Live data from Hacker News

A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

economist.com

101–110 of 144 posts

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a study I can read for this?

To stay on-topic and on-source: "[Gang violence] is concentrated in highly segregated immigrant neighbourhoods. In Husby, a suburb of Stockholm, more than 80% of the population are migrants or the children of migrants, most of them from Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Turkey." https://www.economist.com/europe/2020/11/28/why-sweden-strug... Do you have a counter-factual source showing that immigrants are not more violent in…

That does not show that immigrants are more violent.

Gang violence is not the only form of violence. Are there really no forms of violence which are concentrated in highly segregated ethnic Swedish neighborhoods?

And there are non-violent crimes.

Another question is, are the numbers of immigrants who do not live in highly segregated immigrant neighborhoods with gang violence? It looks like over 1 million people in Sweden were born outside of Europe, or 10% of the population. They can't all be involved in violent crimes.

The Wikipedia entry for Husby points out the crime rates increased 'after the closure of the closest police station to Husby, in Rinkeby, in 2014. The station was reopened on the first of September 2023.' The Economist article you linked to was written in 2020.

Which leads me to wonder if immigrant neighborhoods were under-protected, which would place at least some blame on government failure rather than the people living there.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#102
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think all comments need to be articles in length? My original comment contains an idea, and a justification. It really is almost platonic in how simple it is actually, schoolbook example. You might feel that the justification is inadequate, but instead you began talking about how my comment doesn't "prove" anything, and now that it doesn't contain justification at all. Part of the reason why this justifies the…

Not every comment need be an article, but the internet would be better if every comment has actual justification and not just statements. I said “prove” at first, but I should’ve said “justifies.” It’s a better word for this. An equally plausible reason for the left not talking about immigration is that there is not a giant migrant wave as there was in the mid-2010s and the lax migration policies are already in place…

My original comment contains justification for the idea presented. I don't understand why this is controversial to you? Why do you hold that my original comment does not contain justification? It clearly does.

Moving on to the real discussion, not this infernal semantic journey you've taken to embark upon.

If it was equally plausible that mass-immigration is currently not openly condoned by left-wing politicans, because the migrant wave isn't currently hitting europe and the lax migration policies are already in place; then why was the left so willing to talk about being pro-migration __before__ the migrant wave? The lax policies have been in place in Sweden since the 70:s.

What has happened, is that the disaster of the policies is now so plain and obvious, that not even professional liars can reasonably stand in the tv-broadcast and talk about it enthusiastically, it is a disaster for everyone involved and no one pretends it's not. Instead, all the politicians can do is ignore the problem while they silently try to alleviate as many small aspects of the disaster as possible, so people don't wake up to just how poorly this country has been run.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#103
What in the actual F is going on. I sincerely hope my cursory reading of the law was wrong. This law[1] seems pretty much to be a presumed-guilty-until-you've-proven-yourself-innocent thing.

Seems they've entered some kind of reverse Minority Report middle ground, where they don't have to prove you committed a crime. If there is reasonable suspicion that a crime was committed for you to own that Rolex, it's gone. Possibly that means "you couldn't prove it was acquired legally."

There goes any chance of me returning to Sweden, I guess. This is going downhill fast.

[1] (Swedish) https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-och-lagar/dokument/sven...

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#104
post #7

I'm not a fan of this law and expect it will end up being abused as much as civil forfeiture in the US. That said, it is interesting to see a stop and frisk law that actually targets wealthy people for once.

We’re already starting to see some weird consequences of a closely related law change that allows the authorities to immediately seize assets from people with unpaid debts. For example, there was a news report recently of a woman who lent her car to a friend who was in debt. He was stopped by the police and the car was seized. She complained and could prove she was the legal owner of the car. But that didn’t matter.…

How far does that go to? If you rent a car and get stopped by police does that allow police to seize and sell the car? What if you are driving company car? Company plane?

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you carry your payment slips with you? What if the item in question is deemed too expensive for your role? Yes, you could probably pull up your work email or show the bank deposits, but my point is that this is an arbitrary standard that cannot be consistently enforced.

Most people have their bank application on their phone so you could pull it up and prove it that way. I do agree it will likely be heavily abused like Civil Forfeiture in United States and wouldn't recommend it to Swedish but it's a democracy.

I'm not unlocking my phone for a cop.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#106
post #9
post #5

"There is no consensus on the main cause of this surge in violence" If I am not misunderstood, the consensus in Sweden and globally is that the situation is caused by lax immigration policies and taking in too many immigrants who have not been able to integrate to the society.

Are you saying that the violence is caused by the immigrants directly or indirectly? I can’t say for Sweden but in the Texas immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens[1]. There doesn’t seem to be a good source of data for the US as a whole. 1. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o...

A lot depends on who the immigrants are. You are obviously going to get more problems if they are say criminals from some war zone as opposed to PhDs coming to teach at the university etc.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#107
post #9
post #5

"There is no consensus on the main cause of this surge in violence" If I am not misunderstood, the consensus in Sweden and globally is that the situation is caused by lax immigration policies and taking in too many immigrants who have not been able to integrate to the society.

Are you saying that the violence is caused by the immigrants directly or indirectly? I can’t say for Sweden but in the Texas immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than citizens[1]. There doesn’t seem to be a good source of data for the US as a whole. 1. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/undocumented-immigrant-o...

the US is very demographically different to Sweden

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#108
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that may be because Texas gets Hispanic immigrants, whereas Europe gets immigrants from Islamic regions that have been disrupted by either the U.S. or Russia (mostly the U.S. though). There should be an UN resolution that says: "You start a war, you take the immigrants."

> There should be an UN resolution that says: "You start a war, you take the immigrants." "We need the natural resources, not the people" /s

For dying off Russia, it might be both.

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#109
post #85
post #5

"There is no consensus on the main cause of this surge in violence" If I am not misunderstood, the consensus in Sweden and globally is that the situation is caused by lax immigration policies and taking in too many immigrants who have not been able to integrate to the society.

If I'm not mistaken, the decades of economic liberalism and dismantling of social support systems has made a lot of people very worried about their future, and as usual the rich and powerful blame immigrants (or some other weak minority group) as a slight-of-hand to distract from the actual issues.

the two things are both true. mass immigration is causing problems and elites are using as a distraction to push through right-wing economic reforms

Re: A new law in Sweden lets police seize unexplained luxury goods

#110
post #23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug _consumption_ causes "drug related criminality?" The evidence is quite strong that _prohibition_ causes criminality. Consumption in the absence of prohibition requires no illicit market or cartels.

I think you might be conflating lower risk drugs with cocaine and pals.

one of the issues with drug prohibition is that it throws the baby out with the bathwater and consigns the man on the street to whatever dealers think will sell the most effectively: i.e. whatever is strongest without killing people or drastically fucking them up. when drugs are legal people get more choice and - as shown with tobacco - people tend to favour weaker options. if cocaine were legal, people would likely be taking something closer to what you get from chewing the leaves. this could even just be regulated to be the case
Post reply on HN