In principle, yes. In practice, it would be very hard to tell how many more crimes per year, divided per X, there would be if counterfactually the police’s budget was reduced by $X/year all other things being equal (looking at how other countries are doing will have huuuge confounding effects), and I suspect most people would overestimate that.
Perhaps he should have said “conspicuous absence”. An absence of tigers is only conspicuous if you would otherwise expect tigers everywhere.
In principle, yes. In practice, it would be very hard to tell how many more crimes per year, divided per X, there would be if counterfactually the police’s budget was reduced by $X/year all other things being equal (looking at how other countries are doing will have huuuge confounding effects), and I suspect most people would overestimate that.