Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 July 7

= July 7 =

DEA constitutional mandate
What part of the US Constitution does the DEA claim allows it to enforce the laws (rather than leaving it to the states to decide) against drugs that are consumed in the state where they're produced, and thus don't fall under the Foreign and Interstate Commerce Clause? Neon Merlin  11:38, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Here's a 2005 article which explains the fed's reasoning on this subject. It has to do with taxation: ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Bear in mind that "Prohibition in the United States" predated the Franklin Delano Roosevelt era of unlimited extension of the interstate commerce clause. The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 came afterward, and started with the legal fiction of collecting a tax rather than making a ban. Wnt (talk) 18:50, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It is not really most accurately described as a DEA-derived policy; long before there was a DEA, the U.S. federal government (both Congress and various branches of the Executive) had asserted authority in this area, an authority that has been consistently upheld in a series of Supreme Court rulings. In short, illicit substances generally are seen to fall under the purview of the Commerce Clause, regardless of whether or not they cross interstate borders.  Note that in the present day, different administrations have given differing levels of ascension to the rights of individual states to determine the legality of production and sale of certain substances and the legitimacy of regulations covering the same.  Notably, the Obama administration directed the Justice Department to respect (at least in some circumstances) the state legalization schemes for marijuana, even as state referendums/legislation on the topic were gaining the largest amount of traction they have seen since the first prohibitions of that substance.  The Trump administration has already made intimations that they intend to step back this policy.  This could set of a new round of public debate about states' rights on these issues, as I doubt that genie is going back into the bottle (or bong, as the case may be).  S n o w  let's rap 09:11, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Are black people more likely to engage in crime or more likely to be accused?
It is true that blacks do enter the US prisons more often than other races and get a lot of media coverage. In my email, I keep receiving alerts about crime incidents and I've noticed a number of supposedly black criminals. Are blacks more likely to commit crime because of poverty and desperation or are they more likely to get accused by white victims who may experience outgroup homogeneity? 2600:387:0:805:0:0:0:A4 (talk) 13:50, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Race and crime in the United States may help answer the question. Bear in mind that most people, regardless of race or circumstance, are not criminals. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:56, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I have lived in Nigeria, England, Norway, Panama, and the United States. I have traveled to many other countries. The worldwide rule is that the poor are more likely to commit crimes and more likely to be accused of committing crimes. Depending on the leaning of the researcher, the correlation between poverty and crime can be as low as 0.4 (average correlation) or much higher . If your goal is to say "poor people aren't that bad", you find a way to reduce the correlation. If you want to say "we really need to give money to poor people so they will stop all their criminal behavior", you find a way to increase the correlation. Regardless, the correlation exists and, if you scan as many sources as you can find, you will certainly find mean correlation around 0.6. From there, you look at the correlation between poverty and race in the United States. It is not surprising that more black people are in poverty to a greater degree than white people. Therefore, depending on where you live, you may find that most of the poor in your area are black and, therefore, they contribute to most of the crime that you see in the news. When I was in London and Oslo, Pakastanis were known as the poorest of the poor and the main source of crime. In Panama, the Guaymí were the poor and blamed for most of the crime. In the US, it is the blacks. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 14:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The wealthy white folks commit crimes that are exponentially worse than the poor blacks. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Exponentially? Really? I'm not a prescriptionist, but this really ruins a perfectly fine word with a precise and important meaning. . At least financially, you are probably right in spirit, if not in language. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:32, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * "exponentially worse"? You mean like murder? Do you have a cite for that claim?  A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:39, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * If the IP can give uncited personal opinions, there's no reason you and I can't too. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:54, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * See Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties for an estimate of mass-murder committed, to a significant degree, by the US elites (with willing support from the unwashed masses and a good part of the rest of the "Free World"). Or look at Slavery in the United States for historical examples of crimes, including mass kidnapping, rape, and murder, by the (at least somewhat) rich against some of the poor. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:04, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * @Stephan Schulz: Can you be more specific? I don't see any mentions of murder, let alone mass murder, nor do I see any mention of US servicemen and women being wealthy.  A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:47, 9 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I suspect that if you don't get it, you don't want to get it. (Some) US service men and women individually certainly have a lot of things to answer for, but they are not, in general, the responsible perpetrators for the war as a whole. In this case, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their ilk are most directly responsible, but they are, of course, just part of the establishment that started and conducted the Iraq war based on a combination of lies and incompetence. I'm sure Noam Chomsky has written and talked about this a lot more eloquently than I can. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:18, 9 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Not at all. I personally believe that the "wealthy white folk" you cited, Bush, Cheney, etc. plus wealthy black folk such as Powell and Rice should be tried for (per Nuremberg):


 * Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of a crime against peace


 * Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace


 * But they haven't been tried, let alone convicted. Even if they were, they wouldn't be considered mass murder.


