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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

#731

Post by ALittleLight »

from wrote: post #700
ALittleLight wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? I just googled my location plus "trafficked stolen property conviction" and found news stories regarding multiple convictions. It sure seems like the police investigate and arrest people knowingly selling stolen property. In what sense is Amazon not doing this, or recklessly disregarding whether or not they are doing this? If I were a multi-hundred billion dollar business operating like Amazon, then of course…

Stolen property convictions at least at the local level primarily come from stings where police come in with property that they describe as "boosted" or in similar terms and then once the sale is completed they arrest the store owner. Amazon being online is obviously immune to this kind of police work. As long as Amazon removes the seller once they become aware something is wrong they are probably not breaking any la…

So, you think that if pawn shops and the like required thieves to fill out a webform and mail stolen property in to be resold, like on Amazon, then the shop owners would be immune from prosecution? That doesn't seem plausible to me.

The reality is that Amazon breaks the letter and spirit of the law. (Depending on jurisdiction) laws against trafficking stolen property do not require that the police catch you red handed in a sting, the law doesn't even require that you actually do know you are selling stolen property - you can be charged if you had a reckless disregard for selling stolen property. The spirit of the law is that selling stolen property makes theft more profitable and that will mean more theft which is bad so let's not sell stolen property. Amazon is obviously providing a way for thieves to profit.

Again, repeated violations of the letter and spirit of the law reported in major newspapers, and no criminal consequences for Amazon. Do you think if your local paper was repeatedly writing stories about how Pawn Shop X was helping thieves profit, that local police and prosecutors would just shrug and point to that webform + mail setup? I don't.

Even if you couldn't get a "slam dunk" case going after corporate leadership for this, you could try. Amazon has actually violated the letter and spirit of the law so it would be fair to bring a case against them. If the jury acquits, then wait until you find evidence of the next theft ring reselling on Amazon and bring new charges.

Even without a conviction I don't think corporate leadership would accept facing a jury trial once a month with the possibility of a conviction and prison time. Instead, Amazon would substantially improve protections on reselling stolen property - which is the desired outcome.

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

#732

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

ryan_lane wrote: post #509
listenallyall wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I generally agree there's little positive effect from harshly punishing very petty thieves, saying "address the underlying issue" is a major cop-out basically indicating you have no interest in fixing anything. What do you think the "underlying issue" is? Drug abuse? Lack of education? Paucity of low-skill jobs? Not enough affordable housing? Discrimination? Lack of opportunities for ex-prisoners? Inflation?…

It's not a cop-out, it's exactly how other countries have eliminated this problem. The US is the largest incarcerator in the world, yet it still has these problems. Your suggestion is that we can imprison our way out of this, but prison makes people poorer, in some cases permanently, which ultimately makes the problem worse.

And yet not imprisoning people isn't a solution either. Weird.

Portugal and the NL other countries who are supposedly soft on druggies are actually far stricter with them than Canada or the USA - but by imprisoning the drug user on first use they provide a better outcome than going easy on them until they manage to commit serious crime and have to do hard time.

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

#733

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

standardUser wrote: post #112
Vaslo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What punishment do you suggest then? The unacceptable answer is none.

The fact that the only solution you see is "punishment" is exactly the problem. No reasonable punishment will stop these crimes. Period. And unreasonable punishments, like locking a human in a cage without rehabilitation for years of their life, only make the problem worse and cost us a ridiculous amount of money (and humanity). So maybe take a step back, or five, and think about the causes of petty crimes and why th…

Nah, locking them up is cheaper than leaving them out. Yes, it may cost a lot but what do you think the societal cost is of beating up CVS employees until they close another store? What do you think the neighbors would want?

> locking a human in a cage without rehabilitation for years of their life

A human who isn't worth letting out even if it were safe to do so. Net positive to society. I'd rather imprison one person than sentence another to a mugging or rape. The CVS employees have rights too.

> make the problem worse and cost us a ridiculous amount of money (and humanity)

Explain the humanity loss to someone mugged or raped by a repeat offender.

> why they happen here more than other nations

Why are more rapes reported in Sweden than India? Because more rapes happen, or more rapes are reported? In many countries if you tried to shoplift you'd simply be beaten and thrown out. In the USA police are called and a report is written.

As for which nation is safer, it depends if you're a criminal or not.

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

#734

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

standardUser wrote: post #152
robertoandred wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? They’re a danger to society otherwise.

If a person steals some makeup from a drug store, what danger do you face? What exactly is the danger you feel you are in?

You're laughably sheltered. The same person would set a baby afire to get drugs. By refusing to get them off the street at the first intervention you're setting some poor schmo up to take the fall, robbery, beating, or death.

This isn't some poor single mom who can't afford an extra $20 a month to feed her baby, stealing formula. Watch the videos - crews of five to ten are walking into a store and looting it systematically - expensive cosmetics and other non-essentials - and beating anyone who interferes. Regardless of the violence it just gets called "shoplifting" in the news.

You're minimizing organized crime that results in attempted murderer simply because the predicate crime sounds small.

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

#735

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

_-david-_ wrote: post #708
zuminator wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shoplifting is not violent behavior.

