Train burglaries in LA
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A loss of civic sense and cultural criminality are incredibly hard to weed out of a population, once it has taken root. I worry that the a mix of pessimism and a loss of civic sense is sending non-elite America into a death spiral.
Opponents of return-to-normalcy claim that these are temporary and anomalous circumstances as a result of covid. However, a 2 year period of cultural erosion can lead to this regression getting cemented as a modern cultural identity of non-elite US.
Cost-benefit analyses have been ignored in favor of tunnel-visioning on viral outcomes and short term political gain. At the end of this, we might just find ourselves asking "We made it out of this, but at what cost?".
p.s: I am not advocating for any particular policy, just pointing to the absence of any holistic response. That being said, the complete failure of the American response in terms of 'viral outcomes' despite tunnel visioning on it, doesn't inspire confidence in it.
There is only circumstantial evidence but the story sounds plausible. If things continue like this, I'd wager that trump will return in 24
Is the root of this issue really "in" the population? Or is the population merely responding to a set of external circumstances?
I'm uneasy when someone says something like "weed out of a population." Many dark journeys have started with this idea.
> However, a 2 year period of cultural erosion can lead to this regression getting cemented as a modern cultural identity of non-elite US.
From my perspective, this erosion started showing itself during Occupy Wall Street. Our entire economy was set on fire and very few, if any, people were actually held responsible for that. They were bailed out, and everyone was expected to move on.
If I had a sense that something needed to be "weeded out" of my society, I know that's where I would start.
Or you could argue that their internal culture probably due to religion was not strong enough to fight against external influences.
Sweden is one of the least religious countries in Europe, and one of the safest.
"Approximately 13 percent of the population in Sweden experience problems in their own residential area with crime, violence or vandalism. It is one of the highest proportions in Europe."
https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/artiklar/2019/fler-upplev...
Modern America has no common history. America has no common ethnicity, no common roots and now no common religion. The least religious nations are often ethnically homogeneous (Sweden, Korea) or have an incredibly strong national cultural identity of what it means to belong (France, Singapore).The US had neither, and then took down the one thing that held together 80% of the US as of 2000. ie. Christianity (mostly protestant-derived)
And I'm a Hindu-by-birth Atheist immigrant. So, I don't have any vested interest in the restoration of Europe-derived Christianity within the US.
To me, the closest thing to a common american identity is a combination of the following 3:
* Protestant values of hard work, merit and family
* Colorblind-live-and-let-live immigrant melting pot
* Capitalistic enterprising nature of shooting for the moon and that anyone can be a billionaire/President.
Now, these might not be perfect, but it was the closest thing to national values that 80% could get buy in on.
However, populist politics of the last 10 years and the change in wealth distribution post 2000 has seen wholesale rejection of almost all of these values from both the populist left and the populist right. As the nation continues fracturing, the resentment towards your fellow countrymen grows to the point that you feel no civic duty towards your fellow countrymen, and maybe even take joy in looting them.
Religion unites as long as it is homogeneous. High level of religious beliefs would not help much, if they didn't unify people through a collective identity. So in this case, high levels of religious participation would not have helped, because there would still never be any agreement on a common religious identity given the degree of religious heterogeneity.
On an aside, I always find it funny when people say that countries that tolerate heterogenous identities such as the US or India are discriminatory or racist. Yeah, as if you with your 95+% cultural/religious/ethnic homogeneity have any right to speak about diversity. You can already see Europe coming apart at its seams with a small influx of culturally diverse middle-eastern refugees. The friction you see, is a result of an open system that allows each of these incompatible cultural identities to get a voice in the national discourse.
Hindus in India divide and fight amongst themselves based on caste even though they all follow the same religion.
In other words: freedom, equality, justice, democracy, and self-determination.
America's relationship with religion has always been complex. The first amendment simultaneously guarantees the free practice of religion and enshrines its separation from the state; as a government, the U.S. cannot make any law that preferences a particular religion. Many of the founders were Deists, which is a religion that simultaneously accepts the existence of God but also relies upon empiricism, rationality, and individual thought to divine His will. America is also explicitly not Protestant, and the dominant religion varies a lot from place to place. I grew up in New England, which has a Puritan early history but now is populated by largely Catholic Irish & Italian immigrants. My mom's childhood friends in NYC all seemed to be Jewish. In Utah, it's mostly Mormon.
I'd argue that the main reason America is falling apart is that we've forgotten those core values of liberty, equality, justice, democracy, and self-determination. These have always existed in some tension, but right now we're not doing a particularly good job of any of them. Instead the focus is on capitalism, virtue-signalling, protection from outsiders, preferencing your in-group, forcing your particular morality on others, and many other very human but very un-American activities.
There’s no stuffing the genie back in the bottle now. We’re going to be paying the price for the corporate excess of the 90s, 2000s and 2010s for the next few decades in the form of climate change, disinformation, authoritarianism and the ensuing civil unrest. Thanks to the combination of the last three we will continue to be unable to muster a coherent response to any problem going forward.
Maybe we can have some good times again eventually, but the next decade or two are going to be rough.
The rich are getting richer faster than the rest of us.
Real wages are stagnant. Social safety nets are constantly being removed.
Labor protections have been being rolled back or enforcement lax since the ATC strike.
Atomization and alienation have taken root.
The mythos of the nuclear family being paramount is fully embedded in the culture, destroying the older concept of a broader family and community taking part in the rearing of the next generation and just general socialization.
We're heading to the failure of multiple systems, including food production and power, due to climate change and the increasing frequency of disastrous weather systems.
"Greed is good" has been a value promulgated by the elites for a few generations now.
Things are getting more expensive faster than wage growth, especially basics and things needed for economic upward mobility (housing, education, healthcare, etc).
Identity politics and wedge issues are dividing people who otherwise have similar interests.
Modern life is anxiety and depression inducing, creating a rise in interpersonal conflict.
Our government is no longer accountable to the people or representative of them in any real way unless you're in the top quintile of wealth/income (and that is generous).
All of these things, and many more, are ripping apart the social contract. People no longer feel invested in the wellbeing of the places in which they reside or the governmental and societal systems they are a part of. Instead, they merely endure them with resentment. This won't end well.
I think we're past "nuclear family" at this point. Getting married is actively discouraged by our legal system.
- California is getting very soft on crime recently, people now realize they can rob and steal what they want and there are zero consequences for it, this has lead to almost a complete collapse of order in most major california cities(see excessive smash and grabs($1B stolen in a few weeks in LA/SF bay area) and skyrocketing drug use(SF has more addicts than high school students) and homelessness, along with car jackings and robberies). I live in california and my family has been here for over a hundred years so I have seen its rapid deterioration in the past 3-4 years.
- Complete abandonment of any type of positive morality from the media or any leaders.
- Extreme division due to both right and left moving farther from the center.
- Sky high college costs have made things very difficult for people that are in college and those leaving the system are left with life crushing debt.
- Housing and rent are at all time highs due to excessive money printing and over generous govt. handouts the past 1-2 years.
- Jobs are available and are plentiful there are just not enough workers for the positions or qualified people for the higher earning ones, in addition alot of people were making more sitting around getting checks and enhanced unemployment than working at the lower wage positions.
- I traveled to multiple states over the last year(Hawaii, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Oregon) and this stuff is not happening everywhere, its mainly in CA and NYC and other high density urban areas.
You are claiming this isn't happening in those states, but especially New Mexico and Oregon, ... it is definitely happening in those states, so I question your experience with the other ones. Out of those, maybe Utah is not having those problems? Even as an island, Hawaii has had huge problems for decades, perhaps the worst (housing affordability, homelessness, rising crime rate).
This says a lot about your position in what you imagine is the 'center'; the reality is that both sides are only moving further right. This has been happening for decades.
This is a false statement according to actual studies. Democrats have been moving further left at a higher rate than Republicans have been moving further right. [0] [1]
Before you say this study is outdated and therefore no longer relevant, you need to find a well regarded study that supports your original claim.
[0] http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/201...
[1] https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/pew-research-c...
California's incarceration rate is already double or triple that of Canada, Japan or Western Europe.
Actually, I think they're at all-time highs because you literally refuse to build anything except suburban hellscapes full of single-family houses made of ticky-tacky that all look just the same. I'm serious about this. California's recently-passed upzoning law is the only effective policy intervention for housing I've seen from your state in decades.
I think some of the points in your comment may be valid, especially regarding extreme division, loss of societal trust, and growing inequality. Trust in police and in our institutions probably hit an all time low in 2020. But I think pointing purely to "progressive DAs" doesn't map to reality.
1. Some guy chased a woman in his car and she ran to a fire station. He crashed into the fire station and fought firefighters. Released 0 bail.
2. Violent criminal with a long past let out of jail to attend funeral and hasn’t returned.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. We have constant 0 bail for young carjackers who steal peoples cars for joy rides.
It’s madness. I don’t care what anyone says about “punishment doesn’t deter crime”. That’s against human nature and total horseshit.
Is the problem really that too few people are in prison?
Whichever way you cut it, it's bad for society for it to be such a large percentage.
We have many criminals.
Criminals deserve punishment, including jail should the crime be severe enough.
Criminals prey on law abiding citizens.
If you won't enforce the law, citizens will take the law into the their own hands.
Then you will be forced to cry for criminals even more than you are doing now.
If you don't treat the cause, then you'll just continue getting more symptoms.
Maybe we should figure out what it is about the USA that keeps generating so much more antisocial behavior than everywhere else and fix that.
It seems extremely difficult to break this cycle without actually removing kids from their parents/friend groups.
I can see you're enraged.
There's the real problem about everything - making judgments and decisions about the world based on emotions, not facts. You should care what other people say, especially the people who study things scientifically. I'm sure it sounds great and judicious to your enraged lizard brain to lock someone up and throw away the key, but there's a lot more to consider than what makes you feel good.
It's not a "mythos", it's a fact that children raised in nuclear families have much better outcomes than those who are not [0]. Practically every sociological study confirms this.
Black children are the least likely to be raised in nuclear families in the US, and aligned with the study, are the most likely to suffer from health and mental/emotional/sociological issues.
It's recently become some weird leftist/neo-marxist talking point to subvert the "Western proscribed nuclear family". BLM had to remove this talking point from their website after it was widely criticized [1].
