rjzeller

Okay, I must admit when I first started reading this article I was ready to take my entire Orson Scott Card book collection and throw it out the window. But if you give it the time Card deserves, he reaches some interesting conclusions....

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-09-11-1.html

Manny Laureano

Yes, Freakonomics is the book that I was encouraging everyone to read this summer. That portion that Card starts with is the one the media used to try to get Bill Bennet in trouble. Thank goodness for tapes and transcripts that proved the opposite of what he was being accused of.

ML

Mr. Semman

rj,

I agree that it is an interesting theory. However, if it were true, the same results would have been achieved by using condoms or other protection.

Gary

trickg

Gary, did you read the whole article? I think that the point he is trying to make is that it was a base change in ideals that caused the problems, not the actual conception (or prevention of) of unwanted or unplanned children. The one was a result of the other, even though we had newer and better methods of contraception.

Refresh my memory, (because I'm too lazy to look it up) but isn't Orson Scott Card the guy who wrote "Ender's Game"? Great book. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend giving it a check.

rjzeller

nice rebuttal Patrick. Card clearly is stating that it was a change in the moral fabric of society that caused a lot of problems, not the attitude toward abortion itself. He took a historical perspective, rather than a snapshot perspective, and implies that it was the pre-1960s society that helped ensure low crime rates.

As immoral behavior became more generally acceptable, so did crime. The fortunate (or unfortunate) byproduct of our increased tollerance for bad behavior and bad morals, was an increased acceptance of abortion. Abortion became an unexpectedly immoral tool to reduce the impact of immorality on society.

He's basically said we can have it one of three ways:

1) Ban abortion and see crime skyrocket in the next generation.
2) Encourage abortion given the understanding of its impact on crime.
3) Return to the value system we had 40 years ago, in which case both crime AND abortions would be reduced dramatically.

Card is promoting option 3. People would call it old-fashioned and outdated, but it avoids the killing of millions of unborn children, and still reduces crime.

***

And YES, it was Card who wrote "Ender's Game". Absolutely fantastic book. Even my sci-fi hating sister loved it. I'd highly reccomend it to anyone. ALSO -- if you have kids, go read "Lost Boys". If you're not brought to tears at the end of the book, you're not human.

tpter1

Interesting ideas. A bit more radically, if we apply the crime rate reduction idea to drug laws, and make drugs like marijuana and cocaine legal and controlled (like alcohol), and reduced the cost to under what dealers are charging, we would effectively put organizaions like the mafia out of business. We may also render gangs and their reigns of terror needless.

trickg

You could have a point, but I think that we tend to look at a lot of things with the attitude that the evil that we know is better than the evil that we don't. You could be absolutely correct in your assertions about the legalization and control of certain drugs, however, that action may cause other issues that we couldn't forsee.

Something interesting to note here is the idea of what "illegal drugs" are. For most people, they think of things like marijuana, cocaine, crystal meth, heroin, etc - street drugs. What most people don't tend to think as much about are things like Valium, cough syrup with codine, percocet, HGH (human growth hormone) and other muscle building "suppliments" aka steroids, and various other controlled pain killers like like morphine and other opiates. Most of these things are prescribed by doctors for treatment of various ailments, but that doesn't stop the BIG under the counter business in the trade and selling of prescription drugs.

Just thought I would toss that out there with the idea that even legalizing and controlling certain street drugs really isn't going to hurt the illegal drug business too much.