Some people will never steal even to save their own life, because they have principles which guide them in that direction.
I think it is important to recognize that our society has less respect for property laws and is more accepting of dishonesty, theft, and general lack of honor than many previous societies. As the cultural value of integrity declines, people see no reason to refrain from theft and violence, so if a situation presents itself where it seems advantageous to them, they take it, even if it is not advantageous to society or causes great harm to someone else. It seems that empathy is lacking in our society as well.
Are you sure there are, or do you think there are based on a Disneyesque view of morality?
Stealing because you're dirt poor and want more, while ethically and morally wrong, is understandable.
Stealing even though you could easily afford to buy, that's either a mental illness or a character/education/culture flaw.
I for one would not rob someone or still, even to save my life because my integrity is worth far more to me than that.
Isn't this a restatement of the Fundamental Attribution Error?
Taking a leaf from Deming, we have a system, a process, a society that creates a certain, relatively stable, number of criminals per year. Trying to address specific criminal acts or specific criminals is just meddling that can backlash as easily as it can help.
When you have a stable source of trouble, it makes no sense to try to fix individual occurrences. You have to address the problem at the source.
We have created this system! We can create something else if we're unhappy with it.
There's an old nugget that if anyone could time-travel they'd go back in time and kill Hitler. Nobody would go a few more years back to educate him.
People are not educated to look at the big picture but to react in the moment. Stop the theft as it's happening. Shoot. This goes best with societies where taking a life is considered appropriate response to someone trying to steal your fishing lure, societies where your individual rights trump absolutely anything else (imagine explicitly voting to pay more taxes yourself because that will benefit the poorer part of the population).
Reacting in the moment requires almost no thought out process. It's mostly autonomous, a reflex. Thinking of the bigger picture, identifying a root cause, identifying the impact of each of your options, these all take a strong enough education to override that reflex.
Thinking of bigger picture is all well and good, but the moment you mention education I cannot help, but chuckle. In the context of US, education already is.. lets call it overburdened. Maybe the solution is not to override the reflex, but to appropriately channel it.
For the record, I am just putting words together. It is late and infant does not want to sleep.
Ask you what your evidence is for that assertion given that crime rates vary so widely around the world for disparate reasons.
The prevalence and types of crimes committed really do vary widely as well (though its often hard to get a clear picture since different countries have different reporting mechanisms (or none at all)).
He read newspapers and pamphlets that published the thoughts of philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon and Arthur Schopenhauer. Georg Ritter von Schönerer became a major influence on Hitler. He also developed an admiration for Martin Luther. During his time in Vienna, he pursued a growing passion for architecture and music, attending ten performances of Lohengrin, his favourite Wagner opera.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Stewart_Chamberlain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Ritter_von_Sch%C3%B6nere...
Hum, could I suggest an evil alternative? Just schedule a few meetings with the people that lend money to Hitler and explain them that he will try to keep the money and will go to extreme measures to avoid returning it, including killing them or their relatives if possible. Really bad investment, don't touch this turd with a thousand foot pole. Thank me later when you still own your castle in Europe.
Result: Hitler never climb in a position to became Hitler. Nobody dies, nobody needs to enter in a war to recover the investment and you don't became a murderer. Hollywood would be devastated for sure but, apart of this...everybody wins :-)
So maybe the person could go back in time and discuss with the negotiators at the Versailles treaty after the first world war. Or maybe try to inject some economics education to try to prevent the hyperinflation.
Room for some XKCD or SMBC comics!
But in any case yes, Pre-WW2 Germany was "a paradise" compared with Post-WW2 Germany or with immediately post-Hitler Europe if you prefer it. (And the world is much better without cocaine fueled dictators, for sure).
See: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/rescuing-jessica-s...
This person has no interest in treatment. They want to do drugs and take advantage of what’s provided to keep doing that.
You can’t fix that with hotels. You either need to require treatment or imprison (paired with arresting dealers).
On the more progressive end, maybe drug clinics that administer drugs to addicts for free onsite (to crash the dealer market while you’re going after them). Eventually you have to force a choice. The do drugs openly while living in a tent on the street can’t be an option.
Most people don't develop debilitating drug addictions without underlying problems. Even most people with drug addictions don't get to a point where they can't hold down a job or have a need to carry out crime to fund it, but of those who do it's worth considering why when e.g. a typical heroin addict can hold down a job and could have funded their addiction for ~$20/day if they had access to clean, medical grade heroin (we know the price, because e.g. the UK NHS buys medical grade heroin for use for post-operative pain management - under the generic name diamorphine).
So there's a long path there from failure to address mental health issues and other social problems, via failure to provide safe, clean supplies and early intervention for those who still get addicted to drugs, failure to regulate healthcare properly (e.g. the prescription oxy -> black market oxy -> heroin recruitment path), and failure to ensure availability of jobs, and lacking welfare options, before worrying about treatment and emergency housing is even in the picture.
Start addressing root causes and a lot of the problems later in that chain would either go away or at least be substantially diminished.