[0] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_246.pdf
[1] https://news.yahoo.com/black-lives-matter-removes-language-1...
Come on dude, use context clues.
Which are specifically covered in the CDC report that I listed above.
"Children living in blended (i.e., stepparent), cohabiting, unmarried biological or adoptive, extended, and other families were generally disadvantaged relative to children in nuclear families, and were, for the most part, comparable to children living in single-parent families regarding most health status and access to care measures."
> Which is why I explicitly mentioned extended ("broader") families and communities.
Those "broader" families and communities have unfortunately been failing Black Americans for generations.
>Come on dude, use context clues.
Come on dude, use reading comprehension. At least you admitted here for all to see that you'd rather be a virtue signaler over being a data driven adult.
As I said, I agree that having a mom and dad is good. It produces better outcomes than having one or neither. Go grind your axe elsewhere.
Isn’t that just a restatement if the rather mundane concept of compound interest?
If savings account A has $100 and account B has $1mil, does it go without saying that account B will grow far faster?
I never understood why compound interest should be seen as a negative. What is the counter proposal?
So many of these Alex Jones wannabe 'anti-maskers invade a store protesters', schoolboard meeting ravers get publicized because they get people fired up and drive clicks and ad revenue.
It's normalizing that the way to handle disagreement is to act out.
I'm sorry to say that this onslaught of terrible behavior isn't because people are tired of lockdowns, it's because it's great for driving ad traffic & getting $ from voters.
What we have here is not a sudden lapse in morals - it's a result of, rather on purpose, individualism. Since the community has nothing to lose or gain, the community just stands aside and looks.
As an aside, this reminds me of gypsy villages in Romania - places where lines of concern between insiders and outsiders are so sharply drawn, that from the outside it looks like complete lawlessness. It's not - it's lawless only if you're an outsider, and that village doesn't care about you.
Social mechanisms can be pretty complex (and fascinating). TBH, rather than trying to figure them out, it might be easier in cases like that to just throw manpower (and cameras) at the problem. But long term - this is where it's very much worth it to have cops work with/as social workers and get embedded in their communities. That this got to where it got speaks volumes about police and citizens there being in a purely adversarial context - otherwise the first old lady to meet a cop 6 months ago would have told him what's going on and who's started it.
> It’s not just in LA, theft and vandalism have gone way up on all the rail networks. My company is experiencing some of the worst loss numbers while in rail transit. We just announced that all transport carts will be welded shut and unwelded when it gets to the destination. Even locks aren’t enough.
Same tools, bigger rewards.
Of course, we did nothing when it was just bikes being stolen because it was just hippy car-free bike riders impacted.
...okay, reality check, even if the autopilots get good enough, it'll still be incredibly easy to whack a drone into the train's overhead wires if you have a big enough stick, and now they potentially have to fix the cable, or maybe a blown transformer. Right.
Now I actually think about it (thanks), what would a drone be doing? Yelling really loudly? Getting footage of people's faces?
It's probably only a matter of time until drones end up equipped with taser units :/ (I honestly don't want to be around when they can actually shoot things...), but besides that I now realize they wouldn't really present a legitimate threat (yet). They'd just be very oversized mosquitoes.
I'd completely forgotten this is America though, where people can and do shoot at stuff they don't like and/or is annoying. That would be significantly more effective than a giant baseball bat (which would definitely look hilarious but be a lot less precise).
Or Napalm?
FWIW it looks like a bunch of Russians had similar ideas 5 years ago and bolted a paintball gun to a drone (apparently with automatic targeting too): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8igjcW39T4k
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Ängäyge!1!!
I'd call them TrackBlastR.
I'm not even faulting the elites for it really -- how are you, in a non-authoritarian society, supposed to handle when basic services are under attack and can't effectively discipline or enforce law, either because you just can't police enough, people refuse to obey law and order any more, or you're not allowed to use force for political reasons? Or a certain level (or $ amount) of crime is just ok? All you can do is create greater moats around the areas you can protect and see if the underclass can sort itself out.
I see this kind of creeping / boiling the frog effect happening in lots of developments lately. (although I'm sure people of every generation have decried the end of the world too)
Take the Portland (or Oregon?) relaxation of drug penalties, etc. Sure, it only makes sense to stop criminalizing drug use when everyone's doing it and it's loading up your prisons. But you didn't exactly solve the problem. You just found a less bad way to deal with the effects. And you're still on a path where people are using drugs more and more, and the elites flee to their gated communities to let the underclass sort itself out downtown, because it's not "fair" or "equitable" to lock up people for drug use. "We need less policing, more understanding." Eventually you understand yourself all the way into a society that's broken down.
The sad thing is that the people who suffer most from crime and belief that having a system with rules is against them, are the poor and vulnerable.
I don't think our approaches to these problems is working well.
If you're a pleb, like me, I think the best bet is to just hunker down, keep your head down, stay away from mentally ill types, and focus on getting very good at a useful skill. The elite will still need software engineers to build out the dystopia.
EDIT: To be sure, I wonder because my city is both HQ and a significant hub for one of those F500 major Class I freight rail operators, but I haven't heard of such brazen exploits happening locally...yet?
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/s2sjxj/los_angeles_th...
I wonder if this is an evolution of the security cat & mouse game with shipping switching to have more random items people ordered directly to their home? Similar to porch-pirates being more of an issue today than 30 years ago.
Before, if you broke into a container, you'd often find weird homogenous B2B stuff. Like a bunch of dog food.
but presumably the volume of b2c stuff being shipped over rail hasn't changed? after all, the b2c stuff has to get to customers somehow. Maybe a random assortment makes it a more attractive target due to the skinner box effect (ie. lootboxes).
If you open up a container of UPS shipments, and you grab one random bag out of there-- there will be valuable consumer goods in it.
Why would that be hard? eBay, craigslist, Facebook groups, and other platforms exist which can be used to facilitate the quick and easy offloading of stolen goods.
And then if anyone is poking around at secondary markets, you have a massive number of item X showing up new-in-box grey market in a zip code where a bunch of that item was stolen.
Compare to having 20 random consumer items, all stolen from different end-recipients. It's hard for any authority to know these items were stolen. It's hard to establish you stole them or were knowingly receiving stolen property. Even if they surmise that they're probably stolen, as far as they know you could have committed petty theft several times at unknown places.
OTOH, I think your argument assumes criminals are lacking creativity... and that the police care and/or have the resources to track $8K worth of headphones. If $8K of headphones are stolen, how many % of total headphones sold on eBay/CL/FB/etc. per month is that? Also, who says they have to offload all the headphones immediately? What's to prevent a "criminal network" or a single person from creating 20 different eBay accounts, each selling one pair - location: obviously not near where they were stolen from. Repeat process once per x months or just wait a few months until the heat is lower. Or perhaps pass the headphones on to a larger "criminal network" who can resell them all over the US. Also on eBay one could just say "shipping from northern California" when in fact they are located in Southern California - who will verify that? Also you could take a few pair to pawn shops... some might even take multiple pairs at once. Also someone could gift a bunch to friends/family. I'm sure there are tons of tricks criminals use to offload stolen goods.
See: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-blue-whal...
Similar principles apply to human transportation modes. In particular, safety of routes, for passengers and cargo, is absolutely paramount, and there's little that kills traffic, whether terminal or through-passage, than increased risk.
For rail, the equivalents are continent-spanning cargo operations, efficient freight loading and unloading (particularly via intermodal containerised traffic), and a lack of effective theft or crime operations against the trains and their cargo itself.
The Twitter thread here is strong evidence of a failure of that "no effective predators" requirement. Various supply-chain issues may be changing the calculus on long-distance freight operations and efficiency --- whether cargos decrease in quantity, in value, or in predictability, each of these would decrease operating efficiencies and opportunities. Containerisation is proving to be both a boon and a risk as well, by facilitating theft.
How challenging this might prove for railroads isn't clear, but I see a potentially large risk here.
As John Schreiber's thread notes, law enforcement for railroads is provided by the railroad companies themselves, in one of the first multi-jurisdictional police forces. Historically, railroad cops were more the scourge of hoboes and patrolled freight yards, but they might have to extend operations further if attacks such as these are increasing in frequency.
For those frustrated by Twitter's interface, Threadreader and Nitter links:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1481770722271760384.html
https://nitter.kavin.rocks/johnschreiber/status/148177072227...
During times when Roman security was good - the economy could develop complex systems of trade, which developed coinage, mathematics, architecture, and all sorts of specialists and artisans.
When security was no longer reliable due to the influx of raiders, piracy, and hoards of barbarians, all of those complex activities ceased.
The most complex aspects of society are always the first to collapse when security disappears.
...and eventually a "fend for yourself" attitude permeates society - which becomes a feedback loop, and it's no longer the externalities that are destroying security - but internal actors.
We were lucky to have a safe and stable society for so long that we are shocked to see mass looting. Once it's gone though, it is takes generations to rebuild that.
you mean the citizens of neighbouring states (mainly nowadays france and germany) that refused to be colonized/enslaved?
This was the case amongst the Romans, previously the Greeks, also Persians and other tribes and cultures of the Middle East / Western Asia. And similarly in China.
Nationalistic identity and senses of superiorty may be wholly unjustified on factual basis, and I tend to think that they are unjustified myself. They're also highly prevalent across times and cultures until quite recent times.
What defined a "barbarian" group was that they we undeveloped scattered tribes - without central political power. They usually lacked written codified laws, formal political assembly, ambassadors, etc...
The Gauls, the Celts, the Germanic tribes, the Turkic tribes, etc... They all were considered "barbarians" because of their tribal community focused political structure. Few centralized buildings existed, lower literacy rates, etc...
These differences were very apparent when a soldier would leave from Rome or Constantinople, and then find himself conquering a Gaulic settlement where the biggest buildings were still made of wood.
Of course, as the centuries went on, these tribal communities became more and more centralize and organized until those differences disappeared.
The Huns, for example, were not neighboring peoples. They were hoards of horse archers that came from, literally, a thousand miles beyond the Roman border to pillage.
Their destruction of the Roman borders is what drove other Germanic tribes to flee west, further destroying Roman stability.
