[ExI] e: Acceleration of the wealth gap

[Keith Henson]

<spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> This caper in Fairfield with the forklift has me thinking.  Front door is bashed in, after the store is closed.  Mysteriously there is a crowd already there in the closed store parking lot, as if they knew something like that was going to happen.  There are perhaps 100 or more looters and not that many police, but even if they had enough, it probably wouldn't be a good idea to rush in and start fighting the looters.  A better, cheaper alternative: slash exactly one drive tire on every car in the parking lot.  Theory: every car there has looting on its mind.

> Bad guys put the loot in trunk, drive off with a flat tire, constables calmly bag the perp a coupla miles down the freeway with the evidence in her trunk, recover the loot and the stolen car in good condition (minus one tire (tires are cheap)) arrest the looter under safer conditions than the chaotic parking lot at the mall.

It takes a dozen cops to stop someone on the freeway.  The essence of
riots/looting is that the cops are outnumbered.

Besides, the looter's vehicles are unlikely to be far enough to go on a freeway.

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> Do you ever worry about the dark web and strong encryption?

I knew Tim May and hung out on the cypherpunks list for a long time.

> Perhaps many of these latest Chicago murders are a result of someone making a deal with a hit-human who resides on the dark web and accepts Bit Coin.  I worry about that.

Not a chance.  A lot is random violence, stray bullets, but the
chances of a street punk being involved with something as complex as
bitcoin is close to zero.

If you look at Oakland deaths over the years, it was a sawtooth.
(Have not looked for years.)  Every time the top drug dealer was taken
out by law enforcement, there would be a high level of murders for the
next year or two while the competing enterprises settled down

>>...If that happens, some of the most tightly-packed cities will start to deflate.

>...Not likely.  The reason people are packed into slums is that they can't afford to live anywhere else.  See Jay Forrester's _Urban Dynamics_ for how this works.  Keith

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> In some of the most dangerous slums, conditions will change dramatically as a result of the looting.  In Chicago, they are looking around in some of those wards trying to locate the nearest remaining pharmacy and grocery store, and finding it is a long ways off.  There is some critically important infrastructure that has been damaged or destroyed.

Problems are that these people have no place to go, no money to get
there and very often few skills.

> I am working thru the math trying to estimate the challenges involved in rebuilding at least some of that.  Can you even imagine?  In many cases, the building itself was damaged or destroyed by fire, so in the very best case (which I do not expect) just getting a new building could take at least a coupla years.

You will see pharmacies and grocery stores set up in tents.  The
alternative would be famine areas in the cities.

Keith