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Comment by boomboomsubban | Hacker News Reader

Cargo theft accounts for $15-30 billion dollars lost each year, my quick search says shoplifting accounts for $15-20 billion dollars per year.

Why do we hear so much more about shoplifting? Sure it's more public, but I've seen dozens of stories about how shoplifting is destroying retail and this is the first one about cargo theft I can recall.

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Cynically? Because people understand shoplifting more, and the media can blame it on the poor/homeless and use it as fuel to increase police budgets. Wage theft is also in the same order of magnitude (the infographic on Wikipedia says >$19 billion in 2012), and similarly doesn't get the same kind of coverage. Capital and the police scratch each other's backs.

Capital and the police scratch each other's backs.

Why wouldn’t capital be all over the police to crack down on cargo theft?

If it's anything like the situation with the LA train thefts in the past couple years, it's because the security to guard things enroute would cost more than just eating the losses.

Well it’s one thing to guard and try to prevent thefts. It’s quite another to investigate them and arrest the perpetrators. If there’s some gang stealing trains or truckloads of goods then police could presumably find them and arrest them.

I have met several people who stole things for fun and talked openly about it. Not to make money or to fulfill some fundamental need, but just for the thrill and to get something they couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay for.

Ok? Do you think they're regularly doing this and account for a meaningful portion of shoplifting or do you think they're basically telling you their story about how one time they broke the law?

A friend of mine has shoplifted all kinds of random-ass shit. I'm talking like, oh, an entire dinette set, on one occasion; a canoe, and (unfortunately) only one paddle on another. And, oh, yeah, that $300 Dutch oven in their kitchen cabinet? Yeah, that's stolen.

So, I suppose, you may never know, huh? Because it could be.

How did he/she get it out the door - just run out with it? A dinette set isn’t easily concealed :)

I don’t know if they were bragging about a fake story but I remember an ex Walmart store employee saying they scanned the bar code for a smaller tv and bought a bigger more expensive tv. This was before 9/11 though iirc just to give you a reference of time and technology so don’t try it anymore.

Long ago I worked at Home Depot and we were explicitly told to let people walk if they were stealing. It wouldn’t be concealed, just walked out the door.

"No Chase" policy.

https://youtu.be/h_BT7vNhjCo

Off-topic: how much time has this friend spent in your home alone?

No these people had a years long habit of it, usually starting as kids or teenagers. Not every day but regularly still.

Can you prove the other way around?

Aren't diapers known as one of the most frequently shoplifted items? I guess they could be some kind of challenge for kleptomaniacs, but it seems more likely they're expensive essential items.

According to this [0] page, the most commonly shoplifted items are "apparel followed by cosmetics, alcohol and electronics," so if true, then it's not primarily a matter of essential items. It goes on to say that "incidents peak during December," which I think would tend to imply that people were taking advantage of product placement during Christmas season as opposed to stocking up on food and staples for the winter. (Of course it's possible people in distress are stealing luxury goods to sell at a discount to then acquire necessities.)

Purely speculating but I think that to some extent advertising has been a victim of its own success in convincing people that their self-worth hinges upon their ability to consume goods and services. If you can afford it, buy. If you can't afford to buy, borrow. If you can't borrow, steal. Just don't be poor and get caught. (Being rich and getting caught usually isn't a problem.)

[0] https://blog.gitnux.com/shoplifting-statistics/

… diapers, laundry detergent, etc. are stolen because they’re as good as currency. Anyone who lives in a poor area can tell you there is someone reselling these for a bit cheaper.

Baby formula as well. That's the reason it's typically locked up in stores, drug dealers will exchange formula for drugs.

https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/opinion/columns/2017/08/08...

Some even end up going big and steal from banks/investors but that is a bigger no-no. ( FTX, Theranos, WireCard, Frank, WeWork, etc )

Committing fraud to attempt to hide your failings is different than intentionally stealing things. Madoff is a better example of intentionally stealing.

