Editor’s note: Marshall Brain – futurist, inventor, NCSU professor, writer and creator of “How Stuff Works” is a contributor to WRAL TechWire.  Brain takes a serious as well as entertaining look at a world of possibilities for Earth and the human race.  He’s also author of “The Doomsday Book: The Science Behind Humanity’s Greatest Threats.” 

Note to readers: WRAL TechWire would like to hear from you about views expressed by our contributors. Please send email to: info@wraltechwire.com.

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RALEIGH – We had the election this week, and one big thing we get out of an election cycle is information. We find out what the American electorate cares about through all the polls that get conducted. This year, the economy was the biggest thing on American’s minds. But a surprisingly important factor in the election was crime. Here is a Gallup poll from last week:

Economy Is Top Election Issue; Abortion and Crime Next

“Nearly half of U.S. registered voters, 49%, say the economy will be extremely important to their vote for Congress. But abortion and crime are nearly as prominent; 42% and 40% of voters, respectively, say each of these is extremely important… Women today are also notably more focused than men on crime (45% versus 35%) and immigration (40% versus 33%). All other gender differences are minimal.”

Why has crime become such a prominent issue in the minds of Americans, and especially in the minds of American women?

The Summer Started with the Mass Shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde

Think back to May 2022. The mass shooting in Buffalo, NY happened on May 14, where 10 innocent people died in a grocery store. Then on May 24, nineteen children and two teachers died in the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Both the event itself and the aftermath generated headlines for weeks, and it also brought to light how many other mass shootings were happening around the country. Here is a typical video describing 13 U.S. mass shootings in one weekend in June: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDV1fo39SmM

The video opens with a mass shooting that occurred in Philadelphia in June. Then just this past Saturday there was another prominent mass shooting in Philadelphia with 9 people wounded. This article  describes Saturday’s incident: “The gunmen got out of a black vehicle and opened fire on a crowd on the sidewalk before getting back in the vehicle and fleeing”.

Crime in general is up significantly. This article in Time Magazine points out:

U.S. Crime Is Still Dramatically Higher Than Before the Pandemic

“The homicide numbers for the first half of 2022, which are based on data from 23 cities, are still 39% higher than they were in the same time period of 2019. ‘It is heartening to see the homicide numbers fall, even slightly, but American cities continue to lose too many of their residents to bloodshed,’ Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri – St. Louis criminologist who co-authored the study said in a press release. The authors of the report also reviewed property crimes, violent crimes and drug offenses in 29 large cities. Aggravated assaults and robberies both increased by 4% and 19% respectively. Property crimes also increased by 6% while larceny went up by 20%, residential burglaries rose by 6% and motor vehicle thefts jumped up by 15%.”

Mass shootings and homicides generate big headlines, and those headlines generate legitimate fear in people.

And then the crime problem multiplies. The big, bloody, headlines appear alongside thousands of smaller crimes happening all around us. It can seem like every time you turn around another crime is happening, sometimes to a friend or neighbor. Take, for example, the unbelievable explosion in package thefts.

The Explosion of Porch Pirates

On the off chance that you have never heard the term “porch pirate”, this crime involves unattended packages that have been delivered to someone’s front porch (e.g. by Amazon, UPS, Fedex, etc.). The porch pirate runs up and steals the packages off the porch, often in broad daylight. It is currently an easy crime – some porch pirates are so brazen that they will follow a UPS or Amazon truck around and pick up packages moments after delivery. Here is an example of the problem from news station KJRH in Tulsa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rV4RX7UqD4

One thing that is so uncomfortable about porch pirates is how widespread the problem has become. This article claims hundreds of millions of packages have been stolen:

210 million packages were stolen from Americans this year: survey

“The annual influx of holiday parcels might seem like a cause for celebration. However, experts warn gift recipients to remain extra vigilant this Christmas: A recent survey found that a staggering 210 million packages vanished from porches across the US over the past 12 months… Safewise found that a mind-boggling 64.1% of Americans have been victims of package theft in the last year — a 36% increase from the prior year, according to the survey — and 53.5% had multiple parcels snatched during that period.”

It seems safe to assume that all these package-stealing criminals are causing societal misery in other ways as well. In other words, it seems unlikely that a person who is a porch pirate becomes a model citizen in other situations. And given the numbers cited above, there are millions of porch pirates. Chances are that you or someone you know has experienced this type of crime recently.

