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Of course crime is a social construct. No examples are necessary. What else could it be?
People tend to forget that social constructs are very very real things that can have major material impacts on our lives. Those who don't understand this use “it's just a social construct” to dismiss the importance of certain concepts or abstract ideas. But most of human's reality is made out of social constructs.
For another very clear example, money is a social construct. But people live and die by the hands of it.
These constructs are often based on something concrete at their core as well.
Money, or currency in general, is a social construct that was built on top of the basic idea of trade or exchange. Reciprocity is a very basic behavior found in all kinds of animals, especially us primates.
Likewise, social constructs like "crime" tend to be tied to ethics, another social construct, but that too can be tied back to some basic ideas like harm, which, again, is something animals often form their social norms around.
So, yes, social "constructs", but that doesn't in anyway mean society constructs them out of thin air.
Money is made up but the suffering the lack of it causes is very real.
They're not saying it isn't real, just that it being made up doesn't matter.
That suffering isn't because of a lack of money, though. It's because of a lack of means to secure the things you need. You would not suffer from a lack of money in a world where everything was free.
The social construct is the idea of currency: a physical (or digital) representation of value for the purpose of trading, but it has no inherent purpose or meaning if you remove it from the society that constructed it.
But what that money represents is a resource. All beings on earth need resources. Whether it's money to pay for medicine or berries to eat in the forest or water to drink in the desert, everyone has resources they need and must manage for survival. The social construct are the layers of abstraction added between you and how you secure the resource. With no social constructs, you gotta go hunt your dinner. With them, you can buy it.
They’re not saying it isn’t real, just that it being made up doesn’t matter.
I'm on the same page as you but understand this reply because this thread is full of people who think social construct = made up, frivolous thing that isn't important.
The made up part is true, the rest of that isn't. Many things are made up, but their impact on people is indeed very real.
Yep! Like gender. It may be a social construct but obviously that social construct is very important.
The only reason I can think of to remind people that something is a social construct is to help them remember change is possible and entirely within our control as a society.
The very real use of Force - sometimes of the deadly kind - of this specific "social construct" should make it painfully clear it has real - often life changing - consequences, to even the greatest of fools, but apparently it doesn't.
Ask Chimpanzees, Orcas, Elephants, or many other advanced natural societies that have evolved over the last few million years. They absolutely have a definition of crimes that they will punish if their members engage in those behaviors. Shunning would be the least brutal of their punishments. Capital punishment is far more prevalent.
Those animal crimes are still socially constructed among those various species! Social construct means some thing or dynamic or situation that is created through interaction between numerous actors rather than something extant in the physical world.
Which is why it's dumb to try to negate a thing like crime by saying it's a social construct. The language we are using to talk about it being a social construct is a social construct. Literally YOU are a social construct, but here you are, worried about "wage theft" which is also a social construct. So do things being a social construct matter or not because if not, lets stop trying to negate anything we don't like by calling it a social construct, and if so lets apply it evenly and take it to it's logical conclusion. I would say "reject modernity, embrace monkee" but rejection, modernity, embracement, and monkee are all social constructs.
Of course it's a social construct, just like everything else that matters is. If you don't want your live to be determined by social constructs, you would have to live alone in the woods.
Things that are social constructs can be modified with the social contract and should be modified to suit the will of the governed.
Social constructs that operate without the approval of the membership seem to be bad constructs that should probably not be built that way.
Counterpoint:
Failure to pay someone money they are owed resulting in jail time only sounds good when you imagine employers being carted off for not paying employees what they're owed.
It's not so fun when you consider a mother of 2 carted off for missing a car payment.
Good point, let's not bring jail into the equation and just do it how it's done today:
If a mother of 2 misses her car payment, they take her car
So if your boss misses their payment for your labour, you should take back your labour, destroy whatever you've made but not been paid for
my last boss still owes me >6000€ in wages. I have been struggling for half a year now to get him to pay.
meanwhile: When I order something from amazon, and the bank-transfer bounces, I am in for new kind of hell of late-fees and incasso-mail.
Crime is a social construct = wage theft is a social construct, and according to the law of internet arguments something being a social construct means it doesn't matter and/or it's dumb to complain about it, so don't worry, it's all fine.
Wage fucking theft, everyone.
The quote is still in the wrong mindset with bad use of language.
It's not withholding. It's stealing. It's thievery.
Setting aside morals and ethics for a moment, intent (and malice) is a key component of crimes. Unfortunately it's easier to show in some cases than others. It's also worth noting that the at-will contract goes both ways in this case. Unfortunately there is an insurmountable power imbalance in this situation.
I was about to say I'm glad I was never in this situation, but I just remembered a time where I switched from an employee to a contractor and stopped getting paid.
The place burns down misteriously in both cenarios?