[lmm]

Small children in any city with a subway used to ride it alone; it was entirely normal in New York or London. The question to be answered isn't why they do it in Japan, it's why they stopped elsewhere. (The article points to a mother being arrested for allowing her 10-year-old to play, which kind of thing is likely the immediate cause, but begs the question[1] of why and how we got to that state)

[1] in the usual sense of the phrase, not the historical one recorded in some dictionaries

[wongarsu]

It's still normal in many European cities.

The three obvious answers are crime, perception of crime (even though crime is going down, perception of crime is going up) and perception of the subway (is it a transport method for everyone or just for poor people and low-lifes).

Going one level deeper, you arrive at the media, poorly-handled immigration and failure in law-enforcement as main sources.

[scrappyjoe]

It is not clear to me how your ‘one level deeper’ reasons are connected to your ‘obvious answers’.

[noticing]

Exactly right, it’s normal. But it’s wrong to pin it on immigration. My 10-year-old daughter takes the Tube to Bethnal Green nearly every day, and it’s an incredibly diverse and culturally vibrant area.

[trilbyglens]

Yep. My boys (11 and 13) have been using public transport here in Prague by themselves since they were 9. It's hard to overstate how good it is for the development of kids to have that sort of trust and independence at such a young age.

[reaperducer]

My parents' idea of Summer daycare in dirty 1970's New York was two subway tokens and a buck for a hotdog and a soda. We'll pick you up in front of FAO Schwartz at 5pm. Don't be late.

The worst thing that happened to me was I got my finger bit by a rabbit at the zoo.

[qwerty456127]

After having a similar childhood, I concluded criminals normally avoid targeting small children - I haven't been mugged until becoming a teenager.

[SoftTalker]

Small children don't normally carry anything of much value.

[eru]

Yes, and also just as scarcely any a robber wants to become a murderer, similarly people will shy away from violence against kids.

Both for moral reasons, but also because the penalties are tougher.

(And not just the legal penalties. I would assume you also run a higher risk of a bystander rushing in and becoming hero. And of your prison mates later ganging up on you. People _love_ children, not just their own, and many would gladly give their lives for them.)

[Aeolun]

Nintendo Switch?

I’m more inclined to believe that most criminals don’t entirely lose their sense of shame.

[eru]

The Switch is cheap.

[qwerty456127]

Not as cheap as a life of a stranger in a big city.

[ofrzeta]

Back then that might have been the case. Now they might carry a high-end iPhone.

[bobthepanda]

That can get remotely locked and declared lost, so really just a paperweight if it gets stolen.

[tdb7893]

Where I grew up was undeniably safer than Tokyo or honestly probably almost any place on earth. I still knew kids whose parents didn't want them playing outside without an adult because they were worried their kid was going to get abducted. It was weird because in the 20 years my family lived there it literally never happened in the county but parents still were worried about it so idk about other places but where I grew up in the late 90s and early 00s that was why.

[ty6853]

Abductions by CPS have gone up substantially since the old days. Busting into a gnarly Harlem crack den falls under "won't risk my life for a paycheck" for the state child snatchers. A nice well meaning family who lets their kid walk or bike alone to the house or park, that is prime easy pickings. This is why as CPS budgets go up you see ever more vigilance against child independence but barely moving the needle on helping kids in violent abusive situations.

[bobthepanda]

Heck it wasn’t that abnormal in NYC growing up in the 00s, but not sure about now.

[renewiltord]

I don't mind letting my child take the subway etc. but I think it's risky for them to cross the road here in San Francisco and if they take the subway they have to cross a couple of roads to get home. Not yet a concern, so I'll revisit in a few years.

I'm not afraid of other adults kidnapping my child. But I am afraid of other adults running her over. The Scientologists have been successful in popularizing their doctrine of "children are adults in small bodies" and so people will blame my child and possibly me if someone speeds through and kills her.

Consumer motor vehicles nowadays can do 0-60 in 3 seconds. The guy behind this extreme-performance motor isn't Ken Block. It's a sleep-deprived mother checking her phone.

