The only thing that's shameful here is that this horribly biased article made it's way on to Hacker News.<p>"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain."
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law<p>Instead of complaining on Salon that the government should, using other people's money, do something about this problem. Why don't you go out there and do something yourself? Why don't you go out there a make a difference in the world?
The long lists of murders by people previously treated for mental illness are scary, but are basically long lists of anecdotes. The attempt to deliver some statistics isn't very helpful:<p><i>Is there any way to estimate the frequency of these episodes of violence committed by mentally ill person who were not being treated? There was then, and continues to be, no national database that tracks homicides committed by mentally ill persons. However, a small study published in 1988 provided a clue. In Contra Costa County, California, all 71 homicides committed between 1978 and 1980 were examined. Seven of the 71 homicides were found to have been done by individuals with schizophrenia, all of whom had been previously hospitalized at some point before the crime. The 10% rate was also consistent with the findings of another small study in Albany County, New York. Therefore, by the late 1980s, it appeared that violent acts committed by untreated mentally ill persons was one of the consequences of the deinstitutionalization movement, and the problem appeared to be a growing one.</i><p>This basically gives P(Schizophrenic|CommitsHomicide), but the number of interest is P(CommitsHomicide|Schizophrenic). Bayes' Rule:<p>P(CommitsHomicide|Schizophrenic) = P(Schizophrenic|CommitsHomicide)P(CommitsHomicide)/P(Schizophrenic)<p>P(Schizophrenic|CommitsHomicide) = 7 / 71 (Very rough estimate from a single county 35 years ago)<p>P(CommitsHomicide) = ??? (I'm having trouble estimating this---the easily available figure is murder rate, but that's not the same as probability of being a murderer) But let's fudge this as being the murder rate of 4.7/100,000, which surely overshoots because some murderers kill multiple people [1]<p>P(Schizophrenic) = 15.2/100,000 [2]<p>Then we get P(CommitsHomicide|Schizophrenic) = 0.0986 * 0.000047 / 0.000152 = 0.0305<p>So very roughly three percent of people with schizophrenia would be expected to commit a murder. This is 649 times the probability of the average person being a murderer, which is quite a substantial difference.<p>However, in my opinion that increased likelihood of violence would not justify involuntary commitment in all but the most extreme cases. Otherwise we would essentially have to imprison tens of thousands of people for crimes that 97% of them are not going to commit. It's like Minority Report's "pre-crime", but a horribly inaccurate version thereof.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...</a>
[2]: <a href="http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/67.full" rel="nofollow">http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/1/67.full</a>
Salon is a vile leftist propaganda shop. Reagan turned around a stagnant economy through deregulation. He freed millions of people from the evil of communism. He defeated the Soviet Union and he rebuilt Americas military.