Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand (10 page)

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Authors: Mike S. Adams

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Zach
,
I know you don’t like your present off-campus job very much, but I want you to imagine a job far more risky and far less rewarding. I want you to imagine that you are a professional burglar in the early 1950s. I mean that literally. I want you to stop what you are doing and imagine trying to commit the crime of burglary in an average neighborhood in an average town during the decade after our soldiers returned from World War II.
Progressives argue for gun control on the theory that when guns are readily available, crime increases. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence that just the opposite is true. I’ll write in some detail about gun control in a future letter. But in this letter, I’m going to make a similar case for transistor control legislation.
Prosperity was on the rise in the 1950s, but people still did not have much in the way of electronic gadgets. Whether we are talking about electronic inventions that make life easier or about devices used for entertainment, there simply was not much to be found in the average home—at least compared to today. And the electronics that did exist were built with cumbersome vacuum tubes, not silicon transistors.
If you looked into a living room window and tried to “case” a house for a burglary, these are the kinds of things you might have found: a television set weighing well over one hundred pounds; a radio (on top of the TV) with huge “rabbit ears” antennae protruding from its top; and perhaps a stereo system with turntable, receiver, and speakers all welded into one highly immobile audio entertainment system.
What you were also likely to see was a housewife doing chores, or worse—from the perspective of the burglar-staring right at the TV that you would like to steal if you had the opportunity. And that is really the key word in the present narrative: “opportunity.”
“Routine activities theory,”—which, like the “control theory” that I explained in the context of
Boyz N the Hood
, is compatible with man’s fallen nature—posits that crime equals a motivated offender plus a suitable target minus a capable guardian. If that’s the case, then you as a burglar in the ’50s are in very serious trouble. Since these valuables inside the living room are very heavy (not suitable targets for stealing) and a housewife seems to be virtually always home (and capable of guarding them), you would seem to be out of luck. If you want to burglarize this home, you had better wait until the whole family is on an extended vacation. And you had better bring some friends and a U-Haul to help cart off the stolen merchandise.
Now take a few minutes to imagine what it would be like to be a burglar today. Imagine yourself planning the burglary of an average house in an average neighborhood in an average town. If you peered into the living room window, here is what you might find: a television set weighing about twenty pounds, a DVD player weighing no more than five pounds, and a stereo system with CD player, receiver, and speakers—each component separate and weighing less than five pounds. You might also see a laptop weighing just a few pounds and an iPod weighing just a few ounces.
Remembering that crime really equals a motivated offender plus a suitable target minus a capable guardian, you are in very good shape. Because these valuables inside the living room are very light (suitable targets for stealing), and the husband and wife seem to virtually always to be at work (and thus incapable of guarding them), you would seem to be in luck. If you want to burglarize this home, you do not have to wait until the whole family is on vacation. And you will not need to bring friends and a U-Haul to help cart off the stolen merchandise. Just bring an empty laundry bag and a Honda Civic. You’ll be able to clean the place out in a few minutes.
This illustration seems to paint a dismal view of crime in the twenty-first century. It is true that modern technology has created an abundance of suitable targets for property crime. But there are ways to increase capable guardianship in order to offset the effects of modern technology—ways that stop short of banning the transistors that make electronic devices lighter and easier to steal.
Back in the 1990s, Marcus Felson wrote a book called
Crime and Everyday Life
, which offers cause for optimism in a society vulnerable to predatory crime. In that brilliant book, Felson explores ways of increasing capable guardianship without spending a lot of money.
For example, he discusses the desirability of building a short picket fence around your home, instead of a tall brick wall. It may seem counterintuitive, but the latter invites burglary while the former does not.
To illustrate Felson’s point, imagine yourself casing a house surrounded by an enormous brick wall. It might be tempting to pass on the opportunity because the wall is high and somewhat hard to scale. But once you are over the wall you have it made. Passersby cannot see what you are doing once you get inside the yard. The large wall operates as a shield to allow you to take your time as you break the lock and eventually rummage through potentially valuable papers and personal effects hidden in the house.
But a short picket fence has the opposite effect. Once a burglar is over the fence everything that he does is in plain view of passersby. He had better pick the lock quickly and close the blinds as soon as he gets inside. Otherwise, a jogger or dog walker just might call the police on a cell phone and spoil his fun.
Another of Felson’s examples of how homes and businesses can be designed in such a way as to increase capable guardianship is the decision of a convenience store chain to make some experimental changes in accordance with the central idea of routine activities theory, that crime equals motivated offender plus suitable target minus capable guardian.
The convenience store chain had long had a routine habit of posting advertisements in its windows, which were all located in the front of the store. It also had had a habit of installing its cash registers in the back of the store. Putting the registers in the back had seemed to make intuitive sense—the robber would have a longer distance to travel on his way from the register and out the front door as he tried to flee the scene of the crime.
But the convenience store chain decided to experiment with a new plan that was initially twofold:1) They removed all of the advertisements from the front windows of the store, and 2) they placed the cash register right behind the windows in the very front of the store.
Later, the convenience store would add two more innovations: 1) They placed the cash register and clerk on platforms, so that customers had to look upwards toward them—and potential robbers could not see how much money was in the cash register at any given time—and 2) they painted the word “taxi” on the parking space directly in front of the front doors of the convenience store. In addition to allowing taxis to wait there free of charge, they also offered cab drivers free coffee and restroom privileges.
With these simple innovations, the store slightly reduced motivated offenders’ access to suitable targets.
But the innovations also
more
than slightly increased the presence of capable guardians. There the change was dramatic. For example, people who passed by before the innovations were made could not see a robbery taking place in the back of the store, especially with the windows covered by advertisements. But looking through clear windows at a robbery taking place in the front of the store—with the panicking victim elevated above all else—was simply impossible to miss. And best of all, the first person likely to witness the event would likely be a cab driver whose car was equipped with a CB radio.
I don’t have to tell you the results of the experiment. You already know that the incidence of robbery dropped dramatically. (Otherwise, why would I be telling you this long story on an afternoon when Duke is playing North Carolina in the ACC conference final?)
This approach to combating robbery is very clever. It does not require expensive progressive social engineering in the form of building schools or raising the minimum wage. The grossly naïve principle that doing good things for people will lead them to return the favor by doing good things for “society” is nowhere in the equation.
Instead, this approach to fighting robbery assumes the worst about people—they will commit crimes if they have the opportunity. Then it proceeds to block opportunities for crime by increasing visibility, making crime that much more difficult to commit—and it does so for little more than the cost of giving cheap coffee to taxi drivers.
But of course, increasing visibility is only effective in preventing crime if people feel some obligation to help one another—to be capable guardians. That is why we must continue to teach people to love their neighbors and do for them the things they would wish done for themselves.
After fifty years of trying to implement new and clever progressive theories of crime prevention, it has become clear that the same features that made the neighborhood I grew up in a kind of Camelot are still the most relevant factors. When it comes to fighting crime, community is a far more important word than government.
I’m looking forward to more correspondence and discussion with you after spring break, Zach. Until then, go Heels!
LETTER 17
 
