From: gts (gts@optexinc.com)
Date: Sun Sep 08 2002 - 19:41:51 MDT
Spike66 wrote:
> Ooops I realized a weakness in my own arguement.
>
> If we develop the tech to bag any crime that can be
> recognized from an external view, such as robbery,
> murder, mugging, rape, etc, then poor neighborhoods
> could be cleansed of these plagues. If they were, the
> rents would skyrocket, displacing the poor. I had in
> mind East Palo Alto, which is the last bastion of low
> rents in the valley. It is so ideally located, that if we
> could work out the little problem of the high risk of
> getting killed by going in there, then the yuppy vermin
> would swarm in. The poor lose again.
While I do not in principle endorse increased gov't surveillance by any
method, electronic or otherwise, I think you needn't be concerned that
increased electronic surveillance will displace the poor more than the
rich.
Crime is an economic cost to society. Those costs are reduced when crime
is reduced. When we reduce crime we increase the standard of living of
everyone who benefits from its abatement.
Should it come to pass: wealthy localities will be the first to
implement such hi-tech surveillance because they are most able to afford
it. This will increase the gap in rents between wealthy neighborhoods
and poor neighborhoods in favor of wealthy neighborhoods. The subsequent
implementation of the same technology in poor neighborhoods will then
serve to bring the relative rent-gap back to former levels. The poor
will be able to pay those new higher rents because they will, like the
rich, have higher real incomes then as a result of the reduction in
crime.
-gts
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