Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by macinjosh | Hacker News Reader

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For all those out there that applauded Prop 47 that helped lead to this mess let me tell you a story of how this law leads to more inequality not less.

A single mother working 2 minimum wage jobs in different parts of the city uses her car to travel to work. She basically lives in her car so she must keep belongings she will need in there. While working her first shift for the day her car is broken into. Her bag with her uniform for her second shift is stolen along with everything else.

The cops tell her that the damage to her 20 year old used car's window and the items stolen add up to less than $950 so they can't do much of anything for her.

Meanwhile, across town, a rich tech elite's high end electric car is broken into and some valuable electronics are stolen. The damage and theft adds up to well over $950 so the police are able to investigate.

At the end of the day the tech elite orders replacement electronics with next day prime delivery and has their assistant work on repairing the window. The single mother gets fired from her second job for not having the appropriate attire. Great work California.

This has always been true. If a poor persons bike is stolen, it's a misdemeanor. If a rich person's bike is stolen it's a felony. It's disgusting.

This probably isn't going to be popular, but once in the west horse thieves where hung - today the car or bike has replaced the horse, and while I understand the supreme court would be against the death penalty for it, why shouldn't that crime carry a very harsh penalty?

I understand that the historical lesson was that the Bloody Code (almost any property crime, even minor ones, were punished by hanging) but it seems extremely counter intuitive that harsh penalties carried openly wouldn't have a deterrence effect. I won't advocate hanging for a simple crime like this, but wouldn't a mandatory minimum of 10 years have some similar effect?

I don’t think your progressive Californian would disagree at all that that story is a shock to the conscience, or that California must change to stop that from happening.

We’d disagree a lot about what the biggest problem in the story is, though.

Is there an article on this story?

I'll present a counter argument: these crimes are born out of poverty and addiction. Charging even more addicts & poor people with felonies does nothing to help equality.

If I were on crank stealing bike cranks to buy more crank, I would want to be arrested and sweat out withdrawal in treatment or even jail. Whatever the facility, I'd have medical staff monitoring my symptoms every step of the way, unlike in my tent on the sidewalk.

The last thing I would want is to spend a night in jail then released for time served, wander back to my crank den, where after getting more crank into my veins I will be back on the street finding more bike cranks to sell for scrap and continue feeding the beast until I die. You might say that sounds bleaker than reality, but Los Angeles just buried some 1500 unclaimed dead the other day.

> If I were on crank stealing bike cranks to buy more crank, I would want to be arrested and sweat out withdrawal

You are speaking as someone who hasn't suffered from addiction. If you are an addict, you want drugs and you'll avoid withdrawl at all costs.

> Whatever the facility, I'd have medical staff monitoring my symptoms

You get the bare minimum in jail.

> The last thing I would want is to spend a night in jail then released for time served, wander back to my crank den, where after getting more crank into my veins

If you were an addict, that's exactly what you would want.

If wealthy are impacted by a crime in the same way as poor people, suddenly coming up with solutions becomes important.

An additional angle is that the state is well and truly out of money and running out of lenders, yet continues to see the number of poor and their related costs increase.

One way to offset growth in welfare expenses might be to permit poor people some way to directly steal with impunity, thus they can still somehow be fed, while simultaneously reducing attendant enforcement costs and prison populations.

Using theft as a mechanism for eating is about as broken as you can get. As pointed out by the GP, that theft disproportionally affects the poor directly (their stuff is stolen) and indirectly (their insurance costs are higher).

Not everything is about spending more to fed those already at the bottom — it’s better to prevent that in the first place. While certainly not a simple problem with simple answers, macro changes in culture would go a long way without requiring capital spending. Notice how low the crime rate is in Japan, despite plenty poor and hungry. Not without problems, the societal focus on family and thinking of the larger group has its benefits. The US could benefit a lot from changes in its culture to be less individualistic (and punishment oriented) and more civic minded.

> Using theft as a mechanism for eating is about as broken as you can get.

In addition to being inefficient, a populace that is convinced that their government won’t protect them will eventually start taking justice into their own hands. CA doesn’t seem to be there… yet.

Do you propose that the thief is rich or does not benefit from the theft?

The poor do little to directly increase revenues, so the cold financial evaluations that states are too good at will reveal a net benefit to the state.

I did not make an claim that "...everything is about spending more to fed[sic} those already at the bottom..." You are presenting a straw man.

The discussion about the entire U.S., which is an incredibly diverse region inclusive of almost every demographic except those found in the very poorest nations on the planet is not useful in a discussion on a specific region within the U.S., and worse is to compare it with somewhere else in the world and make no attempt to explain why the comparison is valid.

I don’t understand your argument at all.

First, we aren’t talking about the whole US — California is literally in the title of the article. And it’s explicitly calling out SF and the Bay Area for most of the article (Scott Weiner, from SF, is the impetuous).

The idea that normalizing car theft is a good thing is indefensible. You’re advocating for harming others, as well as creating a lawless society. To attempt to say this presents a solution is to ignore how we got to this place, recognizing there are plenty of other ways to address these issues.

My point about Japan was not that it’s the same as the US, but rather cultural changes affect rates of criminal behavior. It’s one potential avenue that’s ignored in public debate in the US that costs no money but has great baring on our collective future.

I'm not suggesting anything other than the state may not be interested in serving the poor and more interested in reducing what the state pays out.

I did not make a statement about what I would personally prefer the state to do.

Although I don't agree with this, this is a revealing insight into understanding how the liberal thought process works. It explains why liberals are so soft on crime.

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