I guess one social worker costs about the same as maintaining five cars? What you're describing is not normal, and has little to do with the presence or absence of police. The US has about middle-of-the-pack police-per-capita, for instance, but because it lacks all the supporting infrastructure (social workers, psychiatric clinics, etc), it has really bad violent crime stats.

Shutting yourself off from society is a fragile and imperfect solution - if you look at South Africa, where elites have essentially tried to use razor wire and walled communities to insulate themselves, people's lives are still dominated by the threat and reality of the society they've tried to shut out.

It is the new normal if you look at crime statistics.

The insinuation that social workers can fix this problem or the problem is rooted in mental health issues is a problem.

These are, for the most part, grown men deciding to use violence for income (theft in various forms) or to settle disputes. I don't know what you think a social worker is going to do to diffuse a fight (not that they'd be notified and arrive before it was long over) or if anyone with that background would willingly put themselves in the middle of a potentially violent encounter and think they could make everybody play nice and use their words.

There is some magical thinking and somewhat offensive blaming of mental illness on crime.

And excluding yourself from certain populations is absolutely effective, and not "society" that you're shutting yourself off from. Unfortunately you do leave a lot of people behind trying to escape from crime, but there are plenty of effective ways of doing it, if you have the means.

Cities in the US are nothing like SA and the problems are nothing similar.

Eh, the US has kind of outlier stats when it comes to stuff like violent crime basically because it has a weird social system. Most rich countries have settled on a vaguely social-democratic normal where you pay taxes for social services that intervene at various points along the chain to make sure people don't eat each other.

If you subject people to economic darwinism, don't be surprised they bring regular darwinsim to your front door.

If you want things to change, just copy the countries that don't have your problems.

>If you want things to change, just copy the countries that don't have your problems.

The countries that don't have our problems don't have our demographics, history, or size, or anything remotely similar. Most of them also (intentionally) have to pay much less for defense, handled by us, and thus have more free tax revenue to spend on social programs.

There are some problems which could be helped with better access to social welfare resources. Not all. Likely not most.

There are divisions in our society which are a result of our history likewise cultures which are quite separated to which there is not a simple solution or social program which can just fix it.

Every country is special. The point is, social welfare works in reducing crime in Korea, it helps in reducing crime in Denmark. It helps in radically different cultures and in countries with totally different histories. It works because the majority of crime is driven by desperate people that just don't exist if they have basic social welfare.

The mechanics can be complicated, but the basic principle is simple: there are no states with a decent safety net that have US-level crime statistics.

PS: You do realise you don't need all those weapons, right? The US is bordered by Canada, and Mexico. Nobody is ever going to invade. The historical normal of the US is to have basically no army, and it worked just fine. Nobody has even seriously considered invading the US since the British left, despite two world wars, because it's obviously so impractical.