Why don't you think shoplifting is violence? Because you don't believe people have a right to property or because it is theft from a company?

Because the news doesn't report the truth. You have to watch youtube videos of the thefts to see the violence. Even then, the most egregious videos seem to be vanishing as if they're being reported. Most of these people have no idea because the news tells them it's a made-up MAGA issue or something.

And the violence is never punishable if you're a "victim". A guard who trips a thief will be charged, no question, but a thief who beats that guard on camera isn't even going to be investigated. No budget for "shoplifting" after all.

It's not like someone is stealing food. These thugs are systematically ripping off just less than $1000 of expensive cosmetics, medicine, etc, that they can sell. Some of the videos show the thieves with calculators, tabulating their take and leaving just before they cross the line.

This comes out of the pockets of the honest customers, if they weren't beaten in the robbery itself. The cost of these robberies is society itself.

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

#736

Post by quacked »

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?

I thought about this for a while and I don't have a coherent answer.

I do think it's interesting that the Old Internet was more spontaneous, unorganized, and high-trust than the New Internet. It would be effortless to find counterexamples to this claim (back in the day I got death threats, now we have moderators for that!) but the fact remains that any new prosperous sector of the New Internet is immediately invaded by advertisers, authoritarian moderation teams, and the Eternal September effect, and the way that people present themselves on the New Internet is far more curated than in the past.

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

#737

Post by from »

ALittleLight wrote: post #731
from wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stolen property convictions at least at the local level primarily come from stings where police come in with property that they describe as "boosted" or in similar terms and then once the sale is completed they arrest the store owner. Amazon being online is obviously immune to this kind of police work. As long as Amazon removes the seller once they become aware something is wrong they are probably not breaking any la…

So, you think that if pawn shops and the like required thieves to fill out a webform and mail stolen property in to be resold, like on Amazon, then the shop owners would be immune from prosecution? That doesn't seem plausible to me. The reality is that Amazon breaks the letter and spirit of the law. (Depending on jurisdiction) laws against trafficking stolen property do not require that the police catch you red hande…

> So, you think that if pawn shops and the like required thieves to fill out a webform and mail stolen property in to be resold, like on Amazon, then the shop owners would be immune from prosecution? That doesn't seem plausible to me.

Not immune, just saying that the way police traditionally approach stolen property cases basically requires the suspect to be on tape acknowledging receiving stolen property. The reason they do that is because is the law requires them to show knowledge or that a reasonable person would know the property is stolen. Unless they find an email where someone in the company is notified that a seller is selling stolen property and doesn't do anything about they probably don't have a criminal case. What they could do is sue, get a "consent decree" and as part of the settlement force Amazon to implement more rigorous seller identification or something like that. But I doubt any Amazon employees are going to jail over this.

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

#738

Post by dlkf »

alkonaut wrote: post #580
dlkf wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden, deodorant sticks are smaller than what I’d get in Canada. There’s also an appalling lack of variety. In particular, you never see Old Spice. I think there is a lucrative business opportunity in bringing American deodorant maximalism to the nordics.

> deodorant sticks are smaller than what I’d get in Canada. This must be due to the size of the north american armpit. > There’s also an appalling lack of variety. In particular, you never see Old Spice. There aren't any Tim Hortons either but I'm not sure if "Brand X is missing" and "There is no variety" is generally the same thing.

That was just an example. In general, the Swedish drugstore will have 5-10 options, whereas the Canadian equivalent will have dozens.

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

#739

Post by listenallyall »

pj_mukh wrote: post #420
listenallyall wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I generally agree there's little positive effect from harshly punishing very petty thieves, saying "address the underlying issue" is a major cop-out basically indicating you have no interest in fixing anything. What do you think the "underlying issue" is? Drug abuse? Lack of education? Paucity of low-skill jobs? Not enough affordable housing? Discrimination? Lack of opportunities for ex-prisoners? Inflation?…

This is such a weird statement. "The causes of the disease is so complicated, that anyone looking to do anything other than treat the symptoms must be disingenuous" ? :/ It is a long list of problems that most other advanced countries seem to have mitigated. Why must we throw our hands up like, "ugh, Its too hard, I need something simpler"?

I take issue with your statement that theft is a "disease." I do agree that for a small segment of the population, economic conditions are extremely difficult... but I don't think these are the people committing the majority of thefts. As long as you start with the assumption that theft is a disease, i.e. something that happens TO an individual, rather than a choice, we're going to have greatly-differing opinions on how to remediate.

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

#740

Post by thegginthesky »

1MachineElf wrote: post #710
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…

>The least remote, most-managed places have security locks on items over $15. It is impossible to run a friendly, neighborhood-run store when any new customer is a potential thief. When theft goes uncontrolled, owners begin to look at their customers with suspicion. Those who don't like theft leave for more peaceful places and are replaced by owners who will tolerate theft with a big insurance policy and force. There…

A few blocks away from John Hopkins right? I find that city so bizarre, you have mansions, one of the top universities in the country, and a few blocks away it's pure ghetto. People go from being friendly to staring at you as if you are an alien.

Baltimore is so weird, sometimes feels like living in Rio de Janeiro but only the bad part of Rio. None of the music scene, night life or beaches of Rio, but all of the inequality and violence.

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