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Comment by lusus_naturae | Hacker News Reader

I fail to understand how this is different from organized rings of train robbers in the old, old west. Maybe we need modern day cowboys now (per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law)? Most likely we'll have security drones, like Boston Dynamics's robot dog.

Edit to say that having people hounded by security drones sounds like a terrible state of affairs. Having businesses robbed by organized gangs does as well. I think UBI and rent control or rent subsidies with high taxes on the wealthiest is a better solution in the short-term. For the long-term, philosophies that advocate for less materialism seem preferable (no need to rob if you're happy with less money etc.).

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Instead of giving criminals UBI how about the police actually enforce shoplifting crime?

Ain't gotta be either-or. Give everyone UBI and enforce the daylights out of crime.

You've got my vote and my PAC dollars. Run!

I dunno. Doing basic due-diligence level investigation of law enforcement policy and effectiveness first is a good idea.

I'm a fan of UBI, but you may also want to do a web search or two before saying UBI should be 'U'.

Both fair points, and realistically I’m not even really a fan of UBI given that it’ll be captured by landlords as increased rent. The real point I’m making is that these things are not actually at odds and they shouldn’t be portrayed as such.

Sure. I'd buy that.

Lol.

> per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law

Cowboys were animal herders, not police officers.

You're probably thinking of the romanticized "Lone Ranger" image of the cowboy as seen in Western movies. This is almost entirely fictitious.

Not entirely fictitious. Cowboys and ranch hands at times also worked as mercenaries or deputized law enforcers in 19th-century organized conflicts not unlike the urban gang wars we occasionally see today. The best known example is probably the Lincoln County War, which involved 15 murders and probably a few hundred participants at various levels.

San Francisco, that we'll known expanse of American western wilderness is completely without infrastructure, which is why we routinely have battles between native americans and settlers on the Haight. And why there are routine gunfights between ranchers and farmers in North Beach.

Reality is less popular than romanticized ideals, and always has been. Sir Humphrey Appleby famously quipped "All government funding is symbolic." And to paraphrase: "Funds aren't distributed to government programs based on need, utility or expected benefits, but on what politicians think will convince the electorate they're spending government funds appropriately."

If the people working at a store can’t afford any apartment within a forty minute commute the store will fail.

It's been true for a long time that people working at that store couldn't afford to live nearby (in general).

What changed in the last few years though?

Covid

Stores with no nearby workers won’t spontaneously fail. But the situation is symptomatic of a precarious labor/housing equilibrium. In this precarious system, stores are likely to be toppled by external forces (Covid), and have farther to fall afterwards.

Other cities, with more robust labor/housing equilibriums, are bouncing back from the pandemic just fine.

Yet San Francisco continues to have min wage workers.

Never ending stream of suckers that has not realized that it doesn't work out yet. Like Uber drivers that are selling their car at a loss one mile at a time.

Some might be living in rent controlled flats though.

The question you should be asking is if this is actually a shoplifting problem vs. a massive decline in SF’s willingness to shop in person.

I sure don’t know anyone who talked about going to the downtown Nordstrom to buy anything. And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.

This is an important question because while a scapegoat feels nice (they always do - look at the glee people are inserting into their comments here), if this is a preview of what all urban centers look like in 25 years, we better start thinking up answers now rather than later.

to add - the scapegoat here is also particularly useful to take attention away from consumer changes that would effect to operate expensive retail properties.

Not saying it is one or the other, just that nordstrom would be particularly motivated to shift blame because of what the alternative says about their broader business model. So maybe not taking them at their word.

That being said, i'll note that I'm SHOCKED how normalized shoplifting has become not just among 'the criminal element' but among my social set which is decidedly not your typical criminals. Stealing, especially from self checkouts, is increasingly openly discussed in my experience - and generally framed as 'its them paying me for doing their job of checking me out' or 'countering inflation/corporate greed'. Whether I agree with the morality of it or not and juts note that it is increasingly normalized. More broadly, I struggle with feeling sorry for corporations when the public lives under a never ending stream of abuse from corporate policies and control (c.f., everything being a subscription).

>And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears.

It sure seems like a strange coincidence that all the downtown shutdowns happened around the same time that hundreds of thousands of people weren't forced into the area 5x a week by their job and the city lost over 50k in population, likely high earning workers who could now work remote elsewhere.

I think retail locations ebb and flow and it's hard to parse through other factors. I suppose I'm a data point by keeping my location and Nordstrom as a constant over time with neighborhood as a variable.

25 years ago, it was particularly fun to go shopping at Union Square/Market Street, including Nordstrom. Then that devolved into going to Nordstrom at Stanford Shopping Center. Now I prefer to go to Nordstrom Rack in East Palo Alto. In the early 90s, I was afraid to drive through the town due to drug battles.

On the other hand, I still go to Hayes and Haight Streets in SF to shop, even if these urban neighborhoods can be "scruffy."

Maybe I like shopping areas that are interesting but not overly threatening.

Maybe you need better wealth redistribution, higher taxes, better schools, better gun control, it's different from back then because now there are rights, institutions.. the fact that someone in US on this place, that is supposed to be like a place where you find people with a certain brain power, to me it's sign of a certain decadence if the people with supposedly brain of a country say that the answer to modern crime is modern robots cowboys, it's one of those situations where one doesn't know if it has to cry or to laugh

Enforcing the law is necessary but not sufficient. In order for luxury retailers to succeed in a particular area they have to present a safe and comfortable experience to affluent shoppers. Having a bunch of Dalek like security robots roaming the store isn't compatible with that experience.

Third world wealth equality conditions correlates with third world social conditions.

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