5 ms·

anyone that steals a bait car would have stolen a real one given the chance

by gjs278 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
In a high enough crime area otherwise honest people are gonna engage in opportunistic crime because "if I don't someone will". That's also exactly the kind of place the police are gonna go fishing. I know of more than one junk car that's been dragged out of a particular swamp (because scrap prices were high) with no attempt made to contact the rightful owner. That would get you a felony charge in my state (I'm sure a good lawyer could beat it but still). I know that that's not the same as stealing a bait car but it's pretty close.
- freehunter 7y ago
  >otherwise honest people are gonna engage in opportunistic crime because "if I don't someone will" I mean I don't live in a high crime area so maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't sound like the behavior of an "otherwise honest person".
- waste_monk 7y ago
  >In a high enough crime area otherwise honest people are gonna engage in opportunistic crime because "if I don't someone will". That is probably the weakest excuse for criminal behaviour I've ever heard. "Someone else was going to steal that car, so it might as well be me"? Bullshit. If someone's an "honest person" who only engages in crime when they think they can get away with it due to it being unlikely the police will follow up, they never had personal integrity or principles to begin with - they just hadn't been put in a situation where the cost/value proposition of commmiting a crime was worth it.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Maybe stealing cars is a bit of the stretch but if you create more opportunity for crime there will be more crime. A better example is when the cops stick an under cover officer on the street corner as a hooker and of course she gets picked up because someone who would never pick up a hooker sees one that doesn't have a million hard miles on her and decides to give it a go. I know my local police used to leave rolls of copper wire on job sites to bait people to steal them. Of course nobody with a brain would leave an unsecured roll of copper wire around like that so the opportunity for the crime doesn't normally ever exist except when the police are baiting. Both those examples are baiting people who wouldn't otherwise consider the risk reward to be worth it to engage in crime.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      Your argument here is boiling down to someone saying "I'm normally a law-abiding citizen, but the crime was just so easy to commit, how could I resist?" To which the proper response is of course "Learn some self-restraint, that's how you could resist."
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        Well yes of course but people's morals get flexible when relatively (relative to them) large amounts of benefit to them (usually money) are involved. For example, I'm too well paid to shoot you over $10, $100, $1000, $10k, etc. but you keep tacking on zeros and eventually it gets tempting. It's like that but with smaller dollar amounts. People rationalize petty theft all the time by saying things like "well it was there and they weren't using it and I was going to put it (or the money made selling it) to good use". They know it's wrong but they just can't help themselves.
      - logfromblammo 7y ago
        "You wouldn't be poor, if you worked hard enough to earn more money." "You wouldn't be fat, if you ate a reasonable amount of healthy foods instead of calorie-rich junk." "You wouldn't be a criminal, if you had enough moral fiber to obey the law." I think you are intentionally ignoring a lot of circumstantial factors that have been scrubbed from the strawman hypotheticals. I believe the canonical example for rating someone on a scale of morality is as follows: Jack's child is very sick, and may die. The doctor gave him a prescription for a drug that would cure his child in one dose, but when he took it to the pharmacist, he found that they had some in stock, but that single dose cost more than he has ever saved at one time, and even if he could get a loan big enough to buy it, he would never be able to pay off the debt. Jack did notice some holes in the pharmacy's security, though. Should he break in to steal the drug, to save his child? Why? There are a lot of ways to answer the why, for the question as posed. We are also adding some additional questions. When Jack is caught, how severely should he be punished? Does the reasoning behind the situation change if the police operate the pharmacy as a front, and intentionally inflate the price of life-saving drugs and weaken security, in order to more easily catch people who might rob pharmacies, if allowed the opportunity?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "I know of more than one junk car that's been dragged out of a particular swamp" Could you provide more information about how this...is a thing? Where it's reasonably plausible to find the owner? And a felony?

anyone that steals a bait car would have stolen a real one given the chance

by gjs278 7y ago

anyone that steals a bait car would have stolen a real one given the chance

In a high enough crime area otherwise honest people are gonna engage in opportunistic crime because "if I don't someone will". That's also exactly the kind of place the police are gonna go fishing. I know of more than one junk car that's been dragged out of a particular swamp (because scrap prices were high) with no attempt made to contact the rightful owner. That would get you a felony charge in my state (I'm sure a good lawyer could beat it but still). I know that that's not the same as stealing a bait car but it's pretty close.

freehunter 7y ago
>otherwise honest people are gonna engage in opportunistic crime because "if I don't someone will" I mean I don't live in a high crime area so maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't sound like the behavior of an "otherwise honest person".
waste_monk 7y ago
>In a high enough crime area otherwise honest people are gonna engage in opportunistic crime because "if I don't someone will". That is probably the weakest excuse for criminal behaviour I've ever heard. "Someone else was going to steal that car, so it might as well be me"? Bullshit. If someone's an "honest person" who only engages in crime when they think they can get away with it due to it being unlikely the police will follow up, they never had personal integrity or principles to begin with - they just hadn't been put in a situation where the cost/value proposition of commmiting a crime was worth it.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Maybe stealing cars is a bit of the stretch but if you create more opportunity for crime there will be more crime. A better example is when the cops stick an under cover officer on the street corner as a hooker and of course she gets picked up because someone who would never pick up a hooker sees one that doesn't have a million hard miles on her and decides to give it a go. I know my local police used to leave rolls of copper wire on job sites to bait people to steal them. Of course nobody with a brain would leave an unsecured roll of copper wire around like that so the opportunity for the crime doesn't normally ever exist except when the police are baiting. Both those examples are baiting people who wouldn't otherwise consider the risk reward to be worth it to engage in crime.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Your argument here is boiling down to someone saying "I'm normally a law-abiding citizen, but the crime was just so easy to commit, how could I resist?" To which the proper response is of course "Learn some self-restraint, that's how you could resist."
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Well yes of course but people's morals get flexible when relatively (relative to them) large amounts of benefit to them (usually money) are involved. For example, I'm too well paid to shoot you over $10, $100, $1000, $10k, etc. but you keep tacking on zeros and eventually it gets tempting. It's like that but with smaller dollar amounts. People rationalize petty theft all the time by saying things like "well it was there and they weren't using it and I was going to put it (or the money made selling it) to good use". They know it's wrong but they just can't help themselves.
    - logfromblammo 7y ago
      "You wouldn't be poor, if you worked hard enough to earn more money." "You wouldn't be fat, if you ate a reasonable amount of healthy foods instead of calorie-rich junk." "You wouldn't be a criminal, if you had enough moral fiber to obey the law." I think you are intentionally ignoring a lot of circumstantial factors that have been scrubbed from the strawman hypotheticals. I believe the canonical example for rating someone on a scale of morality is as follows: Jack's child is very sick, and may die. The doctor gave him a prescription for a drug that would cure his child in one dose, but when he took it to the pharmacist, he found that they had some in stock, but that single dose cost more than he has ever saved at one time, and even if he could get a loan big enough to buy it, he would never be able to pay off the debt. Jack did notice some holes in the pharmacy's security, though. Should he break in to steal the drug, to save his child? Why? There are a lot of ways to answer the why, for the question as posed. We are also adding some additional questions. When Jack is caught, how severely should he be punished? Does the reasoning behind the situation change if the police operate the pharmacy as a front, and intentionally inflate the price of life-saving drugs and weaken security, in order to more easily catch people who might rob pharmacies, if allowed the opportunity?
perl4ever 7y ago
"I know of more than one junk car that's been dragged out of a particular swamp" Could you provide more information about how this...is a thing? Where it's reasonably plausible to find the owner? And a felony?