I live in Québec, Canada. So we went through the legalization of Cannabis about 10 years ago. And there are many things I like and dislike about how every province went with their brand of legalization. But one of the things I think Québec did great is prohibiting any form of promotion of cannabis products or use. They sell it through a nationalized entity with a very simple logo, buildings are not decorated, and you can't see through the glass. The inside is very bland. Everything is hidden behind a counter where you can only see a standardized detail of what is inside the cabinets : type, brand, levels of different cannabinoids and terpenes, and an overall flavour profile. Employees behind the counter are not allowed to tell you anything other than general information about the products, they can't recommend stuff, and there are no promotions, and no batch prices. Also, there is a security guard at the door that will systematically ask for your ID, no matter how old you are. It adds some kind of friction to the process. I think this part is great : legalization without banalization. But here where I think it doesn't work. First, almost every option in these stores have the highest legal concentration of THC. I am a very frequent, but very low quantity user, of cannabis, and I very often struggle to find any dosage that is low enough for my kind of consumption. Second, the current government changed the legal age to buy cannabis there from 18 to 21. I understand the medical benefits of preventing early use of cannabis, but it's just not how the world works. I was smoking pot well before legalization, and let me tell you that the quality and variety black market sellers will offer you is much worse than what you can get at the dispensary. Never have a SQDC clerk offered me a free methamphetamine trial. Third is that Québec still doesn't sell vapes and vaping liquids. This is nonsensical to me because it has been demonstrated that black market cannabis vapes can be very dangerous, so if legalization is about protecting consumers, it should be one of the first thing you'd want to sell a safe alternative to. And so I live near a provincial border and went on the other side to get a vape there. Since then, I've smoke less than a gram of the stuff in a 6-month period, because it is much easier to calibrate my dosage to what I want, which is pretty much only clearing out some stress a few evenings a week. But then, on the other side of the border, cannabis stores are candy stores. Everything's bright and flashy, and you feel a lot more like in a regular liquor store, with the only exception that they didn't go as far as have you try out products when you come in (yet). And it brings me to my conclusion, that is that I think we should sell alcohol like Québec sells cannabis : It is a drug. It can have detrimental effects on your physical and mental health. This is not candy, this is serious stuff. We sell it because we want to offer a safer alternative to black markets, and we'll offer competitive price and variety. But we will not banalize it. We will not advertise it. And we will not tie any profit incentives to it.
Common denominator. Wealth inequality. Desperate people do desperate things. A rise in homelessness is a rise in a lack of home availability/affordability. An increase in hopelessness is a rise in disaffected behavior.
and yet he brags about capitalism that has directly caused these problems , the capitalists are the biggest ideologists themselves and yet constantly criticising the socialists who actually want to build a practical soceity beyond the commoditization of everything and start building back a community that can contain individuals and flourish their potential for being impractical ideologists!
Stealing food may be desperation, but stealing $200 Nikes is poor values. A lot of the theft increase in June 2020 was because the George Floyd incident disparaged law-and-order and empowered those with a poor moral compass. The US has the world's highest rate of kids raised by a single parent, which greatly increases the risk of crime and also emotional problems. The US also has a hyperstimulating culture of instant gratification, a lack of meaningful in-person relationships & community involvement, and a corporate media fixated on negativity. So crime & drug use is more complex than "wealth inequality".
A lot of crime goes unreported which is left out of the stats. But it's not just crime, it's behavior. A lot of people see, and ultimately feel, that there are swaths of people who act like rules, norms, and even basic behavior doesn't apply to them.
It's interesting, too, to consider how TikTok portrayals of Karens and whatnot factor into this. If you are trained to expect that any given customer who comes up to you at your job might become unhinged and aggressive, I wonder how safe you even are capable of feeling.
Unreported crime is still captured by some sources (e.g., National Crime Victimization Survey - NCVS), which also shows a downward trend. There is criminological literature that covers this issue - crime (both reported and unreported) is down.
I was hesitant to listen to this episode. I foresaw cringe platitudes on one side and nebulous arguments from the other. But this proved to be a very interesting and nuanced discussion. I found Charles credible and clear, and Ezra was curious and facilitating. Good job 👍
I really enjoyed this episode as well. Considering that certain GOP personalities revolve around flimsy migrant and violent crime talking points, it was nice that Charles did not rely on those sentiments. I don't think I've actually seen a right-of-center person actually acknowledge that violent crime is actually, in fact, not skyrocketing.
The basic requirement for a city is that it needs to function for most, and there need to be mechanisms in place to intervene in events that mitigate that functioning. We have a problem with that mitigation step in San Francisco. When experimental policies fail, cities will show the symptoms of that failure. Untrammeled public drug use has led to all the expected problems associated with severely behaviorally ill people who cannot care for themselves, even for their basic bodily needs, so act out in public places instead of getting the medical and psychiatric support they need. "Homeless" and "behaviorally ill" are not the same populations and yet they're repeatedly conflated by all media. We need more affordable housing, developed in a way that makes sense per site. We also need a new generation of custodial behavioral health campuses. Ezra, it's not about "violent crime", although I saw a shoplifter grab his armful of contraband and stride off, knocking into a very small old lady who would have fallen on her face if I hadn't caught her. This is not about liberal politics -- we're all liberals here. But we're not stupid. We need to drop the sophomoric rhetoric, everybody -- Foucault was a philosopher, not a city mayor -- his idea about closing prisons was an argument, not a public policy. Reform the police, don't defund them. We can no longer afford tax cuts for our top tier -- let's ask why Kamala Harris can't just say that? Too radical? It should just be a bread-and-butter issue for the majority. Laissez-faire economics and the resulting income inequality are being ignored to the peril of all of us.
