https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/opinion/columns/2017/08/08...
Purely speculating but I think that to some extent advertising has been a victim of its own success in convincing people that their self-worth hinges upon their ability to consume goods and services. If you can afford it, buy. If you can't afford to buy, borrow. If you can't borrow, steal. Just don't be poor and get caught. (Being rich and getting caught usually isn't a problem.)
So, I suppose, you may never know, huh? Because it could be.
Why wouldn’t capital be all over the police to crack down on cargo theft?
Why would "the media" care about police budgets?
Clearly they missed the memo
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awashingtonpost.com+wa...
https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/18/news/economy/wage-theft-wor...
Also, there's very little in the way of mainstream media that isn't owned by wealthy people. The media is one major arm through which capital acts.
Wut?
EDIT: Found several stories about it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...
When your iPhone gets stolen and the police does nothing does that mean stealing iPhones is legal?
Disingenuous? You mean intentionally deceptive?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...
The subtitle says "Walgreens has closed 22 stores in the city, where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized." Refusal to arrest or prosecute, which is the reality on the ground, is de facto legalization. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not very helpful to say "no, that's disingenuous, you and I both know it's a harlequin mallard."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcin...
Hence the phrase, in the part you quoted, "on a broad scale". Bailing from one city is not a broad scale - I'm sitting in the parking lot of a busy Walgreens in a different state waiting on food truck tacos as I edit this.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/san-francisco-shoplifters-theft...
"San Francisco Has Become a Shoplifter’s Paradise: Walgreens has closed 22 stores in the city, where thefts under $950 are effectively decriminalized."
San Francisco decriminalized thefts under a dollar value of $950. This is direct, object-level proof of the original point in question. It is an established fact independent of your opinion on the Wall Street Journal.
Even a cursory search will inform you this is false, so let's not swing around accusations of acting in bad faith. Shoplifting under $950 is a misdemeanor and still punishable by jail time.
The argument that the only way to stop shoplifting is to have tougher sentences is the kind of galaxy brain take that gave us five decades and counting of the War on Drugs.
And as I noted in another comment, there was no evidence of this rash of shoplifting these stories so breathlessly repeated, and Walgreens themselves now admit it
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcin...
I did a cursory search and instantly substantiated the WSJ's claim:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-san-francisco-sho...
>In an interview with NBC News last week, Scott suggested that California's Proposition 47, which voters passed in 2014 and lowered criminal sentences for certain nonviolent crimes like shoplifting and check forgery, is being exploited by those who want to commit theft. The initiative set a threshold of $950 for shoplifting to be considered a misdemeanor, which doesn't prompt law enforcement to make an arrest, rather than a felony, which could incur harsh penalties like jail time.
Just give up the semantic games already. Walgreens is closing many of their stores in SF due to crime. Your last link pulls the trick of acknowledging objective reality in the first paragraph, then inventing fanfiction to handwave it away for the rest of the article:
>One of the stores set to close, on Ocean Avenue, had only seven reported shoplifting incidents this year and a total of 23 since 2018, the data showed. While not all shoplifting incidents are reported to police, the five stores slated to close had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018.
Store owners aren't reporting thefts of under $950 to the police because the DA and police told them they won't do anything about it, which is the point I have proven that you keep trying to dodge.
https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...
Cargo theft is just less relatable in every way.
I can't imagine what type of economic system where this isn't true. Even in communism you're rewarded for having money because it allows you to obtain more resources.
It is easier to vilify individuals than to reduce the need for food theft (depressed wages and lack of economic opportunities for most people)
edit: CBS reports wage theft at $50 billion a year while a 2007 study in the Kentucky CPA Journal puts time theft in the US at $400 billion per year.
Some people do slack off but 99% of the time "time theft" is the boss being unreasonable (I'll keep it polite for HN)
People know what shoplifting is and they might encounter it in their day to day life.
If some cargo container goes missing, what does that even have to do with me? It’s just some minutiae of an inefficient system as far as an average person is aware
I've never seen a car go with theft but I've seen masked Bandits robbing a store several times. It is very uncomfortable and frankly scary to watch people come in with balaclavas and start grabbing power tools or whatever they want.
It is also very frustrating to shop in stores where many items are under lock and key
Why do we hear so much more about shoplifting? Sure it's more public, but I've seen dozens of stories about how shoplifting is destroying retail and this is the first one about cargo theft I can recall.