[ctrlp]

HN likes to blame safetyism or the "perception of crime" as if crime isn't real. The answer is that big cities in the US and Western Europe have changed in the past 20-30 years. There has been a real increase in free-range mentally deranged homeless. And a parallel increase in "cultural diversity" via immigration, leading to a lower trust environment all around. It may be a low probability event for a homeless lunatic to scream at your child or worse, or for your kid to wander into the wrong neighborhood, but parents don't want their kids exposed to that crap. Who would? Meanwhile, affluent parents have fewer children to spare and very thin communities to watch out for kids in general. The CPS laws penalizing more traditional parenting certainly don't help things.

[ryan_lane]

> The answer is that big cities in the US and Western Europe have changed in the past 20-30 years.

Yeah, to become _safer_. Todays big cities are considerably safer than they were when you or I were allowed to roam free.

I grew up in New Orleans and I was shot at more than once. I was mugged as a kid. I had my bike stolen more than once. New Orleans was (and still is, for the most part) full of homeless people, including aggressive gutter punks.

You're letting your nostalgia cloud your view of how dangerous America used to be, especially in comparison to now.

[ctrlp]

New Orleans is an interesting point of comparison. It's generally considered to be a pretty dangerous city by US standards. If you were gangbanging in the 90s then, yeah, it's safer today. Kind of a low bar tbh. I grew up in and around NYC and there I was never shot at or mugged or molested or beaten up by gangs. It was also generally safe late at night in the 90s and 2000s.