[PoppinFreshDo]

Uhm, scientology? What?

[renewiltord]

It's a famous Scientology doctrine. People used to believe that children are not as capable as adults and therefore we should act differently and more carefully around them and look out for them. The Scientology doctrine is that they are "adults in small bodies" and so whatever they do is punishable as if an adult did it.

[lmm]

I don't think that tracks. Surely if the spread of that doctrine were the reason, we'd see children having more autonomy and a recognition that it's immoral to e.g. take their property, or confine them against their will.

[renewiltord]

That is entirely reasonable! Time to abandon the hypothesis.

[PoppinFreshDo]

I don't doubt that.

I doubt the part that our 400hp supra driving sleep deprived soccer mom is tear assing through the streets knows that.

[ruthmarx]

> begs the question[1]

> [1] in the usual sense of the phrase, not the historical one recorded in some dictionaries

Wait, are you calling the correct usage here historical despite it still being frequently used in contemporary times, and advocating that the incorrect usage should be normalized?

[lmm]

English is defined by its usage, and the historical sense of that phrase is not actually in live use outside of "well actually" hypercorrections.

[quietbritishjim]

Did you really need to insert a contentious distraction in your original comment? The fact that you felt the need to clarify up front shows you knew it would be misunderstood, and discussion of it is totally unrelated to this topic. If you're not using the original meaning, where "beg" specifically is important as the verb, you could have said almost any variant instead, e.g., "raises the question", and not annoyed or confused anyone and not detracted from the actual point you were trying to make (assuming your main goal wasn't social media-style ragebait).

To quote from a sibling comment of yours:

> a phrase that will be misunderstood is worse than useless.

Exactly.

[lmm]

> Did you really need to insert a contentious distraction in your original comment? The fact that you felt the need to clarify up front shows you knew it would be misunderstood, and discussion of it is totally unrelated to this topic.

I put in the footnote precisely to try to pre-empt this tedious digression.

> If you're not using the original meaning, where "beg" specifically is important as the verb, you could have said almost any variant instead, e.g., "raises the question", and not annoyed or confused anyone

I believe a different phrasing would have been (marginally) less effective communication for readers who were sincerely trying to understand. And I don't believe I caused any actual confusion; no-one genuinely misunderstood my comment. The only people who try to "correct" the phrasing are people who weren't actually interested in communication in the first place.

[ruthmarx]

> I put in the footnote precisely to try to pre-empt this tedious digression.

Next time, just don't try to advocate for your personal view of language, and use a less contended term, as the parent said 'raises the question' would be fine.

> I believe a different phrasing would have been (marginally) less effective communication for readers who were sincerely trying to understand.

Nope. Raises the question is far clearer and less ambiguous.

> The only people who try to "correct" the phrasing are people who weren't actually interested in communication in the first place.

Or people who care about misinformation being spread.

[lmm]

> Raises the question is far clearer and less ambiguous.

"Raises the question" is less familiar and marginally more difficult to understand for people who are actually good-faith trying.

[ruthmarx]

> English is defined by its usage

To an extent, but people using language incorrectly isn't a reason for everyone else to start using it incorrectly also.

> the historical sense of that phrase is not actually in live use outside of "well actually" hypercorrections.

No, it's pretty active and certainly in live use, just not in areas you participate in. It's very disingenuous or ignorant to call the correct use 'historical'.

[lmm]

> people using language incorrectly isn't a reason for everyone else to start using it incorrectly also

Language is a tool for communication, a phrase that will be misunderstood is worse than useless. Where a particular usage makes a distinction that is important to convey then it may be worth preserving, but when a historical quirk merely adds confusion and inconsistency, the disappearance and ironing out of that quirk is to be celebrated.

> No, it's pretty active and certainly in live use

The last research I saw claimed otherwise.

> It's very disingenuous or ignorant to call the correct use 'historical'

Nothing disingenuous; to the best of my good-faith knowledge the older usage (certainly not "correct" given that most listeners/readers will understand it to mean something different) is not active at least in general writing (it may still be used as a term of art in philosophy, but if so I don't think that changes anything). Certainly it's a minority use.