You almost got there a few times, but what I feel was missed as part of this conversation is the root causes of addiction. Further to Charles's statement that he sees addiction and substance use has a rational basis, until we look at the family and social dynamics that program us through trauma and stigmatization, we will be constantly chasing our tails around the carousel of substances we use to try to comfort or drown out deep psychological and spiritual injury. A conversation about the social and family structures in this country and how they cause and reinforce deep hurt and trauma is necessary. Until you fully heal the person and provide support and structure for them to live in healthy relationships, people will always, logically and rationally, turn to substance use to feel better.
Your comment is very insightful on the point that until we examine the root causes in family structure, people will be "stuck" in their addiction patterns.
I do like the talk about severe mental illness. I think commitments and keeping people who are vulnerable safe and build mental hospitals etc. It is not safe to be homeless. Period. Who in their right mind would choose that?? No one. I feel they are abandoned. It is disgusting. Harm production helps but not the solution. Allowing people to openly kill themselves cannot be right.
i believe some of what drives this is, take for instance, in NYC, where i live, you have large numbers of people who move here from very small cities and towns as well as places with nowhere near the intensity and cannot adjust and begin to want it to more reflect what they are inherently used to. a case of wanting to live in a big city but dont want to deal with big city problems. i have heard people complain about women/children selling candy on the train, subway dancers etc these things make them feel unsafe even though it is harmless and they start to cry that the city is dangerous
I’d agree to a extent (I live in SoHo/Tribecca and was born in NY, but grew up in NC) - though some of these people probably have a point that we are just too tolerant of nuisance and property crimes, because we unquestionably are. Outside of that I think its mostly a media issue. The people I hear going on about it most are also the ones who are more likely to read sensationalist crime news and love to binge Nancy grace and true crime content. That stuff just poisons their minds!
@@chickenfishhybrid44 as I plainly stated, I’ve seen people get uptight over things as simple as subway shows or women selling candy those aren’t crimes but some people are so uptight they feel it shouldn’t need allowed. That you?
Part of the issue is people doing private things in public spaces, but it's also the government involvement in people's private lives and spaces. When the government is involved in all kinds of private matters, law enforcement feels arbitrary. Citizens are certainly breaking laws all the time; the only question is how, where, and on whom we enforce them. Being accused of a crime becomes a random peril like accidents or illness. I think it would be different if there were very few crimes, with no attempt to control citizens' unwholesome behaviors, and mostly honest law enforcement, these problems would find an equilibrium level that's lower than what we see when we try to control and manage people.
When IPV is addressed everywhere except criminal courts one starts to wonder why that particular crime is permitted in every jurisdiction. Always everyone’s fault except the perpetrator.
On legalization, I used to argue with the NORML people in early 2000s that the existence of illicit pathways plus high taxes would guarantee result in what has happened and that guaranteed once usage increased and became better studied, the harms would become clear. It is absurd to think there could be any other outcome than what has happened. I think we can expect the same outcome for the rest of this stuff.
it sure seems like this guy is working backwards from the stats to find reasons that might be relevant with no real sense of how much each part of "disorder" actually contributes to these feelings. its a great theory if you want to keep moving the goalposts
"moving the goalposts" is not always bad though? if you are moving the goalposts closer to a conversation about the stats and farther from "I feel crime like crime is up even though I have no data to backup this claim" that is objectively a better place for these kinds of discussions. If anything it makes the conversation more interesting, because a decent amount of people think violent crimes are up and are completely, objectively wrong. This gives us an indication of how much influence propaganda peddlers like Fox News can have on our overall perception of reality, regardless of how true their messages are.
@@djbcubedI notice many people in these discussions often jump around from saying "violent crime" or just "crime". Seems true violent crime is down most places. While that's obviously good and more important than things like property crime, it still negatively effects people and feeds into the feeling of disorder or crime not getting better. "Crimes" of various types are not necessarily down everywhere like violent crime.
This man’s answer to every question or issue raised is “Police need more support”. This is not an educational or intelligent discussion about disorder in society as this man pins all the issues on a lack of police support yet, even during and after the Protests police funding did not decline. Yet crime still increased and then declined after the pandemic. What really bothers me is when they discourse homelessness and the dude is like “there’s the good upstanding homeless who cower and hide from the public and there’s bad homeless people who do drive in public “ there homeless if we gave them homes they wouldn’t do drugs in public!
Tell me about it!! I had to stop the video and audibly said, "Are you being serious right now?," because what the hell. Also, as another commenter mentioned, it seems like he's working backwards
In my town, and many others, police enforcement of laws declined after the George Floyd incident because of rampant anti-police sentiment, which made a lot of cops retire. That anti law & order sentiment was a main driver of the crime increase after June 2020. Even pedestrian deaths went up, despite fewer people driving.
Please. People who just need somewhere to go, I think, would choose a park, an alley, or somewhere other than the middle of the sidewalk on a busy street.
Enforcement is not the only option. Many years ago, I had a job where I ran the wastewater treatment system at a small business. The state didn't want people like me to have too much of anything going into the river in the wastewater except water and the insignificant amounts of harmless stuff that we used in the wastewater treatment system. I implicitly assumed that meant they passed a law against dumping various kinds of stuff in rivers, and then had someone try to catch everyone who broke the law: what we do with everything from parking violations to homicide. That's *enforcement,* and it's not what they did. Instead, they kept track of everyone with a business that might wind up dumping stuff in the river that shouldn't be there, they took for granted that we were trying to do our job and run our wastewater treatment systems right, and they did stuff like having us keep records and send wastewater samples for testing. That approach is called *compliance,* and it should be used for a whole lot of things besides wastewater.