Government Subsidies and Spousal Abuse
 
Dear Zach
,
I was sorry to hear about your bad experience with your cell phone service provider over spring break. At the risk of giving you unsolicited advice, let me say that it probably wasn’t a good idea to sell them your cell phone based on their promise that your upgrade would be available for pick-up in the store the next day. You were naturally shocked when you went to the store and they told you it was not there and would not be there
for another month
. But I wasn’t shocked when you told me. Your service provider is subsidized by the federal government, and that makes a difference in the way they treat their customers. Because you did not know that, you are without a cell phone for the next month.
I wasn’t shocked because I had a similar experience with the same federally-subsidized cell phone provider that just dealt with you so dishonestly. They were once in charge of providing my cell phone and Internet services. When I found out they were charging me 50 percent more than a local competitor, I called to cancel my Internet service. Distraught over the prospective cancellation, they matched the other company’s offer, and I stayed on with them. But then they did the same thing to me that they did to you—they broke a promise upon which I had relied.
Zach, I recount the following events not just because they are educational, but because they are also downright comical:
Customer Service Visit #1:
I went down to customer service to cancel my Internet service because the cell phone service provider had continued to charge me under the old rate for two months, despite their promise to make the rate change effective immediately. They apologized and said it would not happen again.
 
 
Customer Service Visit #2:
Ten months later, they raised the rate again, specifically to its previous level. So I went down to tell a customer service agent to cancel my service. They said they did not want to lose me, and they restored the lower rate.
 
Customer Service Visit #3:
One year later, they did it again. So I went down to talk to a customer service agent and asked what the problem was. They told me the low rate was just a temporary promotional offer, which had expired. I told them to cancel my service. They said they did not want to lose me and offered to restore the lower rate. I took them back. That was stupid of me.
 
Customer Service Visit
#4: For two consecutive months, they kept charging me the higher rate. So I went back to cancel my service. It was a Saturday and the young woman working there apologized and told me that she would work everything out on Monday. I left hoping that my relationship with my provider would be improved by her intervention.
 
Customer Service Visit #5:
I got a call from the aforementioned customer service representative, telling me that she could not restore my rate until I came back in the store to talk with another representative, who would then fix things immediately. I came in to the store only to hear a faceless representative tell me over the phone that we could not work things out. That is, she could not offer the lower rate. When I told her to cancel my service, the girl tried to negotiate a new deal. That’s when I just lost my temper and let loose with something like the following:
 
“You know, you’re not really an Internet provider. You’re nothing like one. You’re more like an abusive spouse. You treat me disrespectfully until I threaten to leave you and then you promise to make things better. But they only get better for a while because you don’t change. You just lie to me to get me back because you can’t live without me. But this time I mean it. We’re through!”
There were two employees in the store when I unleashed that little salvo. One was simply speechless. But the other was actually laughing because she knew that I was right. I really do enjoy using humor—especially when I feel like I am about to have a stroke. But Zach, there is a serious point to be made here. The question is, what the heck does it have to do with the political problems we’ve been discussing? Well, everything. Please allow me to explain.

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