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> That is reality, but calling it "unhealthy" implies that the current state of things is somehow wrong. I don't spend a lot of money on physical security. I l

• adrusi 10y ago
  You're only able to be lax about physical security because institutions take care of it for you. Your taxes go to police, FBI, military. You keep your money in a bank, and the bank spends money on security. If people stopped keeping their money in banks and started storing it in their homes, the incentive for burglary would go up in your area. I also assume you don't live in a dense city. Even in a utopia you couldn't have perfect safety without investing in security: some people are going to commit crimes and violate property just for fun, and when there's a lot of people in one area, that becomes a concern. There has never in history been a time when people can be secure without investing in security. To claim that investing in security is in indication of something "wrong" is therefore at best a sentiment far ahead of its time.
  • nitrogen 10y ago
    some people are going to commit crimes and violate property Why are we still assuming that as a given, instead of trying to change it at its roots?
    • Prefinem 10y ago
      He/She could believe that people are inherently bad.
    • adrusi 10y ago
      Breaking the rules is fun. The thrill in taking such risks is exhilerating and if you get good at it — if you can repeatedly break the rules and get away with it — you feel powerful. Unless you're suggesting a transhuman approach, there's no way to get around that. You can eliminate any incentives for crime, and eliminate all sources of childhood strife, and still have people who commit crime because it's a great hobby.
      • eric_h 10y ago
        It certainly is. Personally, I've grown beyond purely breaking rules for the sake of it, without concern for the repercussions. I still break the rules, all the time, but only when I think the rules are wrong and no true harm will come from my breaking them. It's gotten much less fun in my old age, just seems rather boring and rational.
      • msh 10y ago
        Only if the chance of capture is low. If people got cought 9 times out of 10 I don't think they would have that hobby.
        • PhasmaFelis 10y ago
          And now we're back to spending billions on security.
      • Qwertious 10y ago
        I think that can be fixed at a cultural level, so it's no guarantor of crime.
        • clevernickname 10y ago
          Sexual desire was fixed at a cultural level until it wasn't. The narrative that people only steal because they're poor and desperate is just that, a narrative. Anyone can feel excitement at taking another's property. Your perfect society free of crime is begging for a "disruption."
  • banach2 10y ago
    More than just for fun. In a global society so encapsulated by money people are always going to tend toward the path of least resistance to maximise that goal. In many cases, despite the moral factors, risk, etc; this is going to be crime. It seems to simply be human/animal nature and something which society itself won't easily be able to change.
  • kalleboo 10y ago
    I live in Japan, where there seems to be a much stronger respect for other people's property. It's a common story for people who forget their wallet on a park bench or something to come back hours later and it's either still there or at the local police box. There's also a lot less vandalism - I don't usually see things like trashed bus stops that were a daily sight back home. Most people seem to lock their bikes with a simple lock between the frame and back tyre - those would have all been hauled away by a truck and disappeared by the next morning back where I used to live. (edit: another anecdote - I was very surprised when my wife thought nothing of leaving a brand new MacBook Pro visible in the back seat of the car when going into a restaurant for lunch) And yes, people here (mainly the elderly) do keep vast sums of cash at home http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027129/Honest-Japanese-return-78million-cash-earthquake-rubble.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2027129/Honest-Japan... Japan also has some of the densest cities on earth. Of course, it's far from perfect (there's plenty of crime, people still lock their doors, and sexual violence seems to be off the charts), but it shows that paranoia doesn't have to be the default state. If they made it this far, how much further is possible within human nature?
    • lucaspiller 10y ago
      I moved to Rome, Italy last year and was quite surprised how little respect they seem to have for other people's property. All the apartments have thick security doors[1], lower windows of buildings have iron bars and all gardens have tall fences. If you leave anything that looks even remotely valuable in your car, someone will break a window and grab it. There is tonnes of vandalism, and even if you leave a motorbike locked with a secure lock it's somewhat likely it won't be there the next day. It sounds the complete opposite of Japan! [1] A few weeks after I arrived I was at a friends house and there was a disturbance of some sort in the apartment next door. The police couldn't get in, so called the fire service who had to work for 20 minutes to break the door down. They considered going in through the outside, but it was the third floor and all the windows had metal shutters.
    • david-given 10y ago
      I live in Zürich. The joke here is that if you left a pile of money on the pavement in the city centre, it would stay there for a week and then you'd be fined for littering. People here are basically honest. There aren't any turnstiles on the transit system --- they just assume you'll have bought a ticket. Children roam the streets on their own and think nothing of talking to random adults. Of course, they back up this trust with enforcement; there are occasional spot checks on the transit system with big fines; and if you don't pay a driving ticket the police will come to your house and remove your license plates...
• millamox 10y ago
  Most of your physical security comes from two things: 1) the fact that the rest of us lock our doors, so most ne'er-do-wells have accepted the notion that closed doors tend to be locked. It's a form of herd immunity that protects you so long as only a small number of people behave like you. 2) the shift from cash to electronic money, meaning that physical theft is less lucrative than it once was (and meaning that most money is protected by entities that invest meaningfully in security.) You're a free rider, benefiting from effort made by others, while being a (small) net negative to society. You're welcome for the security we've provided for you.
