Metal thieves in America's cities
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Hmmm. There's something missing from this explanation.
While I don't think these reasons are wrong, we are being gaslit about some of the knock-on effects of our sudden cultural attitude towards our justice system that happened at this time.
Young people don't want to become police anymore and police don't want to police anymore.
For good reasons too! It F**ing sucks dealing with ALL the problems of a city. Ask me how I know!
None of us, first responders, are allowed/empowered to do our damn jobs. We have been effectively neutered by woke activists that think everyone is out to get them. All hell breaks loose when you ask, demand or otherwise force people to take responsibility for themselves and/or own their mistakes.
"Wokeness," in the original intended sense - the sense for which people have given their lives in the streets and suffered the arbitrary brutality of American policing for decades, not the sense that incels and racist shitbags use for irony - is the entire point. As soon as your worldview and vocabulary erase the former and continue to normalize the latter you've become part of the problem.
Use of this word could be a microaggression causing them severe mental stress possibly leading to suicide!
And all because you wanted to keyboard social justice warrior! Which, BTW, has not helped, in any way, one person or thing yet and it does cause problems. Also not what this site is for.
But if you're police or some other first response, your job is literally to take responsibility for other people?
Said without any irony whatsoever
Do you actually believe that or do you think there are perhaps broader issues at play?
However...
> All hell breaks loose when you ask, demand or otherwise force people to take responsibility for themselves and/or own their mistakes.
The irony of this statement is that the entire collapse of trust with police in America was refusal for departments or unions to hold individual bad actors responsible. The reactionary response of police unions and the whole "thin blue line/sheepdog" attitude made it clear that also police don't want to take responsibility for mistakes.
https://www.divestspd.com/p/no-discipline-for-detective-arre...
> The OPA could not sustain any allegations against Belgarde because the four-year deadline for discipline established in the police guild contract had passed.
When police unions decide to protect the bad ones, it obviously reduces their credibility and hence society’s trust in them. Might have worked for decades in the past due to lack of information, but people know this stuff now.
I would rather err on the side of letting the guilty go free than convicting someone wrongly. Due process is more important than any individual crime.
Their subsequent newsworthy act of aggression by the same cop this year also makes me err that way.
I very much like the concept of innocent until proven guilty and I want “proven” to be a very high bar.
Also, the guy in the link above also has a 3rd incident in 2015 where he admits to assaulting someone and got a slap on the wrist. Also, it’s 2020, and cops have body cameras and police car cameras, so there presumably is evidence of a DUI. Highly unlikely that another cop pulled him over and cited him for nothing.
So why is it the police are the only ones who are known for taking your property and killing your dog? Maybe the property-takers and dog-killers are naturally drawn to that profession more?
Also, whatever power they do have, they don't seem to abuse, because no one ever complains about the firefighters abusing power.
> police don't want to police anymore
Seems to contradict that being an argument.
The courts are a mess, people get 1 overnight and get back out. There are no penalties anymore for crime so we get this.
The core issue was America needing better and more accountable policing.
"Defunding" the police was an extremist, fringe position that hijacked the situation.
It isn't a false dichotomy, but simply a difference in interpreting what the core issue is. Some believe the police can't be reformed and can't be held accountable, because the core issue is systemic racism and white supremacy, and the only option is to tear the entire system down and rebuild it from scratch around truly anti-racist principles.
Obviously if you don't accept the thesis, you can't accept the conclusion.
I think it sounded extremist and fringe, if you assumed it meant completely gutting their budget and placing police officers on a trebuchet aimed at the nearest shoreline.
But the actual "Defund the Police" proposal tried to shift some of that funding to non-armed responders, to better community services, and other things that have been proven to work better at improving outcomes and preventing crimes than a man with a gun showing up to deal with every conceivable scenario that someone found unpleasant.
No, defund the police means defund the police... not defund some subsection of policing to fund another new section of policing.
"Defund the police" is as hilarious as it is backwards as a statement.
NYT, June 12, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Barely mattered what it was, it just had to be Good Enough for a judge (sometimes another high school kid who was grabbed out of the hall) to accept.
less beating of black men? accountability.
more convictions of thieves? accountability.
more presence in disorderly areas? accountability.
equality before the law? accountability.
Pick anything you want, any political position, and if the cops are unaccountable, its a dead letter. Except for one: no more cops.