For further parallels with Rome, I strongly advise Kyle Harper's The Fate of Rome, which develops the idea that empires and diseases co-evolve with one another. Another lesson from history which seems increasingly significant now.
On the one hand it’s shocking to see it in LA in US. On the other I am surprised it’s not happening more often.
In large cities, some of my acquaintances had to get PO boxes as their packages kept getting stolen. But why bother wasting time going house to house, when you can hit a whole train car at once.
"Video from a police stakeout shows Drago unloading trunkloads full of merchandise at one of his warehouses — mouthwash, cleaning supplies, shampoo, foot spray, over-the-counter medicine, and more than $1 million dollars worth of razors. Drago allegedly directs the boosters to steal small, compact items, with long expiration dates, and high resale value."
To add another dimension of irony if there's a similar pattern to the CVS/Walgreens shoplifting distribution mechanisms - the main distribution back into the system is Amazon and E-bay, etc.
"The stolen goods eventually find their way to Ebay, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and Amazon, where they are sold at a steep discount. Dugan says there’s a big societal cost to saving a few bucks."
So in this case, Amazon stuff is getting pilfered only to back into Amazon to be sold as Amazon marketplace items - no questions asked.
[1] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/10/06/major-san-franc...
Or is it a case of “well, someone else could deal with it, so we’re out”?
I don’t even know that amount of stuff could be opened, filtered for valuables, and transported within a few hours time without dozens of people and some mid-size cargo trucks.
This seems like enough organized logistic planning that a bunch of homeless people or youth gangs would not be able to pull off at this level.
Then sift through it for the next hours.
This is a standard pattern in areas with lax law enforcement, which these days is all of California, and also places like Manhattan. Political leaders in the LA, SF, Manhattan areas have bought into the Bolshevik era explanation of crime being caused by social injustice, and therefore see criminals as victims of a corrupt society rife with inequality. This kind of chaos is an inevitable result. Treating criminals like hapless victims acting out of desperation ignores the fact that many have agency, are intelligent, and make cost/benefit calculations that completely change when they know they won't get prosecuted if they are caught.
Those trains must be stalled there for long periods of time. I can't imagine they're robbing moving trains, but I could be wrong as thieves often prove to be very resourceful
WE NEED EVERY LAST DROP, JESSE
Since there can't be that much profit in this activity, I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of the people responsible are doing it just because it's easy.
Once the train is moving again, they go through all the packages on the ground looking for things of value.
With tamper-evident containers, you have a trusted person watch the container being loaded and locked, and then a trusted person watch as its unloaded at its final destination, and you don't have to care what happens at every point in between.
Hint: look for “lithium ion battery device inside” warning labels.
What is this, open crates or sacks of packages, in traincars locked with a small padlock?
Yes, pretty much. Although in many cases it’s not even a padlock, just a tamper-evident seal device with a serial number matching the paperwork for that container:
https://shipped.com/img-parts/server/php/files/containers/sh...
For huge cargo firms handling tens of thousands of containers daily, padlocks can be problematic operationally and quite expensive.
Succumbing to individual incentives, it's easier to focus on easier-to-handle perps and conduct organized militaryesque "operations"... just like it's easier to run roughshod over the rights of the accused by assuming they're guilty and doling out extrajudicial punishment. Neither one means doing their job better.
Ultimately it's a complete failure of accountability. Accountability of police organizations to their employers, the community, to effectively do what they are deputized to do. As well as the failure to bind police under the overarching law, both civil and criminal, like everyone else. The problem is not deep set and everywhere, but rather distributed because we're only seeing the cherry picked worst examples of both sides. But we need to seriously up our systems of accountability if anybody is going to have any faith in our institutions going forward.
I despair every day at America's descent into a failed state. Is no one watching?
[1]:https://twitter.com/CBSLAKristine/status/1482115852216385538...
Edit: And don’t confuse American police/law enforcement, who are often harsh to say the least, with the legal arm of the criminal justice system. In many US cities the two are often at odds, as lax prosecutors and DAs release criminals almost as soon as police apprehend them. The Washington DC Chief of Police in particular complained about this recently.
I don't think crime is attractive, it isn't something that people want to do in a developed society. There are plenty of crimes I can commits and get away with but I am not attracted to doing them.
So is 'Union Pacific Police' just a security company, or do you guys in the US actually have private businesses with their own police? Because that sounds pretty dystopian
> The railroad police force dates to the mid-1800s, when the number of U.S. Marshals was insufficient to police America's growing rail network. Members were called Pinkertons, named after their originator, Alan Pinkerton. Today, each Class I railroad employs Special Agents across the country to protect America’s rail network.
https://www.up.com/aboutup/community/safety/special_agents/i...
It's just police who are probably paid by that business. That makes sense to me for a large business like this. If anything they're not doing a good enough job here.
Railroads emerged at a time when the only significant national law-enforcement entity would have been the military or US Marshall's service. (There were some customs and coast guard operations, also the postal police dating to 1772, before the United States declared their independence from England.)
Railroads operated across town or city, county, and state boundaries. They had a highly distinctive geography --- the linear alignment of tracks. And multi-jurisdictional law enforcement with competing interests would have been (and remains) problematic.
So railroads provided (or contracted, often through the infamous Pinkerton Agency) their own security serivce. Many railroad police have full law-enforcement police and arrest powers.
Note that there are other businesses and operations with some similar capabilities. A ship's captain traditionally had extraordinary powers when at sea, many hotels have or had house detectives, the US Postal Service as noted has its inspector service, and US Marshalls provide security aboard aircraft, though with partial coverage. Their presence and function received heightened awareness after the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
It is crazy here, what can I tell ya ;-)
Its not that this is hard or impossible to solve.
So I have virtually no faith in security cameras. They do their jobs, but the DA certainly doesn't.
As evidenced by current BNSF strike, USA railroads presently have a tough relationship with their labor force.
For an underpaid and overstressed railroad cop, do they want to risk their life to try to stop this? My guess is generally no. They may even desire a cut of the proceeds.
No, not uniquely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Police_(Poland) It's an unit managed by the rail track operator.
Additionally they are releasing hazardous materials by breaking open boxes:
18 U.S. Code section 1992
likely not, see https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
The sentencing guidelines I mentioned seems specifically designed to mitigate this issue?
>We like group X so they get 6 months we hate group Y so 20 years for them. There is a reason I became a programmer not a lawyer. Deterministic code is easier than subjective rulings at least for me.
The sentencing guidelines seem pretty deterministic to me. There's a bunch of factors. The factors add up to a certain amount of points, and the amount of points determines your sentence to within a fairly narrow band. It's certainly not the "6 months for one group and 20 years for another group" that you talk about.
It might sound funny but I think the sheer discomfort would deter thieves in an instant, and they would be easy to identify for several days.
A device of this sort would be super useful for car thieves as well.
can totally see this dystopia
Which after a while leads to enough people knowing about their ways, and enables easy sabotage :-)
The collectors below look for (ie. boxes that have a lithium/ion battery warning on them), and they break open those boxes and remove those goods.
Those high value goods are then sold to a fencer who will list them online as new from a 3rd party seller.
The remaining lower value goods are then picked over by other community members.
It turned out to be a winning strategy.
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ceo-on-click-fraud-let-...
Unless of course one of the boxes had something like epi-pens or insulin or some other medical supplies of course.
... you're not seriously trying to argue that it shouldn't be a crime right?
The motive for crime is always present, and is mostly held in check by keeping the cost of means and opportunity high.
In this case the opportunity cost is very low. The trains are just sitting there unprotected.
And the means - will just grab a crow bar.
EDIT:
This regulation is well intentioned:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/28101
The good intention is to allow interstate policing of the railsystem. The bad effect is to prevent local law enforcement 'interference'.
[1] https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/mapamond/au-fost-arestat...
If it were autonomous it could defend itself and its contents without risk to humans. At the very least with fart spray, pepper spray, itch powder, and the like.
People who feel they have nothing to lose don't care if they get caught either.
The solution is to provide people with a decent life by default. They can then contribute to society comfortably.
The alternative is to view it as inevitable and therefore don't do anything, but then those not doing it fall behind those doing it and suddenly those who weren't stealing before now feel like losers for not doing it because no one was facing any consequences and because they held back they are now worse off.
So, laptops and phones all travel on trains and trucks. Will big helpful warning labels as well.
I thought we all rooted here to defund the police? Should we backtrack that idea?
Edit: I seem to have broken a nerve in some people here. Sorry, for being snarky. I just think that you can't reduce funding for a gov agency but also then expect it to be resourced. Just using sterile logic to make this conclusion.
And let me guess. You think these train robberies happen because they defunded the police in their area…?
Have you been to the Bay Area? Apartment complexes and condominiums are hardened like castles while their kids play in the safe courtyards and the outside is rotting to the point of unsafe for male padestrians, let alone women and kids. These are the same people voting for these policies. Completely deranged.
They don't need more money. They need to be held accountable.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-10/appeals-...
I see absolutely no reason to believe that raising police budgets would somehow magically fix this. It wouldn’t. We have deeper societal issues at hand.
Digging around a bit, SF (and generally the rest of the bay area follows) has a substantially higher crime rate than say Austin or the US average: https://www.bestplaces.net/compare-cities/austin_tx/san_fran...
There are probably better sources than what I linked. It is really bad here in my experience and I want to move out.
There are plenty of reasons to want to move out of the Bay Area. Christ, traffic on the 101 often makes me want to jump off the golden gate bridge - but I don’t see how snarky remarks about “defund the police” help one way or another without dramatically misunderstanding and oversimplifying the real causes of this city’s problems.
I can deal with traffic, weather is wonderful.
The Tenderloin is practically like a South African slum. Sunnydale, Bayview/Hunter's Point and the south side of Potrero are dangerous. You have to watch yourself in the Mission, downtown, SoMa, and a few other neighborhoods.
But in Forest Hill you might as well be in Menlo Park. Pac Heights is generally safe. So is the Presidio. Even Noe Valley, right next to the Mission, is much safer. Crime doesn't like to climb.
I don't think this is a fair description of the vast majority of the SF Bay Area. Perhaps it describes well some bits of Hayward and Oakland.
