I also assume you don't live in a dense city. Even in a utopia you couldn't have perfect safety without investing in security: some people are going to commit crimes and violate property just for fun, and when there's a lot of people in one area, that becomes a concern.

There has never in history been a time when people can be secure without investing in security. To claim that investing in security is in indication of something "wrong" is therefore at best a sentiment far ahead of its time.

And yes, people here (mainly the elderly) do keep vast sums of cash at home http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027129/Honest-Japan...

Japan also has some of the densest cities on earth.

Of course, it's far from perfect (there's plenty of crime, people still lock their doors, and sexual violence seems to be off the charts), but it shows that paranoia doesn't have to be the default state. If they made it this far, how much further is possible within human nature?

People here are basically honest. There aren't any turnstiles on the transit system --- they just assume you'll have bought a ticket. Children roam the streets on their own and think nothing of talking to random adults.

Of course, they back up this trust with enforcement; there are occasional spot checks on the transit system with big fines; and if you don't pay a driving ticket the police will come to your house and remove your license plates...

Now I guess someone would call a bomb disposal team and cut the traffic 3 blocks around it. (and I would have been very sad, because to this day I still love that bag, leather, light, durable, practical, it still fits a modern 13" laptop perfectly)

Anyhow, this thread is all anecdotes.

That's true. And crime statistics aren't much more useful because willingness to report and how well the police handle filing differ a lot between cultures.

The crime statistics themselves are very useful, there's no need to chuck them about because some level of crime goes unreported. Statisticians have long ago realised that we can measure this too.

All the apartments have thick security doors[1], lower windows of buildings have iron bars and all gardens have tall fences. If you leave anything that looks even remotely valuable in your car, someone will break a window and grab it. There is tonnes of vandalism, and even if you leave a motorbike locked with a secure lock it's somewhat likely it won't be there the next day.

It sounds the complete opposite of Japan!

[1] A few weeks after I arrived I was at a friends house and there was a disturbance of some sort in the apartment next door. The police couldn't get in, so called the fire service who had to work for 20 minutes to break the door down. They considered going in through the outside, but it was the third floor and all the windows had metal shutters.

Why are we still assuming that as a given, instead of trying to change it at its roots?

My upbringing has had this "golden rule of ethics" (don't do to others what you don't want done upon yourself) ingrained in me pretty well, so I would never feel excitement about this.

(Hypothesis: This ridiculous objectivism has had people forget how much cooperation is ingrained into humans by nature.)

That said, I am aware that such thoughts exist in my subconsciousness, because the subc is always exploring all possible paths, but I have never experienced that as an even remotely acceptable (in terms of my own moral) path of action.

This only works for people who sufficiently appreciate their own possessions. Others might develop a very relaxed "stuff comes, stuff goes, who cares it's just materialistic crap anyways" attitude and and that equips them to have surprisingly little remorse in regards to theft. This is probably exemplified best in the extremely high rate of theft affecting near-zero-value bikes in many Dutch cities. That kind of thief might even rationalize by inverting guilt, "if he feels bad about the loss it's his own fault that he is not as cool about shitty old piles of rust as I am"

You've missed my point for the opportunity to moralize and posture. Consider this: You know cheating is wrong, you probably consider yourself to be someone that would never do it, yet you can still acknowledge that it would most likely be enjoyable for at least a very short while, right? That's all I'm saying, not (lmao) some kind of faux-objectivist philosophy on the right to take other people's property or whatever it is you seem to be imagining.

Because eugenics went out of fashion a long time ago. The "roots" is free will, so you can't really change that without horrific consequences. Using birth control (voluntary and involuntary) to bias the population was a popular idea in the 1920s. China's latest gamifaction of "social credit" is another biasing attempt. I'm not aware of any "roots" solution that doesn't require total surveillance or head measurements...

We have a way to go, but we have made at least some progress. Maybe in another few hundred years humans won't be so 'Us and Them'. Maybe materialism will be the next thing we work on. Who knows, maybe by the time we reach the next galaxy we'll have it sorted out.

If the most powerful institution in the western world couldn't "fix" this aspect of human nature over millennia, it is sheer arrogance to think we can do better today.

Something like aggressive behavior though, is something that can be selected against.

You mean change human nature?

Actually it's the exact opposite: very pragmatic and empirically verified.

It's exactly what people, in statistical quantities, tend to do over what they tend not to do.

Plus, most of it is shared with our animal siblings.

Except if you think that an Elephant or a Cat doesn't have certain natural characteristics (insticts, behaviors, traits) based on their species.

That's because it's a casual online conversation. I don't stuff my responses with citations when I'm not writing a paper.

>Do people ever?

Yes. There are tons of research on human psychology, cognition, physiology, evolutionary traits, instincts and other aspects of what colloquially is called "human nature".

There, now the philosophical twaddle is excised without ruining the spirit of the point

Also, thanks for the unjustified rudeness, you've made a great contribution today.

Do you mean chemical lobotomies or a post scarcity economy? Because there are some wants that are impossible to fulfill, for example: there are a bunch of murderers in Syria motivated by the desire to fly a winged horse to a sky mansion where 72 infinity virgins await. I don't see that happening, even post scarcity.

If you're suggesting I should move, then sorry. I would love to live in the woods on a lake and live out my days. I could do that easily. But I think I have a responsibility to help solve the problems the economy that pays my rent is causing. I choose to live in the ghetto where I can see what's going on so that I can help.

If that is true, I very much respect that ...

Anyway, I suppose you know, that people usually adopt to their enviroment. So if you see not so nice changes in your ethics and livestyle, you should probably reconsider your home ...

