Re:Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over spike in car thefts
by krisoft on Friday May 12, 2023 @05:33PM
(#35922711)
> once all the thieves are in jail, the remainder of the populace would mind their own business and walk past the gold bars
Perhaps. I posit that you are going to run out of one of these things sooner than you are going to run out of thieves though: gold bars, patience of police to hunt down your stolen gold bars, places in prison.
You are going to run out of gold bars because if there is a stash of them unsecured there will be some thieves who either by sheer luck, or by being better at their job than the police at theirs will succesfully get away with stealing them.
You are going to run out of police patience by one of two ways: either immediately, once they hear that your unsecured gold bars were just laying in your front garden. In which case they take your report and chuck it in a drawer to forget about it. Or if you are politically well connected they will try to persuade you to secure them better. If you are literally their king and they can’t convince you to store the gold better they might try to protect it by posting a policeman next to it
And then finnaly if you have so much money that replenishing the stolen gold is not a problem, and you have so much political power that the police is not able to change your storage practices then that is when you are going to run out of space in your prisons.
> If your thesis is that literally everyone would steal those gold bars
Not at all. But it doesn’t need to be. My thesis is that there would be enough people who would try that it overwhelms your police force destined to throw thieves in prison.
Perhaps. I posit that you are going to run out of one of these things sooner than you are going to run out of thieves though: gold bars, patience of police to hunt down your stolen gold bars, places in prison.
You are going to run out of gold bars because if there is a stash of them unsecured there will be some thieves who either by sheer luck, or by being better at their job than the police at theirs will succesfully get away with stealing them.
You are going to run out of police patience by one of two ways: either immediately, once they hear that your unsecured gold bars were just laying in your front garden. In which case they take your report and chuck it in a drawer to forget about it. Or if you are politically well connected they will try to persuade you to secure them better. If you are literally their king and they can’t convince you to store the gold better they might try to protect it by posting a policeman next to it
And then finnaly if you have so much money that replenishing the stolen gold is not a problem, and you have so much political power that the police is not able to change your storage practices then that is when you are going to run out of space in your prisons.
> If your thesis is that literally everyone would steal those gold bars
Not at all. But it doesn’t need to be. My thesis is that there would be enough people who would try that it overwhelms your police force destined to throw thieves in prison.