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Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

economist.com

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Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#61

Post by mattigames »

philwelch wrote: post #56
TheRealPomax wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a little like you think criminals aren't a necessary symptom of "living in a scarcity society" itself...? As long as it's easier to take something than it is to pay for something, there will be people who take, and there will be groups that organize around taking. Pretending that crime is some kind of quirk that you can get rid of if only [fill in reasons here], and that the grey and black markets wouldn'…

> As long as it's easier to take something than it is to pay for something, there will be people who take, and there will be groups that organize around taking. One of the basic functions of the state is to make it difficult for people to steal things.

Up to a point, if the money spend into making it difficult is clearly lacking in root problems that are causing people to become criminals in the first place then other forms of governments will quickly become attractive and the likelihood to create civil unrest.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#62

Post by jakelazaroff »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #44
jakelazaroff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Walk around the city and you see more cops than ever. The issue is that police don’t actually prevent crime. Putting more cops on the street is like trying to use water to extinguish a grease fire.

The cops are generally part of the crime problem in NYC. They also don't go after people for anything short of attempted murder (even when it's done in front of their faces), so lots of crime goes unreported.

Yes, that’s a big part of the problem. By far the most common lawbreakers I see in my day-to-day are cops committing traffic infractions. You can tell you’re by a police station solely by how impassable the sidewalk becomes for pedestrians.

There was an incident recently in which someone removed an obstruction from a license plate. The police ignored the illegally obscured plate but arrested the person clearing it for “criminal mischief”. The lawlessness and selective enforcement is astonishing.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#63

Post by jakelazaroff »

philwelch wrote: post #60
pclmulqdq wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cops are generally part of the crime problem in NYC. They also don't go after people for anything short of attempted murder (even when it's done in front of their faces), so lots of crime goes unreported.

NYC used to have a solution for this, it was called broken windows policing.

The issue is that the people most often breaking the metaphorical windows are the police themselves.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#64

Post by tyrfing »

compiler-guy wrote: post #25
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #19

The article says prosecutors don't go after these thefts but I'd think the issue is with the cops and the number of arrests. After the BLM protests of 2020 (George Floyd) cops basically went hands off on these so called minor crimes, and so I'd imagine many of them don't even make it to prosecutors. We'd need a graph of incidents and arrests for years prior to 2020 (or months in early vs late 2020) to see the change.

The article claims that the BLM protests made little difference, and include a graph of various states comparing the amount of shoplifting with the amount of prosecution. Generally there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between states with large BLM protests and reduced prosecution. For example, Oregon had huge protests and weak government responses, and yet prosecutes large amounts of shoplifting. Blaming this on th…

> For example, Oregon had huge protests and weak government responses, and yet prosecutes large amounts of shoplifting.

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/investigations/multnomah-co...

There were not protests state wide, they were in a single county, the one in which shoplifting isn't prosecuted as much. A couple miles away, with different DAs, you will get arrested and prosecuted for even very minor theft.

> Unseating [Washington Co DA] Barton has been a priority for national progressive groups funding criminal justice reform in Oregon.

> “Washington County is the most extreme county I’ve ever worked in, and that’s because of the tough on crime, war on drugs, lock 'em up and throw away the key fanaticism coming from the DA’s office,” Decker said.

This is the person responsible for a 93% prosecution rate, being re-elected on the basis of "law and order" and relatively conservative viewpoints, backlash against the BLM protest responses that you talk about.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#65

Post by jakelazaroff »

silisili wrote: post #54
jakelazaroff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Walk around the city and you see more cops than ever. The issue is that police don’t actually prevent crime. Putting more cops on the street is like trying to use water to extinguish a grease fire.

Well, if law enforcement proves useless, give shopowners protection for handling it themselves. Our current attitude of just deal with it/ignore it is not only insanity, it's infuriating.

Assuming you mean allowing them to use violence against shoplifters, I’m curious how far you think we should take this. Should we allow employees to use violent force to recover stolen wages from their employers? After all, orders of magnitude more is stolen via wage theft than shoplifting.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#66

Post by somehnguy »

mario970v wrote: post #52
jakelazaroff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Walk around the city and you see more cops than ever. The issue is that police don’t actually prevent crime. Putting more cops on the street is like trying to use water to extinguish a grease fire.

The police are not preventing crime because DeBlasio/Adams stripped the NYPD of all their power post-2020

Can you explain how exactly they were stripped of all their power please?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#67

Post by kmstout »

cratermoon wrote: post #58
kmstout wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$ curl -s 'https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/24/why-its-hard-to-buy-deodorant-in-manhattan' | grep articleBody | jq -r .articleBody 2>/dev/null | fmt

curl -s ' https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/24/why-its-h... ' | grep articleBody | jq -r .articleBody 2>/dev/null | paps --font=ETBembo | open -fa Preview

Instead of `paps`, you could also try

  ... | sed -re 's/$/\n\n/' | uniq | man -Tps -l - | ...
If you have groff, you can also have `man` go straight to PDF.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#68

Post by silisili »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #65
silisili wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if law enforcement proves useless, give shopowners protection for handling it themselves. Our current attitude of just deal with it/ignore it is not only insanity, it's infuriating.

Assuming you mean allowing them to use violence against shoplifters, I’m curious how far you think we should take this. Should we allow employees to use violent force to recover stolen wages from their employers? After all, orders of magnitude more is stolen via wage theft than shoplifting.

Whataboutism aside, in a more just world, law enforcement and the judicial system handle things so townspeople don't have to. And that's a great thing. But what do you do when those systems stop doing anything?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#69

Post by jakelazaroff »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #33

> "The stores are insured bro, why do you care if people steal from them? It's not your problem maaan." This is why I care. Criminals degrade society and we all suffer for their greed.

That’s one perspective. Another is that the truly greedy thing is to construct a society such that some people can’t afford basic necessities, and that inflicts far more suffering than people stealing what they need to live.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#70

Post by jakelazaroff »

silisili wrote: post #68
jakelazaroff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming you mean allowing them to use violence against shoplifters, I’m curious how far you think we should take this. Should we allow employees to use violent force to recover stolen wages from their employers? After all, orders of magnitude more is stolen via wage theft than shoplifting.

Whataboutism aside, in a more just world, law enforcement and the judicial system handle things so townspeople don't have to. And that's a great thing. But what do you do when those systems stop doing anything?

It’s not whataboutism. You’re proposing a change to society, and I’m asking you exactly what that change would look like.
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