"defunding" is, perhaps, the worst political slogan I've heard of in my _life_, as it implies yeeting the cops out of the city, with prejudice. Most people didn't want that. (Some did). So that was a cluster.
I think that all Americans need to step out of their houses and shake hands with their neighbors, look around, and realize we live next to each other, all of us. And we have to make this a society we can all live in, rather than griping online.
For example, we go through great lengths to ensure that doctors are suited to their job. Why? Because they have the power to kill people with their mistakes or poor judgement.
It's reasonable to apply that same high bar to police, who have much greater latitude in exercising that power, up to and including the power to kill their fellow citizens, than doctors do.
I don't think any young person who likes the idea of being able to walk around with a gun on their hip, being a police officer, anymore than I think any young person who likes cutting people open should become a surgeon.
I do however agree that it's a problem (it's just an orthogonal one).
The police in my western town began as a protection racket. Businesses wanted someone(s) to do something about drunks and brawling. So they deputized some bouncers. But they couldn't (wouldn't) pay much. So these newly minted cops got entrepreneurial. Then they branched out into prostitution. /1
Sheriffs in the South started as militia and slave catchers.
Texas Rangers started as body guards and quickly transmuted into a paramilitary unit to hunt and kill Comanche people.
Thru the North East and Rust Belt, the robber barons paid cops to violently suppress labor.
Etc.
Old habits die hard.
--
1/ Seattle Justice: The Rise and Fall of the Police Payoff System in Seattle https://www.amazon.com/Seattle-Justice-Police-Payoff-System/...
There are always going to be some bad actors in any profession. Being violent to an appropriate extent is part of being a cop. When billionaires fund social media psyops to convince people that their friendly neighborhood cops are out to get them, and they'd be better off without police protection, that distorts public perception of police performance.
Perceived problems with police need to be investigated carefully. Stirring the public into a frenzy every time some cop looks bad on video is harmful to everyone.
>It's reasonable to apply that same high bar to police, who have much greater latitude in exercising that power, up to and including the power to kill their fellow citizens, than doctors do.
No, it's not reasonable to expect police to go through a similar amount of rigor as a doctor. The job just isn't that complex, and there is nothing inherent about possibly killing people that requires a comparable amount of training. If being a cop did require such rigors, we couldn't afford to have police at all.
>I don't think any young person who likes the idea of being able to walk around with a gun on their hip, being a police officer, anymore than I think any young person who likes cutting people open should become a surgeon.
There's nothing wrong with walking around with a gun on your hip, whether you're a cop or not. I get what you're trying to say but there's only so much anyone can do to discern anyone's internal motivations for picking a career. As long as those motivations aren't evil or likely to interfere with their job performance, I don't care.
source?
You're right. We don't have to have cops go through the same rigorous training as surgeons, but at least we should make sure that they are not sociopaths and have empathy and compassion for other beings (the cops, not the surgeons).
It's very different in peaceful, gun-free countries.
You think gun-free countries have no criminals or violence? They certainly do, and it is often far more brutal because individuals cannot defend themselves from groups and knives are everywhere.
Regardless of the media (and I agree TV news amplify all this stuff which is why we don't even have TV in our house), the statistics (not generated by the media) show much, much higher rates of homocide, both by individuals and police officers, in the US than any other industrialized country.
Regardless of you how you personally feel, the US is inherently statistically unsafe compared to other industrialized nations, especially wealthier ones like Japan, Switzerland, the Nordic countries, etc.
That may be but I don't think homicide is common in the US, even if it is more frequent than elsewhere. 5 in 100k is not common. I don't believe guns are to blame. I also think there are other cultural factors in play as the US is very culturally diverse compared to Nordic countries or Japan. I would be interested to know the number and severity of drug addictions per capita before considering that.
Even reducing my risk of homicide from 5 in 100k to zero would not change my mind about guns. We need them to defend against all aggressors, even government actors. The police do not have a duty to protect you in the US, and even if they did they cannot be everywhere. People are quick to ridicule the idea that guns can protect you against the government these days but the logic is totally sound and has been proven again and again throughout history.
I think what happened in Waco TX showed that having a bunch of guns to protect yourself from the government is 1) ineffective, and 2) a really bad idea.
It made sense in the 1700s but those were different times.