Interesting that theres an increase in public disorder which grows with homelessness. That would seem to indicate its more an economic problem than an actual criminal one
It also seems that if the reality of poverty and homelessness is accepted in a place that leaves government with two choices: - Crack down hard which only serves to increase incarceration and animosity against police because many of these people have no other choice. - Let them be which concentrates disorder and makes people feel unsafe as these spaces deteriorate. I feel like the real solution is to not accept poverty and homelessness. Especially at such a scale.
Depends if it's chicken or egg. I'd find it hard to believe that the majority of "disorderly" homeless got on the streets by primarily economic factors. It's probably drugs or mental illness.
@@juanperret7044I think San Fran for example spent almost 700 million on homelessness in 2022-23. Seems pretty far from accepting poverty and homelessness.
Funny how this data-driven, economics-minded guy fails to talk about Donahue and Levitt's findings on the reduction of crime in the 90s. I wonder why....🤔 Still a very good discussion and it helped me adjust my priors on drug policy and criminal justice.
One would assume so, but even with the revisions, the point remains that this is generally a safer time than, say, 40 years ago, even though people generally don't feel safer. Mean World Syndrome is still highly relevant, and it seems strange for Klein and his guest to focus on disorder instead of media ecology.
@@loganhurley5590 The safety of cities 40 years ago is almost totally irrelevant. Most people don't even have lived experience with this unless they are 60 years old. The demographics of the country have changed vastly since then, there are far fewer young men as a percentage of populations, and it just isn't relevant to today. What is relevant is that we had a continuous decline in crime from the 90s until 2020, then a sudden upswing, and now, a gradual trend lower. The upswing in 2020 is almost entirely attributable to lockdowns and the BLM related riots and subsequent police pull back (and in the case of places like Portland OR, with an actual decrease in police numbers and presence). This is indisputable and is the result of policies on the left.
@@loganhurley5590 The relevant comparison period is Trump's first term. Also note that shoplifting is almost never reported to the police, and that's been skyrocketing. Concerns about crime are as much about the fraying of the fabric of society, as they are about the risk of victimization.
Interesting discussion. Regarding cannabis regulation I think you both miss the point. Cannabis regulation has been off the mark and ends up being a complete fraud. In Oregon where I live, the state imposed insane regulation on the industry that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This included seed to sale tracking that did absolutely nothing to stop the feared diversion to the illicit market. Regulated cannabis farms spent millions on plastic tags on every plant grown. Meanwhile nearby cartel farms grew acres of "hemp" that faced virtually no regulation. These cartel farms were right out in the open and were hundreds of times bigger than the regulated farms. Some cartel farms were busted that police valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Single cartel farms were nearly as big as the entire state legal regulated system. Many cartel farms were busted but not a single higher up was ever even arrested. The cartels already had distribution networks all over the country and the cartel weed ended up fueling the illicit shops in places like New York. The only real effect of cannabis regulation has been to ensure that Mom and Pop businesses can't survive but big multistate operations can. Regulatory capture has already run amok and the big multistate corporate operators end up writing the rules in all the newly legal states. Dumb cannabis regulation is giving birth to Big Cannabis that will have the same sort of problems as Big Pharma, Big Oil or any other industry where innappropriate regulation favors giant uncontrolled corporate greed. Meanwhile the federal government still makes banking difficult for cannabis so the business is mostly cash, making it a magnet for robberies. A cannabis store employee shot two robbers at a store in my daughter's neighborhood and is being charged with murder. As a cannabis activist who worked on every marijuana initiative in Oregon for 40years I advocated for cannabis regulation over prohibition. I have changed my mind. Everything done by the legislature to regulate cannabis has been wrong and made things worse. We need legal cannabis but not dumb regulation that fails to protect the public at all.
I think Charles is giving a false equivalency about poor and rich mentally ill people. The difference between the two and he almost said it, but difference is the wealthy in his example are locking up their kids and have the money to do so. The difference for the poor is that the hospitals are just trying to get the people stable and out of the hospital because they can’t pay to stay there longer. I have dealt with this with my wife. She has never stayed in a mental health facility longer than when she lived with me and was using my good insurance. Before she used to stay for between 3-5 days when now she is held for almost two weeks. Not because she wants to or even needs to but because that’s how long insurance will pay.
There used to be comedians like Andrew "Dice" Clay that did the non-PC shtick, and angry comics like Bob Goldthwait. That's about the time that Seinfeld came into his career. It was a different time. He's just dealing with aging and how we all end up not understanding what matters to the people who are the current creators of popular culture. Also, when his TV show came into being, the trend was sitcoms. With streaming and a complete change of how people consume media, it's just not served up in the same way. We're no longer limited to watch a show at a certain time on a certain day. So, people may or may not have a specific show that they talk about immediately after it airs.
Ezra Klein, LOL, "crime in SF was much worse in the 80s and 90s". First of all, the 80s were 40 years ago, and are about as relevant to this discussion as WW1 was to the 60s, does anyone care that 40 years ago things were worse? Second, I lived in SF in the 90s, and while nominally there was more crime, it was very localized in a few dangerous neighborhoods, some of which have since gentrified, but the majority of the city was safe and relatively clean. The difference now is that there is rampant unreported property crime, smash and grabs from cars, car theft, and open unreported shoplifting, crimes that aren't like murder, but which totally undermine the social contract and anger law abiding people. I no longer live in SF but have two children who live there still and also many other family members, I am a very frequent visitor, and am well aware of the local environment since moving away 20 years ago. And the open sewer and drug markets of the Tenderloin and around Civic Center are 10 times worse than in the 90s. Mayor Frank Jordan cracked down on this behavior in the 90s. For unknown reasons, the far left decided in 2020 or so that cracking down on public disorder and camping was somehow "racist". The current backlash against this is long overdue. Anyway, your minimizing of the problems in SF is typical left wing deflection. There is certainly less violent crime in SF now than 30-40 years ago, but quality of life and property crime is much worse and is a major issue, and it's hard to blame this on anyone except the people who govern at the state and city level.