[ruthmarx]

> Language is a tool for communication, a phrase that will be misunderstood is worse than useless.

Sure.

> Where a particular usage makes a distinction that is important to convey then it may be worth preserving, but when a historical quirk merely adds confusion and inconsistency, the disappearance and ironing out of that quirk is to be celebrated.

It's not a historical quirk, it's the valid and modern usage.

> The last research I saw claimed otherwise.

Then it was clearly insufficient. How deep a dive did you do? What motivated you to do so?

Your entire reasoning here reads like you were corrected and resisted and invented a justification so you could keep using the phrase you are comfortable using the way you are comfortable using it.

> to the best of my good-faith knowledge the older usage

You keep coating your replies with this, but it's not older or historical, just correct.

> (certainly not "correct" given that most listeners/readers will understand it to mean something different)

No, it is absolutely the correct usage.

By your reasoning we should all start using 'irregardless' as well.

> is not active at least in general writing

Yes, it is, and often articles that use it correctly will call out incorrect usage.

> Certainly it's a minority use.

Maybe, but your usage is plain incorrect and is as bad as using irregardless.

[lmm]

> How deep a dive did you do? What motivated you to do so?

I saw it come up in a discussion about linguistic prescriptionism and overcorrection, probably even on this site, and followed through to someone who had counted and analysed use in e.g. major newspapers.

> Your entire reasoning here reads like you were corrected and resisted and invented a justification so you could keep using the phrase you are comfortable using the way you are comfortable using it.

And your posts read like you don't get many wins in your life so instead of learning and improving you cling to the idea that you're objectively "right" about this so that you can feel superior. So let's not stoop to psychoanalysing each other.

> By your reasoning we should all start using 'irregardless' as well.

I don't think "irregardless" is more easily understood than, or conveys a useful distinction from, "regardless". Indeed the opposite, it's more confusing as it sounds like it's a double negation that should mean regardful.

[eadmund]

> English is defined by its usage

Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

Out of curiosity, how do you refer to the logical fallacy of begging the question?

[defrost]

Defined by usage is also the literal premise of the descriptive Oxford English Dictionary.

[lmm]

> how do you refer to the logical fallacy of begging the question?

Like that. But mostly I don't.

[0xbadcafebee]

US mass media is the longest-running experiment in the world at "if you scare people for long enough, can you make them more paranoid?".

Since 1972, Americans' trust in each other has fallen by half[1]. Pew Research has been showing how trust in all forms has been plummeting for a long time[2]. Of course trust in Government nose-dived in the 60's and 70's. In 1976, the movie Network! satirized "The News" as a force of corrupt capitalist enterprise meant to sensationalize rather than inform.

But none of this is new. In the 1890s, William Randolph Hearst waged a "media war" of propaganda at an unprecedented scale, intended to both dominate an industry, and turn popular opinion. He coined the phrase "if it bleeds, it leads" [3]. And well before then, newspapers have been used locally and nationally to push agendas, frighten, lie, exaggerate, and taunt the public into a submissive frenzy.

Today we have media juggernauts that wield a massive pulpit with brazenly political spin. They can lie, intimidate, insinuate, and generally bombard an already terrified public into believing just about anything. And the political fringe weaponizes it into not just political action, but also inspiring real violence and oppression at all levels of society. We allow it because it's good politics, it's good business, and, well, that whole freedom of speech thing.

But politics is a small part of the story. The media controls the narrative, and society is nothing but the accumulation of stories. Everything we consume is delivered to us through the media in one form or another, and all that accumulated payment funds the machine.

Society in America is big business. Most countries can't hold a candle to the control our media wields over our populace. Its tendrils seek out every eyeball and ear, pumping us full of fear and elation, followed by the next commercial break. Our culture is a media product. We wouldn't know what to do without it.

So, why do we fear our kids on the train, where other places don't? We're way better at packaging fear, and we're damn good consumers.

[1] https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/ [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/07/22/trust-and-di... [3] https://pepperdine-graphic.com/opinion-if-it-bleeds-it-leads...