We need to clean up the mess and prevent more being added at the same time.
It is not like we can only do either preventive or reactive.
Here are some pages covering various uses by the NHS
Most relevant to the point I made, here is a pricing page for diamorphine for the NHS[1].
Use during birth: [2]
"This is an injection of a medicine called pethidine into your thigh or buttock to relieve pain. It can also help you to relax. Sometimes, less commonly, a medicine called diamorphine is used."
Use in NHS Scotland [3]: "Unlicensed intranasal diamorphine has been used in the NHS in Scotland for the treatment of severe pain in children in the emergency setting. The availability of diamorphine hydrochloride nasal spray (Ayendi®) provides a licensed preparation."
Article on recent-ish supply problems[4] due to a problem at one of the manufacturers:
"NHS trusts forced to use ‘expensive’ pre-filled diamorphine syringes to manage ongoing supply issues
Exclusive: Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has had to source pre-filled diamorphine syringes from other NHS trusts to meet demand."
NICE advice on diamorphine use [5] lists indications and doses for acute pain, chronic pain not currently treated with a strong opioid analgesic, acute pulmonary oedema, myocardial infarction.
NHS patient information (word doc) [6] on the shortage: "Diamorphine is licensed to treat severe pain associated with surgery, heart attack or a terminal illness. It is also used for the relief of shortness of breath in severe heart conditions. In addition, a small number of people in the UK may be receiving diamorphine to manage heroin addiction."
So while I have no idea about the actual volume of use, as you can tell the NHS has suppliers, and NICE has a price list.
[1] https://bnf.nice.org.uk/medicinal-forms/diamorphine-hydrochl...
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/labour-and-birth/what-happens/p...
[3] https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/nhs-trusts-f...
[4] https://www.scottishmedicines.org.uk/medicines-advice/diamor...
[5] https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/diamorphine-hydrochloride.html#...
[6] https://www.england.nhs.uk/south/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...
What happens when you bust a drug ring and arrest some big players? You immediately create a power vacuum, which leads to a turf war where other players (in the gang or between gangs) start jockeying for power, spreading their mayhem across the area.
The only solution here is legalization, treatment, and general social welfare.
Arrest the dealers and administer the drug to addicts for free at clinics? I think that would be an interesting approach.
I'm not a policy expert. I used to agree with you, but I think part of the issue is trivial access to drugs (see the tenderloin). It's harder for addicts to quit when it's very easy to get the drug (whether that's via dealers or legalization) and the city helps to enable you (hotel shelters, etc.) I understand the good intent and compassion, but a lot of bad policy on the left starts with good intent and ends with unanticipated bad consequences. Cities with arguably crueler enforcement don't have these issues (San Mateo). SF attracts addicts because they know it's lax and drug access is easy. Pair that with NIMBY housing policy and it's very hard to get housed and off of drugs.
I'd argue the SF approach to this has been a failure, London Breed's recent speech on the topic is something I agree with. The equilibrium we're trapped in is bad. We need to force a choice and that choice is likely either treatment or prison.
I mean, it's a national crisis. It's easy to point the zits on my face but the problem is in what I eat.
That last one is what makes the gang bangers go away, but it's a long process.
That is an interesting idea. All kinds of ethical issues for handing out free heroin, but why not take all the confiscated drugs, test them for safety and hand them out for free at clinics with some damage-reduction safe guards like daily per-person limits, offer rehab and mental health services, etc? Turn addicts into informants without even trying, because if they rat out dealers, the dope is free. I doubt users have the long-term awareness to see that it eventually reduce supply.
Making it harder for addicts to get heroin or a replacement will only increase the energy they will spend on getting it. This makes it nearly impossible to get to a better place in their life. It is mostly getting the drug that has a negative effect on holding down a job, not the drug itself.
My sister was a functional alcoholic for 25 years. When she started heroine, everything changed, and she overdosed within 2.
She couldn't have been a functional alcoholic for 25 year if alcohol were an illegal substance.
There are plenty of people who have a normal life on methadone or heroin if it is provided to them.
As already stated, if you are an addict, getting the substance is the highest priority. Making it harder to get just makes them use more of their resources to get them.
It depends on the definition of "worse". If cell death over time, then maybe alcohol is worse. If it's how much a recreational/entertaining dose disturbs the workings of the mind, the operation/rational/ability to live a normal life, which is the purpose of the mind, then I would say heroin is worse.
I would assume the amount of dopamine a drug releases is directly related to its ability to disrupt someones life.
You want to arrest people for being homeless?
“Why do they do it? Radical anti-system ideology. “There’s a San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness hat which says, ‘Coalition on Homelessness: On The Frontlines of Class Warfare,’” said the insider. “They feel like they’re fighting class warfare. They tell people to not take shelter.””
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/san-francisco-ho...
Later in life I was a missionary, and we saw a dude in homeless attire get out of a nice Mercedes. He saw us as well and told us his story about making bank begging in front of a bank, showed us the $$$ suits stashed in his trunk, told us about his high end "compound" where he lived.
