>
> On Apr 8, 2009, at 10:23 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> They would certainly be much smaller numbers, but "incredibly small" I
>> doubt, considering the existence of white, middle and upper class criminals
>> in the United States.
>>
>
> The upper class criminals are often just guilty of exaggerated capitalist
> behavior - e.g., Bernie Madoff. It's sloppy to say that he was the same as a
> derivatives huckster, but they're clearly related.
>
>
Or high-level corruption. Racist as it may be to portray the Irish as a criminal race of people its not without a certain truth. Our political institutions are so corrupt its not funny; this is recognised by everyone and yet its culturally tolerated. Actually on a low-level its manifest as well, but in this case in the guise of black market activity/tax evasion - mainly taking the shape of untaxed, cash-in-hand labour and various other "nixers" as they're known in colloquial parlance. In Ireland its very interesting to see how at all levels of society criminality has been normalised. Although nobody admits to criminality and everybody condemns it, at the same time everybody continues to maintain their devil-may-care attitude. I believe its down to a high level of material development with an exceptionally low level of cultural development.
I get the impression that crime is a constant phenomenon in society, tied to the "discontent with civilisation" itself (i.e. humanity's general resistance to full socialisation); the quantity and quality of which is determined by (a) cultural development and (b) material conditions.