Large amounts of the SF Bay Area have crime rates well below the national median.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-11/covid-19...
https://laist.com/news/politics/mayor-garcetti-signs-11-2-bi...
https://www.lataco.com/lapd-office-closed-defunding-false/
These statements are facts, yours are... what, exactly?
> The city council voted last summer to redirect money proposed for Oakland's Police Department to social services. But this week, defund the police became refund to the police. The same city council approved two new police academies and voted to hire a professional recruiter to attract officers to its department after a wave of resignations.
What about Scandinavian or Western European countries, then? Maybe closer to home, what about NYC – the year the NYPD went on strike, crime went _down_ (not just a drop in arrests, but actual murders, theft, etc). and NYPD realized they'd have to voluntarily restart policing (without the desired increase in labor terms), or NYC City Council might realize they're not as necessary as they originally set out to prove.
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...
https://www.vox.com/2015/1/6/7501953/nypd-mayor-arrests-unio...
When you fund a prison-industrial complex, you're creating a system that incentivizes incarceration, not rehabilitation. These systems don't want to solve crime – they want to set out to look for (or, some would say, create) crime. Other countries realized this, and seem to have much less actual crime as a result, while protecting things that actually matter (i.e. their major trade routes/people's lives/the general wellbeing of society). The US seems to have this idea that... if you don't have a home, or you're addicted to drugs, or you need a wellness check, you're more dangerous than a murderer or a thief (given that the former group makes up the vast majority of those incarcerated)
2019-2021 was 635 million allotted, 20mil less than the 665 mil project, due to the pandemic. The 2021-2023 budget is 674 million, with an additional 18 million spent on the community based programs.
The budget is ever increasing, contrary to what a lot of people like to tout.
> What has not been reported as much is that the number of authorized sworn officers has remained unchanged. What we voted on last Tuesday is a more aggressive push to fill 60 budgeted vacant police officer positions that we had already approved in June that are not yet filled because our academy system is failing.
The rest of the paragraph explains how certain groups are using this concept of defunding the police to stoke fear in people like you. Incredibly ironic.
But it is a nonviolent crime. It seems like finding some way to prevent the thefts is better.
It seems like it should be possible to use locks which are harder to open in a short amount of time...but I suppose the cost of that would outweigh the current costs of the theft for the railroads.
For example, just thinking out loud, what about some sort of container door hinge mechanism which takes five minutes (or an adjustable amount of time) to open the door?
>> Additionally, mail theft laws which include prison as a consequence should be extended to package thefts if they don't already cover them.
>But it is a nonviolent crime. It seems like finding some way to prevent the thefts is better.
The implied conclusion here is "We're allowing it if people don't guard it like it's ft Knox."
The whole point of a legal system, the codification of crime and law enforcement is to stop things like this. To ensure that people cannot unilaterally and directly harm other people.
Which is precisely what "punishment" does. Try being less vindictive and more understanding about the root circumstances that lead someone to perform an act of desperation.
That's exactly what is being attempted via the theft.
2. ?
3. Most criminals are just poor people scraping by using the only means available to them; veritable street kids stealing a loaf of bread
Honestly, I don't understand this logic at all. Specifically, how people arrive at #3.
If you are desperate, you steal anything and try to sell it to buy food and hygiene products.
But I think the bigger issue is just that you're talking about retrofitting an aspect of the global transport complex. Why would the entire shipping industry change it's approach to standardized containers just to stop some thieves at a specific American spot? The cost of using special containers for this specific route would be prohibitive I imagine, and hard to manage the logistics of.
The only solution is armed escort for trains through slow zones.
Weakest point of entry.
That said, steal the shots I take for an autoimmune disorder and I'll definitely consider it an assault on my health.
So if you're going to play the "assault on my health" card, the guys robbing trains are literally Robin Hood saving lives.
Yeah, it introduces some problems around chain of custody, counterfeiting...but people who can afford the $300 can continue to pay the retail price.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mylan-nl-pfizer-epipen-id...
Disruption to medicine supply is my concern here, having had supply issues affect a family member where they've had to ration out heart related medication... I'm a little tetchy about it.
Easier to just go to the ER and not pay the bill.
I'm privileged to be able to even consider spending the $3000 (I don't have severe allergies, so haven't actually made this decision). It's not at all ridiculous that someone on a tighter budget would make the same decision if it was $30 vs $300, and might make compromises on the QA. And "just go to the ER" doesn't cut it: regardless of the cost, that could take hours, while you may only have minutes to spare in the case of anaphylactic shock. You take the injection AND go straight to the ER, it's not an either-or thing.
Two shot kits range from $100-$300, depending on whether you are buying genetic or brand name, whether you use goodrx, etc.
If you want to continue the robin hood analogy, well, Robin hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He wasn't selling life saving medicines that may or may not be fake (buyers won't know either way), and may have been improperly handled or stored.
He wasn't potentially killing people who just want to save a few bucks.
I'd much rather we arrest them so they can be rehabilitated or helped. Which is a separate discussion, but there have to be consequences. Sometimes it's too late to help them and we just need to stem the damage they do to society and other people that are innocent.
This is not what happens when people are arrested.
Do they deserve a (potentially harsh) punishment? Yes.
But is it in society's interest not to make them worse than they already are? Also, yes.
So a problem in most countries is that prison is only focused on the punishment part not on the "what happens when people are released?" part.
Now some of the offenders might have chance to integrate back to society...
It's easier for techy types to gaff at the risk of highway robbery for a good reason.
Tech seeks to alleviate human labor via automation or semi-automation.
I think people are trying to take the same shortcuts to reduce the friction of human labor. Thievery is a foundational American ideal, romanticized in some sense.
The question most US citizens have been asking is "when do I get mine?".
I think they're finding their own answers.
When people can shoplift bagloads of merchandise without even trying to be stealthy, then casually walk out past a security guard who isn't allowed to do anything, or when they can smash a window and clean out a store under the cover of protests/unrest, it's not surprising that it escalates to more organised theft - whether it's 'flash rob' looting* of stores, or now looting train cargo.
(*As for the now-seemingly-controversial term 'looting' vs stealing/theft/robbery - to me, looting is brazenly grabbing anything/everything, out in the open, often in broad daylight and on camera, while most 'normal' forms of theft are carried out more covertly and perhaps with particular targets in mind). No amount of policing will prevent all theft, but open looting is an sign of lawlessness.
Police this.
This doesn't really mean anything. Non-violent crimes range from personal drug use & speeding to ponzi schemes & drunk driving.
There is a difference between theft (a victim exists and can inflict either physical or emotional damage) and something like personal light drug use (mostly victimless).
Theft not only robs a victim of their time & resource but it can also inflict emotional damage. A broken car window means you're out whatever they stole + glass (often a week or more of wages) and the emotional stress & time to fix it. These packages had recipients - the PPE is obviously important but each of these packages could have been someones anniversary gift or important medical device.
If we're talking about the moral severity of the crime itself, theft is pretty close to assault in my book and should be punished accordingly.
We can work on preventing the desperateness that leads to theft while still having strict punishment. What we shouldn't do is not address the root cause AND let such crimes go essentially unpunished.
So their resourcing wouldn't take into account wider societal benefits from lower crime - it'd be more about the direct costs and benefits to the business.
... which are tied to lowering crime.
If Buffett sells his stake in UP, someone else buys it and the company continues on. They got big because they figured out how to build a profitable business. Part of that is security. None of that makes us dependent on them. We have a mutual dependence through trade. Businesses provide something we want, and we give them something they want.
It looks like Buffett owned Union Pacific shares a while back, but sold them in 2009 so that they could buy BNSF.
In this context "the United States" means the federal government. States are also within the jurisdiction of the state government, and therefore not within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.
This is the exact same reason why the US president can only pardon federal crimes.
Whoever, in any Territory or District, OR within or upon any place within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States
(Capitalisation for emphasis by me.)
The crime depicted is a federal one under US law.
Title 18 lacks a Definitions section that I can find.
> The term “U.S. Territory” means American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_the_United_Stat...
And there's plenty of references to legal documents clearly stating or implying that territories are in fact not sovereign entities (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puerto_Rico_v._Sanchez_Valle)
And obviously there's only one Disctrict. The District of Columbia.
So it's actually fairly complex to define "the United States", because the answer is generally "it depends on the context"
I'm trying to determine whether or not the language in Title 18 refers to "territory" in the sense of "any land that is part of the United States" (which would include the states), or "organised Territories exclusive of states". It's odd that the language is chosen but not clarified.
I'm aware that generally states have jurisdiction within their own boundaries, but that interstate commerce is an exception. Given railroads' history ... the distinction, contenxt, and intent seem needlessly vague.
Your original point remains though it's not clear to me it's the correct interpretation.
As a technical comparison; if you have a system that is creating a bug then it seems an incorrect stopgap solution to invest in support resources to handle user complaints rather than development and QA resources to reduce the chances of users running into the bug.
I think this is an interesting perspective, it's very "American", it's like it has been accepted by these commenters that rampant thievery is a perfectly natural part of life and so, must be worked around rather than solved.
But, protecting a thing from theft, rather than removing the reason thievery is so rampant, just moves the problem to someone else.. Like putting locks and security on your home, "Now they won't break into MY home, because the guy next door has less security, so they'll go at him instead".
Come on, the problem is not that it's easy to steal, the problem is that society has constructed situations for some of its citizens where they for one reason or another do it.
I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Two, the way to prevent crime from happening is to make people feel in the heart and soul that crime is morally wrong and destructive for the community around them. This is not instinctual human behavior. For those who learn this and live this, great. For those who don't, see option #1.
To be clear, this is a political ideal of the Roman Empire that has influenced much of modern civlisation, it's not an inevitable state of humanity.
“If any one is committing a robbery and is caught, then he shall be put to death.”
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Codex_Hammurabi_(King_trans...
Likewise in pre-Columbian Mexico, as per the Florentine Codex:
“It was a crime to light a fire in the woods without permission, to cut down trees, to move boundary-markers, to take game from another man’s hunting trap and to steal crops from the fields. All these were crimes that could be punished by death.”
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/which-were-t...
I'm not bragging, though, what I'm getting at is that you're missing a huge part of why people steal - maybe even the largest part: because they feel they have to survive, or because it's okay because society is stacked against them.