I lean to the left and agree wholeheartedly. When I worked in SF and my coworkers and I would go out, we would leave our cars wirh our windows down and never leave anything, that may even look like a bag or case inside. Tenderloin was disgusting mess (some good food tho). Felt extremely neglected, people in horrible states just allowed to waste away and die. SF is horribly mismanaged and that's why it's no longer a top tier city for anyone outside tech.
I’m a little outraged that Ezra didn’t get on his YIMBY soapbox on the homelessness topic. if you want to be a fanatic (like me) you can’t change your mind and you can’t change the topic on zoning and building restrictions
45:44 I'm sorry, "Jammin' on Mario Brothers 3 on a Super Nintendo"???? Super Mario Bros 3 was an NES game and the SNES was not backwards compatible so Ezra Klein just lost all journalistic credibility.
Super Mario Brothers 3 was on the super Nintendo as super mario world. I played super mario 3 on the super Nintendo and had no idea that it was an NES game as well. I had the NES even with that weird joystick peripheral and a zapper.
@@CarterMcartmart Yeah thats what i remember playing super mario bros 3 on. I had an NES back in the n64 days and did not remember it having super mario bros 3. for me it was a snes game. No idea it was on the NES back in the day.
I spent a month in Japan and I am a Chicagoan. I would rather have what is in Tokyo over the shenanigans ive lived with my whole life here. We had a ordered society before the counter culture came in, and that was through the church and civics. If Liberals do not come up with an alternative to what the Republicans vision of society, we are looking at going back to the 1950s and for many of my fellow Americans going back to that is just simply not an option. We need a national agreement on what harms the public sphere, say what you will about Trump and company they at least have a cohesive vision as disgusting as it is.
"According to the numbers reported to the F.B.I., Harris is right: Crime, especially violent crime, has been falling." NO! What are you talking about? The FBI revised those numbers two days prior to this episode dropping, showing that all categories of crime have increased.
@@MattSoulblade given that every fed organization revised their numbers in the bad direction over the past two years, are we safe in assuming FBI will revise 2023 next year? Yes.
While you guys are here yapping nonsense attacking strawmen, major political candidates are appearing on independent podcasts garnering publicity likes of which is almost mythical when compared to your unheard little vain debacles. Change is necessary, adapt now or be worthless in mere future. Nothing would hurt me more than seeing something once held so prestigious that was a major part of my childhood get reduced to just another noisy blender in a city that really really really loves their tasteless vegetables smoothies.
@@don611 lol neither than am I Buut I remember being 8yrs old and realizing during social studies that I understood more about their country than they did😅
1:21:41 I've had a lot of discussions about even just with friends and the nature of the discussion I often find is that there's an agreement that it's bad on a lot of levels including simply that the uh Subway is not getting Revenue that so many people just sort of jump the fair right and the fact that they're jumping the fair jumping the Turn Style in front of sometimes police at least earlier I was seeing that happen but certainly Subway employees you know creates a kind of visual disorder but there's real cost to you know police running down teenagers who honestly really aren't hurting anybody that much right I mean yes like it would be nice for the MTA to get the fair but it's not the end of the world Considering that it costs the community way more to send an individual down the line in their own personal automobile than a shared train car the answer is obvious. Take out the turn styles. There is no need for them and they end up costing more than they ever could bring in. Replace them with High Parking fees for publick parking and high taxation for for land and buildings devoted to parking in private hands. That way you don't have gas huffers, "domination of public space for private purposes" .
That part bothered me. I think he’s completely missing the effect that fare jumping has on the fairness of the system. We certainly can’t take the turnstiles away because the MTA budget is controlled at the state level and no one will ever go for this, plus their pension fund is a disaster as is there union, so it its all a no go. The harm that comes from fare evasion is on the level of fairness in society, the same way it is with shoplifting. Everyone who plays by the rules just feels like a sucker when they see people who refuse to and it erodes the fabric of society. It makes me so angry and I’m relatively liberal. I get why people respond so positively to Trump saying we should be allowed to beat the crap out of those people without facing ramifications in the tort system (the root of all evil)
Enforcement of the law is fundamental to a peaceful society. Broken windows policing works, it's well documented, just get back to that, quality of life crimes matter.
Two intelligent, well informed people talking about stuff. Wonderful. Thank you.
Nope. This guy is a crank and I will accept my vindication 4 years from now.
And on opposite sides of the political spectrum, with no tantrums. Good stuff.
I live in Québec, Canada. So we went through the legalization of Cannabis about 10 years ago. And there are many things I like and dislike about how every province went with their brand of legalization. But one of the things I think Québec did great is prohibiting any form of promotion of cannabis products or use. They sell it through a nationalized entity with a very simple logo, buildings are not decorated, and you can't see through the glass. The inside is very bland. Everything is hidden behind a counter where you can only see a standardized detail of what is inside the cabinets : type, brand, levels of different cannabinoids and terpenes, and an overall flavour profile. Employees behind the counter are not allowed to tell you anything other than general information about the products, they can't recommend stuff, and there are no promotions, and no batch prices. Also, there is a security guard at the door that will systematically ask for your ID, no matter how old you are. It adds some kind of friction to the process.
I think this part is great : legalization without banalization.
But here where I think it doesn't work. First, almost every option in these stores have the highest legal concentration of THC. I am a very frequent, but very low quantity user, of cannabis, and I very often struggle to find any dosage that is low enough for my kind of consumption. Second, the current government changed the legal age to buy cannabis there from 18 to 21. I understand the medical benefits of preventing early use of cannabis, but it's just not how the world works. I was smoking pot well before legalization, and let me tell you that the quality and variety black market sellers will offer you is much worse than what you can get at the dispensary. Never have a SQDC clerk offered me a free methamphetamine trial.
