[p2p-research] Economic System Type tied Scientifically to Homicide Rate

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Ryan Lanham wrote:
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090904103525.htm

 From there:
"""
In the current recession, property crime is already on the increase and he 
predicts there will be a rise in career criminality, particularly as the UK 
has the highest number of young people not in work, education or training in 
Europe.
   Hall lays most of the responsibility for higher crime rates at the door 
of the neo-liberals who claim competitive individualism and greed can be 
stimulated and harnessed to create wealth. That might be true, he argues, 
but it also corrodes our ability to empathise with others.
   Hall said: “Britain and the US have the worst violent crime rates of the 
industrialised west – far worse than Western continental Europe – because we 
have the most competitive, individualist culture and the least developed 
sense of solidarity and common fate. In addition, consumer culture instils 
in so many individuals from an early age that their identities are 
incomplete without the status symbols carried by consumer goods, which of 
course makes crimes an attractive option for those who simply cannot afford 
to buy these goods.’’
"""

Related; a book first published in 1986:
   "No Contest: The Case Against Competition" by Alfie Kohn
   http://www.amazon.com/No-Contest-Case-Against-Competition/dp/0395631254
"Contending that competition in all areas -- school, family, sports and 
business -- is destructive, and that success so achieved is at the expense 
of another's failure, Kohn, a correspondent for USA Today, advocates a 
restructuring of our institutions to replace competition with cooperation. 
He persuasively demonstrates how the ingrained American myth that 
competition is the only normal and desirable way of life -- from Little 
Leagues to the presidency -- is counterproductive, personally and for the 
national economy, and how psychologically it poisons relationships, fosters 
anxiety and takes the fun out of work and play. He charges that competition 
is a learned phenomenon and denies that it builds character and self-esteem. 
Kohn's measures to encourage cooperation in lieu of competition include 
promoting noncompetitive games, eliminating scholastic grades and 
substitution of mutual security for national security."

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/