This is what above was talking about when talking about fixing root causes. If you can ensure that people have shelter, food, safety, security, and belonging, you'll generally find that you don't need to _morally re-educate_ them, they won't have the impetus to steal.
Only half joking. You're right that you can fix 90% of crimes your way. But there is a group of people that, for some reason, just want to see the world burn or feel the power to make others miserable. We need to deal with them somehow.
I’ve always felt this framing condescends to them. Sure, there’s certainly more incentive to steal at the academic extremes (bread for your starving family), but people raiding trains for packages is something else.
There should be police response to this, and people doing it should get charged.
I do read people (rightfully, IMO) claiming that societal changes can significantly decrease the number of people doing this.
I don’t believe USA has so many people in prison because its population _is_ more criminal than that of other countries.
I do. I’ve lived in some foreign countries and have come to realize that culture plays just as much if not more of a role in crime as material conditions. America has some toxic aspects to our culture that contribute to our population being more likely to commit crimes. We are hyper individualist, and more violent across all socioeconomic levels.
Simplifying things, the USA tends to think that all people who _do_ crimes _are_ criminals and, hence, should be locked up in order to decrease the amount of crime, while other countries think circumstances may have made them perform crimes, and changing circumstances may be the best way to decrease crime because it’s cheaper and/or leads to a happier population.
(In general, I think (again simplifying things), the USA prefers sending in the cavalry to save the day over doing things to prevent the need for a cavalry. You see that in infrastructure maintenance, reactions to natural disasters, and in the way it does diplomacy in the middle east, too. California is somewhat of an exception there. It invests heavily preparing for the big one)
This comment is basically arguing that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29932479
They frame it a little indirectly, but it's the underlying core of their point.
You can advocate for policy that reduces crime while still enforcing laws against criminals and not excusing the criminal behavior.
Even if it does, I didn’t see that comment when I wrote mine. HN currently shows my comment as 10 hours old, the one you mention as 9, so I also think I couldn’t have seen it.
Comment numbers also support that observation (29932220 < 29932479)
I’m not talking about those incapable to work, of course. Funny thing is, our government gives shelter to such people, and they don’t live in the streets as well.
United States is a paradoxical country.
I’d suspect most Americans (across the political spectrum) would see these train robberies and think “these people should go to jail”, rather than moralizing about why it’s not their fault.
Jail isn't some magical free solution to your crime problems.
Would Americans still be so eager to imprison someone if they knew that the cost to incarcerate someone is ~$36k/yr? [1]
The government defines poverty as $12k/yr for individuals [2], which is three times less than the annual cost to incarcerate someone!
Is imprisoning someone at the taxpayer cost of ~$36k/yr a sustainable model?
At what point does America have a conversation about the cost of imprisonment versus the alternatives like raising the poverty line, raising minimum wage, or implementing social programs?
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2018/04/30/2018-09...
[2] https://aspe.hhs.gov/topics/poverty-economic-mobility/povert...
Excusing crime because of these other things I think is patronizing to the majority of poor people that are not criminals. It's also a luxury belief imo in that the majority of victims are ethical people in poor communities getting hurt by the criminals who mostly target them (which is why you see a lot of data in poor communities asking for increased policing).
I'd guess it's a view formed from a lack of interaction with the people committing these crimes (in addition to the victims) too. Anyone can rationalize criminal behavior and make it not their fault. I don't have much tolerance for this and don't think society should really either. Discretion exists and context does matter, but people have agency and are responsible for the choices they make.
>it's okay because society is stacked against them.
If you can't find a job in the US, you won't go to another country to find one. After all, you're already in the "best country in the world".
The streets are accepted as the home of failed people (but only if we can't see them).
Medical care is provided only to people who can pay for it. That's only fair.
Also racism was solved with Obama, so just pull yourself by your bootstrap like everyone else.
Just work multiple jobs if you can't afford rent, maybe then you'll save enough to pay for education and get a higher wage job or start your own business.
/s
One doesn’t need to be impoverished to steal. Some subset of individuals will always be driven to obtain “more”, even if through illicit means.
This kind of individual-first-thinking is probably one of the main reasons why we see pictures like in OP in the first place.
I'm not saying everyone has the right to bomb Times Square. But I am saying that the "individual", which some people are asserting to be a taboo idea, can use force to have a chance at preserving their life within their private residence.
what do you mean? death penalty ... solved!
Taking a leaf from Deming, we have a system, a process, a society that creates a certain, relatively stable, number of criminals per year. Trying to address specific criminal acts or specific criminals is just meddling that can backlash as easily as it can help.
When you have a stable source of trouble, it makes no sense to try to fix individual occurrences. You have to address the problem at the source.
We have created this system! We can create something else if we're unhappy with it.
There's an old nugget that if anyone could time-travel they'd go back in time and kill Hitler. Nobody would go a few more years back to educate him.
People are not educated to look at the big picture but to react in the moment. Stop the theft as it's happening. Shoot. This goes best with societies where taking a life is considered appropriate response to someone trying to steal your fishing lure, societies where your individual rights trump absolutely anything else (imagine explicitly voting to pay more taxes yourself because that will benefit the poorer part of the population).
Reacting in the moment requires almost no thought out process. It's mostly autonomous, a reflex. Thinking of the bigger picture, identifying a root cause, identifying the impact of each of your options, these all take a strong enough education to override that reflex.
Thinking of bigger picture is all well and good, but the moment you mention education I cannot help, but chuckle. In the context of US, education already is.. lets call it overburdened. Maybe the solution is not to override the reflex, but to appropriately channel it.
For the record, I am just putting words together. It is late and infant does not want to sleep.
Ask you what your evidence is for that assertion given that crime rates vary so widely around the world for disparate reasons.
The prevalence and types of crimes committed really do vary widely as well (though its often hard to get a clear picture since different countries have different reporting mechanisms (or none at all)).
Hum, could I suggest an evil alternative? Just schedule a few meetings with the people that lend money to Hitler and explain them that he will try to keep the money and will go to extreme measures to avoid returning it, including killing them or their relatives if possible. Really bad investment, don't touch this turd with a thousand foot pole. Thank me later when you still own your castle in Europe.
Result: Hitler never climb in a position to became Hitler. Nobody dies, nobody needs to enter in a war to recover the investment and you don't became a murderer. Hollywood would be devastated for sure but, apart of this...everybody wins :-)
So maybe the person could go back in time and discuss with the negotiators at the Versailles treaty after the first world war. Or maybe try to inject some economics education to try to prevent the hyperinflation.
Room for some XKCD or SMBC comics!
He read newspapers and pamphlets that published the thoughts of philosophers and theoreticians such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustave Le Bon and Arthur Schopenhauer. Georg Ritter von Schönerer became a major influence on Hitler. He also developed an admiration for Martin Luther. During his time in Vienna, he pursued a growing passion for architecture and music, attending ten performances of Lohengrin, his favourite Wagner opera.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Stewart_Chamberlain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Ritter_von_Sch%C3%B6nere...
This is not uniquely American. In the EU so many people by SUVs (despite the impracticality in smaller European streets) “because it’ll make sure I have the benefit in a car crash”. It is technically correct but such an extremely cold statement.
That's mostly because it was fairly easy to get a drivers license with bribes up until a few years after joining EU. (until the anti-corruption agency was set up)
Also due to crappy roads and very aggressive drivers in larger cities. Rich people would just buy the larger car to protect children either from their stupidity or other drivers.
I was actually thinking about these SUVs this morning, as their were two Cadillac Escalades [0] parked on my block in central Stockholm as I walked my kid to school. The town is *full* of these types of vehicles (there are even full-size Hummers driving around).
The "EU" can't be characterized in this uniform way - the different countries are totally unlike each other in so many respects. Because Sweden is part of Scandinavia, people often think there's a cycling culture here for instance - but that's also totally untrue. The same is true of our gun-crime - with criminal gangs frequently shooting each other on the streets: such a thing was virtually unknown to me throughout the time I lived in central London.
The true picture is way more nuanced than the Europe vs USA binary that people like to imagine.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/07/stereoty...
But the noticeable presence of SUV and even Pickup models I usually associate with the US in Sweden also surprised me. Those are rare in Germany.
I see several of them every day here in Sweden. And I saw at least as many last time I was in London.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/17/world/europe/Picasso-and-...
European “security” has also given us gems like the Brussels and Manchester arena bombings.
I don’t know why people in glass houses insist on throwing so many stones.
The trains are clearly being robbed out of desperation by the poorest citizens. If those citizens lived in the EU, they would have free healthcare, free education, unemployment subsidies and housing. And so they would not be forced to steal our packages.
That isn’t clear to me at all. In Washington DC, for example, much of the recent increase in theft (grand theft auto especially) has been committed by unsupervised juveniles. AFAICT they do it because they’re bored, it’s easy, it’s exciting, and they generally escape punishment. Who’s to say it’s not a similar situation with these train robberies?
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/malmobon-sylvias-adr...
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/uppsala/postnord-stoppar-p...
However, they are also notoriously bad so the joke is spot on.
"The trains are clearly being robbed out of desperation by the poorest citizens." I don't think that's true. I think they are being robbed because it's easy to do so, with a low risk for any consequences. Similarly as to why shoplifting in LA is up.
Start shooting at the thieves and see how fast the train robbery trend reverses.
Ok, then why aren't you robbing or shoplifting if it's so easy and risk-free? Is it because you have too much to lose if you get caught?
My whole point is that if people have a minimal standard of living, the fear of losing it will prevent them from committing crimes much more effectively than some nut shooting at them
I'm not doing it because
1. I find crimes against person or property vile
2. It's not worth it. All things considered, it's probably a pretty abysmal hourly rate.
> My whole point is that if people have a minimal standard of living, the fear of losing it will prevent them from committing crimes much more effectively I agree, however I don't see how it is my fault or why would I have to pay for someone else's minimal standard of living.
Teaching a man how to fish vs giving the man a fish.
...
>Start shooting at the thieves and see how fast the train robbery trend reverses.
Pretty sure you'd draw that line somewhere. Perhaps it wouldn't be a train, but I can assure you with absolute certainty that there would be a point where you would value your lawfully possessed property over an attacker's life.