Then of course there was the guy who would block the sidewalk in front of a previous workplace in SF and harass any people passing by who didn't give him money.
There are many cases of people either straight up abusing the system, or acting in ways that will destroy the system.
The more of this there is -- the visible, abusive begging and taking over of shared public spaces -- the less empathy people will have for the invisible homeless who aren't causing trouble and will actually benefit from help.
Didn't seem like that bad of a life while it lasted, being in the tourist areas crime was never bad enough to be afraid for your safety, you had bleeding heart church groups that would regularly come by the camps to hand out food and clothing. All the while you can sell and doing drugs in the open.
out of sight out of mind
Option 2) Re-work society from the ground up to eliminate any incentive for burglary
It is no wonder why folks are drawn more to Option 1, which is about a bajillion times more approachable, but which doesn't preclude also working on Option 2 at the same time.
"It is no wonder why folks are drawn more to Option 1, which is about a bajillion times more approachable, but which doesn't preclude also working on Option 2 at the same time."
I think it does. Option 1 solutions of the world often mitigate the visible problems like whack-a-mole. It reinforces the effectiveness of option 1. It also creates a whole system that ends up protecting itself.
Lets say you hire 100k people to start fighting thefts. The underlying problems that produces thieves are around, so they continue to steal. Option 2 supporters say "Fund social safety nets." Option 1 supporters say theft has gone down 50%, hire more crime fighters. The thief catchers say "Protect our jobs." More money goes into fighting crime and not social safety nets.
At least with regards to crime, we've been at it far too long to know what works and what doesn't. Crime reduction is far more correlated with social stability than increased law enforcement.
But! Usually Option 1 is much less efficient long-term than Option 2, so – as long as we're both talking theoretically here – then theoretically the entity that is footing the bill for the 100k security force would see how freaking expensive it is and would advocate with a loud voice for Option 2 to get implemented as soon as possible.
/s
> In fact, it’s not just art. Any sect at all that is leaner, meaner, and more survivalist than the mainstream will eventually take over. If one sect of rats altruistically decides to limit its offspring to two per couple in order to decrease overpopulation, that sect will die out, swarmed out of existence by its more numerous enemies. If one sect of rats starts practicing cannibalism, and finds it gives them an advantage over their fellows, it will eventually take over and reach fixation.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Not to mention politicians lie to get elected anyhow. They all make empty bullshit promises, so even if they did offer something impressive its doubtful any of them would or could follow through. The fact that they want to stay in power means they keep lying or misrepresenting things in order to keep the votes flowing in
Option 2 is long term, complicated, mostly requires buy in from several levels of underfunded state agencies. The private sector might pick up some crumbs.
Additionally, the people who make these decisions are probably pretty happy with the way that society is configured. Package theft is just a cost of doing business where the benefits are obviously enormous.
This mindset is present in so many aspects of human society. For instance, drug addiction. Up until recently, people would typically ask "how do we stop people getting access to drugs" instead of "why do people do this".
Two, the way to prevent crime from happening is to make people feel in the heart and soul that crime is morally wrong and destructive for the community around them. This is not instinctual human behavior. For those who learn this and live this, great. For those who don't, see option #1.
I'm not bragging, though, what I'm getting at is that you're missing a huge part of why people steal - maybe even the largest part: because they feel they have to survive, or because it's okay because society is stacked against them.
This is what above was talking about when talking about fixing root causes. If you can ensure that people have shelter, food, safety, security, and belonging, you'll generally find that you don't need to _morally re-educate_ them, they won't have the impetus to steal.
I’m not talking about those incapable to work, of course. Funny thing is, our government gives shelter to such people, and they don’t live in the streets as well.
United States is a paradoxical country.
I’d suspect most Americans (across the political spectrum) would see these train robberies and think “these people should go to jail”, rather than moralizing about why it’s not their fault.
Jail isn't some magical free solution to your crime problems.
Would Americans still be so eager to imprison someone if they knew that the cost to incarcerate someone is ~$36k/yr? [1]
The government defines poverty as $12k/yr for individuals [2], which is three times less than the annual cost to incarcerate someone!
Is imprisoning someone at the taxpayer cost of ~$36k/yr a sustainable model?
At what point does America have a conversation about the cost of imprisonment versus the alternatives like raising the poverty line, raising minimum wage, or implementing social programs?
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09...
[2] https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/povert...
Excusing crime because of these other things I think is patronizing to the majority of poor people that are not criminals. It's also a luxury belief imo in that the majority of victims are ethical people in poor communities getting hurt by the criminals who mostly target them (which is why you see a lot of data in poor communities asking for increased policing).
I'd guess it's a view formed from a lack of interaction with the people committing these crimes (in addition to the victims) too. Anyone can rationalize criminal behavior and make it not their fault. I don't have much tolerance for this and don't think society should really either. Discretion exists and context does matter, but people have agency and are responsible for the choices they make.
>it's okay because society is stacked against them.
