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Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

economist.com

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Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#721

Post by Spooky23 »

bombcar wrote: post #692
Spooky23 wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would investigate? Amazon idngaf to the point that they are find with co-mingling fake and stolen goods and selling them under their own brand.

Attorneys General, likely. Amazon would be found selling stolen goods, told to clean up, they wouldn’t, and there’d be a kerfuffle and suddenly it would be one of the items that is harder to list (try listing Milwaukee cordless equipment on Amazon now for example).

Obviously that technique doesn’t work, as Amazon just patches up the hole and nothing else.

So you’ll be unable to buy serialized deodorant, but toothpaste will still be “off the truck”.

You need an actual consumer law with teeth that gets enforced, not one-off AG litigation.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#722

Post by specialist »

chestervonwinch wrote: post #691
quacked wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people live in what can reasonably called a "community" any more, so the link between anonymous theft and the erosion of social culture doesn't make sense to everyone. 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…

> Few people live in what can reasonably called a "community" any more, so the link between anonymous theft and the erosion of social culture doesn't make sense to everyone. What do you think about how this relates to communities shifting almost entirely to the internet?

My wild-assed guess is that social media accelerated the underlying long-term trends.

Bowling Alone is a popular book about the decline of "social capital" (community), which is a fair intro to the topic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

IMHO, technological advances begets social upheaval and accelerating inequity are the root causes for the popular usual suspects (broadcast media, cars and suburbia, social media).

Orthogonally, since Trumpism, I've been more open minded towards explanations rooted in reactionary populism (revanchism) and white racial animus.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#723

Post by tehwebguy »

aliqot wrote: post #476
bushbaba wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except products like deodorant are considered health products. Amazon doesn’t just let you easily sell health products, you need to produce invoices, receipts, etc. More likely this stuff is sold on ebay

> Except products like deodorant are considered health products. Amazon doesn’t just let you easily sell health products, you need to produce invoices, receipts, etc. I have doubts about this.

It’s true. Selling in this and a growing list of other categories is gated, every year the rules get stricter.

Source: I have a seller account on Amazon.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#724

Post by tehwebguy »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #417
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ooooooooohhhhhhh!! So I steal some consumer goods, put them in individual boxes, send them to Amazon warehouse and they distribute for me. I simply never put that together. But surely Amazon is literally handling stolen goods? Is there a smoking gun email?

> But surely Amazon is literally handling stolen goods? Is there a smoking gun email? If Amazon were a mom and pop fence, the local cops could bust them in a sting. But Amazon is a huge megacorp, so even if the cops try to catch them in a sting nothing will stick because Amazon will claim their shear scale rendered them completely oblivious to everything and therefore not criminally culpable. Yeah, it's bullshit.

If you can identify your stolen goods at a local or huge chain pawn shop and your local police feel like helping you can absolutely be made whole by following a process.

If you can prove Amazon has or sold your stolen goods you can absolutely be made whole by following a process.

I don’t really think our system errs on the side of justice but I think the remedies available to victims in these two scenarios are about appropriate to the respective scenarios.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#725

Post by tehwebguy »

JCharante wrote: post #492
adrr wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a whole industry based around arbitraging price differences between Amazon and brick and mortar merchants. Just search YouTube for “get rich with FBA”. How would Amazon know if it was stolen or retail arbitrage?

Wow this opened me up to a whole new world. Even managing to flip items with a 1% loss would let you spend $25k for only $250 (the amount of spend you need on delta co-branded cards to hit the MQD waiver for up to platinum).

Yeah and AA’s new system barely requires any flying, you can hit top status with $200k in CC spend

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#726

Post by tehwebguy »

subradios wrote: post #163
mbreese wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can tackle a problem from multiple directions. So while direct prosecution is important, cutting off a method for converting stolen goods to money is also important. As soon as that method become unprofitable, the activity will either stop or switch to something else.

Regulating legitimate business activity out of existence to support progressive prosecutors ideas about shoplifting and street crime is the opposite of a solution.

Actually you are both wrong :)

Regulating away legitimate secondary markets to sell on leaves us all paying higher prices. If brands and retailers believe it’s really retail theft causing all of this I invite them to track their goods better and run sting operations. I guarantee this type of money is going out the side door a truckload at a time, not the front door stuffed into someone’s shirt.

But the “progressive prosecutor problem” is a made up lie. Even in San Francisco where a DA recall vote actually succeeded it was obvious (and immediately proven[0]) that SFPD were actually just refusing to respond to calls:

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/brooke-jenkins-sf-...

