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Comment by bluescrn | Hacker News Reader

The problem area seems to be property crime without direct violence.

It can ruin the victims life just as much as non-lethal violence (taking away a person's source of income, or transport required to keep a job, or wrecking a business they've spent many years building), but many take the 'it's only property, it's probably insured!' attitude.

And many at least see stealing from 'big nasty corporations' as relatively OK. But if people keep stealing from businesses until they close down or relocate and there's no easy shoplifting targets, will the thieves stop, or will they move on to stealing from homes?

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> 'it's only property, it's probably insured!'

Insurance increases the expected cost of loss! -- the insurer would go broke if they were charging less than that.

So yeah, sure, it can save you from the boundary effect of it instantly wreaking your life but only by putting you at a constant disadvantage to people who live in less crime prone areas or whom are wealthy enough to self insure against such loss.

And very often small mom and pop shops aren't insured

"it's only property, it's probably insured!"

People who say this don't have real jobs; not the type of jobs where they'll end up on pain killers when they retire. They have laptop jobs on the softer side of intellectual rigor.

Money is time traded from your life, health traded from your body to your employer. Stealing property is literally stealing the purpose of hours of grueling work.

'it's only property, it's probably insured!'

I wonder why insurance is so high...

O why there are food deserts when stores continue to get robbed without any meaningful repercussions for the thieves

I almost had to sit for a jury trial. Guy stole things worth less than $950, was likely homeless, the prosecution took 22 months to build a case and failed to leverage a plea bargain, named about 30 law enforcement officers and/or forensics specialists as potential witnesses, and jury selection started with 100 citizens and took 4+ days, then the judge claimed it would take 6 weeks to try the case.

The problem isn’t just insurance. It’s that prosecution is insanely slow and is far more harmful to society than the actual crime.

"and is far more harmful to society than the actual crime."

I doubt the victims see it that way. If we just let people steal, it can turn into a runaway chain reaction due to a lack of consequences.

That's not how society works.

That is exactly how society works.

If people work for my living and see someone just steal for theirs with absolutely no consequence, what they learn is that social dysfunction is optimal, and that doing otherwise is being a chump.

how about we build a robust social safety net so that stealing less than $1000 worth of stuff is not the best way to survive

Please re-read your parent. Same concept here. If you make it that comfortable, then why work? Keep in mind that there will always be people who want things the programs won't provide that they're literally willing to kill for - drugs, the newest iPhone, in-style basketball shoes, etc.

Now, I do agree in a parallel way, but with a different solution. If we fix structural problems preventing people from being, or having hope of being, productive members of society, than that can prevent some crime.

If that's what you want to try, okay that's fine. But do that first, not second. It helps neither side to do it second.

You imply that if you were the victim, watching such byzantine process to recover mere hundreds of dollars would feel satisfying to you?

No, but the idea that there are disincentives for others to make me a repeat victim is nice.

"mere hundreds of dollars"

This is incredibly insensitive. That's a lot of money to lose to many people.

It also results in a disincentives for all parties involved to invest all the time and effort. You could either convince everyone that "don't be insensitive it's a lot of money for them", or you could try to make the process easier.

That's not what was suggested. The suggestion was to simply not prosecute a theft of about $900.

Yes the disincentive, right here in plain view.

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