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Train burglaries in LA

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Re: Train burglaries in LA

#591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a plus for society if some criminals go from petty theft to white collar sociapth investor conning CEO. (or more realistically salesman) Society saves on the need for physical security.

That's a pro, but now the blast radius of your malfeasance is also larger. Instead of stealing a couple of Amazon packages a day, you can now deprive tens of thousands of people out of their life savings, you can deprive thousands of a medication they might need, you're now able to corrupt law enforcement and officials without any moral qualms and so on. "Safer" in the short term for the criminal and law enforcement,…

Positions of power are already taken by people on socio-path (pun intended). So for society nothing changes.

Salesmen already lie. There are already a lot of scammer ceos. People can deal with those by ignoring them. What people can not ignore is gun/knife in their face and a death of a loved one.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has a larger share of its population in prison than any other nation, about 6x higher than Canada, Japan and Western Europe. Is the problem really that too few people are in prison?

Yes, if they deserve to be in prison and aren't.

So then the problem is why do more people deserve to be in prison in the US in particular?

Whichever way you cut it, it's bad for society for it to be such a large percentage.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#593
post #328
post #102

My observation from the comment sections to this post-apocalyptic video is the following: People focusing on how to prevent the theft of these cars, funding police, armed guards on trans, better security. I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather tha…

Good observation - my first though when reading this was "wow, didn't know this happens in the US, until now I only heard about things like this from third world countries". I mean, sure, crime happens everywhere, but you have to be pretty desperate to do things like this (relatively high risk of injury or getting caught, relatively low chance of finding something really valuable). Then I realized that unfortunately,…

If you genuinely believe that the US has standards comparable to the third world, the you've been consuming propaganda on the Internet, I guess from low-quality communities such as Facebook/Twitter/Reddit etc.

These people aren't "desperate", they are opportunists. The situation is the opposite to what you say: there is low risk of getting caught and high chance of finding something valuable.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#594
post #576
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three wrongs don't make it right either...

Again, never said it was right, just that theft is deeply embedded in many facets of American society.

Theft is deeply embedded in _human_ societies, and we should fight it everywhere on every level.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lacks autonomous armed drones swarming around the train, "disencouraging" anyone who doesn't belong there to stay off the tracks.

Why do I feel like this would be the simplest solution to this problem, and in fact so simple it's likely to occur in the next few years... ...okay, reality check, even if the autopilots get good enough, it'll still be incredibly easy to whack a drone into the train's overhead wires if you have a big enough stick, and now they potentially have to fix the cable, or maybe a blown transformer. Right.

There are no overhead wires there. That's all Diesel-powered. Like most, or all freight tracks anyways? Maybe on the east coast, when shared with AMTRAK, or some local passenger network, if at all. Besides that, personally I wouldn't want to use any long sticks near any overhead wires. Brrrz, Brrrz, Brrrz

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you wack a flying drone? If it's in danger of hitting wires it can just fly higher? And how do you wield or even carry a 50m (150ft) or longer stick?. Do you mean shoot it down?

To be entirely honest I didn't think the scenario through. I was just thinking about the dystopian cyberpunk "that would be mad" of drones hanging around people trying to steal stuff from trains and didn't really envision what would really happen next. Now I actually think about it (thanks), what would a drone be doing? Yelling really loudly? Getting footage of people's faces? It's probably only a matter of time unti…

How about paintballing the perpetrators with NEON-GLITTER, laced with something extremely stinky?

Or Napalm?

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When risking getting caught stealing is more attractive than working then it's safe to say the working opportunities for those people aren't worth almost anything. Except when these thefts are de-facto decriminalized in Califronia, and police is either defunded or directed not to fight these crimes, the "risk of getting caught" is effectively zero. That means that unless you start handing out iPhones for free in lo…

there has been no meaningful defunding of police in any major metropolitan area in california and no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades. you are regurgitating authoritarian propaganda with no evidence.

California passed a proposition that theft of property under $950 will not be prosecuted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

That means criminals engaging in such thefts cannot be legally arrested or prosecuted.

And we haven't even started discussing LA's new DA Gascon's aggressive move to decriminalize a very large set of offenses:

https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#598
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no directive to not pursue property crime. police have not pursued property crime for decades If there's no directive, why is property crime not pursued?

Because it’s work and the cops are lazy? No one’s on their ass to go after it either unless it happens to someone with money or connections.

California passed a a proposition that theft of property under $950 will not be prosecuted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47

No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law. Passing such Propositions then blaming cops for rising crime is sinister.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#599
post #360

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…

Pretty much that.

For further parallels with Rome, I strongly advise Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome, which develops the idea that empires and diseases co-evolve with one another. Another lesson from history which seems increasingly significant now.

Re: Train burglaries in LA

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lacks autonomous armed drones swarming around the train, "disencouraging" anyone who doesn't belong there to stay off the tracks.

Why do I feel like this would be the simplest solution to this problem, and in fact so simple it's likely to occur in the next few years... ...okay, reality check, even if the autopilots get good enough, it'll still be incredibly easy to whack a drone into the train's overhead wires if you have a big enough stick, and now they potentially have to fix the cable, or maybe a blown transformer. Right.

Reality check would be that the engines, or a 'caboose' would make an ideal drone carrier where they can reload. They'd also be the perfect beacon to follow, the same way tracks are laid out in very regular patterns. Anything which doesn't belong there?

Ängäyge!1!!

I'd call them TrackBlastR.

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