Where’s The Beef? | Hacker News Reader

Where’s The Beef?

fivethirtyeight.com

49 pointsfirebones33 comments

I'm amazed that branding is being mentioned as some sort of old-time technique that's making a comeback; where I live it's always been done. I've helped brand calves before and got the impression that everyone does it. I wonder if it's just very large, corporate-type ranches that are skipping the brands.

I don't understand why they didn't/wouldn't brand the cattle.

In my country it's more common to use electronic tags that can be scanned to identify the owner.

It would technically be possible to switch the tags.

Not saying that this is the reason people are doing it less, but branding seems like a cruel act that should be avoided if at all possible.

Given that we're fine with castrating and killing cattle, I don't think that branding is that big a deal. And, of course, it has the benefit, as mentioned in the article, of being visible at a great distance, as opposed to requiring a handheld scanner and close contact.

I don't see the logic there. Either branding is cruel or it isn't. This issue should be decided on its own merits. Maybe castration should be done with anesthetic, or not done at all.

I read the article, my point was that you can't just ignore animal cruelty issues, or relegate their discussion to articles on artificial meat.

> Maybe castration should be done with anesthetic,

Uh, no. That's not the technique. The blood loss from your inferred surgical technique would lead to the death of the meat production device.

> or not done at all.

A testosterone filled bovine meat production device diverts its metabolic resources to typical bovine male activities, not manufacturing protein. That's no way to make a profit.

The article states that these were young and directly implies that they hadn't gotten to the branding bit yet. It usually occurs (as you probably know) several (often more than two~three) months after birth. Often late enough that the process is a real PITA.

> the Texas Legislature passed a bill in 2009 to make the theft of even a single cow punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

> More recently, in 2011, serial rustler Carl Wade Curry was sentenced to 99 years in prison for stealing more than 400 head.

It'd be way cheaper for the state to just reimburse the farmers for the stolen cattle than to imprison people.

What would you recommend the penalty be for the actual person who committed the crime, rather than the state?

What does punishing them accomplish?

A big part of the point of punishment is to act as a deterrent. 99 years of prison may be excessive, but there has to be some negative consequence for the person who breaks a law, otherwise there's no reason not to.

This is strange to hear from you (only strange and unexpected, not.. bad).

You've said in the past that only violent criminals should be imprisoned. What does punishing them accomplish? Are the two really so vastly different? If we continue down this line, when does punishment ever accomplish anything? And what does it accomplish? I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts, or whatever you were going for in the question you just pose now.

I don't think either deterrance nor rehabilitation, the traditional justifications for criminal punishment, really work. I think the value of criminal punishment is that it reinforces social norms among all those who observe or know about the punishment (that and retribution for the victims). With regards to violent crimes, imprisonment reinforces the social norm that the state has a monopoly on the use of violence.

I don't think that justification is as important when we're talking about what's essentially a commercial crime. It doesn't even implicate personal safety in the same way as say burglary. These cattle are just assets on a balance sheet.

Locking away violent criminals also has the benefit that the general public will be safe from the violent criminal during the incarceration.

> I don't think either deterrance nor rehabilitation, the traditional justifications for criminal punishment, really work.

I agree that punishment most probably does not end up in rehabilitation. And I think that should be obvious to everyone, locking up people in unsafe areas, where others too are ill in mind, where most are folks who've had poor lives and poor fortunes, it only reinforces the wrong ideals and norms. The Scandinavian model of rehabilitation probably works better: putting people in safe homes with counselors who show love instead of hate, and a general treatment of dignity (one that they were not shown before -- indeed almost all violent criminals come from broken homes, almost all criminals never had a positive and loving authority figure to show them the way). Why not break the cycle and treat them with respect?

> I don't think that justification is as important when we're talking about what's essentially a commercial crime. It doesn't even implicate personal safety in the same way as say burglary.

I don't like that distinction of violent crimes and non-violent crimes, it's too easy, it makes it seem like the non-violent crimes are not bad enough. You know how michaelochurch used to equate managers who gave references to attempted murder or something to that effect? That was of course silly, but I can actually kind of appreciate the logic in that... in today's society these actions essentially make or break a person's life. Not in terms of life and death, but it makes the difference of a life of dignity and work to possible homelessness and a complete inability to provide for your family. And further down in this continuum, there's financial crimes, there's the SV crimes (inculcating bullshit ideas by way of crafty advertising, . These actions don't cause immediate physical harm, but overtime they rot lives of so many in an insidiously disgusting way.