If you can't find a job in the US, you won't go to another country to find one. After all, you're already in the "best country in the world".
The streets are accepted as the home of failed people (but only if we can't see them).
Medical care is provided only to people who can pay for it. That's only fair.
Also racism was solved with Obama, so just pull yourself by your bootstrap like everyone else.
Just work multiple jobs if you can't afford rent, maybe then you'll save enough to pay for education and get a higher wage job or start your own business.
/s
I’ve always felt this framing condescends to them. Sure, there’s certainly more incentive to steal at the academic extremes (bread for your starving family), but people raiding trains for packages is something else.
There should be police response to this, and people doing it should get charged.
I do read people (rightfully, IMO) claiming that societal changes can significantly decrease the number of people doing this.
I don’t believe USA has so many people in prison because its population _is_ more criminal than that of other countries.
I do. I’ve lived in some foreign countries and have come to realize that culture plays just as much if not more of a role in crime as material conditions. America has some toxic aspects to our culture that contribute to our population being more likely to commit crimes. We are hyper individualist, and more violent across all socioeconomic levels.
Simplifying things, the USA tends to think that all people who _do_ crimes _are_ criminals and, hence, should be locked up in order to decrease the amount of crime, while other countries think circumstances may have made them perform crimes, and changing circumstances may be the best way to decrease crime because it’s cheaper and/or leads to a happier population.
(In general, I think (again simplifying things), the USA prefers sending in the cavalry to save the day over doing things to prevent the need for a cavalry. You see that in infrastructure maintenance, reactions to natural disasters, and in the way it does diplomacy in the middle east, too. California is somewhat of an exception there. It invests heavily preparing for the big one)
This comment is basically arguing that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29932479
They frame it a little indirectly, but it's the underlying core of their point.
You can advocate for policy that reduces crime while still enforcing laws against criminals and not excusing the criminal behavior.
Even if it does, I didn’t see that comment when I wrote mine. HN currently shows my comment as 10 hours old, the one you mention as 9, so I also think I couldn’t have seen it.
Comment numbers also support that observation (29932220 < 29932479)
Only half joking. You're right that you can fix 90% of crimes your way. But there is a group of people that, for some reason, just want to see the world burn or feel the power to make others miserable. We need to deal with them somehow.
One doesn’t need to be impoverished to steal. Some subset of individuals will always be driven to obtain “more”, even if through illicit means.
This kind of individual-first-thinking is probably one of the main reasons why we see pictures like in OP in the first place.
I'm not saying everyone has the right to bomb Times Square. But I am saying that the "individual", which some people are asserting to be a taboo idea, can use force to have a chance at preserving their life within their private residence.
To be clear, this is a political ideal of the Roman Empire that has influenced much of modern civlisation, it's not an inevitable state of humanity.
“If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.”
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Codex_Hammurabi_(King_trans...
Likewise in pre-Columbian Mexico, as per the Florentine Codex:
“It was a crime to light a fire in the woods without permission, to cut down trees, to move boundary-markers, to take game from another man’s hunting trap and to steal crops from the fields. All these were crimes that could be punished by death.”
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/which-were-t...
And what you see in these coastal California cities is a result of this thinking, that it's always something else to blame and people should feel guilty for wanting their property to be secured or offenders punished or deterred.
And it's not nearly so simple as you say. Easy to steal or low consequences of stealing absolutely contributes to things being stolen. If one in every 4-5 container has been burglarized, surely there's a good argument things need to be made a bit more secure sitting around handwringing about the state of society and admonishing anybody who doesn't sympathize with the criminals certainly won't solve it, as California has demonstrated.
It's not that there aren't other factors that could be improved on a societal level to reduce this kind of crime, to be clear I'm not arguing that.
> I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Must be nice to be so privileged. You know who suffers the most from street crimes, burglaries, and that kind of thing? It's poor people. Petty criminals know the police will descend on them like a ton of bricks if they went and started robbing rich people places. Just because you might not see police everywhere does not mean it is not protected by the threat of violence and incarceration.
what do you mean? death penalty ... solved!
Why crime us going up? Because of higher desired standard (every body needs an iPhone, brand name shoes and hats), more difficulty with earning a wage (largely, difficulty getting a job at all) and decreased difficulty in crime (defunding police, more aesily available opportunities to steal, etc).
For well-off people it is easier to earn their standard by earning money by work than by stealing. Or they have more comfortable ways of stealing than haulig a paltry 10k in av equipment...
I wish i could be an idealist and to believe in a world where every one is happy with what they've got. But that's a utopia. Humans will always crave to have more than each other ad will steal, loot, defraud, do anything to get there.
Lock your trains well.
People take the easier option. You choose "lock your trains well" despite knowing the answer will be "crack those locks well" because it was the easy answer. The view is simple. Eventually the train will be a rolling mountain of steel protected by an army. Your fishing lure will cost an arm and a leg because protection costs are up. And the thieves will just be relegated to do slave work (the work that shouldn't exist in those conditions but society was too busy locking the train well to bother protecting its most vulnerable members) or starve because those are the only options on the table.