Third is that Québec still doesn't sell vapes and vaping liquids. This is nonsensical to me because it has been demonstrated that black market cannabis vapes can be very dangerous, so if legalization is about protecting consumers, it should be one of the first thing you'd want to sell a safe alternative to. And so I live near a provincial border and went on the other side to get a vape there. Since then, I've smoke less than a gram of the stuff in a 6-month period, because it is much easier to calibrate my dosage to what I want, which is pretty much only clearing out some stress a few evenings a week. But then, on the other side of the border, cannabis stores are candy stores. Everything's bright and flashy, and you feel a lot more like in a regular liquor store, with the only exception that they didn't go as far as have you try out products when you come in (yet).
And it brings me to my conclusion, that is that I think we should sell alcohol like Québec sells cannabis : It is a drug. It can have detrimental effects on your physical and mental health. This is not candy, this is serious stuff. We sell it because we want to offer a safer alternative to black markets, and we'll offer competitive price and variety. But we will not banalize it. We will not advertise it. And we will not tie any profit incentives to it.
Common denominator. Wealth inequality. Desperate people do desperate things. A rise in homelessness is a rise in a lack of home availability/affordability. An increase in hopelessness is a rise in disaffected behavior.
and yet he brags about capitalism that has directly caused these problems , the capitalists are the biggest ideologists themselves and yet constantly criticising the socialists who actually want to build a practical soceity beyond the commoditization of everything and start building back a community that can contain individuals and flourish their potential for being impractical ideologists!
Stealing food may be desperation, but stealing $200 Nikes is poor values. A lot of the theft increase in June 2020 was because the George Floyd incident disparaged law-and-order and empowered those with a poor moral compass. The US has the world's highest rate of kids raised by a single parent, which greatly increases the risk of crime and also emotional problems. The US also has a hyperstimulating culture of instant gratification, a lack of meaningful in-person relationships & community involvement, and a corporate media fixated on negativity. So crime & drug use is more complex than "wealth inequality".
A lot of crime goes unreported which is left out of the stats. But it's not just crime, it's behavior. A lot of people see, and ultimately feel, that there are swaths of people who act like rules, norms, and even basic behavior doesn't apply to them.
It's interesting, too, to consider how TikTok portrayals of Karens and whatnot factor into this. If you are trained to expect that any given customer who comes up to you at your job might become unhinged and aggressive, I wonder how safe you even are capable of feeling.
@@loganhurley5590 "Karens" as cringe as they can be, can also be the people who try and enforce norms for the rest of us.
Do you think these things were not true, in decades past as well?
Unreported crime is still captured by some sources (e.g., National Crime Victimization Survey - NCVS), which also shows a downward trend. There is criminological literature that covers this issue - crime (both reported and unreported) is down.
I was hesitant to listen to this episode. I foresaw cringe platitudes on one side and nebulous arguments from the other.
But this proved to be a very interesting and nuanced discussion. I found Charles credible and clear, and Ezra was curious and facilitating.
Good job 👍
I really enjoyed this episode as well. Considering that certain GOP personalities revolve around flimsy migrant and violent crime talking points, it was nice that Charles did not rely on those sentiments. I don't think I've actually seen a right-of-center person actually acknowledge that violent crime is actually, in fact, not skyrocketing.
The basic requirement for a city is that it needs to function for most, and there need to be mechanisms in place to intervene in events that mitigate that functioning. We have a problem with that mitigation step in San Francisco. When experimental policies fail, cities will show the symptoms of that failure. Untrammeled public drug use has led to all the expected problems associated with severely behaviorally ill people who cannot care for themselves, even for their basic bodily needs, so act out in public places instead of getting the medical and psychiatric support they need. "Homeless" and "behaviorally ill" are not the same populations and yet they're repeatedly conflated by all media. We need more affordable housing, developed in a way that makes sense per site. We also need a new generation of custodial behavioral health campuses. Ezra, it's not about "violent crime", although I saw a shoplifter grab his armful of contraband and stride off, knocking into a very small old lady who would have fallen on her face if I hadn't caught her. This is not about liberal politics -- we're all liberals here. But we're not stupid. We need to drop the sophomoric rhetoric, everybody -- Foucault was a philosopher, not a city mayor -- his idea about closing prisons was an argument, not a public policy. Reform the police, don't defund them. We can no longer afford tax cuts for our top tier -- let's ask why Kamala Harris can't just say that? Too radical? It should just be a bread-and-butter issue for the majority. Laissez-faire economics and the resulting income inequality are being ignored to the peril of all of us.
You almost got there a few times, but what I feel was missed as part of this conversation is the root causes of addiction. Further to Charles's statement that he sees addiction and substance use has a rational basis, until we look at the family and social dynamics that program us through trauma and stigmatization, we will be constantly chasing our tails around the carousel of substances we use to try to comfort or drown out deep psychological and spiritual injury. A conversation about the social and family structures in this country and how they cause and reinforce deep hurt and trauma is necessary. Until you fully heal the person and provide support and structure for them to live in healthy relationships, people will always, logically and rationally, turn to substance use to feel better.
Your comment is very insightful on the point that until we examine the root causes in family structure, people will be "stuck" in their addiction patterns.
You mean like being clear that two parent households, ideally with married people generally has the best outcomes for kids?
The sad thing is that poor people will get less and less on important information. We need more funding for public media that is protected by facts.
How is that relevant to this video?
Meanwhile, non-violent crimes are going off the charts.
Crimes against humanity
I do like the talk about severe mental illness. I think commitments and keeping people who are vulnerable safe and build mental hospitals etc. It is not safe to be homeless. Period. Who in their right mind would choose that?? No one. I feel they are abandoned. It is disgusting. Harm production helps but not the solution. Allowing people to openly kill themselves cannot be right.
