Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this story provides absolutely zero personal or geographic details that could be used to verify anything.
But let's assume it is true. That means these clowns are not primarily engaged in the sale of drugs. They're just wannabe rappers who use violence to build street cred, and often pay for it with their lives or kill innocents in the process. The reason they can do this is because people in America and elsewhere who lead normal lives are consuming this music.
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No, No, and No. There are no consumers of this music in the sense people pay for this, these guys upload directly to youtube and facebook--both platforms don't pay much in terms of views or ad revenue unless you get tens of millions of hits, which these guys don't. The ONLY reason they "can do this" is because all you need is a smartphone and a laptop to produce a music video and upload to the internet. That's it. Now, if a record label signs up one of these goons, they should be prosecuted under RICO for affiliating with organized crime. That talentless punk "Chief-Kief" got signed in a similar way--someone should go after that label.
Most mass consumers of music are listening to decent guys like Chance the Rapper--who is anything but a gang banger and a great voice for Chicago. Being successful in anything requires some degree of socialization to human norms. These banger kids have no hope for that.
Your insane demand-side economics theory on all this is just excuses, and if you apply it anywhere else you'll see how stupid it sounds. Is child porn the fault of the demand for those videos, or those who actually produce it and harm children? Is sex trafficking the fault of those who create demand by seeking out prostitutes, or those who kidnap girls and make them slaves?
You can't say with a straight face that more than 50% of the fault, in the above examples, lies with the consumers of those illegal products. Most "consumers" of those things would simply move on and not avail themselves of such things if those products did not exist, because most people, even vile consumers of child porn, aren't willing to commit the crimes necessary for their product. In the same way, if this trash rap from Chicago were never produced, those youtube viewers would simply move on.
Anyway, I'm willing to concede structural inequities and other systematic problems, because those are facts, but to pin THIS - this insane rap culture - on those other than the perpetrators, shows me that you won't assign personal responsibility for anything on these goons. That I cannot accept.
Assuming you have the sense to know that complex social issues have multiple causes, how much are you willing to allocate to culture and values? Generally, I say 60/40. 60% of the problems in the south and west sides are structural and come from a legacy of exclusion, redlining, de-industrialization, poverty, the drug war (and its associated gangs), and direct racism which has decimated those neighborhoods, while keeping those residents out of the suburbs (and the jobs that went there too); while 40% is due to insane bastard child birth rates, declining morals and values due to decreased church/mosque attendance and other socialization factors, and an overall coarseness of culture (sagging pants, vulgarity) and other things that degrade neighborhoods and community and generally make people unemployable and reliant on the state.
However, for this rap stuff, it's 90/10 in my book. 90% barbaric culture of insulting others and then shooting them, and often missing and killing children. 10% everything else.
Assuming all of this could be resolved by some mythical $1 billion program (probably in the hundreds of billions, but for easy math), how much are you willing to allocate to fight those above issues? Would you spend that entire $1 billion on dissuading middle class consumers from watching rap videos on youtube? Or would you split 50/50 and allocate $500 million to address systemic issues and another $500 million on socialization programs (including birth control?). Putting it all in one basket is stupid.
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