That statement is the classic social-democratic/socialist prescription. Expanding the state’s role in housing, healthcare, wages, childcare, and education has never eliminated crime or resource conflict; it redistributes the conflict into politics, taxation, and regulation. Politicians sell the benefits; the costs in liberty, fiscal sustainability, and unintended consequences appear later. Treating material provision by government as the primary solution to violence ignores culture, family structure, deterrence, and human nature and historically tends to enlarge the very power that can then be used against the people it claims to help.
Notice how the OOP didn't say "eliminate"
They know it can't be eliminated. But they have a point. People are more vulnerable to get wrapped up in criminal organisations when they live in poverty. That's a fact.
Agreed that absolute poverty can raise the risk of recruitment into criminal groups, that’s well documented in many places. The original claim, though, wasn’t limited to “poverty raises risk.” It presented a package of expansive state provision (universal healthcare, public housing, strong unions, high wages, universal childcare, free college) as the primary way to lessen crime and resource conflict.
That package has been tried at scale in various forms and has not reliably produced the promised reductions; the residual drivers family breakdown, cultural norms around violence and work, deterrence, impulse control, and the incentives created by the welfare systems themselves, remain decisive. Treating material redistribution as the main lever still underweights those factors and shifts the conflict into politics and taxation rather than dissolving it.
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u/Jag4342 3d ago
That statement is the classic social-democratic/socialist prescription. Expanding the state’s role in housing, healthcare, wages, childcare, and education has never eliminated crime or resource conflict; it redistributes the conflict into politics, taxation, and regulation. Politicians sell the benefits; the costs in liberty, fiscal sustainability, and unintended consequences appear later. Treating material provision by government as the primary solution to violence ignores culture, family structure, deterrence, and human nature and historically tends to enlarge the very power that can then be used against the people it claims to help.