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Train burglaries in LA

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Re: Train burglaries in LA

#381

Post by [deleted] »

callmeal wrote: post #347
sharikous wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you don't judge theft harshly you actually promote a culture of dishonesty. It is the cruelest and vilest thing to do to those poor people who actually don't steal.

> When you don't judge theft harshly you actually promote a culture of dishonesty. 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.

[deleted]

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#382

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

glenda wrote: post #380

This is visually shocking, but the sheer amount of money taken from workers by wage theft eclipses this issue completely. Theft is normalized at all levels of American society.

It only became shocking to people with power and wealth when poor people started doing it.

Fixing decades of neglected infrastructure, education, and social services is going to cost way more than treating people decently would’ve costed. I won’t be surprised if the solutions entirely ignore the mass suffering that is responsible for events like this and only address the losses realized by the people with the power to make change.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#383

Post by Someone »

bart_spoon wrote: post #371
Someone wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see anybody arguing that people doing this shouldn’t 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 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…

I think we agree. I wasn’t clear enough, but I wrote the underscores in “its population _is_ more criminal” to implicitly contrast it with “its population _behaves_ more criminal”. It certainly does the latter, but that doesn’t imply the former.

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)

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#384

Post by nomel »

jl6 wrote: post #193
mngnt wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cause is the same as it always has been: it is easier for some people to get to the desired standard of living by stealing/other crime than by working. 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 avail…

> Why crime us going up? It’s not. The long term trend in property crime in the US is down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States

Much has been decriminalized in California, so I question if these types of statistics can be accurate.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#386

Post by hansel_der »

q1w2 wrote: post #360
dredmorbius wrote: post #2

I'm reminded of recent realisations in the evolution of whales. The great size and efficiency of whales came about due to increased ocean productivity --- more available food, though often at widely-separated distances, an efficient feeding mechansism (lunge feeding), which could onboard vast quantities of krill in a single act, and the lack of any credible predators, allowing great whales to focus their evolutionary…

It also reminds me of certain episodes of the The History of Rome and The History of Byzantium podcasts where they depict the collapse of complex systems when the breakdown of security occurred. During times when Roman security was good - the economy could develop complex systems of trade, which developed coinage, mathematics, architecture, and all sorts of specialists and artisans. When security was no longer reliab…

> hoards of barbarians

you mean the citizens of neighbouring states (mainly nowadays france and germany) that refused to be colonized/enslaved?

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#387

Post by glenda »

jpambrun wrote: post #385
glenda wrote: post #380

This is visually shocking, but the sheer amount of money taken from workers by wage theft eclipses this issue completely. Theft is normalized at all levels of American society.

Two wrongs don't make it right..

I’m not trying to justify any of it, just pointing out that theft is a completely accepted part of culture in the US. Don’t get me started on civil forfeiture…

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#388

Post by Gravityloss »

pvaldes wrote: post #345
buran77 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Indeed. There's so much focus on short-term solutions for crime – even outside of the US. 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 consid…

> Return backwards in time and kill Hitler 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…

Hitler didn't do his thing in a vacuum. There was an opportunity for him, circumstances, values of the time, the trauma to Germany what happened in the first world war and after it, competing ideologies like communism, political instability in Germany, inflation, recession etc.

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!

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#389

Post by savolai »

DocTomoe wrote: post #212
savolai wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen how tricky participating in society with a cheap android phone can get. Your memory runs out all the time when you try to have apps critical for everyday life, and your privacy is sold to highest bidder. Everything takes more time and is less reliable. 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…

I've been using cheap (~150 Euros) chinese Android phones for years now. I have not experienced memory running out (my current one has some 256 GB, I think), and privacy selling is a problem caused by apps, not by the hardware - you'd be surprised the amount of info your average iOS app sells. This Android vs. iOS thing is not about technical capabilities, it's about elitism - and elitism always breeds jealousy, and…

As a long time user of both, it seems to me there's a fair amount of elitism on android side too - it's just more branded towards technocratic ableism. I.e. "I can use a device that's difficult to use, so I have competence".

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.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#390

Post by nomel »

callmeal wrote: post #344
ramoz wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do crime rates go up when you stop policing actual crimes?

> Do crime rates go up when you stop policing actual crimes? 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…

I think the opposite of this (reducing enforcement should not increase crime) has been proven false by Californias Prop 47 [1]. So, I imagine the starting point, where enforcement is then increased, is very important.

1. https://www.ppic.org/publication/the-impact-of-proposition-4...

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