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A comment on Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free. Parent comment

Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by tpmx on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @11:50AM (#26400634)
I'm not so sure it's a matter of civilization - it's more a matter of infrastructure:

The other piece of the puzzle is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Enforcement_Authority

Basically the government runs debt collection in Sweden. They have the ability to withdraw money from your bank account.

All of this is enabled by every resident having a (public) personal identity number.

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by plumeria on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:05PM (#26400833)
Meanwhile in California people can steal from physical stores with impunity [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/HmOIQv0yu-U?t=480

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by panopticon on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @08:28PM (#26406725)
This is a pretty common practice throughout the US. Some big chain retail stores will even fire employees if they try to confront a suspected thief.

It's generally cheaper to call the cops and file an insurance claim than it is to deal with worker's comp or lawsuits if something goes sideways.

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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by subsaharancoder on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @06:09PM (#26405722)
California classifies this as "crimes of necessity" with zero repercussions and in many cases people defending the acts of lawlessness. In CA everything is upside down!!
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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by blueblisters on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:38PM (#26401236)
Government run debt collection? Is this widely used by companies? Are there any drawbacks/cases of misuse? Does the government keep a credit score too?
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Re:Shops return to rural Sweden but are now staff-free by tpmx on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:45PM (#26401338)
> Is this widely used by companies?

Yes. It's a bit cumbersome, so there are companies specializing in doing this for small debts (say < $5000).

> Are there any drawbacks/cases of misuse?

Hard to say. My impression is that having one trusted party to manage debt collection makes it easier to handle the edge cases in a more humane way, but I haven't really delved into this area.

> Does the government keep a credit score too?

No.

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