5 ms·

I can not stand thievery. And the brazen nature of it is so irksome. The fact that people need a fleet of security cameras and a fake dog to protect their home

I can not stand thievery. And the brazen nature of it is so irksome. The fact that people need a fleet of security cameras and a fake dog to protect their home is ridiculous. These people should be caught and sent off to labor camps for a very, very long time.

tristor 4y ago
One of the challenges of our modern society is that we've eliminated so much self-respect, after all look at social media. Without self-respect, you cannot build respect for others and their property. It is no surprise then that these types of incidents have become more brazen and more common. Any self-respecting person, then must determine how best to deal with this, because you cannot rely on others whether that be the police, the government, your community, or the would-be thieves themselves.
- dymk 4y ago
  Breaking News: Facebook Causes Increase in Burglaries But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just about monotonically decreased throughout all of human development. To say that "modern society" has an increasing problem with burglaries due to a "lack of self respect", there's no evidence it's true, and there is evidence to the contrary. Before you point out the bump in some crime types in recent years, let me remind you that recent years have not been typical, nor easy on our generally monotonically-improving social safety nets. Compare burglary rates in America from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010. Lower, lower lower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...
  - tristor 4y ago
    To not put too fine of a point on it, while crime is decreasing in aggregate over time, it's also spreading into areas/communities where it historically has been lower. It's still generally true that if you avoid going into the bad parts of town or engaging in social relationships with known criminals you are unlikely to be a victim of crime generally, however upper class neighborhoods and quiet suburbs are now seeing an increase in property crime and general anti-social behaviors that are occurring due to shifts in social mores and a decrease in respect that are happening within society overall. What I'm referring to is far more subtle than some direct link between social media and these behaviors, but even in the cases of direct links such things exist... for instance consider TikTok trends like "devious licks"[1] which had students vandalizing and stealing from schools on video, including in upper class neighborhoods and at good schools. I am /very/ well aware of the overall trend of crime decreasing in aggregate. However, I am also aware of the shift I'm noting above, and I'm aware that some crimes are now simply under/un-reported. Property crimes are definitely on the rise /in aggregate/ in some areas of the US, and can be most directly linked to shifts in enforcement. Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in cities like San Francisco are associated strongly to the refusal of the law enforcement in the area to actually enforce the law. We have a large number of social ills, and aggregate decreases in mental health, happening in the West, and I see this as being in the large linked to lack of self-respect and self-esteem. People with self-respect and self-esteem don't go and hurt others and destroy things, they create and produce. Lack of self-esteem is a significant driver for depression, which seems to be on the rise, along with many other related issues. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devious_lick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devious_lick
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      >Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in cities like San Francisco are associated strongly to the refusal of the law enforcement in the area to actually enforce the law. Police in poor cities have never had enough enforcement resources to do anything other than write a report for petty crime yet you don't see the nearly amount of videos of brazen "petty crime in broad daylight while witnesses film" coming out of Detroit or Trenton like you do the richer cities. The problem is largely cultural and it largely begins and ends with the demographics who drive things like local police policy.
      - tristor 4y ago
        You're correct in your first paragraph and probably a quarter correct in your second paragraph. Just to be a bit more deliberate: poor communities have experienced high rates of crime throughout human history, it's a newly recurring phenomenon that high rates of crime are now happening in communities which are not poor, and it's a problematic sign for society. Without trying to crack open the entirety of human psychology and sociology in a comment on HN, a lot of people primarily gather wealth to build safety for their family, the entire reason that they become wealthier is to insulate themselves from the criminality that is common in poorer parts of their city/country/world. The fact that relative wealth is no longer as insulative as it once was is indicative of a wider ranging issue than poverty driving crime, and results in subtle shifts and cracks forming in society. There are absolutely cultural drivers behind crime, as well as demographic drivers, and I am positing that a big piece of what's causing criminal culture to spread and shift is social media acting as a communications platform to spread a different set of social mores and standards than those that have historically enforced cohesion within larger society and reduced criminality in wealthier areas. Again, case in point, children of wealthy families in posh schools engaging in vandalize and theft of school property for social media points. Social media is nothing if not a cultural force that creates a new demographic that cuts across other lines, their user-base.
