Saturday, August 18, 2007 @2:04 AM
'the mother of revolution and crime is poverty.' (aristotle) do you agree?poverty is defined as the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support. it is a major problem in societies ever since eons ago, and it, till now, has yet been solved. poverty often leads to resentment, unhappiness, and sometimes, crime.
it can be said that poverty is the mother of crime. in modern times like this, poverty would mean being deprived of the basic necessities to live. furthermore, with constant development of countries, the prices of necessities would continue to increase as countries become wealthier. this leaves the poor at the lower end, and many times, desperation for basic neccesities due to poverty often drives people to commit crimes in order to survive, and these crimes include stealing or other illegal means to make earnings.
also, the poor may think that their poverty is the result of the government being inefficient, and hence, decide to go against the government. an example would be the russian revolution, where the non-noble classes asked for an improvement in their wretched and poor conditions of life. when the Czarist government failed to do so, they revolted for the first time in 1905 and then for the second time in 1917, by which Czardom was finally overthrown.
moreover, poverty may also lead to resentment, causing both crimes to be commited and revolution. due to the large income gap in a country such as the United Kingdom, where the bottom 50% of the population owns only 1% of the wealth, the poor may feel that it is unjust that they are earning less than a ten times or worse than what the rich earns in a day, and hence, anger resulting from such situations may lead to crimes such as kidnaps and murders and at the same time, riots going against the rich.
however, poverty may not nessarily cause crime. crime is a result of an individual's moral disposition that attempts to satisfy desire by taking something by force, hence it does not matter if one is rich or poor. it has only got to do with one's moral values. compare a poor person with good moral values and a rich person with poor moral values. the poor person may not neccesarily commit more crimes as compared to the rich one just because he is poor. in fact, the rich commits more crimes than the poor. in 1993, the property loss to theft and robbery amounted to $15.3 billion, but white-collar embezzlement cost about $200 billion. furthermore, street criminals murdered 23,271 people that year, but the decisions of profit-driven corporations murdered at least 318,368 (through pollution, consumer and worker safety violations, etc). moreover, the rich tend to commit more crimes than the poor as they might feel that it is more challenging and they would rather take the risks, since they could buy anything they want.
hence, i conclude that though poverty is the cause of revolution and crime, it is not the main reason and only acts as the catalyst.
