Increasingly, the growth of statism fosters the notion that human values can no longer be produced but must instead be obtained by forcible seizure from others. Indeed, the coercive, often arbitrarily wielded power of the state offers a clear model of the latter behavior, which may be imitated by others. Consequently, individuals, who are now undeterred by any notion of the rights of their fellow citizens (cf. previous page), turn increasingly to crimes of personal force against one another.

In tracking crime statistics in a mixed economy, short-term fluctuations may be misleading, since they are heavily influenced by transient factors such as age shifts in the population. (Crime rates tend to be higher in a population with a high proportion of young adults.) More generally, as noted in Section 4, historical statistics cannot constitute scientific proof of cause-and-effect relationships, because of uncontrolled variables (4.3:2-3). Nevertheless, longer-term trends in U. S. crime statistics are at least consistent with the logical argument offered here. Between 1960 and 2001, FBI data, tabulated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (see online spreadsheet) show enormous increases in every category of crime. For instance, violent crimes in general soared from 160.9 per 100,000 inhabitants to 504.4, while property crimes escalated from 1,726.3 to 3,656.1.