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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

#211

Post by alpinisme »

tshaddox wrote: post #124
jmward01 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.

I don’t think potential criminals need to research statistics to have a general sense of the ROI of attempting the crime. They probably have a ballpark sense of both the cash value of the stolen property and the likelihood of getting caught.

Yes but those are very different time scales of consequence. Definite immediate reward or possible long term consequence. People with active drug addictions are known to vastly overprioritize the former to the detriment of the latter. I mean, they also know the risks of overdose but they’re not all getting testing kits for their drugs.

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

#212

Post by etskinner »

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.

I thought about this when my catalytic converter was stolen. Part of me was like "maybe I should just strap a two $100 bills onto it with a note pleading them not to take it. But then, of course, the type of person to steal a converter is also the type of person that would take the $200 AND steal the converter

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

#213

Post by Tangurena2 »

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.

That is one point made in the essay *Million Dollar Murray". This Malcolm Gladwell essay is nominally about power law distributions, but also makes the point about homelessness, drug abuse and car emissions/pollutions. Denver is one domestic city that has a small program that hands apartment keys to homeless people. "Murray" cost the public health system at least one million dollars during his lifetime.

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

#214

Post by vitalyan1234 »

kube-system wrote: post #179
vitalyan1234 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sho…

> I don't think the average American sympathizes with random shitheads, bro. As a gross generalization, they don't. But not because they don't understand being poor, but because there are various powerful groups that benefit from pitting the lower class against themselves. But "poor people" aren't a monolithic group with an absolutist view on the issue. There's a nuanced understanding of low level crimes in impoveris…

>a mother stealing food from a chain store

oh come on now, how can that Dickensian scenario happen in a country where even a McJob pays, per hour, more than enough to feed for a week?

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

#216

Post by rayiner »

khafra wrote: post #193
rayiner wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theft is a very inefficient tax on civilization.

Some theft is efficient. If a hypothetical thief grabs a few bills from an unattended wallet, and the wallet's owner wasn't counting on having a specific amount of money available soon after, the amount lost by the victim is roughly equal to the amount gained by the thief. Stealing copper from power lines and transformers is among the least-efficient kinds theft; it's hard to do worse without shooting a wealthy phila…

That ignores higher order effects--how theft changes primary behavior. In your example, fear of pick pocketing may reduce the degree to which people carry around and spend money with vendors. Your rapacity index makes little sense: by your logic, corruption has a low rapacity index, since the state has a lot of money compared to the amount of the transaction. And given the deterrent function of sentencing, the more relevant figure is the aggregate effect of a particular class of theft, not an individual instance of theft.

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

#217

Post by appreciatorBus »

dylan604 wrote: post #63
vostrocity wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A topic I'm interested in that is upstream of what you're saying is the propagation of meaning. If somebody has no idea what the Mona Lisa or the Statue of Liberty are, then we can't really bemoan that they would not ascribe any value to it beyond its raw material.

I could understand looking at the Mona Lisa and not being impressed that it's something considered of great value. On the other hand, the sheer size of the Statue of Liberty makes that impossible to misconstrue.

Sure, it’s impossible to misconstrue that the statue of that size has or had value to someone. But that still doesn’t mean it will have value to you.

Someone who’s never seen it before, who has no exposure to the cultures that produced it or the discourse around it, can be impressed by the size, but otherwise not care.

Worse, if such a person is actively hostile to the cultures that produce it, then learning that it is valuable to that culture will lead them to assign negative value to it.

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

#218

Post by cjbgkagh »

swiftcoder wrote: post #200
cjbgkagh wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders.

> They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders. Since most current-day legal systems severely limit employment opportunities for former criminals, it's pretty hard to determine whether they would re-offend in a society that didn't inflict continual punishment in this way

It’s not that hard to know, since they’re often not caught on their first crime but on their Nth. They leave fingerprints that’ll link the crimes together, so we already have stats on how likely a person will reoffend even when they are not punished at all.

Criminal behavior is strongly linked to IQ and like IQ is largely hereditary. It’s dumb people thinking they’ve figured out a trick to game the system.

We have a labor glut which is the primary reason employment opportunities are so restricted for offenders, I think it’s unhealthy for society to keep importing so many people in these circumstances. I also think allowing so much violence in prisons, effectively pressuring people to join gangs, is extremely counterproductive.

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

#219

Post by ripberge »

NewJazz wrote: post #68
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.

The person needs to have a stake in the infrastructure OR there needs to be a high chance of them getting caught and losing something. People with little stake in a community will strip infrastructure bare. Inequality is a significant root cause here.

These copper thieves are almost always hardcore drug addicts. The “inequality” explanation is incorrect. A failure to recognize that has grave consequences for everyone.

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

#220

Post by kube-system »

vitalyan1234 wrote: post #214
kube-system wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the average American sympathizes with random shitheads, bro. As a gross generalization, they don't. But not because they don't understand being poor, but because there are various powerful groups that benefit from pitting the lower class against themselves. But "poor people" aren't a monolithic group with an absolutist view on the issue. There's a nuanced understanding of low level crimes in impoveris…

>a mother stealing food from a chain store oh come on now, how can that Dickensian scenario happen in a country where even a McJob pays, per hour , more than enough to feed for a week?

I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. If you run the math, there's not many places in the US that a mother can raise a child on a minimum wage job without relying heavily on assistance.
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