5 ms·

The fastest the trash is collected, the better for the society. These guys provide the service for free and faster than the "legitimate" one. They didn't thre

by rvnx 6y ago

The fastest the trash is collected, the better for the society. These guys provide the service for free and faster than the "legitimate" one. They didn't threaten anyone. They just came, picked up the trash, and left. The only angry people are the "legitimate" waste collectors who pay kickbacks to politicians to keep this monopoly alive.

giarc 6y ago
They were also charged with money laundering. I suspect if they had set up a legitimate business and signed contracts with customers for "free pickup" and paid taxes on profits etc, they wouldn't be in jail.
- rvnx 6y ago
  Money laundering has this vague definition of reusing or reinvesting any money from a crime. You can do a very minor crime and be charged for money laundering (which is a serious offense).
  - throwaway_kufu 6y ago
    > Money laundering has this vague definition of reusing or reinvesting any money from a crime. In the criminal context Money laundering doesn’t have a vague definition. It is a crime with very specific definitions codified in statutes, each having their own elements and controlling case law from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For example, at the US Federal level there are 4 very specific types of unlawful money laundering (promotional, concealment, structuring and tax evasion). And at least at the Federal Level the companion statute prohibits depositing or spending more than $10,000 from the predicated offense.
    - rvnx 6y ago
      It depends on each countries, even inside the Eurozone it can get complex, for one of the European countries it is: (1) Money laundering means: 1) the concealment or disguise of the true nature, source, location, disposition, movement, right of ownership or other rights related to property derived from criminal activity or property obtained instead of such property; or 2) the conversion, transfer, acquisition, possession or use of property derived from criminal activity or property obtained instead of such property for the purpose of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the property or of assisting a person who is involved in criminal activity to evade the legal consequences of his or her action -- "the conversion, transfer, acquisition, possession or use of property derived from criminal activity" can be applied to a lot of situations. Even a shop thief could be accused of money laundering. Obviously it would be interesting to see how the judgment goes. If there is any follow-up I'm very interested.
    - monoideism 6y ago
      As I’m sure you know if you’ve worked in this area, there’s a vast grey area between “legitimate transfer” and “money laundering”. At least in the US. Even with every best intention in the world, it was enough to keep me multiple years ago from starting a business that might have been both beneficial to society and profitable to me. Money laundering laws favor huge corporations and serve as barriers to entry for small, disruptive, often consumer-friendly businesses. As your description implicitly concedes, you need lengthy access to very expensive lawyers to operate in this area, not to mention the cost of other compliance measures. Like the rest of the drug war, such laws have been a huge net negative for society.
koolba 6y ago
I wouldn’t want random people coming through my neighborhood taking my recyclables. That’s one step removed from random people picking through your trash.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > That’s one step removed from random people picking through your trash. If they leave your trash cleaner than it was, what's the problem here?
  - koolba 6y ago
    What if two teams show up and decide to have a turf war?
    - inetknght 6y ago
      Turf wars happen all the time. If there's a turf war over trash then that suggests that we're throwing away lots of valuable items in an inefficient manner.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      That’s a different problem (which can be addressed by enforcement of other, existing laws) but doesn’t justify making picking up trash illegal.
    - aendruk 6y ago
      Whatever disturbance that presumably causes is its own violation.
- bityard 6y ago
  Local law may vary but in most places in the US, once you put your trash on the curb, it effectively becomes public property. Anyone is allowed to take it and do what they want. This is one of the main sources of information for private investigators, for instance. This is why I run _all_ of my paper documents through a shredder before throwing them away. I don't have any immoral behavior to hide but I also have zero control over where my bank statements and such end up once they leave the end of my driveway.
justin66 6y ago
> The fastest the trash is collected, the better for the society. If society in the aggregate is spending twice as much (or whatever) fuel to get the recyclables to the recyclers, a few hours less time spent waiting in the bin is not some kind of win. > The only angry people are the "legitimate" waste collectors who pay kickbacks to politicians to keep this monopoly alive. Some percentage of the people who don't want randos going through their bins are certainly angry.
- wirrbel 6y ago
  Well, our municipal waste collectors kind of cross-finance fees for collecting the non-recyclable waste with the profit they make from selling recyclables. If someone steals cardboard, the other collection fees go up.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  Aren’t bins intentionally left unlocked (or rather most dumpsters don’t even have a lock) on the streets so that whoever willing to take away their contents is able to? As far as the business is concerned they don’t care who takes their trash as long as it does get taken away.
  - Jolter 6y ago
    This is clearly not the case with these particular dumpsters. The article shows a picture of a suspect exiting the bin through a very small hole that was designed not to let people enter.
    - Nextgrid 6y ago
      To me it seems like he was doing that just because he didn't have the garbage truck that would lift the entire dumpster and tip it over into the truck. It doesn't seem like he's "breaking in", in the sense that that opening (unintentionally) wasn't built big enough for a person to fit through as opposed to being an intentional security feature.
      - 6y ago
bargle0 6y ago
The legitimate business has a contract to pick up the garbage reliably. It costs a certain amount of money because the legitimate business will recoup costs. If they can’t do that because of the scavengers, the city, and consequently you and I, will have to pay more the next time the contract is negotiated.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  If the scavengers are doing such a good job, why do we even need the “legitimate” business? In fact why shouldn’t the scavengers be considered legitimate when they provide a more timely service than the current incumbents? It seems like the market is working as designed and the scavengers are successfully competing since they are able to provide the same service more efficiently than the current company.
  - gpderetta 6y ago
    Scavengers might be opportunistic and only pick up the easily accessed or easily recycled trash whenever it is convenient for them. Legitimate collectors will have to pick all the trash at scheduled times.
  - cjhveal 6y ago
    Probably to satisfy legal duties. Someone, landlord or municipality, has a legal obligation to ensure that waste is dealt with regularly and appropriately. If they contract with a third party, they have fulfilled that legal obligation, and even if the trash piles up, the question becomes why did the third party not fulfill the contract. If the responsible party leaves it to scavengers, they are assuming liability should the trash pile up. Ultimately, this legal service is why the "legitimate" business isn't providing the exact same service as scavengers, though I agree with you it is less efficient at waste removal.
  - buran77 6y ago
    Some of the legitimate contracts do get handed out based on political favors or bribes. This being said those contracts ensure some legal obligations for the service provider. Everything from providing the recycling bins, to providing service to everyone equally, to providing service consistently. And the recyclables are usually picked up by the same company pickling up the garbage. With that income gone they'd just jack up the prices for the garbage, which I assure you won't be picked up by any scavenger. You don't want your garbage or recyclables to stay on the street corner for days because the scavengers don't provide any bins, there's no money in garbage pickup, and your recyclables are too small game for them to go out of their way to pick them up. As a city you also don't want to realize one day that they just moved on to even more profitable business elsewhere while heaps of trash are popping up around town. As with anything, if it's important you want more than just best effort by someone who's anyway just piggy backing on someone else's groundwork.
hundreder 6y ago
..."it is estimated that they cost the City Council of Madrid a total of €16m in lost recycling revenues" So in other words The City of Madrid has a recycling business and they are unhappy with the competition.
- Jolter 6y ago
  Problem is, that missed income will have to be paid by the taxpayers in the end.
bschne 6y ago
In Roberto Saviano's 2006 Book "Gomorrah", there's a section outlining how the Camorra makes a lot of money from collecting waste (IIRC mostly industrial) and dumping it into illegal landfills that pollute large areas. They are obviously not quite as scrupulous about e.g. toxic substances as one would like. Of course where the cardboard ends up is probably not an issue here, as we are talking about recycling. But there are still a ton of ways an organization operating outside official contracts and regulations can cut corners to be "more efficient" than the official contractors are, and they can cut those corners in ways that have a larger negative impact on society than the upside of the trash being out of the street faster.