        yamazakiwi 4y ago
        Why is it an issue that wealth is not as insulative as it once was against crime? What about those who want wealth but can't acquire it but also do good in a community to prevent crime? What if we were forced to make communal change instead of buying our way out? Children across all spectrums of wealth have engaged in vandalization or theft for the entirety of humanity, whether for social media points or other variations of clout.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just about monotonically decreased throughout all of human development. No, they haven't. Most of them may have decreased, but it hasn't been even approximately monotonic. > Compare burglary rates in America from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 I like that you use a a few decades of decline from the well-known peak of a long surge as your proof of a monotonic decline over the entire history of human development.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
I mean that's the "revenge" school of thought, but there's two others; "rehabilitation", where people are re-educated otherwise, and the more difficult one... why do people steal in the first place? In practice it'll be things like poverty, lack of other opportunities, etc. Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in life and crime will drop. But that sounds too much like socialism.
- wollsmoth 4y ago
  Different people respond to different things. But I do think the US system is a bit too punitive. A lot of states have stuff like free community college for those who want it. But guess what? they still have a lot of car radios and catalytic converters being stolen.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    A bit? It has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea.
    - wollsmoth 4y ago
      Sure, but they also have a pretty repressive regime where you might get executed for watching the wrong tv show. I think it's better to compare to other developed countries.
      - goodpoint 4y ago
        Ok. Compared to developed countries, it has a waaay higher incarceration rate.
- pid_0 4y ago
- tristor 4y ago
  > Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in life and crime will drop. I agree with everything but the first word of this sentence, "give". The challenge is that you cannot "give" someone self-respect, purpose in life, or gratitude. These are things which must be internally developed by people through their life experiences. The best we can do as a society is improving early childhood development and parenting, but once someone is an adult, it is exceptionally difficult to impossible to change someone's direction absent any desire to change on that person's part. The people doing these things are generally young adults or adults. Someone is not breaking into my garage to steal my tools because of "poverty" except in the most abstract definition. Generally, it's to feed a drug addiction, a drug addiction the person acquired due to self-medicating for ennui and depression or other mental health issues, mental health issues that may be partially caused by environment or genetics (we don't know, social / psych science is not there yet), and contributed to by the state of society and a complete lack of self-respect (someone with self-respect wouldn't stoop to theft). The opposition to your mode of thinking isn't "oh no socialism", it's about complete elimination of accountability, respect, ethics, and root cause analysis as part of the process. You cannot "give" someone an improvement in their internal state. Or as the saying goes "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink."
jvanderbot 4y ago
In small communities (think, hundreds), thievery is much, much harder. People just "know" who the thieving-types are, or can find out pretty quick by gossip. And what would they do, build a house with the saw they stole? Sell it ... back to me? If I knew everyone I could possibly see sneaking around my house, it's pretty simple to go talk to their parents/ siblings / spouse to get them straightened out. If I didn't know, it doesn't take long to gossip my way into likely suspects. It's another responsibility we offloaded to the state, and it is now impossible to recognize people on the street, and so there's an infinite set of people each thief could exploit. This isn't bad per se (see witch hunts and mob rule), it's just a modern exploit.
sophacles 4y ago
So you are opposed to the concept of "equal response"?
jck 4y ago
Obviously, crime sucks and society needs criminals to face some sort of consequence but your take (vengeance) is pretty sad and lacking to me. You need to understand that most of these sorts of crimes are committed by people in terrible socioeconomic conditions and you seem like you have the privilege to not know what that sort of despair feels like and how it can break people.