  • nostrebored 10y ago
    1) is not necessarily true. There are entire communities, even in tourist towns that leave their doors unlocked. Just go to Santa Cruz.
• porkloin 10y ago
  It doesn't matter whether or not you buy or use locks. You passively pay for security at a bar when you buy a drink - the price of the bouncer is part of how they derive the cost of your beer. Similarly you pay taxes (local, state, federal) that pay for a massive amount of physical security that you utilize unknowingly on a day to day basis. Just because you don't find it necessary to lock up your stuff in your driveway doesn't mean that you can claim that you don't use or pay for physical security.
• ajmurmann 10y ago
  Wow, what country do you live I that you feel comfortable keeping you door and car unlocked? I've lived I the US and Germany and wouldn't have felt comfortable doing that in either place.
  • dtparr 10y ago
    Countries are not granular enough to use for this sort of thing. I've lived in several places in the US where unlocked doors were the norm, and then in several places where it would be a bad idea if you want to keep your things.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • nostrademons 10y ago
    I spent a semester abroad in New Zealand and there were people there that left their doors unlocked. Similarly, in college a lot of my classmates left their doors unlocked even though the college administration repeatedly told us not to. I think it's a density thing. In a small town, there's nobody to steal from you, and even if there was you'd eventually figure out who it was since everybody knows everyone. In a big city, someone can be in and out without you ever knowing, and you would never find them again. Indeed, most of the city residents I met in NZ still locked their doors (the people mentioned above were in smaller villages), while when my family went on vacation to a rural vacation home (in the US) my mom felt comfortable enough to leave the back door unlocked.
  • gutnor 10y ago
    There is a lot of places where you can get away with it even in dense area of the US and Germany. There is some social engineering going on there. If you live in an area where everybody locks his door and don't have a huge problem (like bands of bored teens trying every house, or lots of junkies, ...) the chances are very small that anyone would try to open your door, and if they do, they most likely come prepared. I remember that in my previous flat in the center of London, we left the kitchen window opened for years without even realising it. It would have been trivial to break into our place, but nobody cared. They entered 2 times over the same period at my neighbour place, likely because they saw something they wanted to steal through the window.
• erikpukinskis 10y ago
  I live in a place where anything not locked up will get stolen. I agree with you that something is wrong here, and I am doing my best to fix it. But it's tightly connected with intergenerational poverty. I would love it if you would come help me. If you're suggesting I should move, then sorry. I would love to live in the woods on a lake and live out my days. I could do that easily. But I think I have a responsibility to help solve the problems the economy that pays my rent is causing. I choose to live in the ghetto where I can see what's going on so that I can help.
  • hutzlibu 10y ago
    > I choose to live in the ghetto where I can see what's going on so that I can help. If that is true, I very much respect that ... Anyway, I suppose you know, that people usually adopt to their enviroment. So if you see not so nice changes in your ethics and livestyle, you should probably reconsider your home ...
    • erikpukinskis 10y ago
      That's an interesting assumption you're making about the ethics of people who live in ghettos.
• icebraining 10y ago
  An endless abyss sucking money? Most online services, even huge ones, manage to thrive for years with terrible security practices. OpenSSL, the cornerstone of online communication security, had until recently a single full-time developer. I think it's amazing we manage to spend so little on security.
  • mef 10y ago
    squeaky wheel gets the grease.
• coldtea 10y ago
  >I don't spend a lot of money on physical security. I leave my car and front door unlocked usually, and don't bother with security systems. Try living in a bad neighborhood then. If you already live somewhere nice and safe, the spendings and effort you don't do on security has been done by the state (police), buying or paying rent for the house, etc.
  • Qwertious 10y ago
    What we need to do to save money, then, is make all neighbourhoods into nice and safe neighbourhoods.
    • coldtea 10y ago
      You'll discover that this costs money. And perhaps more than it saves (like policing, it's a continuous effort too, you can just make the nice and safe and leave them at that).
• vbezhenar 10y ago
  The boundaries are key here. You just found a community without thieves and our physical world has natural boundaries which prevent other people to enter your community. An analog is some kind of LAN with trusted peers. There's often little to no security in such a networks, the only security is firewall preventing any connections from the outside. But Internet is requires a completely different thinking. You are always living in the worst nightmare, everyone's attacking you constantly, checking your doors and locks. And there are such places in the Earth. In my city you can't use a wooden door, because thief can easily break it with good kick, so everyone uses heavy iron doors with good locks. You can't leave your automobile with factory locks, it'll be stolen, sooner or later. Everyone uses additional security systems. You can't even leave your bag in the closed car, if your windows are not tinted. Someone will see it, break window and stole your bag. You must use heavily tinted window, so no one from the street could see anything inside. Even the thought that I could leave my car or home unlocked is foreign for me. It's my property, so it's my work to defend it.