These 2 seniors were just busted running a racket selling half priced stolen toothpaste, detergent, ect http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/elderly-...
Why Thieves Steal Soap
21–30 of 121 posts
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#22"The top of thieves’ mental loot list features expensive electronics like Playstations, GPS systems, and DVD players." Playstations maybe, but DVD players?
The article is a write-up of an 8 year-old paper based on research from 10 years ago and extensively quoting papers from 20 years ago, so current definitions of expensive don't really apply
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#23how did you manage to make a whole article out of 'soap is easy to sell illegaly'
I wish I had this skill. I generally can't make even complex topics more than a paragraph or so..
I read it all and thoroughly enjoyed it. It could be summed up as thieves like to steal commodity goods because they are easier to trade. Other than that they like to steal high demand luxury goods.
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#24The Safeway in the San Francisco Castro neighborhood is especially... exciting... relative to the surrounding area. It even has its own full time police officer.
One time as I was leaving I asked the officer why Folgers crystals of all things were locked up. His reply was "[ethnic group] gangs steal essentials in bulk, and sell them to the homeless."
From that point forward it clicked in my head, retail theft is about liquidity not value.
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#25how did you manage to make a whole article out of 'soap is easy to sell illegaly'
To be honest, when you're talking about tens of thousands of dollars of one brand of detergent from one store alone, maybe there is some value in examining the minutiae? After all, it's easy to sell a lot of things illegally, but most of them are not so incredibly widely desired by so many different people.
Soap is after all, an essential.
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#26William Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism for Exchange (1876) discusses many of the characteristics of money and exchange, including in chapter V, the properties which make money useful: utility and value, portability, indestructability, homogeneity, divisibility, stabilityof value, and cognizability. The merchandise stolen for use as "street coin" as described in the article meet most or all of these characteristics.
Jevons' work is recommended -- it's a classic study of the subject, but one which still carries strong weight. Rather more useful than many of the misdirected rantings of more recent vintage available online.
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#27Great writeup. I've seen the same patterns in my locale. It's formula, Tide, soap, beer, meat, and other things that are pricey but useful for low-income people. Most of the thieves are low-income without any particular race dominating the role. They're not the only ones, though, as a number of people with plenty of money are just as happy to be thieving assholes. ;)
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#28The Safeway in the San Francisco Castro neighborhood is especially... exciting... relative to the surrounding area. It even has its own full time police officer. One time as I was leaving I asked the officer why Folgers crystals of all things were locked up. His reply was "[ethnic group] gangs steal essentials in bulk, and sell them to the homeless." From that point forward it clicked in my head, retail theft is abou…
Folgers crystals = instant coffee.
Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#29Re: Why Thieves Steal Soap
#30The Safeway in the San Francisco Castro neighborhood is especially... exciting... relative to the surrounding area. It even has its own full time police officer. One time as I was leaving I asked the officer why Folgers crystals of all things were locked up. His reply was "[ethnic group] gangs steal essentials in bulk, and sell them to the homeless." From that point forward it clicked in my head, retail theft is abou…
> [ethnic group]
interesting way to combat racism...