Ooh, aren’t Sussex Police smart. They must read The Economist. Because over Christmas, said publication published a long and interesting article about Darwinism, which featured the following paragraph.

Conversely, the Darwinian explanation of continued support for socialism—in the teeth of evidence that it results in low economic growth—is that even though making the rich poorer would not make the poor richer in financial terms, it would change the hierarchy in ways that people at the bottom would like. When researchers ask people whether they would rather be relatively richer than their peers even if that means they are absolutely worse off, the answer is yes. (Would you rather earn $100,000 when all your friends earn $50,000, or $150,000 when everybody else earns $300,000?) The reason socialism does not work in practice is that this is not a question that most people ask themselves. What they ask is how to earn $300,000 when all around them people are earning $50,000.

Please note the bit in italics: it says that, at heart, a lot of people get rather miffed by the fact that others get more money than them. And that they’ll be as happy if said others get torn down as they would be if they themselves made more money.

And why do I think that Sussex police have been paying attention to this? Because of this scheme.

A police campaign targeting people living lavish lifestyles on the proceeds of crime and money laundering has begun in Sussex.

Crimestoppers and Sussex Police joined forces for the campaign called “Too Much Bling, Give Us a Ring”.

People are urged to report their suspicions about apparently wealthy people with no legitimate income.

In other words: if you think that people have too much money, tell the police.

Apparently having money is now grounds for suspicion.

Of this, I am not a fan…