by rvnx 6y ago

giarc 6y ago

They were also charged with money laundering. I suspect if they had set up a legitimate business and signed contracts with customers for "free pickup" and paid taxes on profits etc, they wouldn't be in jail.

rvnx 6y ago
Money laundering has this vague definition of reusing or reinvesting any money from a crime. You can do a very minor crime and be charged for money laundering (which is a serious offense).
- throwaway_kufu 6y ago
  > Money laundering has this vague definition of reusing or reinvesting any money from a crime. In the criminal context Money laundering doesn’t have a vague definition. It is a crime with very specific definitions codified in statutes, each having their own elements and controlling case law from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. For example, at the US Federal level there are 4 very specific types of unlawful money laundering (promotional, concealment, structuring and tax evasion). And at least at the Federal Level the companion statute prohibits depositing or spending more than $10,000 from the predicated offense.
  - rvnx 6y ago
    It depends on each countries, even inside the Eurozone it can get complex, for one of the European countries it is: (1) Money laundering means: 1) the concealment or disguise of the true nature, source, location, disposition, movement, right of ownership or other rights related to property derived from criminal activity or property obtained instead of such property; or 2) the conversion, transfer, acquisition, possession or use of property derived from criminal activity or property obtained instead of such property for the purpose of concealing or disguising the illicit origin of the property or of assisting a person who is involved in criminal activity to evade the legal consequences of his or her action -- "the conversion, transfer, acquisition, possession or use of property derived from criminal activity" can be applied to a lot of situations. Even a shop thief could be accused of money laundering. Obviously it would be interesting to see how the judgment goes. If there is any follow-up I'm very interested.
  - monoideism 6y ago
    As I’m sure you know if you’ve worked in this area, there’s a vast grey area between “legitimate transfer” and “money laundering”. At least in the US. Even with every best intention in the world, it was enough to keep me multiple years ago from starting a business that might have been both beneficial to society and profitable to me. Money laundering laws favor huge corporations and serve as barriers to entry for small, disruptive, often consumer-friendly businesses. As your description implicitly concedes, you need lengthy access to very expensive lawyers to operate in this area, not to mention the cost of other compliance measures. Like the rest of the drug war, such laws have been a huge net negative for society.

koolba 6y ago

I wouldn’t want random people coming through my neighborhood taking my recyclables. That’s one step removed from random people picking through your trash.

