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Re:MIT campus is planning on mostly remaining permanently cl... by midoridensha on Thursday October 27, 2022 @09:33PM (#33366432)
What exactly are "they" going to do about it? Set up a surveillance police state where everything in public is monitored all the time, and then catch the thieves and "disappear" them so they don't re-offend? This isn't something you can easily stop without resorting to extreme policing measures. The reason it doesn't happen in Japan is purely cultural: people simply don't think to do it, because it's culturally unacceptable. It's just like pickpocketing in America: no one does it, even people who really are thieves and would steal stuff out of your car. There are crimes in Japan, but they're other kinds of crimes (usually some kind of scam). Just like there's plenty of crimes in America, but pickpocketing just isn't one of them.
Re:MIT campus is planning on mostly remaining permanently cl... by Amezarak on Friday October 28, 2022 @05:38AM (#33369404)
There's no extreme policing where I live in America, yet these things don't happen.

We already live in a surveillance state - there's cameras everywhere and the police can use your phone's location data pretty much willy-nilly.

So the net result is some Americans are already living in a surveillance state and don't even get the touted safety benefit.

People in places like this need to take a good, hard look at what causes society to break down in this way. People all through this thread want to blame things like safety nets and not enough money...I live in a very poor area in a red state with basically no safety nets beyond the federal minimums. Would I like more safety nets? Yes. Is the lack thereof the cause of crime? No.

If a brief period of extreme policing though is necessary to change the culture and incentives, maybe it's worth it though, especially given the fact that statistics show that most of the problem is people continually reoffending. Why would you want to live in a low-trust society where you have take being robbed as a real risk? What kind of knock-on effects does that have? People talk about car culture, for example - doesn't that reinforce it? How does that affect kids? Neighborhoods and communities? Anxiety and depression? It's just such a huge negative it's mind-boggling to me that people tolerate it and justify it.