You passively pay for security at a bar when you buy a drink - the price of the bouncer is part of how they derive the cost of your beer. Similarly you pay taxes (local, state, federal) that pay for a massive amount of physical security that you utilize unknowingly on a day to day basis.

Just because you don't find it necessary to lock up your stuff in your driveway doesn't mean that you can claim that you don't use or pay for physical security.

In my city you can't use a wooden door, because thief can easily break it with good kick, so everyone uses heavy iron doors with good locks. You can't leave your automobile with factory locks, it'll be stolen, sooner or later. Everyone uses additional security systems. You can't even leave your bag in the closed car, if your windows are not tinted. Someone will see it, break window and stole your bag. You must use heavily tinted window, so no one from the street could see anything inside. Even the thought that I could leave my car or home unlocked is foreign for me. It's my property, so it's my work to defend it.

I think it's amazing we manage to spend so little on security.

I went to college in Atlanta, where leaving anything slightly valuable inside your vehicle would lead to a smashed window. So I've developed a lifelong paranoia about never leaving valuable items in sight in a locked car.

Also, HN crew if someone is going to rob your house they don't just try to enter in a locked door. The robber is going to knock, if you answer, make up some story how they are looking for Alice & Bob, and go on their way. If nobody answers, then they try to see if your doors are locked. I used to frequently get strangers "looking for someone" at my door in Atlanta, too. Few things are scarier than hearing a knock at the door when you are in bed, ignoring it, then hearing them try to open your door.

I guess the long commute is worth it.

I once did a Habitat for Humanity build out the Bankhead (not Buckhead, big difference) highway. The had to have Atlanta PD watch the lot DURING THE DAY because multiple cars had been stolen from Habitat Volunteers. I still think that was crazy cars were stolen that brazenly in broad daylight.

I don't have a pulse how things are these days. But don't get scared off by these stories, there are lots of good things about living in the city too. Go Jackets. :)

What did you study btw?

The epitome of this is most of Switzerland. I went on a Tinder date with a girl recently whose apartment door did not even have a lock.

Before I moved into my second college apartment, the previous tenants warned that they got robbed a few times, and then learned never to open the blinds, and didn't have a problem after that. We therefore never opened the blinds. We pretty quickly broke off a key in the lock and ended up leaving it unlocked except when everyone was gone for multiple days (I won't bother explaining how this worked, or why we didn't get it fixed for a year.)

So our door was always unlocked, but since you couldn't see inside, theft was never the goal of the folks who wandered in. It was always those who were friends and customers of other people in the building who were told they could hang out with us until their friends got back from class or those who had to use the bathroom late at night.

One of my roommates was up until 4 am in the living room every night, and one time someone wandered in while no one was there, and left a note thanking us for letting them use the bathroom, but nothing was ever taken except xbox controllers, and we thought we knew the culprit.

It's not even really a poverty issue - there are places where people are poor as churchmice, but the social stigma around theft is strong enough to keep people in line.

I think it's a density thing. In a small town, there's nobody to steal from you, and even if there was you'd eventually figure out who it was since everybody knows everyone. In a big city, someone can be in and out without you ever knowing, and you would never find them again. Indeed, most of the city residents I met in NZ still locked their doors (the people mentioned above were in smaller villages), while when my family went on vacation to a rural vacation home (in the US) my mom felt comfortable enough to leave the back door unlocked.

[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/police-blotter-reports-f...

I was once walking through Atherton and a police officer stopped me to make sure I wasn't doing anything suspicious. I suppose the number of "walking while white" infractions a community tallies might be a good (if unfortunate) indication of how wealthy they really are.

The same police officer later bought me a coffee for no particular reason. What a country.

- Cheapest home for sale in Atherton on Zillow is listed for $3.2 million

- The public schools shown to be in the same area as this house have unbelievably low scores (as measured by GreatSchools.org):

-- Selby Lane Elementary (assigned) .... 4/10

-- Garfield Elementary ..................2/10

What gives?

There is some social engineering going on there. If you live in an area where everybody locks his door and don't have a huge problem (like bands of bored teens trying every house, or lots of junkies, ...) the chances are very small that anyone would try to open your door, and if they do, they most likely come prepared. I remember that in my previous flat in the center of London, we left the kitchen window opened for years without even realising it. It would have been trivial to break into our place, but nobody cared. They entered 2 times over the same period at my neighbour place, likely because they saw something they wanted to steal through the window.

in most suburban places you can also leave the garage door open all day long just fine.

it's primarily dense cities that are the issue. just like online, when there's transience and anonymity, there's a high incentive for people to behave poorly.

Sometimes people tend to behave even more poorly if there is no anonymity. This happens when they think that they are morally right in an important area although they are totally wrong. Many racist "this needs to be said" comments are written using real names.

Sure it's different when you're in the city, but out here it's mostly older folks.

Try living in a bad neighborhood then.

If you already live somewhere nice and safe, the spendings and effort you don't do on security has been done by the state (police), buying or paying rent for the house, etc.

And perhaps more than it saves (like policing, it's a continuous effort too, you can just make the nice and safe and leave them at that).

1) the fact that the rest of us lock our doors, so most ne'er-do-wells have accepted the notion that closed doors tend to be locked. It's a form of herd immunity that protects you so long as only a small number of people behave like you.

2) the shift from cash to electronic money, meaning that physical theft is less lucrative than it once was (and meaning that most money is protected by entities that invest meaningfully in security.)

You're a free rider, benefiting from effort made by others, while being a (small) net negative to society. You're welcome for the security we've provided for you.