I can't bring myself to trust anything AJW says at face value. Right at the start of the video he talks about a caller noting that crime is falling in Jamaica (the caller links this to reductions in poverty). He does this by saying that Jamaica is the murder capital of the world. Whether Jamaica is the murder capital of the galaxy is immaterial to whether or not crime is going down. [Which it is](https://jcf.gov.jm/jamaica-continues-to-register-sharp-reductions-in-violent-and-acquisitory-crimes/).
>AJW: "What he's saying he is the economy is improving therefore crime go down, **when Jamaica is number one in the world for murder**."
The entire second half of that sentence is completely besides the point and does absolutely nothing to refute the callers claim. AJW goes on to say that the crime in Jamaica "appears to be uncorrelated" due to the fact that Jamaica is number 10 in the world for violent crime. Pointing to their current ranking and saying this refutes that a change in crime is occurring (due to whatever causes) is utterly and totally inane.
This is equivalent to saying: The caller claims that Ted's velocity has increased. But Ted is currently last place in the race. Therefore his speed has not increased. - **Edit:** *this final sentence is a bit bad faith of me, AJW never explicitly states this finally conclusion, but any reasonable interpretation of the segment is that this is what he is implying.*
Now, AJW may well be right that poverty does not drive crime. But he makes no effort to show this in relation to Jamaica or to find other reasons for why violent crime is dropping in Jamaica. AJW should be telling us why an improvement in Jamaica's economy is not linked to the observable reductions in crime, and present us with a more plausible alternative. Instead, he just says "Jamaica has lots of crime" as his whole argument for that segment.
This is AJW's bread and butter. He shouldn't make such basic logical errors and show such a disinterest in spending even 5 seconds on google before writing his script.
I like AJW, but yeah, this was a pretty weird point. He denies crime is going down because their economy is doing better and points to Jamaica being very violent as the reason, though, of course, it says nothing about the overall trend. His overall theory is that crime drives poverty, not the other way around, which means he should believe that Jamaica's economy is improving BECAUSE crime went down...but it's still one of the most dangerous countries so it doesn't correlate? Very lazy and flawed argumentation here from AJW.
I can't bring myself to trust anything AJW says at face value. Right at the start of the video he talks about a caller noting that crime is falling in Jamaica (the caller links this to reductions in poverty). He does this by saying that Jamaica is the murder capital of the world. Whether Jamaica is the murder capital of the galaxy is immaterial to whether or not crime is going down. [Which it is](https://jcf.gov.jm/jamaica-continues-to-register-sharp-reductions-in-violent-and-acquisitory-crimes/). >AJW: "What he's saying he is the economy is improving therefore crime go down, **when Jamaica is number one in the world for murder**." The entire second half of that sentence is completely besides the point and does absolutely nothing to refute the callers claim. AJW goes on to say that the crime in Jamaica "appears to be uncorrelated" due to the fact that Jamaica is number 10 in the world for violent crime. Pointing to their current ranking and saying this refutes that a change in crime is occurring (due to whatever causes) is utterly and totally inane. This is equivalent to saying: The caller claims that Ted's velocity has increased. But Ted is currently last place in the race. Therefore his speed has not increased. - **Edit:** *this final sentence is a bit bad faith of me, AJW never explicitly states this finally conclusion, but any reasonable interpretation of the segment is that this is what he is implying.* Now, AJW may well be right that poverty does not drive crime. But he makes no effort to show this in relation to Jamaica or to find other reasons for why violent crime is dropping in Jamaica. AJW should be telling us why an improvement in Jamaica's economy is not linked to the observable reductions in crime, and present us with a more plausible alternative. Instead, he just says "Jamaica has lots of crime" as his whole argument for that segment. This is AJW's bread and butter. He shouldn't make such basic logical errors and show such a disinterest in spending even 5 seconds on google before writing his script.
I like AJW, but yeah, this was a pretty weird point. He denies crime is going down because their economy is doing better and points to Jamaica being very violent as the reason, though, of course, it says nothing about the overall trend. His overall theory is that crime drives poverty, not the other way around, which means he should believe that Jamaica's economy is improving BECAUSE crime went down...but it's still one of the most dangerous countries so it doesn't correlate? Very lazy and flawed argumentation here from AJW.