The traditional justifications are incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation, and deterrence, and the thing you describe as working after you say deterrence doesn't is actually a combination if general deterrence andand the exemplary element of retribution.

And justification of criminal punishment is always important, because you can't evaluate a policy without doing so in context of the purpose it is intended to serve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_%28legal%29

Well, given the value of the stolen goods in question ( http://www.theeagle.com/landandlivestockpost/in-today-s-mark... seems to indicate that a year ago, two thousand dollars was reasonable if historically high), a reasonable penalty would be restitution and depending on history perhaps a suspended sentence with compulsory community service, or failing that a few months in prison. Although it would have to be one of those prisons you only get in foreign countries where the aim is to make everyone better off by turning criminals into lawful, valuable citizens :(

Ten years is just plain fucking stupid, and costs the state an absolute fortune.

> Ten years is just plain fucking stupid, and costs the state an absolute fortune.

But makes for-profits prison corporations a fortune!

>> Ten years is just plain fucking stupid, and costs the state an absolute fortune.

Maybe to you. But to other cattle ranchers, if this guy is free and running stealing cattle all the time, it looks like a pretty good idea to keep in in a cage for 10 years.

Why should the law favor cattle ranchers (who can cheaply protect their property by branding) over other owners of property worth low thousands of dollars?

Here's (probably) the relevant laws:

http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/SOTWDocs/PE/htm/PE.31....

http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm

Theft of up to $20,000, assuming no priors, is limited to a penalty of 2 years (I've elided a bunch of details, click through to read them, skim for the relevant portions, but I'm pretty sure stealing $10,000 cash would result in a prison sentence of 2 years...).

Maybe because it's harder for cattle ranchers to actually protect their property.

It's not like cows are locked up and alarmed like televisions in a store. Possibly the extra penalty is supposed to act as extra deterrent where enforcement is less feasible. (Well.. either that or some sort of rural vote skew or good-ole boy thing... I wouldn't rule anything out.)

Cattle theft is not a crime of passion. People who steal cattle weigh the consequences of their actions ahead of time, including the potential punishments if they get caught. Studies consistently show that the rates of premeditated crimes decrease when the penalties increase.

It may be the case that this penalty is excessive and unjust, but that doesn't mean it is ineffective.

> Studies consistently show that the rates of premeditated crimes decrease when the penalties increase.

Which studies show that? Most studies I'm aware of show that severity is a very weak deterrent and that certainty is much more effective [1].

> The Institute of Criminology at Cambridge University was commissioned by the British Home Office to conduct a review of research on major studies of deterrence. Their 1999 report concluded that “…the studies reviewed do not provide a basis for inferring that increasing the severity of sentences generally is capable of enhancing deterrent effects.”

> Daniel Nagin and Greg Pogarsky, leading scholars on deterrence, conclude that “punishment certainty is far more consistently found to deter crime than punishment severity, and the extra-legal consequences of crime seem at least as great a deterrent as the legal consequences.”

> researchers compared crime and punishment trends in the U.S., England, and Sweden, and failed to find an effect for severity. The statistical associations were weak and even when there was a negative relationship between severity of punishment and crime rates, the findings were not strong enough to achieve statistical significance.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/Deterrence%20Briefing%2...

There are a couple of problems with the analysis you linked to, primarily that it doesn't differentiate between premeditated and unplanned crimes. It specifically mentions that "half of all state prisoners were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of their offense." This article suggests that more carefully examining the way people interpret severity can demonstrate that in many cases, severity is an effective deterrent [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1541-0072.2001....].

I contend that cattle theft is typically planned in advance and not a spur-of-the-moment offense.

So suppose I start stealing cattle. I sell them, and hide the money. I keep doing this until I get caught.

What would you suggest the state do, if they do not imprison me, to discourage me from going back to cattle stealing?

The article never actually explained where the beef is. The mystery of the missing cattle is apparently still unsolved - and that's a lot of cow!

Buying cattle futures seems like a good idea

What potential change in the cattle market do you believe is not being priced into the futures?

I don't know how much one head of cattle costs, but it sounds like >1000 missing cattle is worth millions. The article doesn't seem to say, unless I missed it.

>With cattle prices at near-record heights, early estimates of the heist pegged the value of the stolen animals at $1.4 million. Less than a decade ago, the same thousand-plus cattle would have netted only about $500,000.

> With cattle prices at near-record heights, early estimates >of the heist pegged the value of the stolen animals at $1.4 >million.

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