Have to remember crime stats are just ones people report or have someone caught
i believe some of what drives this is, take for instance, in NYC, where i live, you have large numbers of people who move here from very small cities and towns as well as places with nowhere near the intensity and cannot adjust and begin to want it to more reflect what they are inherently used to. a case of wanting to live in a big city but dont want to deal with big city problems. i have heard people complain about women/children selling candy on the train, subway dancers etc these things make them feel unsafe even though it is harmless and they start to cry that the city is dangerous
I’d agree to a extent (I live in SoHo/Tribecca and was born in NY, but grew up in NC) - though some of these people probably have a point that we are just too tolerant of nuisance and property crimes, because we unquestionably are.
Outside of that I think its mostly a media issue. The people I hear going on about it most are also the ones who are more likely to read sensationalist crime news and love to binge Nancy grace and true crime content. That stuff just poisons their minds!
You think longtime New Yorkers don't react against crime? Lol
@@chickenfishhybrid44 not at all. I just notice some things bother some people more than others
@@chickenfishhybrid44 as I plainly stated, I’ve seen people get uptight over things as simple as subway shows or women selling candy those aren’t crimes but some people are so uptight they feel it shouldn’t need allowed. That you?
Part of the issue is people doing private things in public spaces, but it's also the government involvement in people's private lives and spaces. When the government is involved in all kinds of private matters, law enforcement feels arbitrary. Citizens are certainly breaking laws all the time; the only question is how, where, and on whom we enforce them. Being accused of a crime becomes a random peril like accidents or illness. I think it would be different if there were very few crimes, with no attempt to control citizens' unwholesome behaviors, and mostly honest law enforcement, these problems would find an equilibrium level that's lower than what we see when we try to control and manage people.
When IPV is addressed everywhere except criminal courts one starts to wonder why that particular crime is permitted in every jurisdiction. Always everyone’s fault except the perpetrator.
On legalization, I used to argue with the NORML people in early 2000s that the existence of illicit pathways plus high taxes would guarantee result in what has happened and that guaranteed once usage increased and became better studied, the harms would become clear. It is absurd to think there could be any other outcome than what has happened. I think we can expect the same outcome for the rest of this stuff.
it sure seems like this guy is working backwards from the stats to find reasons that might be relevant with no real sense of how much each part of "disorder" actually contributes to these feelings. its a great theory if you want to keep moving the goalposts
"moving the goalposts" is not always bad though? if you are moving the goalposts closer to a conversation about the stats and farther from "I feel crime like crime is up even though I have no data to backup this claim" that is objectively a better place for these kinds of discussions.
If anything it makes the conversation more interesting, because a decent amount of people think violent crimes are up and are completely, objectively wrong. This gives us an indication of how much influence propaganda peddlers like Fox News can have on our overall perception of reality, regardless of how true their messages are.
@@djbcubedI notice many people in these discussions often jump around from saying "violent crime" or just "crime". Seems true violent crime is down most places. While that's obviously good and more important than things like property crime, it still negatively effects people and feeds into the feeling of disorder or crime not getting better. "Crimes" of various types are not necessarily down everywhere like violent crime.
This man’s answer to every question or issue raised is “Police need more support”. This is not an educational or intelligent discussion about disorder in society as this man pins all the issues on a lack of police support yet, even during and after the Protests police funding did not decline. Yet crime still increased and then declined after the pandemic.
What really bothers me is when they discourse homelessness and the dude is like “there’s the good upstanding homeless who cower and hide from the public and there’s bad homeless people who do drive in public “ there homeless if we gave them homes they wouldn’t do drugs in public!
Are you trying to make Ezra go on a housing rant?
I don't think you were listening very well.
Tell me about it!! I had to stop the video and audibly said, "Are you being serious right now?," because what the hell. Also, as another commenter mentioned, it seems like he's working backwards
In my town, and many others, police enforcement of laws declined after the George Floyd incident because of rampant anti-police sentiment, which made a lot of cops retire. That anti law & order sentiment was a main driver of the crime increase after June 2020. Even pedestrian deaths went up, despite fewer people driving.
Who wants to poop in public?
Somehow the lack of proper facilities isn't mentioned.
Please. People who just need somewhere to go, I think, would choose a park, an alley, or somewhere other than the middle of the sidewalk on a busy street.
In Dem cities those facilities would soon be rendered unusable for normal people by the homeless, the addicted and the unhinged.
This Charles Leihman guy is so smart. Fantastic guest Ezra
Enforcement is not the only option.
Many years ago, I had a job where I ran the wastewater treatment system at a small business. The state didn't want people like me to have too much of anything going into the river in the wastewater except water and the insignificant amounts of harmless stuff that we used in the wastewater treatment system. I implicitly assumed that meant they passed a law against dumping various kinds of stuff in rivers, and then had someone try to catch everyone who broke the law: what we do with everything from parking violations to homicide. That's *enforcement,* and it's not what they did. Instead, they kept track of everyone with a business that might wind up dumping stuff in the river that shouldn't be there, they took for granted that we were trying to do our job and run our wastewater treatment systems right, and they did stuff like having us keep records and send wastewater samples for testing. That approach is called *compliance,* and it should be used for a whole lot of things besides wastewater.
32:00 This was a great point about creating a drug market that allows the efficiency of scale
Interesting that theres an increase in public disorder which grows with homelessness. That would seem to indicate its more an economic problem than an actual criminal one
Worth listening
It also seems that if the reality of poverty and homelessness is accepted in a place that leaves government with two choices:
- Crack down hard which only serves to increase incarceration and animosity against police because many of these people have no other choice.
- Let them be which concentrates disorder and makes people feel unsafe as these spaces deteriorate.