 * Also, let's not forget that someone else waged the same war in Iraq, plus wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan.


 * In any case, I don't think the OP was asking about war crimes. So again, if anyone has a cite that supports the contention that "wealthy white folks commit crimes that are exponentially worse than the poor blacks", I'd love to see it.  A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:49, 9 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The question was not asking about the severity of crimes. It asked if black people are MORE LIKELY to commit a crime. I gave two resources to point out that poverty is correlated with crime rates. The claim "black people are more likely to commit a crime" is not correct as a worldwide absolute. Instead, the claim should be "poor people are more likely to commit a crime." That does not take into account the severity of any particular crime. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:08, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Then it's a bogus question. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It is a statistical question. It is, in my opinion, no different than "Are black people more likely to have a heart attack?" or "Are black people more likely to become an NFL player?" In many cases, there is no correlation. In this case, the correlation only exists in areas where being black is highly correlated with being poor. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:18, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Race is always a controversial subject in the US. The question does mention the US. One response does mention the US, so it does support the original poster's conjecture that blacks are more likely to commit crimes, because they are poor.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:387:0:805:0:0:0:A4 (talk) 16:30, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It is different, because such stats lead to racist assumptions... like those of the Nazi troll immediately below. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:22, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * That is why I tried very hard to make it clear that it isn't about race. It is about poverty. Educate the person asking the question. He or she may comprehend that poverty is a vicious cycle that is hard to break out of. Then, he or she might decide to try and help people escape poverty. Racism is based heavily on ignorance. Refusing to educate a person leads to ignorance, which leads to racism. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:28, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * What's the explanation for gigantic thefts by white-collar criminals? It sure ain't poverty. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:31, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Greed and stupidity. Are you claiming that there is more white-collar crime than all the petty crimes committed by the poor? 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:37, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * A reference (old, but I doubt it has changed much) . White collar crime was 6% of the felonies. Even if it has tripled since then, it is still less than a quarter of all crime. It is not anywhere as pervasive as the claims above seem to make it. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm talking about the impact. A street thug impacts a small quantity of victims. A white collar thug can impact thousands or millions of victims. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:44, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * That is an entirely different question. I do not see why it is necessary to censor the question asked by changing it into a different question. I understand that you are very sensitive about race. I am not. I've experienced both sides, being black in Africa and being black in America. It doesn't bother me at all if someone wants to educate themselves. Why not help them understand the relationship between poverty and crime? Then, maybe, they will become a person who tried to help the poor instead of claiming that race is the source of all problems for the poor. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:51, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * It is not separate. You can't isolate the pure stat and claim it's meaningful by itself. Also, you said the motive for fat-cat crime is "greed and stupidity". I would argue that characterization applies to nearly all crime. And there's also the question of how you define a "crime". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Does Wikipedia have an article on "poverty tax"? I cannot find one. It is a negative term for taxes, regulations, fees, etc... that unfairly burden the poor who, because they cannot pay, end up being deemed criminals. I feel it is closely related to this question because it is an entire area of law-breaking that is, in my opinion, unjustly heaped upon the poor. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 16:26, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Regressive tax? i.e. sales taxes and poll taxes. If you charge each person X dollars that's regressive. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Related are also the fees that they can charge prison inmates for room and board..


 * If you don't pay, back to prison with you. (Accumulating even more debt!)


 * ApLundell (talk) 17:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * There is an article on Debtors' prison. 209.149.113.5 (talk) 17:16, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes, especially the section "Modern debtors' prisons (1970-current)... -- AnonMoos (talk) 23:45, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * correlation and statistical bias are of help, here.


 * It is quite obvious that race/ skin color has absolutely nothing to do with crime, so the basic answer is NO, "blacks" per se are NOT more likely to commit crime.


 * However, as much as obviously, blacks DO, more than other racial groups, statically belongs to social groups that commit crime (for instance, fatherless childs are more engaged in gang and crime than child of stable families, and most blacks are raised by single mothers)


 * Furthermore, War on Drugs:

"'The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.' - John Ehrlichman, to Dan Baum for Harper's Magazine in 1994, about President Richard Nixon's war on drugs, declared in 1971."
 * Gem fr (talk) 10:18, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Complex industries.
Are all regulated, safety critical industries complex? So defence, utilities, transport etc? 82.17.228.192 (talk) 16:06, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Define "complex". ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:13, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Define "industry" and "safety critical".Hofhof (talk) 16:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * You might be thinking of the phrase "military industrial complex" and other related phrases. In that case, 'complex' is used as a noun meaning "An assemblage of related things; a collection".


