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Train burglaries in LA

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Re: Train burglaries in LA

#451
post #14

How long before Amazon has their own containers with cameras and defense mechanisms?

As soon as the shrinkage exceeds the cost of those security measures. Security is a business problem.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree to a degree. 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.

Which people? Since when? Could there be a pattern?

Burglary and shoplifting? Drug abusers mostly these days it seems but also professional thieves from further down in Europe.

Has always been going on, but it feels there has been an increase.

There can absolutely be some patterns.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#453
I see a lot of people talking about "packages", but UPS/Fedex/USPS don't use trains because they're too slow, right? I assume we're talking about wholesale shipping here.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#454
post #193
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

That article hasn't been updated for the massive increase in crime from the past two years.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#455
post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Except for the “citizens” and the “states” bits and quite often without the “neighbouring” or the “colonized/enslaves” aspects either.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#457
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They open things up, take what they want, and dispose of the rest.

This seems like a problem that armed guards would fix pretty quickly.

Maybe. Or you just up the stakes and now you have thieves with automatic weapons having a gunfight with the train guards.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#459

It is surreal to see this in a country where the police and “justice” system is extremely trigger happy and wants to lock everyone up for any reason they can get away with.

US is a big place. That means it's possible to get a steady stream of stories of innocent people getting arrested/killed by the police, and have jurisdictions that turn a blind eye to property crime.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#460
Kind of related : America Is Falling Apart at the Seams https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-a...

A loss of civic sense and cultural criminality are incredibly hard to weed out of a population, once it has taken root. I worry that the a mix of pessimism and a loss of civic sense is sending non-elite America into a death spiral.

Opponents of return-to-normalcy claim that these are temporary and anomalous circumstances as a result of covid. However, a 2 year period of cultural erosion can lead to this regression getting cemented as a modern cultural identity of non-elite US.

Cost-benefit analyses have been ignored in favor of tunnel-visioning on viral outcomes and short term political gain. At the end of this, we might just find ourselves asking "We made it out of this, but at what cost?".

p.s: I am not advocating for any particular policy, just pointing to the absence of any holistic response. That being said, the complete failure of the American response in terms of 'viral outcomes' despite tunnel visioning on it, doesn't inspire confidence in it.

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