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Why Thieves Steal Soap
- kilroy123 11y agoReminds me of this article I read a few years back, also interesting: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-tide-black-market-2013-1
- maxerickson 11y agoThe Priconomics article mentions and links the New York Magazine article that your link is based on. The NYM article reads an awful lot like a submarine piece for that amazing technological wonder, Tide, the expensive to produce detergent that gives anything you wash with it a quality feel.
- eli 11y agoMaybe, but in DC a few years ago the CVS near me put Tide (and only Tide) behind the counter and left other brands on the shelf.
- maxerickson 11y agoYeah, it's probably not fair to speculate about it being a submarine piece, but it really does meander around and extol the many virtues of Tide.
- rconti 11y agoTide is HUGE in the hood. Hell, it's even huge ON the hood of a NASCAR team.
- bch 11y ago...and reminds me of this[0] where residents of hard-hit Beattyville Kentucky use Coke or Pepsi as currency to support their addictions. Both this soap situation and the cola situation are horrible, but it's fascinating to see how people cope. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-kentucky-and-americas-poorest-towns http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/12/beattyville-k...
- spydertennis 11y agohow did you manage to make a whole article out of 'soap is easy to sell illegaly'
- zodPod 11y agoI wish I had this skill. I generally can't make even complex topics more than a paragraph or so..
- ultramancool 11y agoEven shorter, the whole article could be a single word: liquidity.
- 0898 11y ago"The top of thieves’ mental loot list features expensive electronics like Playstations, GPS systems, and DVD players." Playstations maybe, but DVD players?
- robotanna 11y agowhy not? they're cheap entertainment
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- alloyed 11y agoOne way to think of it is that torrenting movies requires an (expensive) internet connection, where all you need for a DVD player is electricity and some DVDs someone else ripped.
- icebraining 11y agoI think the weirdness is calling them "expensive"; nowadays you can buy a new one for $25 or so.
- takno 11y agoThe article is a write-up of an 8 year-old paper based on research from 10 years ago and extensively quoting papers from 20 years ago, so current definitions of expensive don't really apply
- ttcards 11y agoThis article is from March 2014. Top date is incorrect.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- pakled_engineer 11y agoThese 2 seniors were just busted running a racket selling half priced stolen toothpaste, detergent, ect http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/elderly-couple-arrested-allegedly-buying-stolen-items-drug-addicts-reselling-1.3532251 http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/british-columbia/elderly-...
- dsl 11y agoThe Safeway in the San Francisco Castro neighborhood is especially... exciting... relative to the surrounding area. It even has its own full time police officer. One time as I was leaving I asked the officer why Folgers crystals of all things were locked up. His reply was "[ethnic group] gangs steal essentials in bulk, and sell them to the homeless." From that point forward it clicked in my head, retail theft is about liquidity not value.
- mattmanser 11y agoFolgers crystals = instant coffee.
- randyrand 11y ago> [ethnic group] interesting way to combat racism...
- gozur88 11y agoIs that combating racism, or is it combating information? Is there such a thing as a racist fact?
- randyrand 11y agoIf a fact shows an ethnic group in negative light, then its possible its better to ignore that fact and not speak of it. By not speaking of it, it may make the overall problem of racism go away faster. So goes the theory at least.
- gozur88 11y agoI don't find that theory very sound. Facts that are unspoken become "things everybody knows but can't speak of", and in a society governed by things everybody knows but can't speak of things that aren't actually true can't be refuted.
- adrusi 11y agoWell the implication is that the parent assumed that the officer was racist against [ethnic group]. It's not a fact that that's who was stealing, it's an observation filtered through the man's biases. Not that I think it's appropriate to assume malice on the part of the police officer, nor to censor everything race-related that you find objectionable.
- dredmorbius 11y agoWilliam Stanley Jevons, Money and the Mechanism for Exchange (1876) discusses many of the characteristics of money and exchange, including in chapter V, the properties which make money useful: utility and value, portability, indestructability, homogeneity, divisibility, stabilityof value, and cognizability. The merchandise stolen for use as "street coin" as described in the article meet most or all of these characteristics. Jevons' work is recommended -- it's a classic study of the subject, but one which still carries strong weight. Rather more useful than many of the misdirected rantings of more recent vintage available online. https://archive.org/details/moneyexchange00jevorich https://archive.org/details/moneyexchange00jevorich
- mitchtbaum 11y agoWow, what an interesting book. > stability of value Yes, soap has phenomenal storage value! Depending on its ingredients you can keep soap bars indefinitely, and they will maintain 100% of their value. If necessary, you can (re)pack it with food storage tools to ensure it stays dry, like vacuum-sealed mylar bags in plastic bins, but as I understand it, soaponified oil won't go rancid even with moderate O2 exposure. For friends looking to save for their future, I advise putting soap near the top of their list and making a full space for it among their shelves. For my needs, I have found this soap works and feels great: http://www.kirksnatural.com/products/kirks-fragrance-free-coco-castile-bar-soap/ http://www.kirksnatural.com/products/kirks-fragrance-free-co...