Anyway, we kind of went off track (no pun intended), but my initial point was that since you can rob these trains with basically no reprecussions, would it still be true if there was a chance that you might get shot in the process? I'd think not.
Wut? This isn't clear at all. Lots of theft like this or mass retail theft are done by semi-organized crime rings.
Didn't seem like that bad of a life while it lasted, being in the tourist areas crime was never bad enough to be afraid for your safety, you had bleeding heart church groups that would regularly come by the camps to hand out food and clothing. All the while you can sell and doing drugs in the open.
out of sight out of mind
Later in life I was a missionary, and we saw a dude in homeless attire get out of a nice Mercedes. He saw us as well and told us his story about making bank begging in front of a bank, showed us the $$$ suits stashed in his trunk, told us about his high end "compound" where he lived.
Then of course there was the guy who would block the sidewalk in front of a previous workplace in SF and harass any people passing by who didn't give him money.
There are many cases of people either straight up abusing the system, or acting in ways that will destroy the system.
The more of this there is -- the visible, abusive begging and taking over of shared public spaces -- the less empathy people will have for the invisible homeless who aren't causing trouble and will actually benefit from help.
See: https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2021/rescuing-jessica-s...
This person has no interest in treatment. They want to do drugs and take advantage of what’s provided to keep doing that.
You can’t fix that with hotels. You either need to require treatment or imprison (paired with arresting dealers).
On the more progressive end, maybe drug clinics that administer drugs to addicts for free onsite (to crash the dealer market while you’re going after them). Eventually you have to force a choice. The do drugs openly while living in a tent on the street can’t be an option.
What happens when you bust a drug ring and arrest some big players? You immediately create a power vacuum, which leads to a turf war where other players (in the gang or between gangs) start jockeying for power, spreading their mayhem across the area.
The only solution here is legalization, treatment, and general social welfare.
That last one is what makes the gang bangers go away, but it's a long process.
Arrest the dealers and administer the drug to addicts for free at clinics? I think that would be an interesting approach.
I'm not a policy expert. I used to agree with you, but I think part of the issue is trivial access to drugs (see the tenderloin). It's harder for addicts to quit when it's very easy to get the drug (whether that's via dealers or legalization) and the city helps to enable you (hotel shelters, etc.) I understand the good intent and compassion, but a lot of bad policy on the left starts with good intent and ends with unanticipated bad consequences. Cities with arguably crueler enforcement don't have these issues (San Mateo). SF attracts addicts because they know it's lax and drug access is easy. Pair that with NIMBY housing policy and it's very hard to get housed and off of drugs.
I'd argue the SF approach to this has been a failure, London Breed's recent speech on the topic is something I agree with. The equilibrium we're trapped in is bad. We need to force a choice and that choice is likely either treatment or prison.
I mean, it's a national crisis. It's easy to point the zits on my face but the problem is in what I eat.
Most people don't develop debilitating drug addictions without underlying problems. Even most people with drug addictions don't get to a point where they can't hold down a job or have a need to carry out crime to fund it, but of those who do it's worth considering why when e.g. a typical heroin addict can hold down a job and could have funded their addiction for ~$20/day if they had access to clean, medical grade heroin (we know the price, because e.g. the UK NHS buys medical grade heroin for use for post-operative pain management - under the generic name diamorphine).
So there's a long path there from failure to address mental health issues and other social problems, via failure to provide safe, clean supplies and early intervention for those who still get addicted to drugs, failure to regulate healthcare properly (e.g. the prescription oxy -> black market oxy -> heroin recruitment path), and failure to ensure availability of jobs, and lacking welfare options, before worrying about treatment and emergency housing is even in the picture.
Start addressing root causes and a lot of the problems later in that chain would either go away or at least be substantially diminished.
Here are some pages covering various uses by the NHS
Most relevant to the point I made, here is a pricing page for diamorphine for the NHS[1].
Use during birth: [2]
"This is an injection of a medicine called pethidine into your thigh or buttock to relieve pain. It can also help you to relax. Sometimes, less commonly, a medicine called diamorphine is used."
Use in NHS Scotland [3]: "Unlicensed intranasal diamorphine has been used in the NHS in Scotland for the treatment of severe pain in children in the emergency setting. The availability of diamorphine hydrochloride nasal spray (Ayendi®) provides a licensed preparation."
Article on recent-ish supply problems[4] due to a problem at one of the manufacturers:
"NHS trusts forced to use ‘expensive’ pre-filled diamorphine syringes to manage ongoing supply issues
Exclusive: Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust has had to source pre-filled diamorphine syringes from other NHS trusts to meet demand."
NICE advice on diamorphine use [5] lists indications and doses for acute pain, chronic pain not currently treated with a strong opioid analgesic, acute pulmonary oedema, myocardial infarction.
NHS patient information (word doc) [6] on the shortage: "Diamorphine is licensed to treat severe pain associated with surgery, heart attack or a terminal illness. It is also used for the relief of shortness of breath in severe heart conditions. In addition, a small number of people in the UK may be receiving diamorphine to manage heroin addiction."
So while I have no idea about the actual volume of use, as you can tell the NHS has suppliers, and NICE has a price list.
[1] https://bnf.nice.org.uk/medicinal-forms/diamorphine-hydrochl...
[2] https://www.nhs.uk/pregnancy/labour-and-birth/what-happens/p...
[3] https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/news/nhs-trusts-f...
[4] https://www.scottishmedicines.org.uk/medicines-advice/diamor...
[5] https://bnf.nice.org.uk/drug/diamorphine-hydrochloride.html#...
[6] https://www.england.nhs.uk/south/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/...
We need to clean up the mess and prevent more being added at the same time.
It is not like we can only do either preventive or reactive.
You want to arrest people for being homeless?
That is an interesting idea. All kinds of ethical issues for handing out free heroin, but why not take all the confiscated drugs, test them for safety and hand them out for free at clinics with some damage-reduction safe guards like daily per-person limits, offer rehab and mental health services, etc? Turn addicts into informants without even trying, because if they rat out dealers, the dope is free. I doubt users have the long-term awareness to see that it eventually reduce supply.
Making it harder for addicts to get heroin or a replacement will only increase the energy they will spend on getting it. This makes it nearly impossible to get to a better place in their life. It is mostly getting the drug that has a negative effect on holding down a job, not the drug itself.
My sister was a functional alcoholic for 25 years. When she started heroine, everything changed, and she overdosed within 2.
She couldn't have been a functional alcoholic for 25 year if alcohol were an illegal substance.
There are plenty of people who have a normal life on methadone or heroin if it is provided to them.
As already stated, if you are an addict, getting the substance is the highest priority. Making it harder to get just makes them use more of their resources to get them.
It depends on the definition of "worse". If cell death over time, then maybe alcohol is worse. If it's how much a recreational/entertaining dose disturbs the workings of the mind, the operation/rational/ability to live a normal life, which is the purpose of the mind, then I would say heroin is worse.
I would assume the amount of dopamine a drug releases is directly related to its ability to disrupt someones life.
“Why do they do it? Radical anti-system ideology. “There’s a San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness hat which says, ‘Coalition on Homelessness: On The Frontlines of Class Warfare,’” said the insider. “They feel like they’re fighting class warfare. They tell people to not take shelter.””
https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/san-francisco-ho...
Why crime us going up? Because of higher desired standard (every body needs an iPhone, brand name shoes and hats), more difficulty with earning a wage (largely, difficulty getting a job at all) and decreased difficulty in crime (defunding police, more aesily available opportunities to steal, etc).
For well-off people it is easier to earn their standard by earning money by work than by stealing. Or they have more comfortable ways of stealing than haulig a paltry 10k in av equipment...
I wish i could be an idealist and to believe in a world where every one is happy with what they've got. But that's a utopia. Humans will always crave to have more than each other ad will steal, loot, defraud, do anything to get there.
Lock your trains well.
> https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07...
"Two commonly used measures are: people in relative low income – living in households with income below 60% of the median in that year; people in absolute low income – living in households with income below 60% of (inflation-adjusted) median income in some base year, usually 2010/11."
This is however a bureaucratic definition of poverty that I don't accept as capturing the everyday meaning, but I thought it might be of interest to mention. I remember being under the poverty line and thinking "this doesn't count. I don't accept that I'm living in poverty." Knowing these technical uses made me regard official-sounding news and reports about 'poverty' quite differently.
(The bottom of the article talks about a group giving a more lay-compatible definition "The Social Metrics Commission (SMC) proposed a new based on the extent to which someone’s resources meet their needs. This accounts for differences among households such as costs of childcare and disability, savings and access to assets." which seems more meaningful if you're interested about absolute standards of living).
But in general I'd expect crime to be a "least worst option" choice and I seem to remember research to that effect. Although I wouldn't be able to find that now again, so take it with an appropriate amount of salt.
Furthermore we seem to have such an easy money culture right now - if you get caught in a crypto or NFT or memestock or whatever bubble on FB or Twitter, 'everyone' is rich with no effort (and they can teach you how for 99$ a month!) - why shouldn't you be rich without working?!
No they don't. See all the studies that disprove the "broken windows theory" that tried to prove that crime rates go down when you enforce policing.
https://carder.uk/threads/does-broken-windows-theory-work.11...
The first book to disprove the broken window theory was Bernard Harcourt 's Illusion of Order, published in 2001. The author points out that over the 30 years of the existence of this theory, it has never been empirically confirmed, on the contrary, the available research contradicts it. The theory also relies on arbitrarily defined categories of "order" and "disorder", "law-abiding citizens" and "violators."
The first book to disprove the broken window theory was Bernard Harcourt 's Illusion of Order, published in 2001. The author points out that over the 30 years of the existence of this theory, it has never been empirically confirmed, on the contrary, the available research contradicts it. The theory also relies on arbitrarily defined categories of "order" and "disorder", "law-abiding citizens" and "violators."
First of all, the drop in crime in New York occurred simultaneously with the corresponding process in the entire United States. In another study, Harcourt notes that the drop in crime rates in New York coincided with the end of the crack drug epidemic. Christina Sterbenz adds that this trend has been fueled by declining unemployment (during the 1990s, its rate fell by 40%).
