Hacker News Reader

Comment by sudosysgen | Hacker News Reader

Similarly, after civil asset forfeiture the #2 form of theft is wage theft.

EDIT : I've been corrected by someone below - wage theft is the #1 form of theft, civil asset forfeiture is #2

I think you have those reversed. Wage theft is like $9.2 billion [1], and civil forfeiture is like $68 Billion total across 20 years [2]

[1]: https://www.nelp.org/publication/forced-arbitration-cost-wor... [2]: https://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit-3/

Huh, you're right. I'll try to correct my comment!

But let's have a moral panic about the "organized gangs robbing Walgreens" instead, perhaps 67 news stories a day about it?

Libertarians have been making noise about this issue for years/decades, but few people seem to care.

If it's really that bad that problem will just solve itself: they'll just close all the stores.

We'll save the moral panic for when those businesses inevitably leave the neighborhood and create "food deserts". You know, after the damage is already done.

They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line, and even then others will grow to fill their place.

Food deserts aren't and never were created by shoplifting.

> They're not going to leave until it threatens their profit line,

It does.

> and even then others will grow to fill their place.

Filling their place will be family operated corner shops that charge 3x as much. I have lived in such neighborhoods and seen it myself. You can't gaslight me sudosysgen.

It will never do so - they will simply increase prices, and not by 3x.

I'm not gaslighting you. There are many ways to make a grocery store for produce where people can't shoplift. Good luck stealing potatoes from a farmer's market. And they're not more expensive either.

I live in such a neighborhood and I can see it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com