Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Swiftness
Certainty
Severity
Clarity
Laws are the codification of ruling class interests. Laws become legitimate
simply because the ruling class has the power to enforce them and the ability to
create the ideology by which they are made to appear justified.
The police, the courts and the correctional systems are all instruments utilized
by the ruling class to insure adherence to their laws.
People who are socio-economically close to the power group tend to develop
normative behavioral systems that are similar to members of the power group.
The further away a person is from the power group, the more likely they will
possess different normative behavioral systems, and the greater the likelihood
that those different behaviors will be defined as criminal.
Crime is not an inherent quality of any act. All behavior patterns in fact
have the potential to be defined as criminal. Criminality is merely a
label given to certain behaviors by the ruling authorities.
Law and definitions of crime may be modified from time to time, but
never to the extent that existing political and economic relationships
are jeopardized. As a rule, law changes are a reflection of changes in
the needs and interests of the powerful.
The freedoms that laws confer grant a great deal more freedom to
some groups than to others. The freedoms allegedly protected by law,
are only protected for those who can afford it. In the end, legal
efficacy reigns supreme, not the law.
A. Unemployment:
1. Capitalism by its very nature does not yield stability but rather volatility. We
often talk of business cycles in a very detached fashion, but business cycles
means, there are times when people will be out of work. The cyclical nature of
capitalism with its risk-based orientations, results in economic instability and
periodic unemployment.
The optimum unemployment rate from the capitalist point of view is thought to be
roughly 3% - 4%. In a nation of roughly 500 million workers, that is 15 million – 20
million people unemployed, and with unemployment comes crime, for a variety of
reasons.
A. Capitalism results in a small number of people accumulating great
wealth and others, a large number, living in or near poverty levels.
Capitalism, and particularly un-regulated and un-controlled
capitalism, yields a large socio-economic inequity coefficient.
Nations with a high socio-economic inequity coefficient have high
property and violent crime rates.
C. Planned obsolescence
D. Conspicuous consumption
E. Monopolistic tendencies
Capitalism seeks monopolies and exploits the
poor. By very definition, many lack the capital
needed to obtain basic needs and wants.
Swiftness
Certainty
Severity
Clarity