Criminologist Ralph Taylor is sure that socio-economic is a significant factor that affects the crime rate. Returning to the experiment with two cars - in the Bronx initially there was a low level of welfare, and in wealthy Palo Alto, a researcher must intervene in the experiment to provoke vandalism.
The theory of broken windows has also failed to pass the test of a massive social experiment. In 1994, the US government introduced the Moving to Opportunity program, which relocated 4,800 impoverished families to prime locations. The program was implemented in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Baltimore. Three quarters of the resettled households were on the brink of poverty, and two thirds of the participants were African American.
According to the theory, in the new environment the level of their involvement in offenses should have, but this did not happen, since the move did not improve their financial situation, but emphasized the social gap with their neighbors.1. https://www.ppic.org/publication/the-impact-of-proposition-4...
Yes and currently society has many many ways for the privileged to get even more than others than they already have, in ways that are legally accepted even if they’re morally reprehensible. And as long as we don’t change that and make the playing field more even, I don’t think judging petty theft so harshly makes any sense at all.
Working is always superior to stealing. Your words might try and cast them as morally equivalent, but they arent.
It is the cruelest and vilest thing to do to those poor people who actually don't steal.
Yup. I wish we would start doing that.
https://inthesetimes.com/article/walmart-corporations-wage-t...
A scathing new report finds that hundreds of major corporations in the United States are repeat wage-theft offenders — committing the violations and then paying the subsequent fines as part of the cost of doing business.People take the easier option. You choose "lock your trains well" despite knowing the answer will be "crack those locks well" because it was the easy answer. The view is simple. Eventually the train will be a rolling mountain of steel protected by an army. Your fishing lure will cost an arm and a leg because protection costs are up. And the thieves will just be relegated to do slave work (the work that shouldn't exist in those conditions but society was too busy locking the train well to bother protecting its most vulnerable members) or starve because those are the only options on the table.
That assumes thieves are rational actors capable of assessing risks at least somewhat accurately. Often times (the vast majority of times, even) they are not.
It's also worth bringing up that certain American subcultures glorify criminals. The criminal lifestyle is seen as glamorous by a large number of people, while honest labor is just dull, whether it pays enough or not.
"They are poor, not stupid"
He was commenting on the risk decisions of farmers throughout history. It would be sensible for people to put all their effort into growing surplus of one crop for sale, but then they would be at greater risk of starving under crop failure.
People's choices are affected by their (percevied) risk calculus.
https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...
It probably is not the main driver, but it is hard to discount it as a factor. Another interesting archetype is one man going solo against a corrupt system ( usually guns are involved ). You could reasonably argue that US populace is conditioned for it and then people are all surprised when people actually act out on those early imprints.
Except when these thefts are de-facto decriminalized in Califronia, and police is either defunded or directed not to fight these crimes, the "risk of getting caught" is effectively zero.
That means that unless you start handing out iPhones for free in local malls, the thefts will continue.
Let's stop pretending these thieves are "starving". Starving people don't pull up to a Gucci or Louis Vuitton in a Porsche and casually steal a luxury handbag for their girlfriend.
If all work is slavery to you, how about the people who produced all these iPhones and LV bags?
We're dealing here with people who are happy to steal the products of other people's work, instead of doing any work themselves.
If there's no directive, why is property crime not pursued?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law. Passing such Propositions then blaming cops for rising crime is sinister.
> It recategorized some nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors, rather than felonies, as they had previously been categorized.
It’s still a crime. Police’s job is to respond to crime. Can you imagine if you were tasked with a job and then just stopped doing it because your thought your boss needed to take it more seriously? Any place I worked you’d get fired.
Especially if you started lying to everyone that your boss made it a rule that the problem can’t be dealt with when in reality you just think the consequences aren’t high enough
> No matter how diligent cops are, they cannot do anything about these crimes within the law
They could patrol the streets and respond to the crime. The court system and prosecutors office decides if it needs to escalate from there. This is the LAPD however so they’re probably too busy forming gangs and engaging in crime themselves
to the extent that police are an effective anti-crime tool, it primarily stems from their physical presence (racially profiled harassment) as a deterrent. outside of homicides & some PR-useful drug enforcement, police departments spend most of their time discouraging people from filing police reports after actual crimes, harassing poor people, and meeting traffic citation quotas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_California_Proposition_47
That means criminals engaging in such thefts cannot be legally arrested or prosecuted.
And we haven't even started discussing LA's new DA Gascon's aggressive move to decriminalize a very large set of offenses:
https://abc7.com/george-gascon-los-angeles-district-attorney...
For house burglary the way to deter opportunistic criminals is to harden down the house just a little bit. Lock doors, close windows.
Often drugs is the driving factor. I notice that out of 207 comments in this thread, only 4 including this one mention drugs.
(I used to work in a criminology research office)
Until we as a society can honestly look at what reasonable amount of well being in information societies looks like, it's tricky to tell those with less what is reasonable to expect of quality of life.
Yes, mimetic desire is a real power too. Is that really what's at play here?
Who has the right to draw the line between basic well being and an utopia?
This Android vs. iOS thing is not about technical capabilities, it's about elitism - and elitism always breeds jealousy, and thus thievery. Lao Tse knew this in 500 BC: "By not prizing goods hard to get, you will cause the people to cease from robbing and stealing."
Used iphones are verifiable to be reliable, so there is a good aftermarket for them, as opposed to Android phones. At that point the elitism argument falls conpletely apart.
The point I want to make is that it can and will happen related to phones regardless of the brand. Some people are proud of actual propertiea of the product, others will focus more on the image or ideological aspects.
There's nothing wrong with this as such: humans are good at attaching their identities/personalities to all kinds of external things. This tendency also drives healthy psychological growth and learning when it's in check.
Police budgets are, by and large, still increasing in the US.
In billions of dollars:
2014-2015: $1.338
2015-2016: $1.438
2016-2017: $1.485
2017-2018: $1.578
2018-2019: $1.609
2019-2020: $1.733
2020-2021: $1.721
2021-2022: $1.760
The city also took on $47 million in overtime debt in the year that the budget was cut [2]
[1] https://lacontroller.org/budgets/ [2] https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/la-cut-the-police-budget...
It’s not. The long term trend in property crime in the US is down.
The question here is really what specific policies and cultural forces are shaping the economic realities that these people are living in. If nothing else, we should ask why someone isn't having great success hiring a few thick-knuckled train robbers away from their life of crime and running a very profitable security business.
This is based on the (imho) wrong assumption that people prefer stealing over working when it's easier. But this is not true, people prefer to work but they need to live and their children need to live. You should remove the necessity to steal by building a social infrastructure that helps struggling people.
The case for this is nicely details in "Human Kind" by Rutger Bregman [0].
If you increase the base floor of affluence in the whole of society, yes, people stricken by poverty will no longer have to conduct this kind of activity out of desperation, but many, driven by other impulses, will simply move up to a higher class level of antisocial white collar behavior, from scamming investors to conmanship et al. still eventually necessitating the intervention of law enforcement and jail time.
If you take a look at your average prison population, people incarcerated due to poverty-induced despair are only part of the picture. There are plenty of folks in there who, for one reason or another, spanning from genetics to growing up in extremely abusive environments, are not wired to succeed in society, and are in some form a menace to it, and need to be contained in a way that allows non-sociopaths to conduct normal living.
I can't tell you the exact desperation-to-sociopathy ratio of criminal activity, I'm not sure those numbers exist, but my hunch, based on whatever information I've gotten my hands on over the years, is that the sociopath percentage behind this sort of activity is non-trivial and cannot be simply glossed over in the interest of standing up for folks of lesser means.
Before we inject our own biases into this conversation, I would love to see the data, the stats, and understand why the culprits are doing what they're doing. Otherwise we're simply painting our existing moral and political positions onto this canvas with no way of refuting any of the stances. The trite and tedious unfalsifiable personal-responsibility-vs-oppressed-victim-of-circumstances debate that never gets anywhere.
Society saves on the need for physical security.
"Safer" in the short term for the criminal and law enforcement, but overall much more damaging to society and the rule of law.
Salesmen already lie. There are already a lot of scammer ceos. People can deal with those by ignoring them. What people can not ignore is gun/knife in their face and a death of a loved one.
I’m assuming LA is similar to SF - much of the crime is organized. Multi-million dollar operations.
This is a problem because the perception is that law enforcement won’t do anything, so fuck it, why not get easy money. Working and paying taxes like some chump? Nah.
Some people will never steal even to save their own life, because they have principles which guide them in that direction.
I think it is important to recognize that our society has less respect for property laws and is more accepting of dishonesty, theft, and general lack of honor than many previous societies. As the cultural value of integrity declines, people see no reason to refrain from theft and violence, so if a situation presents itself where it seems advantageous to them, they take it, even if it is not advantageous to society or causes great harm to someone else. It seems that empathy is lacking in our society as well.
Are you sure there are, or do you think there are based on a Disneyesque view of morality?
Stealing because you're dirt poor and want more, while ethically and morally wrong, is understandable.
Stealing even though you could easily afford to buy, that's either a mental illness or a character/education/culture flaw.
I for one would not rob someone or still, even to save my life because my integrity is worth far more to me than that.
Isn't this a restatement of the Fundamental Attribution Error?
If it is intentional: Go look at the porch pirate glitterbomb videos and come back and tell me that it is because of necessity (I've only seen one go off in a pawn shop, the rest were people who wanted to improve their own home it seemed.)
Trying to be intellectually honest here I'll note that maybe those videos weren't uploaded because they didn't match the viewpoint he Mark wants to create. Or because he felt pity for them, but I don't think that is the full explanation.
Edit:
> I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Agree. Note however:
Norway were I live used to be like that (as far as I understand), but isn't anymore (this I do know).
Norway has maybe the best social security in the world.
Clearly there are two things that must be in place here:
- there mustn't be a need to steal to survive
- stealing must also not be accepted
It's a bit more complex than that, in my opinion. This is also about whether people respect/love society.
When you feel connected to society and feel thankful for what it gives to you, you will be much less likely to exhibit antisocial behavior.
In my opinion, this lack of connection to society is caused by
1. The US being a lot harder on its participants than in the Norden countries. This causes people to feel less thankful to it. 2. The division in US politics and media causes people to be disillusioned by society and feel no connection/relation to it.
