Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cubano | Hacker News Reader

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This is surprising to me for when I was in Florida prison in 2003 there was a man who was serving a 15-year "3 strikes" sentence for stealing a rusty $30 bike off a house porch.

I was incredulous, as of course was he, and I asked to look at his paperwork because, frankly, I didn't believe him.

Often, I have learned, when you hear of things like this in the system, once you look at the paperwork you find out "oh, on top of stealing the bicycle you also pulled a gun on someone" or something of the like that explains things.

Not this time...the guy was a drug addict in his 40's who had a lifetime of petty crap, and I guess the judge was in a shit mood the day of sentencing. Since a porch is attached to a house..an "occupied dwelling" in Florida parlance, this was considered a rather serious crime, thus the 15-year bam!

I guess I'm trying to say...it depends upon several factors how things like this are going to be treated. To be honest, I have a few "friends" in Vegas now that are telling me they are really cracking down on fraud and handing out real time behind relatively minor offenses.

Just carrying a fake ID in Vegas with priors will get you a 2-5 year state-sponsored vacation.

I'd much rather live in a society where I have to guard my credit card info an lock my doors than one in which the state will cart people off for nonviolent crimes like stealing a bike or using a fake ID. Petty criminals are much less of a drag on society than the measures society would need to take to get rid of them.

See if you feel that way when it's your bike that gets stolen. Especially if it's your primary mode of transportation.

Petty crimes like this ruin otherwise helpful ideas. In my city I've come across a number of Bird scooters that have been vandalized, had the GPS ripped off to presumably steal them for personal use.

If nobody does anything about that, an otherwise great idea that could seriously help people get around more easily and reduce traffic and pollution will simply not work, because we allow some people to get away with being assholes.

A lot of people find those scooters to be tremendously annoying and dangerous.

Maybe so, but that doesn't justify destroying or stealing them.

I find cars tremendously annoying and dangerous, does that mean I can start smashing them up?

the point is that you are claiming that they are being vandalized despite having demonstrated great social good, which, like cars, is the very notion under dispute with that vandalism.

Vandalism is not an appropriate way to express your opinion about whether something is a great social good. It's also very difficult for something to become a social good, if it's unavailable because of unchecked vandalism.

Also, they are not being only vandalized, but stolen, which would imply that the perpetrators do believe the scooters are quite useful, but simply don't want to pay for them.

I'm not saying that vandalism is a good or proper way to respond to something. I'm saying that their vandalism is directly correspondent with the fact that they are a nuisance rather than a boon. It doesn't matter if they are being appropriate about it, it's simply NOT a tragedy of the commons situation.

You are assuming that the motivation of the vandals is to protest the presence of the scooters because they dislike them. That is an unfounded assumption on your part. I don't know if you've ever been in a city or been a teenager, but generally vandals vandalize stuff because they enjoy doing so, not to make any kind of political statement.

You're also ignoring that many of the scooters are being stolen not vandalized, or the vandalism is part of the theft (ripping off the GPS unit so the scooter can't be tracked).

Besides nuisance/boon is not a binary switch. Even if the vandals were a handful of angry cranks who were annoyed by the scooters, that doesn't imply that the scooters aren't overall beneficial to the city.

I have made no such assumption. ALL I am saying is that you have not made a "tragedy of the commons" argument.

Maybe this vandalism is done by someone with the intent of holding back any innovation, maybe some sort of conservatism or simply keeping the competition away with any means possible.. Sure, some of it may be pure vandalism...

You act like you've never had your old POS bike stolen.

At some point I figured the guy who took mine needed it more than the effort I didn't take to lock it up.

> the state will cart people off for nonviolent crimes like stealing a bike or using a fake ID

Reasonable, morally normal people don't want anybody sent to prison for stealing a bike. That's a reductive straw man. The issue at hand is that this person had stolen before, had been caught stealing multiple times before, and, despite being told that doing it again would result in a long sentence, still couldn't stop himself from stealing a bike.

This is a pattern of bad behavior, even in response to the threat of dire consequences. That's not normal. And it's not just "stealing a bike." It's the totality of the behavior that's being punished. "Three strikes" laws require three strikes. It's silly to look at any one of those strikes in isolation. The point is that society is saying, "enough is enough."

thank you.

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