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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

There is an intangible to living in a place where cars are regularly broken into vs. living in a place where they aren't. Think of the kinds of attitudes that people develop towards others in the two places. Trust vs. distrust, comfort vs. unease, open vs. closed. There's also the second-order effects of having a class of people going around committing those kinds of crimes with impunity. Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos.

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Your words bring to mind my experience with gentrification in a few cities: one person's order is another person's chaos. If you ask a longterm resident in a gentrifying neighborhood how they feel about what the new developments are doing to their social fabric, you might find your simple truism gets wierded <3

It's often that crimes restore lost order and stability for some people. Not saying it's moral on one side or the other, but it certainly doesn't feel like a neat little package.

I know that moral philosophy is a complex matter, but I should hope we can agree that being upset that your car was broken into is significantly different than being upset that there’s a hip coffee shop in your neighborhood.

I think its that not affording rent leads to higher demand for crime.

> Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos.

Why does SF have a sizable increase in property crimes over the past 10 years but a drop in violent crimes? I'd imagine if chaos did truly beget chaos, then rates of crime across the board would be going up.

So true. Reminded me of Swiss towns in the Alps where houses, bikes in the shopping street and cars in general are unlocked. Really refreshing and makes you feel safe. The bigger risk to a car is when it is locked and the lock mechanism freezes over.

At the far other extreme of the spectrum, in blighted urban neighborhoods, everyone also leaves their cars unlocked. If you let the junkies inspect the contents of your car freely, they won't smash the windows to do it.

Living in a place with breakins is fine for people who don't have expensive things lying around.

The thieves don’t leave crappy old cars alone.

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