And all pale in comparison next to tax evasion (the IRS estimates this at one trillion dollars per year for the US, and even more conservative estimates are in the hundreds of billions).

>the media can blame it on the poor/homeless and use it as fuel to increase police budgets

Why would "the media" care about police budgets?

Keeping people scared keeps them watching. Most media would lead you to believe crime is way up (it blipped up slightly, but has declined considerably in the last 30 years).

Also, there's very little in the way of mainstream media that isn't owned by wealthy people. The media is one major arm through which capital acts.

It drives engagement which means greater impact.

You could argue the same about wage theft, arguably even more so considering the viewers likely has a personal stake. Why don't we see this happening with wage theft?

Because wage theft is committed by the ownership class. Ted Turner, Jeff Bezos, and Rupert Murdoch don't want people upset about wage theft because they benefit from it.

>Ted Turner, Jeff Bezos

Clearly they missed the memo

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awashingtonpost.com+wa...

https://money.cnn.com/2017/12/18/news/economy/wage-theft-wor...

The same reason the media doesn't focus on the biggest theft category: wage theft.

It is easier to vilify individuals than to reduce the need for food theft (depressed wages and lack of economic opportunities for most people)

The media also doesn't focus on the inverse of wage theft: time theft, which is probably an order of magnitude larger than wage theft, if not more.

edit: CBS reports wage theft at $50 billion a year while a 2007 study in the Kentucky CPA Journal puts time theft in the US at $400 billion per year.

The same people who complain about "time theft" are the ones that try to skip on paying overtime, funnily enough

Some people do slack off but 99% of the time "time theft" is the boss being unreasonable (I'll keep it polite for HN)

Exactly. I am at the bottom of the totem pole as it goes. I am definitely not management. How am I “exempt”?

Federal minimum exempt pay should be at least $150k if not $200k.

Haha, is "time theft" when you post on HackerNews while you're compiling instead of checking Slack and email?

Lying on time sheets is usually what's meant by time theft, not checking HN while youre compiling.

In Barbara Ehrenrich's book Nickled and Dimed she got a job at a big box store (i think it was Walmart) and orientation included telling the workers that time theft was doing anything other than work while on the clock.

Don't "@" me. I swear my HN shitposting is marketing, or something.

Yeah I’m out here _evangelizing_ or some shit. For what I don’t know.

"But Wattabout ... Wage Theft" is just a standard trope-response on Hacker News whenever there's anything about "theft".

Article says the average cargo theft is $214K, which I'll guess is more than average shoplifting, meaning cargo theft is less frequent. Logistics companies are less relatable than physical stores where people have been.

Cargo theft is just less relatable in every way.

Also the criminals end up rich and in capitalism having money increases your self worth and you are rewarded for having money no matter where it came from.

>in capitalism having money increases your self worth and you are rewarded for having money no matter where it came from.

I can't imagine what type of economic system where this isn't true. Even in communism you're rewarded for having money because it allows you to obtain more resources.

Because cargo theft is not something an average person has any involvement with.

People know what shoplifting is and they might encounter it in their day to day life.

If some cargo container goes missing, what does that even have to do with me? It’s just some minutiae of an inefficient system as far as an average person is aware

Between the two, on the low end, that looks like a per capita donation of around $100/year to criminals, not including all of the other associated costs related to theft prevention, enforcement, incarceration and so on.

Visibility and customer impact would be my answer.

I've never seen a car go with theft but I've seen masked Bandits robbing a store several times. It is very uncomfortable and frankly scary to watch people come in with balaclavas and start grabbing power tools or whatever they want.

It is also very frustrating to shop in stores where many items are under lock and key

The news companies hardly have reporters anymore, and are often more than happy to pick up press releases companies create for them. It frequently seems to be a way to lobby for more police protection.

Wait until you find out how much wage theft occurs.

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