What I write about above however is that even in the Nordic countries where everyone has all reason to be thankful people steal a lot.
Has always been going on, but it feels there has been an increase.
There can absolutely be some patterns.
And I think everyone individually is trying to minimize societal ills like theft. But good luck getting enough people to agree on what is the right path forward.
This mindset is present in so many aspects of human society. For instance, drug addiction. Up until recently, people would typically ask "how do we stop people getting access to drugs" instead of "why do people do this".
Remember the imagery from recent (any) riots? E.g. the mob plundering a Walmart? Those people are not starving. They are just greedy, uncontrolled and aggressive. They did not steal food. Just expensive electronic entertainment devices.
Human behaviour is very predictable. There will always be a large number of people taking whatever they can get. That's how it is. The failed communism is the proof.
The only thing preventing those people from doing their crime onto society are sanctions.
If a society instills the values of "every man for himself" and that patience, hard work and helping a fellow human is for chumps, the result is also predictable when mixed with the right conditions/environment.
Trying to solve a problem by focusing on sanctions (usually called "War On ____") has been proven to fail catastrophically.
During the 2011 London riots, looters consistently avoided bookstores in favor of "shoes, clothes, computers, and plasma televisions". <https://news.yahoo.com/pattern-london-rioters-leaving-bookst...>
(1) make sure everyone has enough and they won't steal
(2) promote a culture that stealing is unacceptable regardless of your situation
I don't personally believe (1) is sufficient nor will it solve the problem. Most people stealing are not "that" poor. They are not starving etc...
Instead they (we) have a culture that it's acceptable to steal. Even many well to do middle and upper middle class westerners feel like it's a right of passage to steal a few things, to shoplift once in a while, etc...
The places I've lived where theft is low didn't have much absolute poverty but they also had a culture of stealing is wrong almost regardless of your situation.
I have no clue how to promote that culture. it seems an impossible task. I'm confident though that the majority of the issue is culture , not poverty
There was a good bit on some Russian blog back in the day. Cops in Russia were very underpaid then, and someone floated the idea that they take bribes for that reason. The response:
"A cop takes bribes because his salary is low. Ok, what should his salary be? Like a minister's? But they say nowadays that ministers also take bribes like there's no tomorrow. Maybe we should make the cop's living standard like Zeus the god of all gods and then he'll stop taking bribes?"
Whether you're rich or poor, if you feel that it's ok to rob people, you'll rob people (in the way that your level affords). And if you hate the idea of robbing people, you won't.
These people aren't "desperate", they are opportunists. The situation is the opposite to what you say: there is low risk of getting caught and high chance of finding something valuable.
And what you see in these coastal California cities is a result of this thinking, that it's always something else to blame and people should feel guilty for wanting their property to be secured or offenders punished or deterred.
And it's not nearly so simple as you say. Easy to steal or low consequences of stealing absolutely contributes to things being stolen. If one in every 4-5 container has been burglarized, surely there's a good argument things need to be made a bit more secure sitting around handwringing about the state of society and admonishing anybody who doesn't sympathize with the criminals certainly won't solve it, as California has demonstrated.
It's not that there aren't other factors that could be improved on a societal level to reduce this kind of crime, to be clear I'm not arguing that.
> I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Must be nice to be so privileged. You know who suffers the most from street crimes, burglaries, and that kind of thing? It's poor people. Petty criminals know the police will descend on them like a ton of bricks if they went and started robbing rich people places. Just because you might not see police everywhere does not mean it is not protected by the threat of violence and incarceration.
I love my kids more than I love Pacific Rail Company or Fedex.
As I get older, sure we're secure, but I still worry about money for the mortgage and the kids' college fund.
If there was actually ZERO chance of getting caught because there was ZERO enforcement, I would absolutely steal to make those worries go away.
When I was young and single, I would not have.
To solve most of them, it appears A) everybody has to simultaneously change their behavior at once or B) some entity with a lot of resources will end up taking hits until culture changes. We're too deeply divided for A and class divides/corporate-civilian divides prevent anyone from stepping up and doing B.
Since it's too hard we're taking the easy way out into anger, revenge, and apathy--and if you live in a bad area the solution is to make or have enough money to move. The constant mobility mostly driven by job and money chasing makes culture impossible for those who need to work and don't have significant assets--which is most people--and without a culture the tendency to not care about each other tends to win.
Eventually we will run out of room in this country (we always sell out to developers) and we'll have to actually solve problems, but that's probably a good 100 years from now assuming we haven't broken up into separate countries by then.
I assume you're talking about poor people. I don't know how much experience you have with lower socio-economic people in the US, but from my experience, most are honest hardworking and industrious. Some are immigrants without a formal education or even language skills that came to this country for opportunity.
It's a little offensive to deny them basic autonomy to not steal and trash a rail-yard. The people that I came across in my life that do petty crime like this are not poor desperate people. They're usually highly anti-social borderline sociopaths. They're organized by informal networks of other people exploiting them. There's organization involved to keep lookout, know when and were to go and how to avoid getting caught. And if you get caught, there is a whole system around that as well. And since they're organized, they are fully aware of the risk-reward tradeoffs. This includes the recent trend of being soft on these kinds of crimes or looking the other way, as you're doing.
Think about the skill you need to pull this off. You need to be young and physically fit, to run from police. You have to be able to keep a lot of information in your head and make snap decisions about what to open, what to keep and what to toss. You have to show up on time and plan. The people doing these heists could easily be employed as warehouse or delivery workers and make an honest, probably even more lucrative living, especially when you consider long term risk of being arrested. They choose not to.
Poor people are not to blame for this savagery.
Having a strong culture that treats theft as a shameful act and caring for others is what breeds the culture you describe.
Option 2) Re-work society from the ground up to eliminate any incentive for burglary
It is no wonder why folks are drawn more to Option 1, which is about a bajillion times more approachable, but which doesn't preclude also working on Option 2 at the same time.
/s
> In fact, it’s not just art. Any sect at all that is leaner, meaner, and more survivalist than the mainstream will eventually take over. If one sect of rats altruistically decides to limit its offspring to two per couple in order to decrease overpopulation, that sect will die out, swarmed out of existence by its more numerous enemies. If one sect of rats starts practicing cannibalism, and finds it gives them an advantage over their fellows, it will eventually take over and reach fixation.
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Not to mention politicians lie to get elected anyhow. They all make empty bullshit promises, so even if they did offer something impressive its doubtful any of them would or could follow through. The fact that they want to stay in power means they keep lying or misrepresenting things in order to keep the votes flowing in
"It is no wonder why folks are drawn more to Option 1, which is about a bajillion times more approachable, but which doesn't preclude also working on Option 2 at the same time."
I think it does. Option 1 solutions of the world often mitigate the visible problems like whack-a-mole. It reinforces the effectiveness of option 1. It also creates a whole system that ends up protecting itself.
Lets say you hire 100k people to start fighting thefts. The underlying problems that produces thieves are around, so they continue to steal. Option 2 supporters say "Fund social safety nets." Option 1 supporters say theft has gone down 50%, hire more crime fighters. The thief catchers say "Protect our jobs." More money goes into fighting crime and not social safety nets.
At least with regards to crime, we've been at it far too long to know what works and what doesn't. Crime reduction is far more correlated with social stability than increased law enforcement.
But! Usually Option 1 is much less efficient long-term than Option 2, so – as long as we're both talking theoretically here – then theoretically the entity that is footing the bill for the 100k security force would see how freaking expensive it is and would advocate with a loud voice for Option 2 to get implemented as soon as possible.
Option 2 is long term, complicated, mostly requires buy in from several levels of underfunded state agencies. The private sector might pick up some crumbs.
Additionally, the people who make these decisions are probably pretty happy with the way that society is configured. Package theft is just a cost of doing business where the benefits are obviously enormous.
How come no one is incentivized to fix this - protect the trains, prevent this loss of property? Who pays for the stolen goods? I presume it would be the retailers, is it just a drop in the ocean for them?
In some more dystopian movies there were trains crossing vast areas of postapocalyptic hellscape protected by soldiers with machine guns and flamethrowers. In these pictures, the "responsible" just gave up. I find that simiarly dystopic.
This photojournalist probably just helped him make a bunch of money by identifying a prime location for an ongoing problem. The fact that we saw it before UP did doesn't mean they aren't incentivized to stop it. It's obviously bad business if their deliveries are missing packages.
>A May SEC filing revealed Berkshire owned 10.5 million shares of Union Pacific unp and nearly 6.4 million shares of Norfolk Southern nsc.
>Berkshire omitted those investments from a quarterly summary of its stock holdings filed earlier this month because the SEC allowed the company to keep them confidential, so it's not clear how much Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern stock Berkshire currently owns.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=3550477&page=1
Berkshire's 2022 ownership of UP (if it exists) is less than 1%.[2]
[2] https://money.cnn.com/quote/shareholders/shareholders.html?s...
As long as sum(value of goods lost) < sum(priced-in value of goods lost/damaged)+sum(expected cost of health/liability/life insurance rate hikes after robbers maim or kill staff), nothing will be done, it would simply be more expensive and risky.
I think people just don't want to admit how bad it has gotten because then they have to face their fears and take some action to change their future.
Homelessness, crime, theft, lack of security, mentally ill people in droves on the street, "do not go areas" like the tenderloin in SF and skid row in LA... These are not exaggerations, these are real, growing problems.
At some point, you won't be able to ignore it and all the money in the world that we earned won't help us.
People will lament on Nextdoor, Reddit, Facebook, forums, but in the end, the people I spoke with, won't leave the state or make drastic changes.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
That's the real dystopia here. Not that they need more armed guards.
By many measures, the US are a third world country. Here's an article from 2014 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/six-ways...
The problem with "winner takes all" culture is that "losers" still have to eat, and you can't jail or shoot them all. Hence, this.
Once the trains insurance company/fund (or UPS? Amazons?) starts to take a hit, they will respond swiftly with a solution somehow. It'll probably take a few more months of this to hit their bottom line.
Fixing decades of neglected infrastructure, education, and social services is going to cost way more than treating people decently would’ve costed. I won’t be surprised if the solutions entirely ignore the mass suffering that is responsible for events like this and only address the losses realized by the people with the power to make change.