Electron Drift and Murder Rates

     I have met with a lot of criticism for my posts on income inequality and muder rates (e.g. here). The primary criticism is that people are far more complex than my posts might suggest and that it is not abstract notions such as 'income inequality' that determine a person's actions but rather their personal history. As a result I am compelled to respond.

     To do so I begin with an (classical) analogy from physics; the notion of drift velocity. Electrons in a conducting wire tend to'wander' about in random directions at approximately 1570 km/s. This random movement is akin to the complex lives of individuals. Impossible to describe and predict, it accounts for most of the movement of the electrons. Likewise, individual events in our lives account for our characters and habits.
     Now, what occurs when we apply an electric field to our copper wire. The electrons dash off! Well........at a speed of the order of roughly one metre per hour (in the wiki example of 1mm diameter copper wire with a current of 3 amps). Clearly this 'drift velocity' is swamped by the random motion of the electron (illustrated well here). In this case the applied field acts as the 'environment' or 'backdrop' for the charges.
       In a similar vein, income inequality forms the backdrop and environment for members of a society. The slow drift of the electrons is comparable to the increase in murder rates. While it is the individual's life and circumstances that determine whether or not they will murder, certain conditions (be they economic or otherwise) tend to make certain experiences, certain viewpoints, certain actions more likely. So to claim that high levels of income inequality affect the homicide rate is not to make a deterministic statement and the remarks "Oh I grew up in such a neighbourhood and yet I'm not a murderer!' miss the point entirely. It is simply the case that certain conditions make certain results more likely. In any case, I strongly recommend reading some papers about income inequality and homicide rates. (A very nice example can be found here).

Libertarianism and the Maximisation of Liberty

       In a similar vein to my previous post on Jevon's paradox I now ask about another seeming paradox. Libertarians often propose an 'objectively' derived system based on the maximisation of liberty. Leaving aside my initial objections with regard to the value judgements in play here, let's examine their claim.
     At first glance, the system libertarians propose does indeed seem to maximise liberty however as we know from Jevon, first glances may be deceptive. It very well may be that the libertarian system is indeed the one that maximises liberty but does follow 'objectively' (even allowing for the nonsenses inherent in that term)? I think not. The libertarian reasoning here is naive.
    To illustrate the point I offer an example. Suppose we wished to reduce alcohol consumption, the most logical method would be to ban alcohol consumption, no? Of course anyone with half an understanding of history or how people work would know that this is perhaps the worst way of going about it. The law of unintended consequences is at work here. Prohibition leads to an explosion of organised crime, murder and doesn't stop alcohol consumption.
   Given that the naive approach does not necassarily work then can we just assume that the naive libertarian approach works? I argue not. It may well be that libertarianism is the system that maximises liberty but the reasoning employed is horribly wrong. To offer a single example I point to how increasing income inequality results in increasing homicide.

Income inequality and homicide rates in Canada and the United States

   These considerations do enter into libertarianism but only lightly. For example, murder is curtailed as the liberty to murder reduces net liberty (for those killed mainly). Do other considerations apply? Does the curtailment of liberty entailed by taxation (and its expenditure on certain items) lead to a net increase or decrease of liberty if this tax is used to prevent muder and the like? These are questions libertarians must answer if they are to escape from their current naive position, and while it may be that they find in the end that their initial position was right then all the better for them. Their first hurdle will be to find a method to compare degrees of liberty, I very much feel this is where they will fall.