Catalytic Converter Thefts Are Also in the News

Another crime trend on the rise is catalytic converter theft. The criminal gets under your car with a battery-powered saw and cuts out your catalytic converter in just a few seconds. The converter is the size of a loaf of bread, but the criminal can fence it for $150. This video from Houston’s KHOU shows security camera footage of a crime in progress in a church parking lot in broad daylight. It also points out that 99% of the catalytic converter criminals are never caught: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYqIdhFthdE

This article points out how fast catalytic converter crimes are rising, and why:

Catalytic Converter Thefts Skyrocket Across the Nation

“In 2020, catalytic converter theft claims jumped massively to 14,433, a 325% increase in a single year. Though not a reporting of all catalytic converter thefts, it did provide a look at the trends of catalytic converter thefts.”

If You Live in a Big City, You May Be Surrounded by Crime and Filth

Something has changed in America’s largest cities. The ABC News station KOMO in Seattle started a trend in documenting the problem when it released the video “Seattle is Dying” three years ago. At this point, 13 million people have watched it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw

The video opens with this idea:

“Let me ask you something. What if Seattle is dying and we don’t even know it? This story is about a seething, simmering anger that is now boiling over into outrage. It is about people who have felt compassion, yes, but who no longer feel safe, no longer feel they are heard, no longer feel protected.”

Just before Covid hit, 60 Minutes Australia came to cover Chicago’s gang wars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1YUiTRREF0 “Imagine living in a place where every two hours someone is shot, and every 14 hours someone is murdered. It isn’t Iraq or Afghanistan, but one of the biggest and most sophisticated cities in the world: Chicago.”

The Domestic Violence and Sexual Violence Numbers in America Are Staggering

Domestic violence is such a huge problem in the United States that we need to have a national hotline for it:

National Domestic Violence Hotline:  https://www.thehotline.org/

The hotline is supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, which has a special Office on Violence Against Women (OVW), which has a website on the topic:

Domestic Violence : https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence)

There is also the National Council Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) which offers this definition:

NCADV National Statistics:  https://assets.speakcdn.com/assets/2497/domestic_violence-2020080709350855.pdf?1596828650457)

“Domestic violence is the willful intimidation, physical assault, battery, sexual assault, and/or other abusive behavior as part of a systematic pattern of power and control perpetrated by one intimate partner against another. It includes physical violence, sexual violence, threats, economic, and emotional/psychological abuse. The frequency and severity of domestic violence varies dramatically. In the United States, more than 10 million adults experience domestic violence annually.”

That 10 million number is staggering. It means that there are millions of perpetrators walking among us. Some are caught and imprisoned, yes, but many more are walking free at any given moment.

How harmful can domestic violence get? In the worst-case scenario, the victim is beaten, shot, or strangled to death by the attacker. Here is a survivor of domestic violence, a woman named Emma Murphy, talking about her experience with domestic violence in her TEDx talk. Millions of people have heard her story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frFEdN7aMh8

And yet the tragedy of domestic violence continues at this massive scale.

Closely related are the criminals who spread sexual violence in the form of rape. As this video from the CDC points out, “Sexual violence includes rape and any other unwanted sexual contact or experience. About 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual violence in the form of physical contact at some point in their lives. Violence starts early. Before the age of eighteen, 8.5 million women first experienced rape”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWctQH4C0P8

It boggles the mind to understand that there are this many criminals in our society making life so miserable for their victims through domestic violence and sexual violence. Imagine how much better our world could be if we could aggressively eliminate all this criminal behavior.

The Problem with Bullies in America

Bullies are low-level criminals in America, affecting millions. They make their innocent victims miserable for no reason. Bullying is such a big issue that the United States has an official site called StopBullying.gov: https://www.stopbullying.gov/

The American Psychological Society also has a big section on bullying:  https://www.apa.org/topics/bullying  and defines it this way:

“Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort… Cyberbullying is verbally threatening or harassing behavior conducted through such electronic technology as cell phones, email, social media, or text messaging.”

Another example that shows how serious a problem bullying has become: If you type “bullies” or “bullying” into YouTube as a search term, YouTube automatically pops up a notice about the 988 suicide prevention hotline.

We are currently living in a society where bullies have so much freedom to operate that they have created a significant increase in suicidal behavior. This article from the CDC]: https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/yv/bullying-suicide-translation-final-a.pdf) points out: “We know that bullying behavior and suicide-related behavior are closely related. This means youth who report any involvement with bullying behavior are more likely to report high levels of suicide-related behavior than youth who do not report any involvement with bullying behavior.”

This video shows a typical bullying situation and how bystanders can react to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z8oevTEcSY

It is easy to understand that the bullying demonstrated in the video is wrong, that its intent is solely to make innocent victims miserable, and that bullying like this is corrosive to our society.

The Problem with Racism in America

Racism makes life miserable, dangerous, and unfair for tens of millions of innocent people in the United States. A co-worker once put it to me this way:

“I am a person just like anyone else and that should be enough to simply be able to exist without fear.”