tristor 4y ago

One of the challenges of our modern society is that we've eliminated so much self-respect, after all look at social media. Without self-respect, you cannot build respect for others and their property. It is no surprise then that these types of incidents have become more brazen and more common. Any self-respecting person, then must determine how best to deal with this, because you cannot rely on others whether that be the police, the government, your community, or the would-be thieves themselves.

dymk 4y ago
Breaking News: Facebook Causes Increase in Burglaries But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just about monotonically decreased throughout all of human development. To say that "modern society" has an increasing problem with burglaries due to a "lack of self respect", there's no evidence it's true, and there is evidence to the contrary. Before you point out the bump in some crime types in recent years, let me remind you that recent years have not been typical, nor easy on our generally monotonically-improving social safety nets. Compare burglary rates in America from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010. Lower, lower lower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/media/File:Property_Crime_Rates_in_the_United_States.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#/me...
- tristor 4y ago
  To not put too fine of a point on it, while crime is decreasing in aggregate over time, it's also spreading into areas/communities where it historically has been lower. It's still generally true that if you avoid going into the bad parts of town or engaging in social relationships with known criminals you are unlikely to be a victim of crime generally, however upper class neighborhoods and quiet suburbs are now seeing an increase in property crime and general anti-social behaviors that are occurring due to shifts in social mores and a decrease in respect that are happening within society overall. What I'm referring to is far more subtle than some direct link between social media and these behaviors, but even in the cases of direct links such things exist... for instance consider TikTok trends like "devious licks"[1] which had students vandalizing and stealing from schools on video, including in upper class neighborhoods and at good schools. I am /very/ well aware of the overall trend of crime decreasing in aggregate. However, I am also aware of the shift I'm noting above, and I'm aware that some crimes are now simply under/un-reported. Property crimes are definitely on the rise /in aggregate/ in some areas of the US, and can be most directly linked to shifts in enforcement. Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in cities like San Francisco are associated strongly to the refusal of the law enforcement in the area to actually enforce the law. We have a large number of social ills, and aggregate decreases in mental health, happening in the West, and I see this as being in the large linked to lack of self-respect and self-esteem. People with self-respect and self-esteem don't go and hurt others and destroy things, they create and produce. Lack of self-esteem is a significant driver for depression, which seems to be on the rise, along with many other related issues. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devious_lick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devious_lick
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    >Car-break ins and bike thefts in particular in cities like San Francisco are associated strongly to the refusal of the law enforcement in the area to actually enforce the law. Police in poor cities have never had enough enforcement resources to do anything other than write a report for petty crime yet you don't see the nearly amount of videos of brazen "petty crime in broad daylight while witnesses film" coming out of Detroit or Trenton like you do the richer cities. The problem is largely cultural and it largely begins and ends with the demographics who drive things like local police policy.
    - tristor 4y ago
      You're correct in your first paragraph and probably a quarter correct in your second paragraph. Just to be a bit more deliberate: poor communities have experienced high rates of crime throughout human history, it's a newly recurring phenomenon that high rates of crime are now happening in communities which are not poor, and it's a problematic sign for society. Without trying to crack open the entirety of human psychology and sociology in a comment on HN, a lot of people primarily gather wealth to build safety for their family, the entire reason that they become wealthier is to insulate themselves from the criminality that is common in poorer parts of their city/country/world. The fact that relative wealth is no longer as insulative as it once was is indicative of a wider ranging issue than poverty driving crime, and results in subtle shifts and cracks forming in society. There are absolutely cultural drivers behind crime, as well as demographic drivers, and I am positing that a big piece of what's causing criminal culture to spread and shift is social media acting as a communications platform to spread a different set of social mores and standards than those that have historically enforced cohesion within larger society and reduced criminality in wealthier areas. Again, case in point, children of wealthy families in posh schools engaging in vandalize and theft of school property for social media points. Social media is nothing if not a cultural force that creates a new demographic that cuts across other lines, their user-base.
      - yamazakiwi 4y ago
        Why is it an issue that wealth is not as insulative as it once was against crime? What about those who want wealth but can't acquire it but also do good in a community to prevent crime? What if we were forced to make communal change instead of buying our way out? Children across all spectrums of wealth have engaged in vandalization or theft for the entirety of humanity, whether for social media points or other variations of clout.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > But in all seriousness, all forms of crime have just about monotonically decreased throughout all of human development. No, they haven't. Most of them may have decreased, but it hasn't been even approximately monotonic. > Compare burglary rates in America from 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 I like that you use a a few decades of decline from the well-known peak of a long surge as your proof of a monotonic decline over the entire history of human development.

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

I mean that's the "revenge" school of thought, but there's two others; "rehabilitation", where people are re-educated otherwise, and the more difficult one... why do people steal in the first place? In practice it'll be things like poverty, lack of other opportunities, etc. Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in life and crime will drop. But that sounds too much like socialism.

wollsmoth 4y ago
Different people respond to different things. But I do think the US system is a bit too punitive. A lot of states have stuff like free community college for those who want it. But guess what? they still have a lot of car radios and catalytic converters being stolen.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  A bit? It has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea.
  - wollsmoth 4y ago
    Sure, but they also have a pretty repressive regime where you might get executed for watching the wrong tv show. I think it's better to compare to other developed countries.
    - goodpoint 4y ago
      Ok. Compared to developed countries, it has a waaay higher incarceration rate.
pid_0 4y ago
tristor 4y ago
> Give people an education, gratifying jobs, a purpose in life and crime will drop. I agree with everything but the first word of this sentence, "give". The challenge is that you cannot "give" someone self-respect, purpose in life, or gratitude. These are things which must be internally developed by people through their life experiences. The best we can do as a society is improving early childhood development and parenting, but once someone is an adult, it is exceptionally difficult to impossible to change someone's direction absent any desire to change on that person's part. The people doing these things are generally young adults or adults. Someone is not breaking into my garage to steal my tools because of "poverty" except in the most abstract definition. Generally, it's to feed a drug addiction, a drug addiction the person acquired due to self-medicating for ennui and depression or other mental health issues, mental health issues that may be partially caused by environment or genetics (we don't know, social / psych science is not there yet), and contributed to by the state of society and a complete lack of self-respect (someone with self-respect wouldn't stoop to theft). The opposition to your mode of thinking isn't "oh no socialism", it's about complete elimination of accountability, respect, ethics, and root cause analysis as part of the process. You cannot "give" someone an improvement in their internal state. Or as the saying goes "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink."

jvanderbot 4y ago

In small communities (think, hundreds), thievery is much, much harder. People just "know" who the thieving-types are, or can find out pretty quick by gossip. And what would they do, build a house with the saw they stole? Sell it ... back to me? If I knew everyone I could possibly see sneaking around my house, it's pretty simple to go talk to their parents/ siblings / spouse to get them straightened out. If I didn't know, it doesn't take long to gossip my way into likely suspects. It's another responsibility we offloaded to the state, and it is now impossible to recognize people on the street, and so there's an infinite set of people each thief could exploit. This isn't bad per se (see witch hunts and mob rule), it's just a modern exploit.

sophacles 4y ago

So you are opposed to the concept of "equal response"?

jck 4y ago

Obviously, crime sucks and society needs criminals to face some sort of consequence but your take (vengeance) is pretty sad and lacking to me. You need to understand that most of these sorts of crimes are committed by people in terrible socioeconomic conditions and you seem like you have the privilege to not know what that sort of despair feels like and how it can break people.