Exactly. And to be clear. I wasn't suggesting that cops go through the equivalent of 10 years of college + medical school. But now they get, what, 2-4 months training, in some cases just straight out of high school? But even more important is the screening -- and that's a lot of what those years of the medical school process does.
There's a reason that you think the cops are friendly and other people don't. But the reason is not distorted media consumption. It's because the cops actually treat different people very differently.
Many people who are routinely harassed and abused by police would be similarly surprised to learn that you find them to be so friendly. What seems to you to be an elaborate psyop conspiracy to demonize the police is actually just ordinary people in different social circumstances from you showing what reality looks like in their position.
No, what I'm talking about is a very well-funded campaign with support from the richest people. They have little interest in you having adequate police protection. They are sabotaging each other and the public at large by making people think the problems with police are far more severe and widespread than they are.
I happen to think that there is.
If you have a gun on your hip you probably won't shoot anyone with a gun. But the chances of shooting someone with a gun are non-zero. If you don't have a gun on your hip, the chances of shooting someone with that gun are zero. I like those chances better.
(The 2A was good for its time and make sense in the context in which it was written; it has no place in today's world.)
On-duty police fatally shoot about 1,000 people every year.[0] That's in the US. Guess how many on-duty police in the U.K. or Japan fatally shoot every year? [1][2]
[0] https://manhattan.institute/article/fatal-police-shootings-a... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_...
At some point in time this stopped being normal. AFAIK nowadays every cop in Europe has a pistol on themselves. Surely that's not actually necessary ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Once even a small fraction of criminals starts to have guns and use those to kill cops to get away that becomes necessary, yes. Then once cops starts to have guns the criminals stops shooting them as much, the transition is very quick as once police has a gun the criminal risks his life by shooting, while before the police had guns the criminal was perfectly safe using his gun.
This transition happened in most European countries, but not all. And this costs basically nothing, the amount of deaths from police shootings in Europe is minimal even if you include warranted police shootings.
This is false. Police in the UK and Japan don't carry guns. And their violent crime rates are significantly lower than the US where police do carry guns.
Now granted, in the US everyone can carry a gun, so yeah, the police need them too. That's why the root of the problem is the fact that everyone, with minimal checks and balances, has the right to carry a gun and it's embedded into US culture as part of "being American".
Require insurance for gun owners, like we do for vehicles, and the problem largely goes away.
(Hardened criminals and gangs will always find access to guns, as they can in the UK or Japan. That's a separate issue that is conflated with but actually orthogonal to gun control and police carrying weapons.)
Police in Japan do carry guns.
Also police in Sweden and almost all other European countries carry guns, and they have much less levels of violence than USA as well, guns are illegal yet still a very small fraction of criminals have guns. A police doesn't get to decide when they meet a criminal with guns, when they do the police really really need a gun, and they need the protection of the criminal knowing that the police has a gun.
Only a handful of countries in the world has police patrol without guns, the majority of the most peaceful countries on earth still have policemen patrol with guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_firearm_use_by_country
If you want to point to a single factor as having / not having an effect between 2 groups you need to account for other factors. You could setup a statistical model.
So to be clear, the fact that policemen in the US/UK do/don’t carry guns and have higher/lower crime rate doesn’t prove anything on its own.
First country I find by googling is Germany but copper thieves are stealing cables alongside railroad in France, Belgium, etc.
https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/copper-railway-theft-eur...
And it is regularly disrupting trains.
These thieves do not care for the community. They do care about fake Luis Vuitton caps (convinced they're highly stylish with their Luis Vuitton caps and Luis Vuitton manpurses) and the latest iPhone though.
Deoderant in particular is incredibly profitable because it sells super well on ebay. Just search old spice deoderant on ebay and look at all of the obviously stolen merchandise.
It's funny though, because it kinda creates tons of jobs. the highly incompetent just steal and sell to fencers, the semi-incompetent buy stolen goods and fence them on ebay, and poor consumers get to buy slightly cheaper goods on ebay. the only people who lose are stores elling goods, and consumers who have to ask salespeople to open the locked up merchandise.
Fewer and fewer people have a stake in their communities and their community's prosperity. Fewer have a stake in the housing market. Fewer have a stake in our institutions working properly. Fewer have a stake in capitalism itself. It's not surprising that these things are slowly becoming devalued. The solution may involve welcoming back more people as stakeholders in society rather than pushing them away.
