Hacker News Reader

I was certain I’d find an April 1st publication date but holy cow that’s real. What a waste of public resources.

Japan takes theft seriously; you can go to prison for stealing small change, or lose your job for cheating at self-service coffee.

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/japan-man-jailed-10-yen-theft-1159...

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/school-principal...

It's severe, but I don't know what degree it's a waste of public resources. People like the rock-bottom crime rate. On the other hand, word is that Japanese police are not great at investigating more well-planned crime. A trend has emerged in recent years of professional criminals basing themselves abroad and using social media to recruit naïve/disaffected people for the manual labor part.

You can be very strict at punishing theft without having a very expansive definition of theft.

This isn't defined as theft; my comment is to point out that Japan throws resources at policing/prosecuting violations on principle rather than scale of the injury. They are deontologists rather than utilitarians.

Selling cheat devices/services is treated as a kind of unlawful commerce, because Ruining It For Everybody is socially unacceptable there.

Or just police is bored because crime rate is low? They may have quota to fill to justify their job?!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com