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An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

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Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#131

Post by stickfigure »

peddling-brink wrote: post #67
bigbuppo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local copper thieves that were busted stealing telco lines... they were just looking to make a quick buck regardless of legality or care for the impact it had on other people. They're more like tech company CEOs, really.

And these thieves were already well cared for in a healthy society with all sorts of opportunities available to them regardless of social status, skin color, and mental heath? Crime goes down when the gap between the rich and the poor goes down.

Some people just want drugs.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#132

Post by zdragnar »

peddling-brink wrote: post #67
bigbuppo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local copper thieves that were busted stealing telco lines... they were just looking to make a quick buck regardless of legality or care for the impact it had on other people. They're more like tech company CEOs, really.

And these thieves were already well cared for in a healthy society with all sorts of opportunities available to them regardless of social status, skin color, and mental heath? Crime goes down when the gap between the rich and the poor goes down.

Look at sibling comments on copper theft in Scandinavian countries.

The idea that humans only commit crime out of necessity and wouldn't do it if they could just get a 9-5 job is extremely naive.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#134

Post by bArray »

I'm surprised nothing more serious happened. There was obviously a serious electrocution risk, but I think that is the easiest bit to deal with. 100kW of radio waves, whilst non-ironising, can still microwave you. With 100kW there could have also been a serious reflection back to the transmitter. This guy cutting the cable is far luckier than he will ever know.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#135

Post by NewJazz »

SoftTalker wrote: post #123
razakel wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief. The UK does that - a scrap dealer can only pay by bank transfer or cheque. That way there's a paper trail.

Same in the USA. I had to show my drivers license to sell a couple of old lawn mowers at a scrap yard. The thieves don't sell directly to the scrap dealers. If there's money to be made, there will always be a way to work around regulations.

Yeah you really need to make sure there is a high chance folks are caught in the act.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#137

Post by vitalyan1234 »

esikich wrote: post #69
TurdF3rguson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what nobody wants to admit, whether it's nature or nurture doesn't matter because you're not in control of either of them. You were born into so and so of a family, and they brought you up with such and such care and values. The idea that you've been "force of willing" it through your whole life since infancy and are therefore solely accountable for your outcome is absurd. We know that at some level and yet s…

This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts.

I don't think the average American sympathizes with random shitheads, bro. romanticizing thieves into some kind of noble morally grey antiheroes wronged by the society and struggling to feed their kids is a uniquely bohemian delusion. 9 times out of 10 they're junkie lowlives who would amount to nothing with all the opportunity in the world.

wanna bet that in a few days there will be a follow up with mugshots and short bios of the perpetrators, and each one will turn out to be a worthless fuck with a long rap sheet?

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#138

Post by lmm »

johanvts wrote: post #61
aeonik wrote: post #15

Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire. Assuming between 3-1/8″ - 6-1/8″ diameter. Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair... Absurd.

Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem.

Because the only solutions that work are social.

> There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

Kipling has a poem about that one, it doesn't work out.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#139

Post by silisili »

Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of.

I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are not conducive to a functional society.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#140

Post by dlcarrier »

themafia wrote: post #88
johanvts wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage. > better off by just paying the theif double. You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of…

I license doesn't stop someone from doing something illegal. It doesn't cost much for the equipment to turn scrap copper into billet.
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