Racism appears to be endemic. In October there was even an incident involving the Los Angeles City Council as described in this piece from PBS Newshour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cUEegsFS4

Time Magazine reports that:

“Martinez, a descendant of Mexican immigrants who became the first Latina to be elected as city council president three years ago, made inflammatory comments while discussing redistricting with two other council members, saying that fellow councilmember Mike Bonin’s son, who is Black, ‘looked like a monkey.’ She also referred to Oaxacans, people from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico, as ‘little short dark people’ and ‘ugly.’ Oaxaca has one of Mexico’s largest Indigenous populations.”

If high government officials are casually making racist remarks like this, it is easy to understand how common racism can be in the general population. This video makes the case from a scientific standpoint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBWImda1Zig

Imagine if we could have a society where all the racist behavior has been removed. It would be a society that is significantly better for everyone.

Liars and other purveyors of misinformation

We all have experience with liars, but today it can seem like the liars are completely out of control:

  • Companies often lie to their customers
  • Spouses often lie to their partners
  • Politicians often lie to their constituents or to score political points
  • Scammers lie to take advantage of their victims

Liars have always been a problem, but it seems like their power and reach is growing because of social media. On social media, it often seems the case that liars have free reign. It can seem like they can post any lie they like. Then others can share the lie freely, sometimes to millions of people. It can happen at an individual level, at the corporate level, and at the political level. There is plenty of evidence that foreign governments can use bots, ads, and human actors on social media sites to initiate and amplify lies and misinformation, and at advanced levels these lies are called “information warfare”. For example:

The third article points out: “As relations with the United States and the EU have worsened in recent years, China has sought more actively to project what the CCP calls “external propaganda” overseas, conducting what it has characterized as a “war without smoke.” It has sown disinformation about COVID-19, about the efficacy of Western vaccines, about the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang and much more.”

Corporations can do the same kind of thing:

We see plenty of other domestic examples:

There is a process called radicalization, often fostered by lies and misinformation, as described in this video from the Wall Street Journal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6984NNJyWQ

This quote from the video is valuable: “Individuals who own websites are allowed to decide what stays and what goes. That is non-controversial. But when we run into the problem of scale, when that speech scales so that it is comparable to broadcast, when you have 50,000, 60,000 people that are looking at particular posts and videos online that contain racist speech, hate speech, harassment, incitement, then we have to come up with a schema related to amplification like we did with broadcast radio and like we have done with broadcast television that sets a different set of rules.”

All of these lies combine with all of the mass shootings and homicides and porch pirates and catalytic converter thieves and rapists and racists and bullies and flash mobs and every other form of crime, and it all adds up. Taken all together, it can make it feel like our society is collapsing; Like things are spiraling out of control; Like the bad guys rather than the good guys are winning, and the bad guys are tearing our communities apart.

Who Would Be Criminal of the Year?

If we were to have a contest for the biggest criminal of 2022, who might win this honor? One nominee would certainly be Vladimir Putin. This single individual has been the architect of so much global misery that he certainly deserves consideration for “Criminal of the Year”:

  • Putin started the war in Ukraine – a horrific act of unilateral aggression – war crimes
  • This war has needlessly killed thousands of innocent Ukrainians along with thousands of Russian soldiers – the crime of murder at a massive scale
  • This war has destroyed countless buildings and infrastructure – the crimes of arson, vandalism, destruction, again at a massive scale
  • With their homes and livelihoods destroyed, this war has created millions of refugees out of Ukraine into other countries
  • This war has also had a major impact of grain supplies around the world, leading to significant increases in food prices and threatening death by starvation for millions of people in developing countries
  • There is also a global fertilizer shortage
  • Putin has conspired with OPEC+ to cut oil supplies and therefore raise oil prices around the world, pushing up inflation
  • Putin has also cut off the supply of natural gas that Russia previously provided to Europe, affecting the future of everyone in Europe
  • Putin has recently targeted missile attacks at civilian infrastructure in Ukraine with the sole purpose of causing civilian casualties and suffering
  • Putin is threatening to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine
  • Putin and his surrogates have lied many times during these proceedings
  • Putin is a root cause of a large portion of the global inflation we are all experiencing

The active threat of nuclear weapons is appalling because there will be massive civilian casualties, as seen in recent headlines:

With all of these crimes, Putin has caused misery in Ukraine, misery in Russia, and misery all around the world. Billions of people are affected by this single criminal. It is astonishing that we as a global community would allow one person to cause so much suffering for an entire planet.

What Might Life Be Like Without the Criminals?

