Comment by markdog12 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by markdog12 | Hacker News Reader

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Some more interesting context from your link:

When the author anonymously interviewed students, he gathered the following responses:

• “I totally have [taken things from a store downtown without paying for it].

I think I’ve stolen from Gibson’s twice. I took a packet of those noodles that come in boxes… It wasn’t expensive and I felt like it. I just preferred not paying for it, but I could have.”

• A female student admitted that she has stolen many things from Gibson’s Bakery and Ben Franklin’s. “I took a wine bottle. I had a large winter jacket and I put the bottle in the lining and I walked right out.” And, “I took pens from Ben Franklin because individually the pens cost $4 and I thought it was a racket.”

• “Probably [I have stolen from downtown] but let me think about it…yeah, no, I do that all the time.” The same student then talked about how they stole a one-hundred-dollar ($100) bottle of wine from Gibson’s Bakery.

• “I have stolen from Gibson’s, Kim’s, IGA. I took some dumb stuff. From Gibson’s I took some steak knives for an avocado that I also stole. I was really drunk and that was really bad.”

• “I think I’ve taken candy and just small shit from Ben Franklin’s and the Oberlin Market.”

• “[I have taken] a few pens from Ben Franklin over the years… they’re hard to resist.”

• One said she’s never paid for Chapstick while at Oberlin for four years.

• The author: “I myself have stolen from the very people I’ve interviewed for this story. I could have paid for the items easily, but I chose to steal them instead.”

This student and/or institutional attitude was supported by the statistics provided from the Oberlin Police Department of thefts at Gibson’s Bakery from January 1, 2011 to November 14, 2016. These statistics show that of the 40 adults arrested for theft during that time period, 33 of those adults (82.5%) were Oberlin College students.

They should do like Saudi Arabia and cut off their hands.

I'm going to be charitable, because I recognize the username since you usually comment with more verbose and thought-out text, and assume you meant to say "They should be thankful that Gibson's doesn't do like Saudi Arabia and cut off their hands".

I would have thought the same thing, a year ago. It's a low-effort provocation either way, though. The thread has nothing whatsoever to do with Saudi Arabia.

When someone points out a problem with healthcare in America, others always chime in with “we should have socialized healthcare like Sweden.” This is in the same thing, except the premise is that maybe Saudi Arabia and other Sharia law countries are on to something.

The affluent, privileged Oberlin students profiled in the article don’t even feel shame about stealing from local small businesses. That suggests not only something about them, but the moral context they inhabit. And these are our next generation of leaders! What if we have made a mistake and ratcheting down punishments for theft had the effect of weakening social taboos against it? What if the students aren’t the product of something that can be called progress? What if the Saudis are on to something?

When people make stupid comments in the other ideological direction, I flag them too. This stuff is beneath you --- or, it used to be.

It’s “stupid” to suggest that hundreds of millions of other people might have a point in how they’ve structured their laws?

Are you just upset because you think corporal punishment for theft should be outside the Overton window and you assume I agree and am just being flippant? (And I’m not sure what the “ideological direction” here is. I’m pretty sure right wing people don’t think sharia gets anything right.)

I'm not upset, but I flagged your comment because it was an unserious, low-effort attempt to provoke the thread, which is something you've been doing a lot lately.

I'm probably being too testy about this. There's been a pretty clear shift with your comments (people have emailed me about it out of the blue!) and it's been disappointing, in the sense that I have a rooting interest in people who contribute good stuff to HN continuing to do so, and not tearing the place down. But that's my problem, not yours.

I (mostly) find myself agreeing with you on this website, and I see what point you're making by referencing healthcare, but that's not at all relevant.

To steelman your argument, you're concerned about proliferation of, essentially, tomfoolery and pilferage amongst the young. Because of changing or weakening of cultural norms, or because of some other reason (maybe poverty or class divides or some such explanation). I mostly share these concerns, to be honest, because in the last 2 years I've started to see the apathy present in younger co-workers that have joined the company I'm at. The problem I have with your comparison is that ... no one wants to be like Saudi Arabia except the Saudis. Older iterations of Civilization had much more draconian enforcement of law because, and this is just my personal opinion based on my own reading of history, the stakes were a lot higher. Stealing someone's coin or robbing them of their livestock literally killed the victim (usually very slowly and very very miserably), and so, in a way that I understand, it made sense for the penalty for such a transgression to be as or nearly as extreme as the cost to the victim.

I'm not sure what purpose it would serve to bring that back, since the stakes are demonstrably not that high. I realize you're not arguing for that, and are making a broader point. I'm trying to think of constructive ways to explain to these kids that "stealing is bad", but then I just realize that the problem isn't the kids, it's the Professors and the University, and redirect my criticism toward those institutions instead.

I think that stealing and cheating—by people who don’t face acute need—is a profound moral defect. In the same way that people saying “boys will be boys” when applied to quite horrible conduct says something bad about our society, normalizing theft as youthful hijinks says something bad. (Not directed at you, I’m aware most Americans anymore just don’t think it’s that big of a deal.)

You have a point about abundance changing the balance compared to earlier eras. I’ll have to think about that.

I understand and sort of agree but this could spiral into some deontological debate. I don’t see “boys will be boys” as relevant because, well, boys will in fact be boys and do stupid stuff. You’re imo rightly pointing out that there’s a certain strain of moralism today that, mostly as a political project, excuses certain behavior - like theft. I don’t think the people you’re concerned about are actually saying “boys will be boys”, and far from it. They actually want these kinds of thefts to happen, and that’s not the same as “Johnny 16 year old crashed the car racing his friend”.

My point about scarcity and material abundance isn’t that harsher penalties weren’t morally or philosophically justified. Just that it was much easier to do so when things were scarce.

Whoa, please don't post like this to HN. That's the sort of thing we ban people for. I know you know this!

I don't want to ban you and have no intention to, but you create a big problem for us if we ban people for comments like this and then an account like yours does the same thing. Users expect fairness. How am I supposed to answer them when they say things like "so it's ok if rayiner does it?"

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