661–670 of 763 posts
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The most diverse country? Not even in the top 50, nor the most diverse in the Americas. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-raci...
Perhaps the commenter means diversity of background and experience, rather than skin color?
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What is a better solution?
Portugal decriminalised drugs in 2000 and this is regarded as a better solution. Drug use is treated as a health issue rather than a crime issue, and the results are better. See here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
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So we should use public caning and ramp up the use of the death penalty for illegal drug possession?
Kindly point out where I'm advocating for anything remotely like what you're describing here.
If we wanted to emulate Singapore to make our subways safer, we would have to do much, much more than put up a little wall on the subway platform.
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> People are safer on the street. Only if you narrowly define 'people' to mean the tiny minority of people who are thieves, and exclude the overwhelming majority of people who aren't thieves. Thieves are safer on the street but everybody else is safer with thieves off the street. You've got your priorities skewed.
This is a reasonable comment if you're talking about stabbings or murders but not shoplifting. Allowing people to steal from retail stores with impunity doesn't make anyone unsafe. Realize that I'm not arguing for impunity, just that incarceration should be off the table.
Most of the comments here are ignoring the difference between regular old shoplifting and the trend driving the increase discussed in the article, which they're referring to as "organized retail crime". I think it's very fair to have differing attitudes/moral thresholds for an impoverished mother shoplifting a week's worth of baby formula versus "a couple in Alabama [which] pled guilty to shifting $300,000-worth of s…
> I think it's very fair to have differing attitudes/moral thresholds for an impoverished mother shoplifting a week's worth of baby formula versus "a couple in Alabama [which] pled guilty to shifting $300,000-worth of stolen baby formula on eBay". I’ve also noticed a weird tendency to downplay theft lately, either through projecting a theoretical moral justification on to the shoplifter or by insinuating that retail…
The most remote, homestead-y places will have unattended "stores" where you leave out goods and people come by and leave money in the basket and take what you have. The least remote, most-managed places have security locks on items over $15. It is impossible to run a friendly, neighborhood-run store when any new customer is a potential thief. When theft goes uncontrolled, owners begin to look at their customers with suspicion. Those who don't like theft leave for more peaceful places and are replaced by owners who will tolerate theft with a big insurance policy and force.
It is continually astonishing to me that so many "community-focused" people don't realize that unilateral actions of harm inside the community (theft, assault, etc.) have ripple effects that harm the entire community. If you grow up in a region where store owners believe you might be a thief unless they personally know you and you have to constantly worry about protecting what's yours, and I grow up in an area where I'm trusted and respected by business owners and I leave my door unlocked when I go to town, how is equity meaningfully achievable between us?
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Bible laws are imposed rules of violent hostile overlords, not the foundation of civilization. Although you could argue that the way civilization has evolved, those kinds of rules _are_ its foundation :-( I might agree that all theft is wrong, but - as Proudhon aptly put it: La propriété, c'est le vol ! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_is_theft !
Disagree a bit here. The Bible and other religious texts were not necessarily decrees by "hostile overlords", they were the back-then equivalent of what we would call a Constitution these days - the foundational rules of society. Particularly what Christians call the "Old Testament", the Jews the Torah and whatever Muslims call the foundations prior to Quran today... it's essentially the same text, the same rules. It…
A constitution is what a ruling class formalizes as foundational rules of the state. Society is mostly made up of the subjects of states.
This is perhaps more of a gray area these days - as most states are official democracies and have elections and such - but I would argue it is still essentially the case. But regardless of the present - this was certainly the case in more ancient times, where some well-armed and well-connected person or family declared itself to be the rulers. The majority of the population were simply conquered, lorded over, by such kingdoms; and whatever codex of rules was put down in writing (if at all) was not even known to them, let alone constrained to agree with their mores and customs.
About the (Jewish) bible specifically - the legislative part of it is a collection of different, and partly contradictory texts from different periods in the history of ancient Judea and the holy land, that was put in writing only much later. Most subjects of the Judean kings were not even that committed to Yahweh as a god. Naturally, such decrees and commandments were not written to be entirely divorced and contradictory to surrounding society, but they were first and foremost impositions in the interest of the rulers, not representation of the views of the ruled.
PS - From my (admittedly partial) familiarity with devout muslims, I very much doubt people going on a martyrdom (istish'haad) missions here in Palestine expect to get virgins after they die, nothing of the sort. There isn't a "piety and modesty now, promiscuity and debauchery after death" kind of a perception. Again, AFAIK. I can't access the NYT link, there's a paywall.
Manhattan is getting the law enforcement it demanded.
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.
To see when police are absent, look to CHAZ. Did CHAZ not have one of the highest murder rates in the known world?
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A database of serial numbers alone wouldn't be sufficient. Counterfeiters frequently copy real serial numbers and print them on fake products. There are more effective means such as tamper resistant RFID tags, but those aren't cost effective for cheap items. And often no one bothers to check anyway.
Just marking product with seller's ID would be enough. You don't care which exact product was counterfeited, you care which seller sold it
I've lived in the same city now (not NYC) for 10+ years, so I'm moderately connected with all sorts of people and not just a bubble of affluent tech people. So I'll be real, I know some sketchy people that probably do drugs or at least know where to find some. What I don't know, however, is any "fences". That is, someone that traffics in stolen goods. Or maybe I do, they don't exactly advertise their services. I've n…
Blaming Amazon is misplaced. Blame the people stealing and the system that refuses to prosecute them.
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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…
And what do you suppose would happen to the career of a researcher who published a study showing such a correlation?