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#727

Post by chriscjcj »

abvdasker wrote: post #487
chriscjcj wrote: post #472

443 comments as I write this. I searched for the word "boost" and "Fentanyl" and was surprised that neither word had been mentioned. There is another engine driving this phenomenon: addicts "boosting" to feed their addiction. Drug use is another crime that society seems uninterested in prosecuting or punishing as of late. Add illicitly manufactured Fentanyl (1) to that recipe and you have an absolute onslaught of ret…

We already tried this. It was called The War on Drugs and it failed totally, completely and unambiguously. If there's one thing to understand about the last 60 years of United States drug criminalization and enforcement, it's that those policies have utterly failed to curb drug abuse and addiction. There are a mind-boggling number of studies which show that criminalizing drug use doesn't create fewer drug addicts.

Decriminalizing drugs doesn't mean that addicts would suddenly be able to afford them. How would drug decriminalization mitigate retail theft? Who is going to purchase their Fentanyl for them?

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#728

Post by avazhi »

jmyeet wrote: post #116

So if we attribute the rise in petty property theft to organized crime gangs that still doesn't get to the issue of why . we know why and we've known for thousands of years [1]: "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime" -- Aristotle No one grows up wanting to steal deoderant from Walgreens. A lot of crime can simply be explained by material conditions. Over the last 40 years in particular, we've seen real incom…

"No one grows up wanting to steal deoderant from Walgreens"

You should mix with different people. When you mix poverty and a lack of education with genetic stupidity you get some pretty obnoxious personal motivations over the population, and those motivations aren't fixed by lifting people out of poverty or trying to educate them. Some people are simply lost causes that society would be better off without, period. Pretending otherwise is naive.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#729

Post by public_defender »

bhk wrote: post #716
public_defender wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am speaking of the perspective of having seen about 200 cases of this type in the last few years (this is a moderately low sample size among practitioners) in the place in question and from having discussed the issue with colleagues who have more experience than that over longer time periods in the same place. You are free to disregard my "word of mouth" claim in favor of an elected prosecutor's press releases and…

I regret the "clearly not true" wording. I wasn't reading your original comment as closely as I should have. But now I'm not clear exactly what you are claiming. Of the 200 cases you've seen, how many were petit larceny cases that resulted in jail time? How much jail time? Every source I can find indicates that the government can reduce charges or dismiss, and that in any event, jail time is unlikely. "Jail is highly…

> how many were petit larceny cases that resulted in jail time? How much jail time?

I don't think I've seen anyone get a jail sentence for a shoplifting petit larceny in New York. However, people commonly serve jail time before sentencing in these cases. There are two major causes: arrests and bail.

The DA statement in the article you cite says that people should be issued a summons for shoplifting rather than be arrested. It is true that this should happen, but a lot of police don't seem to agree with it and they have the power to arrest. I have seen more petit larcenies in DATs than under arrest at arraignment, but it's actually a pretty close call. People who are arrested can spend a few days in jail until they are arraigned.

At arraignment, the person will be released unless bail is set. Bail cannot be set in most misdemeanors in NY after bail reform. However regarding shoplifting, the legislature has passed the "harm over harm" carve out (referenced earlier) to allow a prosecutor to ask for bail if someone is, among other things, repeatedly accused of shoplifting. Having bail set in a misdemeanor like this is a big deal because a lot of people will serve more jail time waiting for a plea offer than would have been the sentence.

Regarding discretion to dismiss, this is a nuanced issue. Line prosecutors, unlike police, have astonishingly little autonomy. More specifically there is usually freedom to be more punitive but not less punitive. There are instances where discretion is pre-delegated and the prosecutor in arraignments can dismiss a case if they see a reason this would be a good idea, but this is extremely rare. What I was saying above is that petit larceny is not such a crime. Of course there are other ways to dismiss cases later in the process, but those require more work and are available to fewer people.

Anyway my original point, which I will stick to, was that shoplifting is not deprioritized or unprosecuted by the NYC DAs. They treat it as seriously as anything, and to my mind more seriously than they should.

Re: Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan

#730

Post by jnwatson »

taurath wrote: post #602
dls2016 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 guess, but conversely I'd argue that organized retail theft has been around pretty much as long as supply chains have existed. That's the mob's bread and butter. The phrase "riding shotgun" is in common use. Perha…

> The phrase "riding shotgun" is in common use. I’m in my 30s and this is the first time I’ve ever actually understood the historical meaning of this

"Riding shotgun" was from the stagecoach days. It was the seat next to the driver that acted as a bodyguard.
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