71–80 of 233 posts
High inflation? A pandemic disrupting millions of people's income? Rising inequality? Colour me surprised.
These people aren't shoplifting to get their needs and to propose such so am ignorance of the situation. There was a wonderful and detailed article a while back about a baby formula shoplifting ring in the south that shows how this works. The people who are doing the shoplifting are often drug addicts who are promised cash payments or more drugs if they will go and shoplift by a middle man who then stockpiles the goo…
No idea if it's really true, but it is suspicious how there's always a good explanation that something that looks like terrible injustice actually isn't.
I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.
I think corporal punishment should be considered as an alternative. Hard to be a cool gangster when you have a sore ass.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
...because they are losing money? stores aren't in business to feed you; they are in business to make money. Would you continue to own and run a store if it lost money for you? Better have deep pockets then.
How does society function if no one is tasked with feeding the people? Are we all supposed to own farms? How does that work with 330 million Americans? Who is going to have time to do things like design the hardware and software that power the devices you use to post on the internet--they don't have time to do that and work their personal farm for food...
Or: farms task themselves with producing food in the same way programmers task themselves with producing software.
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No because a class structure only has rich and poor with less and less middle ground, stealing becomes necessity to some. Even if immoral.
Is stealing from someone like Walmart, who post record profits every year, pay employees so little they are on food stamps, engage in union busting etc etc really immoral?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure shoplifting is to blame, and not the price of rent and lack of new construction.
They're both problems that can be attacked independently. You can crack down hard on shoplifters and reselling rings but also build lots of new housing. Price of rent is a function of housing supply and demand. Rent control just pushes the costs to less visible things like security deposit, maintenance, etc.
I don't think "reselling rings" are that easy to crack down on, they probably are not rings at all rely on apps and services and operate on a more individual basis. The very framing of such is just used to justify greater police budgets, but this is something far harder than even the drug war to win. The only way to win it is to make sure entrepreneurial sorts find it more profitable to do things legitimately than it is to plunder goods, and ensure jobs and job training are more accessible than a life of crime.
Let the market handle this. Simply close stores with high theft rates, which will happen anyway since they’re unprofitable.
Absolutely not. There are actually human costs to it. My parents are old (in their 70s), and they are lucky to have a CVS near by where they can walk and get their medicine and basic needs. Pharmacies and grocery stores being forced to close due to unchecked theft inflict pain and major lowering of quality of life to people around the neighborhood, and especially to people that can't just drive to the next store. Als…
Current events, especially in America, has created a situation where I think theft has become ethical to sustain oneself. They may let us eat cake, but we may opt to eat the rich instead. Maybe you don't trust the stories over on /r/antiwork or /r/workreform but I think if even 1% is true, America is rapidly spiralling into a direction where a society can't be sustained. For a large part of the USA population, young…
To condone theft because you feel like it is the best option for you is the epitome of that mindset. It will destroy society because we destroy the incentive for anyone to create to produce and then we see real poverty. Everyone bitching on antiwork about their hopeless future are doing so from a place where they have regular stable electricity, running clean water, an internet connection, and I am going to guess ate sometime in the last 12 or at least 24 hours.
Contrast that with my brother in law from Africa when we was growing up the government was subject to constant rebellions, and anything you had could be taken at any time, it made it hard to build and secure goods and services because much of your time was trying to survive, and any appearance of success brought those that would take it from you.
That's where we are headed if we continue to ignore the fact that justice and laws are the price of civilized society regardless of how inhumane it feels.
Let the market handle this. Simply close stores with high theft rates, which will happen anyway since they’re unprofitable.
> Let the market handle this. Not sure I want that. When the state refuses to protect private property, the market solution tends to look more like Vito Corleone. That's especially true when it appears certain organized crime groups are perpetrating coordinated thefts like the one at Nordstrom. The big corporations can't afford to to have mafia payments on the books, but they can afford to pack up and leave or encase…
I'd like anyone who considers more harsh jail punishments to be the solution to consider that the USA has the highest per-capita prison population in the world. Only 1/5 of those prisoners is in there for drug-related crime. Perhaps harsher punishments aren't going to help here.