inetknght 6y ago
> That’s one step removed from random people picking through your trash. If they leave your trash cleaner than it was, what's the problem here?
- koolba 6y ago
  What if two teams show up and decide to have a turf war?
  - inetknght 6y ago
    Turf wars happen all the time. If there's a turf war over trash then that suggests that we're throwing away lots of valuable items in an inefficient manner.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    That’s a different problem (which can be addressed by enforcement of other, existing laws) but doesn’t justify making picking up trash illegal.
  - aendruk 6y ago
    Whatever disturbance that presumably causes is its own violation.
bityard 6y ago
Local law may vary but in most places in the US, once you put your trash on the curb, it effectively becomes public property. Anyone is allowed to take it and do what they want. This is one of the main sources of information for private investigators, for instance. This is why I run _all_ of my paper documents through a shredder before throwing them away. I don't have any immoral behavior to hide but I also have zero control over where my bank statements and such end up once they leave the end of my driveway.

justin66 6y ago

> The fastest the trash is collected, the better for the society. If society in the aggregate is spending twice as much (or whatever) fuel to get the recyclables to the recyclers, a few hours less time spent waiting in the bin is not some kind of win. > The only angry people are the "legitimate" waste collectors who pay kickbacks to politicians to keep this monopoly alive. Some percentage of the people who don't want randos going through their bins are certainly angry.

wirrbel 6y ago
Well, our municipal waste collectors kind of cross-finance fees for collecting the non-recyclable waste with the profit they make from selling recyclables. If someone steals cardboard, the other collection fees go up.
Nextgrid 6y ago
Aren’t bins intentionally left unlocked (or rather most dumpsters don’t even have a lock) on the streets so that whoever willing to take away their contents is able to? As far as the business is concerned they don’t care who takes their trash as long as it does get taken away.
- Jolter 6y ago
  This is clearly not the case with these particular dumpsters. The article shows a picture of a suspect exiting the bin through a very small hole that was designed not to let people enter.
  - Nextgrid 6y ago
    To me it seems like he was doing that just because he didn't have the garbage truck that would lift the entire dumpster and tip it over into the truck. It doesn't seem like he's "breaking in", in the sense that that opening (unintentionally) wasn't built big enough for a person to fit through as opposed to being an intentional security feature.
    - 6y ago

bargle0 6y ago

The legitimate business has a contract to pick up the garbage reliably. It costs a certain amount of money because the legitimate business will recoup costs. If they can’t do that because of the scavengers, the city, and consequently you and I, will have to pay more the next time the contract is negotiated.

Nextgrid 6y ago
If the scavengers are doing such a good job, why do we even need the “legitimate” business? In fact why shouldn’t the scavengers be considered legitimate when they provide a more timely service than the current incumbents? It seems like the market is working as designed and the scavengers are successfully competing since they are able to provide the same service more efficiently than the current company.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  Scavengers might be opportunistic and only pick up the easily accessed or easily recycled trash whenever it is convenient for them. Legitimate collectors will have to pick all the trash at scheduled times.
- cjhveal 6y ago
  Probably to satisfy legal duties. Someone, landlord or municipality, has a legal obligation to ensure that waste is dealt with regularly and appropriately. If they contract with a third party, they have fulfilled that legal obligation, and even if the trash piles up, the question becomes why did the third party not fulfill the contract. If the responsible party leaves it to scavengers, they are assuming liability should the trash pile up. Ultimately, this legal service is why the "legitimate" business isn't providing the exact same service as scavengers, though I agree with you it is less efficient at waste removal.
- buran77 6y ago
  Some of the legitimate contracts do get handed out based on political favors or bribes. This being said those contracts ensure some legal obligations for the service provider. Everything from providing the recycling bins, to providing service to everyone equally, to providing service consistently. And the recyclables are usually picked up by the same company pickling up the garbage. With that income gone they'd just jack up the prices for the garbage, which I assure you won't be picked up by any scavenger. You don't want your garbage or recyclables to stay on the street corner for days because the scavengers don't provide any bins, there's no money in garbage pickup, and your recyclables are too small game for them to go out of their way to pick them up. As a city you also don't want to realize one day that they just moved on to even more profitable business elsewhere while heaps of trash are popping up around town. As with anything, if it's important you want more than just best effort by someone who's anyway just piggy backing on someone else's groundwork.

hundreder 6y ago

..."it is estimated that they cost the City Council of Madrid a total of €16m in lost recycling revenues" So in other words The City of Madrid has a recycling business and they are unhappy with the competition.

Jolter 6y ago
Problem is, that missed income will have to be paid by the taxpayers in the end.

bschne 6y ago

In Roberto Saviano's 2006 Book "Gomorrah", there's a section outlining how the Camorra makes a lot of money from collecting waste (IIRC mostly industrial) and dumping it into illegal landfills that pollute large areas. They are obviously not quite as scrupulous about e.g. toxic substances as one would like. Of course where the cardboard ends up is probably not an issue here, as we are talking about recycling. But there are still a ton of ways an organization operating outside official contracts and regulations can cut corners to be "more efficient" than the official contractors are, and they can cut those corners in ways that have a larger negative impact on society than the upside of the trash being out of the street faster.