2 ms·

My wife owns a small retail clothing store. It is her experience that the people who attempt to steal, are not generally lower income, they are often among the

My wife owns a small retail clothing store. It is her experience that the people who attempt to steal, are not generally lower income, they are often among the most well-to-do members of the population that goes through her store. Very different stakes, and very different age group (she mostly sells to teenagers and twentysomethings), but same psychology, I think. "I'm not the sort of person who gets arrested and sent to prison". Which is true until suddenly it isn't.

ethbr0 5y ago
I call this the "National Park effect". Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present. See: tourists who wander off in National Parks with no cell service, with no water or survival gear, and then think it's a good idea to pet a bison The concept of laying bleeding, miles from the nearest road, with broken bones, as night falls and the temperature drops is so foreign to their experience that it just isn't an imagined possibility.
- saalweachter 5y ago
  There's also the "cynicism effect". If you believe "everyone does it" -- Congress, billionaire X, the C-suite at every company -- it becomes a lot easier to justify you doing it yourself. You're not doing anything wrong, everyone does it.
- nebula8804 5y ago
  >Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present. It will be interesting to see this happen nationwide if the music were to stop(or slow down) in the US economy as some are predicting.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    That's what the 2008 crisis was at its root -- too many people, at all levels, who'd forgotten to be alert for danger and mistakenly assumed that the recent past served as fundamental bounds of future possibility.
    - nebula8804 5y ago
      Yes but a large chunk of the country never really felt the music stop in that crisis. I wonder if they find a way to keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely. If not, then we will finally see what happens.

ethbr0 5y ago

I call this the "National Park effect". Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present. See: tourists who wander off in National Parks with no cell service, with no water or survival gear, and then think it's a good idea to pet a bison The concept of laying bleeding, miles from the nearest road, with broken bones, as night falls and the temperature drops is so foreign to their experience that it just isn't an imagined possibility.

saalweachter 5y ago
There's also the "cynicism effect". If you believe "everyone does it" -- Congress, billionaire X, the C-suite at every company -- it becomes a lot easier to justify you doing it yourself. You're not doing anything wrong, everyone does it.
nebula8804 5y ago
>Being constantly coddled in some way dulls your ability to recognize when circumstances have changed, and those safeguards are no longer present. It will be interesting to see this happen nationwide if the music were to stop(or slow down) in the US economy as some are predicting.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  That's what the 2008 crisis was at its root -- too many people, at all levels, who'd forgotten to be alert for danger and mistakenly assumed that the recent past served as fundamental bounds of future possibility.
  - nebula8804 5y ago
    Yes but a large chunk of the country never really felt the music stop in that crisis. I wonder if they find a way to keep kicking the can down the road indefinitely. If not, then we will finally see what happens.