3 ms·

Never read "My Side of the Mountain" as a kid?? He steals in that too. This guy is not homeless. He had a home. I've read similar stories of people setting u

Never read "My Side of the Mountain" as a kid?? He steals in that too. This guy is not homeless. He had a home. I've read similar stories of people setting up semi-permanent homes in hidden urban spaces. It's the hacking aspect that makes it interesting. Living within a community off the books. If his stealing hurt people, then his bad, but I kinda feel like it didn't. The urban legend itself had a value to the community. There have been billions of 'pre-Columbian hunter-gatherers', this is different.

cmdrfred 10y ago
All theft hurts someone. People have this conception that home/store owners are millionaires. That is more often than not incorrect. The margins on products sold can be as low as 1 - 3%. Thus you have to sell 34 to recoup the cost of a single stolen item. The business owner would likely increase prices in order to respond to the theft, thus hurting the community as a whole. Now imagine you are a single mother attempting to feed your child, are you happy to pay higher prices so this guy can live " off the grid"? In more primitive society this person would have simply been killed for this transgression of the social contract. This isn't a hack, its sociopathy.
charles-salvia 10y ago
This isn't that different from what many other homeless people on the fringes of cities/towns accomplish. They setup some kind of make-shift shelter, and subsist via varying degrees of cleverness, begging or charity. The only difference with this guy is he never begged (he just stole), and the setting was slightly more rustic than usual. But for some reason people read this story and desperately try to make it more than it is, by awkwardly infusing this "wilderness survivalist" aspect into it, which really doesn't reflect what actually happened at all.
antisthenes 10y ago
I'm sure that after the first 100 burglaries it became evident to him that it wasn't possible to live/survive without help from other human beings. In that case I'm wondering why not take the more legal approach of resupplying at a local church / shelter from time to time rather than continue stealing. More than 1000 burglaries over 27 years is still a frequency of nearly 1/week. Stealing is the hacking equivalent of breaking someone's fingers to tell you the password, or getting lucky and finding their sticky note under the desk.

cmdrfred 10y ago

All theft hurts someone. People have this conception that home/store owners are millionaires. That is more often than not incorrect. The margins on products sold can be as low as 1 - 3%. Thus you have to sell 34 to recoup the cost of a single stolen item. The business owner would likely increase prices in order to respond to the theft, thus hurting the community as a whole. Now imagine you are a single mother attempting to feed your child, are you happy to pay higher prices so this guy can live " off the grid"? In more primitive society this person would have simply been killed for this transgression of the social contract. This isn't a hack, its sociopathy.

charles-salvia 10y ago

This isn't that different from what many other homeless people on the fringes of cities/towns accomplish. They setup some kind of make-shift shelter, and subsist via varying degrees of cleverness, begging or charity. The only difference with this guy is he never begged (he just stole), and the setting was slightly more rustic than usual. But for some reason people read this story and desperately try to make it more than it is, by awkwardly infusing this "wilderness survivalist" aspect into it, which really doesn't reflect what actually happened at all.

antisthenes 10y ago

I'm sure that after the first 100 burglaries it became evident to him that it wasn't possible to live/survive without help from other human beings. In that case I'm wondering why not take the more legal approach of resupplying at a local church / shelter from time to time rather than continue stealing. More than 1000 burglaries over 27 years is still a frequency of nearly 1/week. Stealing is the hacking equivalent of breaking someone's fingers to tell you the password, or getting lucky and finding their sticky note under the desk.