For house burglary the way to deter opportunistic criminals is to harden down the house just a little bit. Lock doors, close windows.
Often drugs is the driving factor. I notice that out of 207 comments in this thread, only 4 including this one mention drugs.
(I used to work in a criminology research office)
That assumes thieves are rational actors capable of assessing risks at least somewhat accurately. Often times (the vast majority of times, even) they are not.
It's also worth bringing up that certain American subcultures glorify criminals. The criminal lifestyle is seen as glamorous by a large number of people, while honest labor is just dull, whether it pays enough or not.
It probably is not the main driver, but it is hard to discount it as a factor. Another interesting archetype is one man going solo against a corrupt system ( usually guns are involved ). You could reasonably argue that US populace is conditioned for it and then people are all surprised when people actually act out on those early imprints.
"They are poor, not stupid"
He was commenting on the risk decisions of farmers throughout history. It would be sensible for people to put all their effort into growing surplus of one crop for sale, but then they would be at greater risk of starving under crop failure.
People's choices are affected by their (percevied) risk calculus.
https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
Except when these thefts are de-facto decriminalized in Califronia, and police is either defunded or directed not to fight these crimes, the "risk of getting caught" is effectively zero.
That means that unless you start handing out iPhones for free in local malls, the thefts will continue.
Let's stop pretending these thieves are "starving". Starving people don't pull up to a Gucci or Louis Vuitton in a Porsche and casually steal a luxury handbag for their girlfriend.
If all work is slavery to you, how about the people who produced all these iPhones and LV bags?
We're dealing here with people who are happy to steal the products of other people's work, instead of doing any work themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
That means criminals engaging in such thefts cannot be legally arrested or prosecuted.
And we haven't even started discussing LA's new DA Gascon's aggressive move to decriminalize a very large set of offenses:
https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...
If there's no directive, why is property crime not pursued?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law. Passing such Propositions then blaming cops for rising crime is sinister.
> It recategorized some nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors, rather than felonies, as they had previously been categorized.
It’s still a crime. Police’s job is to respond to crime. Can you imagine if you were tasked with a job and then just stopped doing it because your thought your boss needed to take it more seriously? Any place I worked you’d get fired.
Especially if you started lying to everyone that your boss made it a rule that the problem can’t be dealt with when in reality you just think the consequences aren’t high enough
> No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law
They could patrol the streets and respond to the crime. The court system and prosecutors office decides if it needs to escalate from there. This is the LAPD however so they’re probably too busy forming gangs and engaging in crime themselves
to the extent that police are an effective anti-crime tool, it primarily stems from their physical presence (racially profiled harassment) as a deterrent. outside of homicides & some PR-useful drug enforcement, police departments spend most of their time discouraging people from filing police reports after actual crimes, harassing poor people, and meeting traffic citation quotas
It’s not. The long term trend in property crime in the US is down.
Furthermore we seem to have such an easy money culture right now - if you get caught in a crypto or NFT or memestock or whatever bubble on FB or Twitter, 'everyone' is rich with no effort (and they can teach you how for 99$ a month!) - why shouldn't you be rich without working?!
No they don't. See all the studies that disprove the "broken windows theory" that tried to prove that crime rates go down when you enforce policing.
https://carder.uk/threads/does-broken-windows-theory-work.11...
The first book to disprove the broken window theory was Bernard Harcourt 's Illusion of Order, published in 2001. The author points out that over the 30 years of the existence of this theory, it has never been empirically confirmed, on the contrary, the available research contradicts it. The theory also relies on arbitrarily defined categories of "order" and "disorder", "law-abiding citizens" and "violators."
The first book to disprove the broken window theory was Bernard Harcourt 's Illusion of Order, published in 2001. The author points out that over the 30 years of the existence of this theory, it has never been empirically confirmed, on the contrary, the available research contradicts it. The theory also relies on arbitrarily defined categories of "order" and "disorder", "law-abiding citizens" and "violators."
First of all, the drop in crime in New York occurred simultaneously with the corresponding process in the entire United States. In another study, Harcourt notes that the drop in crime rates in New York coincided with the end of the crack drug epidemic. Christina Sterbenz adds that this trend has been fueled by declining unemployment (during the 1990s, its rate fell by 40%).
Criminologist Ralph Taylor is sure that socio-economic is a significant factor that affects the crime rate. Returning to the experiment with two cars - in the Bronx initially there was a low level of welfare, and in wealthy Palo Alto, a researcher must intervene in the experiment to provoke vandalism.
The theory of broken windows has also failed to pass the test of a massive social experiment. In 1994, the US government introduced the Moving to Opportunity program, which relocated 4,800 impoverished families to prime locations. The program was implemented in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Baltimore. Three quarters of the resettled households were on the brink of poverty, and two thirds of the participants were African American.
According to the theory, in the new environment the level of their involvement in offenses should have, but this did not happen, since the move did not improve their financial situation, but emphasized the social gap with their neighbors.1. https://www.ppic.org/publication/the-impact-of-proposition-4...