I feel like the real solution is to not accept poverty and homelessness. Especially at such a scale.
Depends if it's chicken or egg. I'd find it hard to believe that the majority of "disorderly" homeless got on the streets by primarily economic factors. It's probably drugs or mental illness.
@@juanperret7044I think San Fran for example spent almost 700 million on homelessness in 2022-23. Seems pretty far from accepting poverty and homelessness.
Funny how this data-driven, economics-minded guy fails to talk about Donahue and Levitt's findings on the reduction of crime in the 90s. I wonder why....🤔
Still a very good discussion and it helped me adjust my priors on drug policy and criminal justice.
Was this recorded before or after the newly revised FBI crime statistics?
I came here to ask the same question.
One would assume so, but even with the revisions, the point remains that this is generally a safer time than, say, 40 years ago, even though people generally don't feel safer. Mean World Syndrome is still highly relevant, and it seems strange for Klein and his guest to focus on disorder instead of media ecology.
@@loganhurley5590 The safety of cities 40 years ago is almost totally irrelevant. Most people don't even have lived experience with this unless they are 60 years old. The demographics of the country have changed vastly since then, there are far fewer young men as a percentage of populations, and it just isn't relevant to today. What is relevant is that we had a continuous decline in crime from the 90s until 2020, then a sudden upswing, and now, a gradual trend lower. The upswing in 2020 is almost entirely attributable to lockdowns and the BLM related riots and subsequent police pull back (and in the case of places like Portland OR, with an actual decrease in police numbers and presence). This is indisputable and is the result of policies on the left.
@@loganhurley5590 The relevant comparison period is Trump's first term. Also note that shoplifting is almost never reported to the police, and that's been skyrocketing. Concerns about crime are as much about the fraying of the fabric of society, as they are about the risk of victimization.
@@moleratcon As did I
NYT wants more money for vanguard
Interesting discussion. Regarding cannabis regulation I think you both miss the point. Cannabis regulation has been off the mark and ends up being a complete fraud. In Oregon where I live, the state imposed insane regulation on the industry that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. This included seed to sale tracking that did absolutely nothing to stop the feared diversion to the illicit market. Regulated cannabis farms spent millions on plastic tags on every plant grown. Meanwhile nearby cartel farms grew acres of "hemp" that faced virtually no regulation. These cartel farms were right out in the open and were hundreds of times bigger than the regulated farms. Some cartel farms were busted that police valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. Single cartel farms were nearly as big as the entire state legal regulated system. Many cartel farms were busted but not a single higher up was ever even arrested. The cartels already had distribution networks all over the country and the cartel weed ended up fueling the illicit shops in places like New York. The only real effect of cannabis regulation has been to ensure that Mom and Pop businesses can't survive but big multistate operations can. Regulatory capture has already run amok and the big multistate corporate operators end up writing the rules in all the newly legal states. Dumb cannabis regulation is giving birth to Big Cannabis that will have the same sort of problems as Big Pharma, Big Oil or any other industry where innappropriate regulation favors giant uncontrolled corporate greed. Meanwhile the federal government still makes banking difficult for cannabis so the business is mostly cash, making it a magnet for robberies. A cannabis store employee shot two robbers at a store in my daughter's neighborhood and is being charged with murder. As a cannabis activist who worked on every marijuana initiative in Oregon for 40years I advocated for cannabis regulation over prohibition. I have changed my mind. Everything done by the legislature to regulate cannabis has been wrong and made things worse. We need legal cannabis but not dumb regulation that fails to protect the public at all.
They literally talked about how it's hard to actually enforce regulations everywhere.
I think Charles is giving a false equivalency about poor and rich mentally ill people. The difference between the two and he almost said it, but difference is the wealthy in his example are locking up their kids and have the money to do so. The difference for the poor is that the hospitals are just trying to get the people stable and out of the hospital because they can’t pay to stay there longer. I have dealt with this with my wife. She has never stayed in a mental health facility longer than when she lived with me and was using my good insurance. Before she used to stay for between 3-5 days when now she is held for almost two weeks. Not because she wants to or even needs to but because that’s how long insurance will pay.
There used to be comedians like Andrew "Dice" Clay that did the non-PC shtick, and angry comics like Bob Goldthwait. That's about the time that Seinfeld came into his career. It was a different time. He's just dealing with aging and how we all end up not understanding what matters to the people who are the current creators of popular culture.
Also, when his TV show came into being, the trend was sitcoms. With streaming and a complete change of how people consume media, it's just not served up in the same way. We're no longer limited to watch a show at a certain time on a certain day. So, people may or may not have a specific show that they talk about immediately after it airs.
@24:30 min. Why are the homeless described as guys? You think women aren't homeless?
Ezra Klein, LOL, "crime in SF was much worse in the 80s and 90s". First of all, the 80s were 40 years ago, and are about as relevant to this discussion as WW1 was to the 60s, does anyone care that 40 years ago things were worse?
Second, I lived in SF in the 90s, and while nominally there was more crime, it was very localized in a few dangerous neighborhoods, some of which have since gentrified, but the majority of the city was safe and relatively clean. The difference now is that there is rampant unreported property crime, smash and grabs from cars, car theft, and open unreported shoplifting, crimes that aren't like murder, but which totally undermine the social contract and anger law abiding people. I no longer live in SF but have two children who live there still and also many other family members, I am a very frequent visitor, and am well aware of the local environment since moving away 20 years ago.
And the open sewer and drug markets of the Tenderloin and around Civic Center are 10 times worse than in the 90s. Mayor Frank Jordan cracked down on this behavior in the 90s. For unknown reasons, the far left decided in 2020 or so that cracking down on public disorder and camping was somehow "racist". The current backlash against this is long overdue.