It's not like selling a stolen bike and pretending it's not stolen. There's just not a lot of good reasons for someone to bring into a recycler an old brass plaque from a city monument or a hundred yards of wire from a bridge. Law enforcement knows this at least and is lenient on the thieves if they help pin the fence.
And yet countries that aren't as rich as the US and are a lot softer on crime, have a lot less of it than the US. So maybe something is actually wrong in the US at a societal leve, that it has such a higher crimerate.
"If I make $100, and some stranger who I don't know loses $10,000...well, sucks to be that stranger, he should have paid a security guard to watch his wires" is the mindset of a whole load of people in the world.
Hell, I mean, there are people out there who will kill you for your $100 phone if they have the chance.
Strong disagree.
If the gains are high enough, lots of people who aren't poor will steal.
But if the gains are low, then there's a risk-to-reward ratio that comes into play and, generally speaking, the poorer you are, the high ratio you're willing to put up with.
Sure, there are those people too, but even then the risk-to-reward factor will come into play, it's just that those people are willing to take a higher risk not because of the monetary reward but because of the reward of the "thrill".
Parent's point is that poverty will lower the threshold for some of these categories. People who wouldn't care that much about money if they had enough to get by will get into stealing, not necessarily to get rich but just to get back to a state they're comfortable with.
You mean exactly like the employees, execs and shareholders of the big publicly traded companies many people here work for?
But it's evil when the homeless crackhead in your neighborhood smashes your car window for drug money, but not the Google/Microsoft exec who pushes ads with malware or addictive drugs on your kids for a career advancement and a nice house in California, that's just called innovation, where the former person is the looser and the latter the winner of our capitalist system.
Many profitable industries have been built on privatizing the profits and socializing the externalities on the environment, society, people, etc. Oil & gas, mining, motor vehicles, fast fashion, ads, gambling, food, pharma, etc. Usually on less developed countries, and it only makes the news when those externalities finally reach us here in the rich western countries.
More regulation, regular enforcement of law, and more responsibility in general for the people and firms that wield the most influence will prevent many otherwise great citizens from deciding not to play the game of civilized life. IRS getting massive returns from cracking down on wealthy tax cheats is one of many good steps in this direction under the current US administration.
That goes against easy money for corporations.
I think your conclusion is wrong because you assume "huge risk/effort -> people only do this out of poverty" when it's "almost no risk/effort -> people want a quick hundred bucks".
It's interesting that absolutely no mention of changes to policing / prosecution.
Across Los Angeles County, more than 290 fire hydrants have gone missing since January.
In my town we are having electric outages because of this (they call it "vandalism")
"Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez joined Hernandez in opposing the motions, even though he had initially supported the idea. He asked his colleagues to understand that the thefts might be committed by people living in poverty who are pushed into acts of desperation."
A note that the costs to report, schedule, supply, staff and roll a govt truck to do a fire hydrant or street light are not cheap. The poor person will get some money from wiring, but the city will be spending 10x - 100x that to get the infrastructure fixed up - so not sure allowing theft as a result of the pandemic or poverty is the most efficient way to address poverty? Insulated coper wire is about $1.50 per pound to recycle at a metal buyer.
Many (including me) would consider it unethical but I understand the temptation to cut out several layers of middlemen and just have the government hand out drugs.
I took the old one to a metal scrap yard, inside unit and outside. They made me go back home and cut some stuff apart for "top dollar" (which wasn't worth it really but I did it anyway).
Very surprised at what I received. I had over 200 pounds of "tin" (they called it) which was basically scrap steel. That fetched around $10 at $.04 a pound. The aluminum radiators fetched $.37 a pound coming to nearly $20. The old copper refrigerant lines however fetched around $3.50 a pound (nearly $60) and they were a small part of the whole system weight-wise, but most of the money. The owner got visibly excited when he saw the copper lines so I assume it's pretty profitable on that end too.
Overall I got close to $100 which wasn't worth the work, but it needed to be disposed of anyway. It was also "interesting" as I'd never been in a scrap yard before. Lots of shady looking folks coming in (some on bicycles) while I was there.
The disparity in metals pricing was surprising, with copper being worth more and aluminum way less then I'd thought. Also interesting was it was pretty close to a 10X ratio for each metal. Copper = 10X aluminum. Aluminum = 10X steel.
