So unless those people are framed innocents, it would make sense to start asking questions why do so many people commit crime, no?
Which gets us back to the question of personal responsibility vs. social structure. They are after all causally connected - I agree. Since we have the me-centered culture that says it is ok to do anything to get me what I want and fuck the rest, that might be a reason or rather a contributing factor why we also have so many people behind bars - they just follow the morality of capitalism and individualism to the letter. In that context, the issue of personal responsibility - that is - accountability to other for my own action sounds radically progressive no?
Dick Grippon:
> You can't have a socially stratified society without the same mechanism at
> work, one which limits rewards to the deserving and punishes the losers.
> Rewards -- the good life -- must be scarce to have any value. Stratified
> societies produce scarcity.
Your argument is teleological - it implies that the outcome in the future is the cause be current behavior. Functionalists and the invisible hand folks are quite good at that, but I am unimpressed. To avoid teleology, you need to show how the "need" for inequality actually produces behavior that leads to inequality.
Citing generalized correlates of inequality (poverty, discrimination, etc.) does not do the trick precisely because they are generalized whereas outcomes are specialized. That is to say, not every poor or discriminated person ends up as delinquent or loser, and not every privileged person end up as successful. I would go as far as saying that statistically speaking, the privileged have a greater probability of becoming delinquent or losers than the poor people do. It is just because there so many more poor people than privileged people, we see so many more poor delinquents and losers.
Wojtek