 * ie: It just refers to the collection of all corporations that contribute to that industry. ApLundell (talk) 17:23, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * 82.17.228 might be referring to that noun, but clarification might indeed be helpful. My first thought were complex industrial systems (complex systems) which, from a risk managemental point of view, can include "defence, utilities, transport" systems, as described, for example, in Perrow's classic Normal Accidents. ---Sluzzelin talk  00:49, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

"Bavaria and Tyrol Region" or "Bavaria-Tyrol Region"/"Vatican City" or "Vatican"
I am working on a project, and in it, I am labeling pictures taken from different regions. In many instances, I cannot differentiate Tyrol in Austria from Bavaria in Germany, so I thought that it would be more convenient for me to just refer to them collectively as one region. It is of importance that I do not mislabel anything in this project, so just to be clear, is that region referred to as Bavaria-Tyrol? Additionally, can the country "Vatican City" be accurately just be called "Vatican" or is the full form required? I am using a software to create an art piece including country names, and it is counting "Vatican" and "City" as two separate countries, which is why a shortened, one-word means of referring to the country would be preferable. I realize how silly these questions likely sound, and I hope that nobody is offended by my stupidity, as that is never my intention. HarryOtter (talk) 17:29, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Vatican City is the correct name of the country. The single word "Vatican" can be used to describe the leadership of the Catholic Church, the Holy See, or as an adjective to describe anything to do with either of those - so the Vatican Palace, Vatican Library, Vatican Basilica, Vatican Hill etc.


 * There is no formally organised or structured region called Bavaria-Tirol or anything similar - if you use that it is going to sound confusing. Describe it as the German-Austrian border area, or something like that. Wymspen (talk) 18:23, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your prompt and helpful answer, Wymspen. Yes, the German-Austrian border area is a good alternative that I had not thought about. I will figure out a way to make it work using the correct name. HarryOtter (talk) 19:11, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * If you are certain that the pictures were either taken in Tyrol or in Bavaria, then you might simply wish to write "Tyrol or Bavaria". I'm just throwing this in because the German-Austrian (as well as the Bavarian-Austrian) border area also includes the Austrian states Vorarlberg, Salzburg and Upper Austria. Moreover, depending on where in Tyrol the pictures were taken, they might lie closer to the Italian-Austrian border. (e.g. Lienz District). ---Sluzzelin talk  22:27, 7 July 2017 (UTC)


 * In English, Vatican is mostly an adjective, but in Italian I believe the state's name is Città del Vaticano, making it a noun. —Tamfang (talk) 07:26, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Buses and PSV
In the UK, is a vehicle used for training bus drivers (that is, one not carrying paying passengers) still classified as a PSV by the DVLC? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spinningspark (talk • contribs) 23:15, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Does this help? If not, it might provide links to pages that do. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 11:10, 8 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Maybe - maybe not. "Is a vehicle still a PSV even when it is not carrying passengers? If the vehicle is parked in a depot or garage (or is being driven between two depots or is temporarily laid up for any reason) it is still a PSV. It only stops being a PSV when its use as one has been permanently discontinued; for example, if you take a vehicle out of service altogether and adapt it for some other use (such as driver training)." . So if a bus is being used for training which carries passengers at other times, it is still a PSV. If it is only ever used for training, it is not. The difference is not actually in the vehicle, but about whether you need a PSV Operator Licence to run it. Wymspen (talk) 15:00, 8 July 2017 (UTC)


 * In the UK, vehicles are PSVs if they're registered as PSVs. You can own anything you like without registering it, but if you want to use it on the road, and need to register it, then it will be difficult to register it as something other than a PSV if it has too many seats in it. It's not hard to register as something else (commonly a bus recovery truck, or a domestic camper) by starting with a bus and taking the seats out. If you leave the seats in (mobile cafe) it can be difficult to register it as a non-PSV, even though it's function is no longer to move with anyone sitting in those seats. Some have got round this by removing the seats for transport to site (you can carry them inside, so long as they're not installed), then re-installing them. It can be difficult to register a double decker though, because stability tests might be needed if you make major modifications, such as putting more weight upstairs, or just take the seats out downstairs.
 * If you use a working fleet bus as a PCV driver training vehicle (seats still in, plates on the ends), then it's still a PSV. But if you're a fleet operator and already have a PSV Operator licence, then that's not too difficult. The MOT is more rigorous, but not terribly more so than for the same chassis as a non-PSV. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:13, 8 July 2017 (UTC)