But in general I'd expect crime to be a "least worst option" choice and I seem to remember research to that effect. Although I wouldn't be able to find that now again, so take it with an appropriate amount of salt.
> https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07...
"Two commonly used measures are: people in relative low income – living in households with income below 60% of the median in that year; people in absolute low income – living in households with income below 60% of (inflation-adjusted) median income in some base year, usually 2010/11."
This is however a bureaucratic definition of poverty that I don't accept as capturing the everyday meaning, but I thought it might be of interest to mention. I remember being under the poverty line and thinking "this doesn't count. I don't accept that I'm living in poverty." Knowing these technical uses made me regard official-sounding news and reports about 'poverty' quite differently.
(The bottom of the article talks about a group giving a more lay-compatible definition "The Social Metrics Commission (SMC) proposed a new based on the extent to which someone’s resources meet their needs. This accounts for differences among households such as costs of childcare and disability, savings and access to assets." which seems more meaningful if you're interested about absolute standards of living).
The question here is really what specific policies and cultural forces are shaping the economic realities that these people are living in. If nothing else, we should ask why someone isn't having great success hiring a few thick-knuckled train robbers away from their life of crime and running a very profitable security business.
Yes and currently society has many many ways for the privileged to get even more than others than they already have, in ways that are legally accepted even if they’re morally reprehensible. And as long as we don’t change that and make the playing field more even, I don’t think judging petty theft so harshly makes any sense at all.
It is the cruelest and vilest thing to do to those poor people who actually don't steal.
Yup. I wish we would start doing that.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/walmart-corporations-wage-t...
A scathing new report finds that hundreds of major corporations in the United States are repeat wage-theft offenders — committing the violations and then paying the subsequent fines as part of the cost of doing business.Working is always superior to stealing. Your words might try and cast them as morally equivalent, but they arent.
Until we as a society can honestly look at what reasonable amount of well being in information societies looks like, it's tricky to tell those with less what is reasonable to expect of quality of life.
Yes, mimetic desire is a real power too. Is that really what's at play here?
Who has the right to draw the line between basic well being and an utopia?
This Android vs. iOS thing is not about technical capabilities, it's about elitism - and elitism always breeds jealousy, and thus thievery. Lao Tse knew this in 500 BC: "By not prizing goods hard to get, you will cause the people to cease from robbing and stealing."
Used iphones are verifiable to be reliable, so there is a good aftermarket for them, as opposed to Android phones. At that point the elitism argument falls conpletely apart.
The point I want to make is that it can and will happen related to phones regardless of the brand. Some people are proud of actual propertiea of the product, others will focus more on the image or ideological aspects.
There's nothing wrong with this as such: humans are good at attaching their identities/personalities to all kinds of external things. This tendency also drives healthy psychological growth and learning when it's in check.
Police budgets are, by and large, still increasing in the US.
In billions of dollars:
2014-2015: $1.338
2015-2016: $1.438
2016-2017: $1.485
2017-2018: $1.578
2018-2019: $1.609
2019-2020: $1.733
2020-2021: $1.721
2021-2022: $1.760
The city also took on $47 million in overtime debt in the year that the budget was cut [2]
[1] https://lacontroller.org/budgets/ [2] https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/la-cut-the-police-budget...
This is based on the (imho) wrong assumption that people prefer stealing over working when it's easier. But this is not true, people prefer to work but they need to live and their children need to live. You should remove the necessity to steal by building a social infrastructure that helps struggling people.
The case for this is nicely details in "Human Kind" by Rutger Bregman [0].
(1) make sure everyone has enough and they won't steal
(2) promote a culture that stealing is unacceptable regardless of your situation
I don't personally believe (1) is sufficient nor will it solve the problem. Most people stealing are not "that" poor. They are not starving etc...
Instead they (we) have a culture that it's acceptable to steal. Even many well to do middle and upper middle class westerners feel like it's a right of passage to steal a few things, to shoplift once in a while, etc...
The places I've lived where theft is low didn't have much absolute poverty but they also had a culture of stealing is wrong almost regardless of your situation.
I have no clue how to promote that culture. it seems an impossible task. I'm confident though that the majority of the issue is culture , not poverty
There was a good bit on some Russian blog back in the day. Cops in Russia were very underpaid then, and someone floated the idea that they take bribes for that reason. The response:
"A cop takes bribes because his salary is low. Ok, what should his salary be? Like a minister's? But they say nowadays that ministers also take bribes like there's no tomorrow. Maybe we should make the cop's living standard like Zeus the god of all gods and then he'll stop taking bribes?"
Whether you're rich or poor, if you feel that it's ok to rob people, you'll rob people (in the way that your level affords). And if you hate the idea of robbing people, you won't.
And I think everyone individually is trying to minimize societal ills like theft. But good luck getting enough people to agree on what is the right path forward.
I love my kids more than I love Pacific Rail Company or Fedex.