- dredmorbius 11y agoI'm finding older econ works rather interesting generally. Not always correct. Usually insightful. And subject to different biases than our time.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoGreat writeup. I've seen the same patterns in my locale. It's formula, Tide, soap, beer, meat, and other things that are pricey but useful for low-income people. Most of the thieves are low-income without any particular race dominating the role. They're not the only ones, though, as a number of people with plenty of money are just as happy to be thieving assholes. ;)
- wmeredith 11y agoTL;DR: Demand
- rokhayakebe 11y agoSomething else I find interesting: people will find stealing despicable yet have no problem buying stolen goods if it is a good deal.
- dennisgorelik 11y agoI find buying stolen goods despicable too. Stealing itself is worse, of course.
- krzrak 11y agoWhat a coincidence: yesterday I was doing shopping and it struck me, that on the package of sausage (kabanos [1], to be precise) of $2 value they put the same RF stickers as on $200 electronics (while they don't do it on many more expensive products). I asked a clerk about that and she told me, that thieves are really keen on this particular type of product, along with shavers and some cosmetics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabanos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabanos
- elcapitan 11y agoMaybe Walgreens or Safeway should simply open a cheap unbranded store down the road that sells the typical thief goods in a no name version at competitive street prices, catering to the people who need that stuff but can't afford it at store price. That would dry up the stolen goods market. Their normal customers wouldn't buy there anyway, if the store is sufficiently awkward.
- shmageggy 11y agoFTA > Thieves can sell items for around a third of their retail value, according to the report, or for roughly half their value if they sell them to second hand shops. I think even with no name brands, they'd still have to sell at a loss to be competitive with that kind of markdown. Hard to compete when the other guy's cost is $0.
- jacobush 11y agoThe price difference would be lower, though. Hard to tell how low they'd need to go, but the other guy's cost is not $0. There is always opportunity cost, even for the other guy. (AKA it may push the other guy to greener pastures.)
- elcapitan 11y agoAlso, the illegal sellers probably operate on pretty thin profits as well, if that's their only source of income. So it might hurt them just enough.
- clort 11y agoHm Do you have a reference as to the prices of branded vs no-name items? I don't have any specific knowledge but I suspect the brand markup is quite significant.. might be interesting to check that (I don't think there is any no-name shop around here or I'd go out and have a look at soap for instance) Also, the other guys cost is not really $0 .. he also has to make the money to cover his costs, which could be anything from food and rent, or drugs, or paying off a loanshark or baliff, or greasing the palm of his crime boss. His costs don't go down, so if his profit is reduced then his exposure goes up as he needs to steal much more. That means more time spent on the job, and more chance of getting caught.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y agoSo they can make a clean getaway? ...I'll get my coat.
- tragomaskhalos 11y agoIf we're talking about shoplifting, I have no experience in this but surely the penalties for stealing a $2 item are different than for stealing a $200 or $2,000 item, and indeed a store will be less likely to press a prosecution for a low-valued item. Thus, particularly if you are a small-time or casual thief, it is safer to target very cheap goods, even taking into account the fact that you need to be a lot more prolific to realise the same income.
- SyneRyder 11y agoI have no experience either, but from watching a few reality crime TV shows, there is not much difference in the penalty. Offering to pay for the item after the fact is not accepted by mall security. The pain of the penalty (at least in the show I watched) was less about the crime & any charges, but that the shopping mall was banning them from the mall for a year. It was a bigger deal to them that they would have to find another mall and drive further away to buy their groceries to feed their kids.
- millzlane 11y agoTL;DR: Soap gets stolen because there is a market for it in the hood. No matter, if it's a corner store marking up the prices or an addict/door to door salesman, or people buying it from said addicts. There will always be a market for cheaper than retail goods. I have multiple people in my neighborhood in Baltimore that sell stuff like this (detergents, soaps, deodorants, axe, febreeze, shower gels, razors, carpet, toothpaste and brushes, loofas, mouthwash). Including their food stamps. Well, not stamps but now they're debit cards that ironically say Independence on them. So around the 1st-3rd of the month people get their stamps. They get enough in stamps that they can afford to sell some, maybe $200 FSD for $100 USD. Some folks actually budget and shop at the lower priced store like aldi, or food depot. So maybe a couple months out of the year they're able to sell sometimes more than half of the stamps that month. After that cash runs out for whatever reasons, a small minority, sometimes in groups steal from the local chain stores so they have quick cash. They're mostly drug addicts doing it for a fix or two for the day not for a living. But it's a daily thing. One guy comes around often, sometimes everyday. He's got regulars sometimes he catches them on off-days and he'll need to come back to secure the sale. But fair is fair and he holds stuff for people. Most of his customers are the little old ladies you would imagine that spend hours peering over newspapers for coupons, or comparing the sales at store A vs store B. An $800 social security check doesn't go very far after expenses. Seems like a way of life in the ghetto where I live. My family included, has always purchased these things from the guys in the neighborhood and still do. I'm not saying it's morally right. But as long as there is a cheap alternative to the corner store you will find someone in the hood willing to deal.
- sjg007 11y agoWhy not give away free coffee?
- sjg007 11y agoI order from Google express. Sometimes orders go missing and I've noticed that laundry detergent (liquid) gets siphoned. Google even tapes it.
- mchahn 11y ago> Tide laundry detergent has widely been reported as a favorite target of drug gangs. The author didn't do his homework. Tide detergent bottles are (were?) a fiat currency for drug transactions. Weird but true.