What’s the key to understanding social problems? Numbers
Consider issues in the news like gun control, mass shootings, immigration, poverty, and drug addiction. No matter what the issue, there is something about it we can measure if we want to. No matter what the problem, numbers always matter. This should be obvious, but the implications of the simple truth that “numbers always matter” can escape even the educated and analytical reader. I get into the reasons why this happens in other posts. This article is just an attempt to explain why the key to understanding any social problem lies in looking at the numbers.
Firstly, bear in mind that a social problem is about behavior. Lack of morals is not a social problem. A sense of entitlement is not a social problem. Things people do because they feel entitled or have no moral compass can become a social problem. It makes a difference if 1 in 20 million do a behavior sometimes or 1 in 200 do it several times a month. Heroin addiction wouldn’t be much of a problem if there were only 4 or 5 addicts in the United States at any given time. Somewhere between 5 addicts and 5 million, you reach the point where people start to say that heroin addiction is a social problem.
Let’s take a closer look at this logic of numbers and frequencies as they relate to a couple of timely social problems.
Guns and Violence:
The rate of gun violence, or any kind of violence, is going to be a function of how many people exist. Other variables can be important as well, like poverty rates or access to healthcare. I’ll explain why those things matter in a minute. So, give Country A 300 million people and Country B 30 million. Rates of mental illness are about the same. Rates of gun ownership are about the same. Only a tiny percentage of people in each country ever succumb to mental illness and start shooting at people. In each country, about 1 in 1,000,000 carried out a mass shooting. In Country A, that means there were 300 mass shootings. In Country B, there were30 mass shootings.
Some people in each country turn into violent fanatics for various reasons, usually religious reasons. Like people who carry out mass shootings, fanatics who commit violence are rare. In Country A, violent terrorists carried out 100 attacks of various sorts. In Country B, there were 30 attacks.
Now, let’s talk about gun culture in each country. Gun ownership is common and gun laws are permissive — concealed carry permits are easy to get, semi-automatic rifles are legal, that sort of thing. Now, note that a small percentage of the population in Country A and Country B turns violent and often has a gun. In Country A, you are potentially going to see 10 times as many people who can use their guns to address the objects of their paranoid fantasies or fanatical hatred.
So, what if Country A had 1/2 as many guns because gun laws had been dramatically tightening up 20 years ago. Instead of say 1 gun per adult, there is now 1 gun per 2 adults. Many gun owners have 2 or more, so really there are about 40 million gun owners. Without those gun laws, there would have been 80 million. Now, there are half as many people who have access to guns, and who are going to use those guns to shoot people of the wrong religion, skin color, political party or whatever.
Drugs, Self Control, and Math:
Now, let’s talk about opioid addiction. How many people in the United States use opioids for part of the year? How many of those people develop a habit that meets the definition of opioid addiction? In other words, what percentage of opioid users become addicts? If the number is 1 in 20, how many addicts will we get if twice as many people take opioids? You end up with twice as many opioid addicts. That’s what happens.
It doesn’t matter if the addicts could control themselves or could quit by some kind of magic. That’s a common way to dismiss drug addiction — they could stop if they wanted to. I stopped smoking meth when I really wanted to. Why can’t these dope fiends do the same?
Possibly, just possibly, those opioid addicts are the people who tried and failed to get off the drug. Maybe self-control is like lots of things — not 100% effective. If 1 million people take opioids for legitimate reasons, a few of them are going to slide into addiction. The more people who take the drugs, the more people end up as addicts. Self-control is irrelevant when we talk about social problems, really. If Joe succumbs to opioid addiction, maybe it really was a personal failure. If there are thousands of Joes, you have to admit that something else might be at play.
Maybe people just lack self-control. Where does that insight get us? Nowhere in particular. It seems obvious that self-control isn’t 100% effective for anyone. The more prescription drug users there are, the more opportunities there are for people to become dependent.
No True Scotsman Would Get Drunk and Shoot Someone:
Some pundits try to dismiss gun violence by saying the responsible gun owners don’t shoot family members by accident or let their guns get stolen out of their unlocked cars or let their children handle loaded guns without supervision. Yet, thieves steal guns from cars. Children shoot other children by mistake. Gun owners mistake family members for intruders and shoot. You can’t make those things irrelevant by just saying that ‘responsible gun owners’ don’t allow these things to happen. They do allow those things to happen, many times a week.