Anyway, your minimizing of the problems in SF is typical left wing deflection. There is certainly less violent crime in SF now than 30-40 years ago, but quality of life and property crime is much worse and is a major issue, and it's hard to blame this on anyone except the people who govern at the state and city level.
I lean to the left and agree wholeheartedly.
When I worked in SF and my coworkers and I would go out, we would leave our cars wirh our windows down and never leave anything, that may even look like a bag or case inside.
Tenderloin was disgusting mess (some good food tho). Felt extremely neglected, people in horrible states just allowed to waste away and die.
SF is horribly mismanaged and that's why it's no longer a top tier city for anyone outside tech.
How do you function in society being this wimpy and scared?
I’m a little outraged that Ezra didn’t get on his YIMBY soapbox on the homelessness topic. if you want to be a fanatic (like me) you can’t change your mind and you can’t change the topic on zoning and building restrictions
It means as much to us or at least me. Good health sir!! Don't going changing man!
Who doesn't think of Detroit as an area of shoplifting? Lol
Huh rn all past Ezra Klein episodes are still available on UA-cam, I wonder when they'll change that
45:44 I'm sorry, "Jammin' on Mario Brothers 3 on a Super Nintendo"???? Super Mario Bros 3 was an NES game and the SNES was not backwards compatible so Ezra Klein just lost all journalistic credibility.
Super Mario Brothers 3 was on the super Nintendo as super mario world. I played super mario 3 on the super Nintendo and had no idea that it was an NES game as well. I had the NES even with that weird joystick peripheral and a zapper.
@@hungrybraineater2 Actually, Super Mario Bros 3 was remade on the SNES in Super Mario All Stars, so Ezra Klein could be telling the truth
@@CarterMcartmart Yeah thats what i remember playing super mario bros 3 on. I had an NES back in the n64 days and did not remember it having super mario bros 3. for me it was a snes game. No idea it was on the NES back in the day.
I spent a month in Japan and I am a Chicagoan. I would rather have what is in Tokyo over the shenanigans ive lived with my whole life here. We had a ordered society before the counter culture came in, and that was through the church and civics. If Liberals do not come up with an alternative to what the Republicans vision of society, we are looking at going back to the 1950s and for many of my fellow Americans going back to that is just simply not an option. We need a national agreement on what harms the public sphere, say what you will about Trump and company they at least have a cohesive vision as disgusting as it is.
"According to the numbers reported to the F.B.I., Harris is right: Crime, especially violent crime, has been falling." NO! What are you talking about? The FBI revised those numbers two days prior to this episode dropping, showing that all categories of crime have increased.
Only 2022 was revised. 2023 still shows a fall compared to prior years.
@@MattSoulblade given that every fed organization revised their numbers in the bad direction over the past two years, are we safe in assuming FBI will revise 2023 next year? Yes.
@@MarkBowenLikesToThink If I flipped a coin twice and got heads both times, is it a certainty that a third flip will be heads?
@@transimpedance yes
While you guys are here yapping nonsense attacking strawmen, major political candidates are appearing on independent podcasts garnering publicity likes of which is almost mythical when compared to your unheard little vain debacles. Change is necessary, adapt now or be worthless in mere future. Nothing would hurt me more than seeing something once held so prestigious that was a major part of my childhood get reduced to just another noisy blender in a city that really really really loves their tasteless vegetables smoothies.
This guy's theory on crime is pandemic lockdowns made it? Yah, keep this behind a paywall. 😂
Smart waffling. Seems to start from conclusion then tries to find evidence
This is interesting but it’s also sum right of center elitist BS🤨
Why though?
I am not american
Facts hurt a little too much?
@@kevinwoolley7960it's elitist not to want homeless people shooting up in front of school, didn't you know? Check your privilege, please.
Could you eleborate?
@@don611 lol neither than am I Buut I remember being 8yrs old and realizing during social studies that I understood more about their country than they did😅
The absurdity of requiring the homeless to be quiet, respectful and out of sight in order to not be considered disorderly criminals, give me a break
1:21:41 I've had a lot of discussions about even just with friends and the nature of the discussion I often find is that there's an agreement that it's bad on a lot of levels including simply that the uh Subway is not getting Revenue that so many people just sort of jump the fair right and the fact that they're jumping the fair jumping the Turn Style in front of sometimes police at least earlier I was seeing that happen but certainly Subway employees you know creates a kind of visual disorder but there's real cost to you know police running down teenagers who honestly really aren't hurting anybody that much right I mean yes like it would be nice for the MTA to get the fair but it's not the end of the world
Considering that it costs the community way more to send an individual down the line in their own personal automobile than a shared train car the answer is obvious. Take out the turn styles. There is no need for them and they end up costing more than they ever could bring in. Replace them with High Parking fees for publick parking and high taxation for for land and buildings devoted to parking in private hands. That way you don't have gas huffers, "domination of public space for private purposes" .
That part bothered me. I think he’s completely missing the effect that fare jumping has on the fairness of the system. We certainly can’t take the turnstiles away because the MTA budget is controlled at the state level and no one will ever go for this, plus their pension fund is a disaster as is there union, so it its all a no go. The harm that comes from fare evasion is on the level of fairness in society, the same way it is with shoplifting.
Everyone who plays by the rules just feels like a sucker when they see people who refuse to and it erodes the fabric of society. It makes me so angry and I’m relatively liberal. I get why people respond so positively to Trump saying we should be allowed to beat the crap out of those people without facing ramifications in the tort system (the root of all evil)
Enforcement of the law is fundamental to a peaceful society. Broken windows policing works, it's well documented, just get back to that, quality of life crimes matter.
the hidden politics of disorder (thumbnail ks a jewish guy)
Who still trusts the NYT? Seriously, who?
Who do u trust
Uhhhh most well informed people who are capable of praising data? You do know this is part of their opinion section though right?
What a moron.