When there is massive inequality (or rampant drug abuse) and inadequate law enforcement, people on the fringes cannibalize essential infrastructure and sacred spaces. Meanwhile, the very rich take advantage of the situation to gain more power and benefits.
We have the peak of technology and knowledge and yet the core base of the society is rotting away, alas we know how it ended last time. Perhaps we to go the way of the neoplatonists?
Only allow maximum amounts of metal to be recycled unless said person has a registered business, per day/week/whatever. Regulate it.
There isn't an incentive if you can't sell it. As a commentator indicated below people were scrapping fire hydrants. Wouldn't this be a huge red flag??
"Oh yeah, I see you have 5 hydrants here to sell. I can't think of where these could have possibly have come from."
If you are in poverty in America and want to get help, it's pretty easy to get. You can get food stamps to buy food, to go a shelter or section 8 for housing, we have welfare and many other programs to take care of folks who ask for it.
But each of those programs has rules, you can't buy booze with your food stamps and you can't bring drugs into a shelter for example. Some people don't like this tradeoff so they resort to theft, whether breaking into a car or stealing the copper wiring out of a lightpole.
And that is where the issue is, while we are pouring tons and tons of resources into the inventive, we as a society are neglecting the fact that you also need disincentives. We need to make sure that we show people that we have incentives to get them back on their feet, get them healthy and get them fed but we also need to show equal disincentives if they choose to break the law.
No, you're wrong. The only thing one can say is "many programs exist" but they are altogether inadequate even without their restrictions (which you're minimizing).
Most places section 8 housing is nearly impossible to get with years waits common. Shelters have extremely restrictive conditions as well as being very unpleasant (being around people destroyed by the system isn't good for even those not yet in terrible condition).
Also, drugs and alcohol are often by homeless people to get to sleep in circumstances where it would be otherwise impossible.
That's not to say that there aren't many options for aid, but many of these programs are much less available than you'd think.
We, as a society, have stopped demanding people to take responsibility for themselves. We don't hold anyone accountable for their actions. We ostracize the basic enforcement of accountability and those that are charged with upholding law. We are soft AF as a society.
That said, they will also prosecute anti-social behavior in an extremely putative manner.
In Singapore (and also Japan and SK), it's the carrot and the stick that runs the social contract.
https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/scrap-theft-complianc...
Drugs.
You’re stealing copper wiring because you’re an addict. You’re not getting a minimum wage job because you’re an addict. You live in poverty because you’re an addict.
Comments lamenting the state of society are as useful as kicking dirt. Either build better bridges or make better medicine.
Now one of you smart people comment something useful in this thread about tech that can cure dependency issues!
Tech will not cure dependency issues, it's biochemists, biologists, and psychologists that are at the forefront of that, and there isn't a universal cure for addiction. Tech also won't solve poverty, which is a political issue.
Appears to be an incredibly powerful force multiplier, just need to scale up (can be manufactured for less than $5/month/person). My apologies for going off topic, confirming your point to solve addiction to solve these second order effects of mental health challenges and poverty. Secure (basic needs), functional humans with basic needs met don't strip infra and homes for copper.
> Tech will not cure dependency issues, it's biochemists, biologists, and psychologists that are at the forefront of that, and there isn't a universal cure for addiction. Tech also won't solve poverty, which is a political issue.
Preach.
https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/wegovy-and-ozempic-semaglu...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40565144
https://recursiveadaptation.com/p/the-growing-scientific-cas...
Please let me know where these people are! I have been riding the streets for 18 years in a city with over 1 million (Top 100 by population in the US) and I haven't met an actual impoverished person that was not an addict. Our "poorest" citizens eat better than lower middle-class with EBT. They steal because its 1000% easier than any job on the planet.
1. Of course you can live in poverty without being an addict, that wasn't an implication of what I said.
2. Biochemistry is technology.
3. Tech will, has, and is 'solving' poverty.
4. My point is that it is not poverty driving people to strip copper from the walls, it is drug addiction.
It's a quick and easy way to make money, so of course drug addicts will be drawn to it, but people who don't care about the moral issues with stealing, or find it easier than the alternative will do it too.
Anecdotally the people I know that take serious drugs are on average as normal as anyone else. And I know plenty of people with psych issues that don't take drugs. Neither a necessary nor sufficient condition.
Yes, we can work on people's underlying psychological problems, but we are far from having reliable solutions to resolve psychological problems.