As I get older, sure we're secure, but I still worry about money for the mortgage and the kids' college fund.
If there was actually ZERO chance of getting caught because there was ZERO enforcement, I would absolutely steal to make those worries go away.
When I was young and single, I would not have.
I’m assuming LA is similar to SF - much of the crime is organized. Multi-million dollar operations.
This is a problem because the perception is that law enforcement won’t do anything, so fuck it, why not get easy money. Working and paying taxes like some chump? Nah.
To solve most of them, it appears A) everybody has to simultaneously change their behavior at once or B) some entity with a lot of resources will end up taking hits until culture changes. We're too deeply divided for A and class divides/corporate-civilian divides prevent anyone from stepping up and doing B.
Since it's too hard we're taking the easy way out into anger, revenge, and apathy--and if you live in a bad area the solution is to make or have enough money to move. The constant mobility mostly driven by job and money chasing makes culture impossible for those who need to work and don't have significant assets--which is most people--and without a culture the tendency to not care about each other tends to win.
Eventually we will run out of room in this country (we always sell out to developers) and we'll have to actually solve problems, but that's probably a good 100 years from now assuming we haven't broken up into separate countries by then.
I assume you're talking about poor people. I don't know how much experience you have with lower socio-economic people in the US, but from my experience, most are honest hardworking and industrious. Some are immigrants without a formal education or even language skills that came to this country for opportunity.
It's a little offensive to deny them basic autonomy to not steal and trash a rail-yard. The people that I came across in my life that do petty crime like this are not poor desperate people. They're usually highly anti-social borderline sociopaths. They're organized by informal networks of other people exploiting them. There's organization involved to keep lookout, know when and were to go and how to avoid getting caught. And if you get caught, there is a whole system around that as well. And since they're organized, they are fully aware of the risk-reward tradeoffs. This includes the recent trend of being soft on these kinds of crimes or looking the other way, as you're doing.
Think about the skill you need to pull this off. You need to be young and physically fit, to run from police. You have to be able to keep a lot of information in your head and make snap decisions about what to open, what to keep and what to toss. You have to show up on time and plan. The people doing these heists could easily be employed as warehouse or delivery workers and make an honest, probably even more lucrative living, especially when you consider long term risk of being arrested. They choose not to.
Poor people are not to blame for this savagery.
If you increase the base floor of affluence in the whole of society, yes, people stricken by poverty will no longer have to conduct this kind of activity out of desperation, but many, driven by other impulses, will simply move up to a higher class level of antisocial white collar behavior, from scamming investors to conmanship et al. still eventually necessitating the intervention of law enforcement and jail time.
If you take a look at your average prison population, people incarcerated due to poverty-induced despair are only part of the picture. There are plenty of folks in there who, for one reason or another, spanning from genetics to growing up in extremely abusive environments, are not wired to succeed in society, and are in some form a menace to it, and need to be contained in a way that allows non-sociopaths to conduct normal living.
I can't tell you the exact desperation-to-sociopathy ratio of criminal activity, I'm not sure those numbers exist, but my hunch, based on whatever information I've gotten my hands on over the years, is that the sociopath percentage behind this sort of activity is non-trivial and cannot be simply glossed over in the interest of standing up for folks of lesser means.
Before we inject our own biases into this conversation, I would love to see the data, the stats, and understand why the culprits are doing what they're doing. Otherwise we're simply painting our existing moral and political positions onto this canvas with no way of refuting any of the stances. The trite and tedious unfalsifiable personal-responsibility-vs-oppressed-victim-of-circumstances debate that never gets anywhere.
Society saves on the need for physical security.
"Safer" in the short term for the criminal and law enforcement, but overall much more damaging to society and the rule of law.
Salesmen already lie. There are already a lot of scammer ceos. People can deal with those by ignoring them. What people can not ignore is gun/knife in their face and a death of a loved one.
If it is intentional: Go look at the porch pirate glitterbomb videos and come back and tell me that it is because of necessity (I've only seen one go off in a pawn shop, the rest were people who wanted to improve their own home it seemed.)
Trying to be intellectually honest here I'll note that maybe those videos weren't uploaded because they didn't match the viewpoint he Mark wants to create. Or because he felt pity for them, but I don't think that is the full explanation.
Edit:
> I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Agree. Note however:
Norway were I live used to be like that (as far as I understand), but isn't anymore (this I do know).
Norway has maybe the best social security in the world.
Clearly there are two things that must be in place here:
- there mustn't be a need to steal to survive
- stealing must also not be accepted
It's a bit more complex than that, in my opinion. This is also about whether people respect/love society.
When you feel connected to society and feel thankful for what it gives to you, you will be much less likely to exhibit antisocial behavior.
In my opinion, this lack of connection to society is caused by
1. The US being a lot harder on its participants than in the Norden countries. This causes people to feel less thankful to it. 2. The division in US politics and media causes people to be disillusioned by society and feel no connection/relation to it.
What I write about above however is that even in the Nordic countries where everyone has all reason to be thankful people steal a lot.
