We are told to “obey the law,” which for those that are well established and therefore are in a very good position to obey the law, find that this shouldn’t be an issue for them because this basically makes eminent sense, for those that have it all or have access to it all, really ought to obey the laws, because they are already the beneficiaries of what comes to those that are successful in society. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who do not come from a world of opportunity, or of fairness, and quite frankly are often discriminated against because they are the wrong skin color, or have the wrong accent, or have the wrong religion, or come from the wrong side of the tracks. In all of these things, we have a contingent of people that are on the outside and therefore are looking in, and for these people, it has to be acknowledged that obedience to the laws essentially means acquiescence to that which isn’t fair or right, but serves more to oppress them and therefore to keep them in their place.
When it comes to crime, the first thing to recognize is that any society that insists that certain people do not deserve to make a living wage is going to present a real problem to that same society, because those that aren’t accorded the basic respect that the richest nation in the world should provide fair access to, by cheating them out of a living wage and leaving them without a reasonable way to ever achieve something of substance are going to have to understand that robbery is a two-way street. That is to say, those who rob the sweat, blood, and bread from those who are laborers, by, in essence, cheating them out of a fair wage as well as providing them no more than a dead-end job, have robbed them, just the same as if they have lifted money from their wallet. Yet, the difference between the two is that one entity is protected by the law because it is legal to pay whatever the minimum wage is, and it’s okay to leave those who are employed without any job security or a means to promotion within the organization, because that is the way our capitalistic system is structured. On the other hand, those who do not have enough money to live on and have no real future to look forward to are going to be prone to finding a way to get their due, through licit or illicit means, and it’s hard to blame them for doing so.
To expect those who are being cheated by the system to be obedient to the system signifies that this nation isn’t interested in thinking people, but rather just wants them to permit themselves to be exploited, again and again, for the betterment of those who have the capital and are in a position to take advantage of them. Indeed, crime has its reasons, and for those that desire to see less crime, they might want to seriously consider that a well-educated populace, with opportunity and fairness for all, along with equality under the law, and with a fair wage paid for a fair job done, would do more to reduce crime than anything else, which is that inconvenient truth that needs to be dealt with sooner as compared to later.