wary of this practice as some drugs are indeed incredibly destructive.
Housing values are also incredibly subjective and it can be argued that the government could do something to coerce lower values for houses that would allow someone to better afford a home.
In cities with high levels of crime it may also be best to impose a sales tax versus an income tax as the main point of income for the city. While not everyone in the city is making a taxable income, they are all buying things. If you avoid this tax on most foods and place it on most luxury items then you can attempt to make up for deficits for the city's education and infrastructure.
Increasing the wage is seen as an alternative but this can also be a detriment if not used in combination with other methods. Magically making the minimum wage $15 an hour will not help as it reduces the amount of employees a business is willing to hire and also makes other positions question their own wages. If a job already pays $14 an hour then they get that raise to $15, however if that individual has done more to earn that wage(certification, training, out of pocket expenses for education) then they will begrudge the fact that the now make the same as someone who had to do none of that in order to get their position. That person will most likely ask for a higher wage, change positions, or begin to have high dissatisfaction with their current job. The best way to solve this issue is to increase the number of jobs in a city. If a city can reduce the risks involved with owning a business then more people may be willing to create more jobs, this increases the amount of available income in a city and protecting these businesses should be a top priority. Tax deductions are good in this case.
Increasing the overall income, reducing the rewards from criminal activity, and creating opportunities for employment and betterment of one's social standing will also lead to improved educational facilities and will improve social modeling of the children growing up in these environments. This method is costly as it expects the government to take the hit for certain risks made by smaller businesses but in the long run this can be seen as an investment that will improve these cities and the lives of those living in those cities.
The issue with the statistics given is that they don't take into account the community as being something greater than just skin color. A community consists of people and the environment around them and while people may see those statistics and blame the people it really is the environment that is the cause for these statistics.