Has always been going on, but it feels there has been an increase.
There can absolutely be some patterns.
Having a strong culture that treats theft as a shameful act and caring for others is what breeds the culture you describe.
These people aren't "desperate", they are opportunists. The situation is the opposite to what you say: there is low risk of getting caught and high chance of finding something valuable.
Remember the imagery from recent (any) riots? E.g. the mob plundering a Walmart? Those people are not starving. They are just greedy, uncontrolled and aggressive. They did not steal food. Just expensive electronic entertainment devices.
Human behaviour is very predictable. There will always be a large number of people taking whatever they can get. That's how it is. The failed communism is the proof.
The only thing preventing those people from doing their crime onto society are sanctions.
During the 2011 London riots, looters consistently avoided bookstores in favor of "shoes, clothes, computers, and plasma televisions". <https://news.yahoo.com/pattern-london-rioters-leaving-bookst...>
If a society instills the values of "every man for himself" and that patience, hard work and helping a fellow human is for chumps, the result is also predictable when mixed with the right conditions/environment.
Trying to solve a problem by focusing on sanctions (usually called "War On ____") has been proven to fail catastrophically.
This is not uniquely American. In the EU so many people by SUVs (despite the impracticality in smaller European streets) “because it’ll make sure I have the benefit in a car crash”. It is technically correct but such an extremely cold statement.
I was actually thinking about these SUVs this morning, as their were two Cadillac Escalades [0] parked on my block in central Stockholm as I walked my kid to school. The town is *full* of these types of vehicles (there are even full-size Hummers driving around).
The "EU" can't be characterized in this uniform way - the different countries are totally unlike each other in so many respects. Because Sweden is part of Scandinavia, people often think there's a cycling culture here for instance - but that's also totally untrue. The same is true of our gun-crime - with criminal gangs frequently shooting each other on the streets: such a thing was virtually unknown to me throughout the time I lived in central London.
The true picture is way more nuanced than the Europe vs USA binary that people like to imagine.
But the noticeable presence of SUV and even Pickup models I usually associate with the US in Sweden also surprised me. Those are rare in Germany.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/07/stereoty...
I see several of them every day here in Sweden. And I saw at least as many last time I was in London.
That's mostly because it was fairly easy to get a drivers license with bribes up until a few years after joining EU. (until the anti-corruption agency was set up)
Also due to crappy roads and very aggressive drivers in larger cities. Rich people would just buy the larger car to protect children either from their stupidity or other drivers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/world/europe/Picasso-and-...
European “security” has also given us gems like the Brussels and Manchester arena bombings.
I don’t know why people in glass houses insist on throwing so many stones.
The trains are clearly being robbed out of desperation by the poorest citizens. If those citizens lived in the EU, they would have free healthcare, free education, unemployment subsidies and housing. And so they would not be forced to steal our packages.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/malmobon-sylvias-adr...
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/postnord-stoppar-p...
However, they are also notoriously bad so the joke is spot on.
That isn’t clear to me at all. In Washington DC, for example, much of the recent increase in theft (grand theft auto especially) has been committed by unsupervised juveniles. AFAICT they do it because they’re bored, it’s easy, it’s exciting, and they generally escape punishment. Who’s to say it’s not a similar situation with these train robberies?
"The trains are clearly being robbed out of desperation by the poorest citizens." I don't think that's true. I think they are being robbed because it's easy to do so, with a low risk for any consequences. Similarly as to why shoplifting in LA is up.
Start shooting at the thieves and see how fast the train robbery trend reverses.
Ok, then why aren't you robbing or shoplifting if it's so easy and risk-free? Is it because you have too much to lose if you get caught?
My whole point is that if people have a minimal standard of living, the fear of losing it will prevent them from committing crimes much more effectively than some nut shooting at them
I'm not doing it because
1. I find crimes against person or property vile
2. It's not worth it. All things considered, it's probably a pretty abysmal hourly rate.
> My whole point is that if people have a minimal standard of living, the fear of losing it will prevent them from committing crimes much more effectively I agree, however I don't see how it is my fault or why would I have to pay for someone else's minimal standard of living.
Teaching a man how to fish vs giving the man a fish.
...
>Start shooting at the thieves and see how fast the train robbery trend reverses.
Pretty sure you'd draw that line somewhere. Perhaps it wouldn't be a train, but I can assure you with absolute certainty that there would be a point where you would value your lawfully possessed property over an attacker's life.
Anyway, we kind of went off track (no pun intended), but my initial point was that since you can rob these trains with basically no reprecussions, would it still be true if there was a chance that you might get shot in the process? I'd think not.
I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather than solved.
But, protecting a thing from theft, rather than removing the reason thievery is so rampant, just moves the problem to someone else.. Like putting locks and security on your home, "Now they won't break into MY home, because the guy next door has less security, so they'll go at him instead".
Come on, the problem is not that it's easy to steal, the problem is that society has constructed situations for some of its citizens where they for one reason or another do it.
I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.