Your implied solution is that we can fix drug addicts. That is a long way from reality in my limited experience (and I have acquantances working in drug rehab).
Watch one close friend go down the hellhole of drug addiction, and you can quckly discover for yourself that often (a) it isn't due to mental health and (b) there doesn't seem to be much that anyone can do.
Unfortunately, rat park is in no sense good or useful science. It's more useful as a litmus test for how sincerely someone tests their beliefs.
But seriously, just regulate the recyclers where people are eventually taking this stuff.
There were a lot of addicts that were getting opioids prescribed to them by a doctor and paid for by Medicaid. Abuse was happening but few needed to turn to crime.
Suddenly a lot of them lost their legal opioid prescription, and this is when we saw the explosion of fentanyl and the rise of drug fueled crime.
At the peak in 2007, lead was worth at least 1/3rd more.
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/lead
... so i dunno about "soaring demand for metals", cuz the market doesn't seem to show that.
copper is higher than the 2011 peak, but not that much more.
Yes, Americans have a problem regarding crime perception - a lack of sympathy and a thirst for punishment. But your attitude is simply the opposite problem. Trying to use your broad paintbrush is only going to create antagonism. People understandably hate crime - hate. It ruins homes, businesses, communities, one's sense of safety and camaraderie - all of the things we work hardest for and hold dearest. It's too much to ask.
But seriously, this isn’t an either/or game. We can and should fight the underlying causes simultaneously while arresting people, temporarily preventing them from doing further damage.
Also, part of life is realizing there are people who commit crime just for the heck of it, who have no interest in reform, and arrive at that lifestyle from a wide array of backgrounds. I still vividly remember when a news station in LA chased a beggar and found they lived in a mansion.
It doesn’t matter what it is, crime is typically opportunistic.
Next week, it will be smashing houses to steal jewelry. A month from now, it will be catalytic converters. A year, robbing laptops and getting decryption keys at gunpoint.
Who needs to be punished here? The thief. Who needs to change? The thief. Who needs to be taken out of society if they voluntarily choose to not change? The thief.
Do you think it’s acceptable to take 300 feet of commercial copper wiring from a random dude and pay him for it without question? Punish the thieves, but also roll them over to testify against the obvious criminality happening in the scrapyards. You’re laying all the blame on the small thieves, but this kind of massive theft requires a supporting demand. Targeting one side is this equation doesn’t work.
Well, here’s the problem with that: You’re showing that the scrapyards are acting as though we are living in a high-trust society, and act as though everything was legit.
Your proposal is to once again force the scrapyard to change and act like a potential customer is a thief. This is dangerous logic, because consider:
- Should computers have mandatory spyware? Many of their users do illegal things, some morally repugnant.
- Should stores check your ID at the door, even Walmart? That would surely stop thieves, it’s their own fault if they don’t.
My point is that there are no shortages of industries which have criminal customers. Even the company hosting your little web server.
I don’t like scrapyards; but I believe that it is the job of police to allow society to function like we can trust each other. If that means the scrapyards are a little trashy; so be it.
You’re also pre-supposing that scrapyards are innocent victims of those thieves passing off goods as their own, but this scale of theft-to-scrap absolutely requires criminality of both sides of the transaction.
By contrast, I used to live in NYC, which had a budget of over $100 billion, of which about 5% was the police department.
Surrounded by prisons.The new home of choice for recently released prisoners.
It's where all cities within 100 miles send their problem homeless.
Primary industries: retirement communities, abortion services, care for the mentally disabled and a small university.
Worst restaurants.
Many trailer parks.
Half the population collects welfare.
High taxes
Unreasonably large police station and train station. Seriously. Huge.
It's like they're setting something up.
Any other cities like this?
We need more sophisticated theories about what specific theories apply to what specific cities rather than looking for general copy-paste philosophies which can be summarized on the back of a napkin.
The economic optimization continues.
The people buying the "recycled" metal are the ones making bank. Why bother investigating or prosecuting them?
Also, this has been going on for decades.
I used to believe this, but watching the Trump presidency really shook something loose for me, and now I pretty much believe we live more in a society of "whatever you can get away with" if I was to put my feeling into words. You might think that that means I feel like I can do whatever I want, but it's sort of made me realize how important my own morality is to me and I feel like I'm living the best I have in my lifetime. I guess it didn't have that effect on everyone however.