It turns out that we got a taste of how amazing a crime-free world could be via a viral TikTok video from Singapore last week, as discussed in this article:

Shock as Man Leaves MacBook Unattended in Starbucks: https://www.newsweek.com/man-macbook-starbucks-singapore-safe-viral-video-1754729

“Millions of people online were shocked to see a man’s laptop wasn’t stolen in a Starbucks in Singapore despite it being left there unattended for an hour—on purpose. Uptin Saiidi spoke to Newsweek about his viral TikTok video which has received over 20 million views and more than 2.9 million likes.”

If you go to the article and watch the TikTok video, the whole thing seems surreal, maybe impossible. Especially the statistic he cites about crime in Singapore. In fact, you may be asking yourself if the statistic he quotes is true. Yes, it is true, as demonstrated here:

Crime-free days for snatch theft, housebreaking and robbery in Singapore from 2015 to 2021

In 2021, Singapore had 250 crime-free days for snatch theft, housebreaking and robbery. This amazing statistic demonstrates at least two things. First, Singapore shows us that it is possible to do much more to eliminate criminal behavior in a society. And second, the view count shows a tremendous pent-up desire to eliminate the criminal behavior that is so corrosive in America today.

What do we do with all the criminals?

The examples above give you a taste of the problems that criminals are causing in our world today. Just for a moment, close your eyes and think about the bigger picture. Try to imagine how fantastic our world could be if we eliminated all the criminals and disruptors described above. Then imagine a society that is completely free of criminal behavior. All of the porch pirates, catalytic converter cutters, rapists, racists, bullies, liars, and dictators are gone, along with all the rest:

  • Muggers
  • Burglars
  • Murderers
  • Pedophiles
  • Stalkers
  • Creeps
  • Cat callers
  • Misogynists
  • Gang members
  • Thugs
  • Drug dealers
  • Drug users
  • Drunks
  • Homophobes
  • Con artists
  • Pickpockets
  • Purse snatchers
  • Flash mobbers
  • Arsonists
  • Vandals
  • Graffiti painters
  • Terrorists
  • Religious fanatics
  • White supremacists
  • Spammers
  • Scammers
  • Phishers
  • Swindlers
  • Embezzlers
  • Road ragers
  • Kidnappers
  • Paparazzi
  • Public restroom defilers
  • And all the rest…

Just imagine if we could eliminate all these criminals and their toxic behavior from our society. Imagine an aggressive nationwide campaign to eliminate all criminal behavior. There would be no need to lock our doors or our cars. Women could walk down the street at night without constant fear. People would not be getting shot on the street in mass shootings. And so on.

Our world would be so much better for everyone, so why haven’t we aggressively eliminated all of the criminals already?

We do try in some respects. We do have police, we do have courts, and we do have prisons. But clearly they could be more effective, as demonstrated by the situation in Singapore seen previously.

It seems like there is room for innovation. Look at what happened to Kanye West in October after he started spouting antisemitic garbage:

What if every antisemite and racist saw real ramifications like this? How might we bring this same kind of condemnation to the masses? There are millions of racists in the United States, along with a legion of white supremacists who are even worse. How might we shut all these millions of people down so that the rest of us can live in peace? Let’s try to think creatively.

In the United States we have several nationwide lists that can have a big effect on people’s lives:

If a person gets on one of these lists, it punishes them. They can have trouble getting a job. They can have trouble renting an apartment. They can have trouble traveling freely. They can have trouble getting a loan. And so on.

Why not create a National Racist Watchlist? When someone posts racist material on social media, or posts a racist video on YouTube, or shows up and gets filmed at a racist rally, and so on, they have publicly outed themselves as a racist. Therefore, they get entered into the National Racist Watchlist and suddenly they start to feel real effects due to their racism.

What if we banned everyone on the National Racist Watchlist from all social media and news platforms? What if we banned them from holding public office or positions of authority? Suddenly there would be no more racists in our feeds, in our governments, and on our police forces. What if we purged our military of racists as well? This would be a huge win for freedom and democracy.

Then, as a society, we would be wanting to find innovative ways to rehabilitate the racists. Sure, the hardest-core white supremacists may be a lost cause. But many racists have fallen into racist rabbit holes due to radicalization, misinformation, poor parenting, etc. A good rehabilitation program might be able to retrieve them from these holes and allow them to rejoin the society of decent people.

That’s just one example of a way to effectively curtail racist behavior. We could use a similar approach with liars. With the racists and liars taken care of, we can think creatively about eliminating all the bullies, porch pirates, sex offenders, etc.

Think how much better everything in our world would be if we started an aggressive program to eliminate all the criminal behavior from the public sphere. Our society would be utterly transformed into a much better place for everyone.

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