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Why it’s hard to buy deodorant in Manhattan
- Georgelemental 4y ago> "generally states with more shoplifting prosecute more shoplifters" Caveat: In states where the law isn't enforced, people often don't bother to report minor crimes, because there is no point in doing so.
- hellfish 4y agoThere's a simple solution to this: just leave, and take your taxable income with you. If a jurisdiction can't do a basic function of government, why the fuck would you want to perpetuate the administrative disease any further? Paying taxes to these jurisdictions is like enabling an abusive relationship
- HDThoreaun 4y agoNew York is where the jobs are. Just leave and get another 200k job as a banker where?
- hellfish 4y ago> New York is where the jobs are. Just leave and get another 200k job as a banker where? If you scale that 200k for cost of living it shouldn't be very hard to find an alternative
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoThis economics point is often misunderstood, because at the high-end of the earnings spectrum, a large portion of income can go to savings, and cost-of-living differences make no impact on that. That is, if you're making a $200k salary in NYC, let's say you spend 50k a year on housing and 50k a year on other expenses, but the rest you can put towards savings. Then you move somewhere that is 50% cheaper, but you make 50% less. So now you can get the same quality apartment for $25k and your other expenses are only $25k, but you're only saving $50k a year instead of $100. Obviously this is a gross oversimplification, but the vast majority of time if you move to a place with a much lower cost of living, your reduction in salary, if looking at local jobs, is unlikely to make up for it. Never mind the fact that for many industries there are only a few places where you can live if you really want a career: if you work in high finance or fashion in the US, you probably want to live in NYC. Film or TV, you'll be in LA, etc.
- lelanthran 4y ago> New York is where the jobs are. Just leave and get another 200k job as a banker where? What percentage of New York makes over 200k? They can stay, the rest can leave. IOW, it takes all sorts to make a city work, and if you have labor (those people who work, at whatever wage) move away because the policies favour non-labour (those people whose income is from theft) it doesn't really matter how many 200k stockbrokers want to stay - they'll have to move eventually too.
- Pigalowda 4y agoLA, Chicago, Houston
- abvdasker 4y agoAh yes, the "simple solution" of uprooting your entire life because it takes ~2 minutes longer to buy deodorant.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoTarget’s cameras have facial recognition. They can even identity people by gait. When these people return to the store, they can probably tell with some level of confidence they previously robbed a target. Why not stop them from entering? Or try to inconvenience them significantly? Drop a bag of slime on them as they exit? Make the floor slippery as they try to run out? There are smart people working at target; they need to be less shy about protecting their store, which is an American treasure
- factsarelolz 4y ago> When these people return to the store, they can probably tell with some level of confidence they previously robbed a target. They still need a cop to show up and actually trespass the individual. Cops refuse to show up, take hours if they do and perhaps even then still not be convinced to spend their time doing to report. The cops know the person will be back, the company knows the person will be back, and even the person knows they'll be back. Unfortunately there's nothing the owner of the store can do except attempt to reduce all liability of said person being on property.
- anovikov 4y agoWhy stores simply don't improve physical security? As in, doors that automatically shut when abrupt movement is detected OR panic button is pressed, and a security that shoots to kill (to avoid legal trouble with the wounded thief claiming racism etc)?
- avazhi 4y ago
- chriscjcj 4y ago443 comments as I write this. I searched for the word "boost" and "Fentanyl" and was surprised that neither word had been mentioned. There is another engine driving this phenomenon: addicts "boosting" to feed their addiction. Drug use is another crime that society seems uninterested in prosecuting or punishing as of late. Add illicitly manufactured Fentanyl (1) to that recipe and you have an absolute onslaught of retail theft. In interview after interview with addicts, it's clear that boosting is one of the primary methods of funding drug use. (2) If we are not interested in curbing drug trafficking, sales, and abuse, we will continue to have a huge problem with retail theft. (And also an unconscionable death toll that is growing rapidly.) (1) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34603876/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34603876/ (2) https://www.youtube.com/@SoftWhiteUnderbelly/videos https://www.youtube.com/@SoftWhiteUnderbelly/videos
- abvdasker 4y agoWe already tried this. It was called The War on Drugs and it failed totally, completely and unambiguously. If there's one thing to understand about the last 60 years of United States drug criminalization and enforcement, it's that those policies have utterly failed to curb drug abuse and addiction. There are a mind-boggling number of studies which show that criminalizing drug use doesn't create fewer drug addicts.
- magic_hamster 4y agoWhat is a better solution?
- etage3 4y agoPortugal decriminalised drugs in 2000 and this is regarded as a better solution. Drug use is treated as a health issue rather than a crime issue, and the results are better. See here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal
- ginja 4y ago
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago>On October 17th the Department of Homeland Security launched “Operation Boiling Point”, a co-ordinated federal and local effort to disrupt orc gangs. lol, lmao
- fareesh 4y agoIs there a way to analyze how other cities in the USA are dealing with crime in a way that NYC does not? Perhaps therein lies the answer.
- simple10 4y ago"Organised retail crime gangs are behind a shoplifting spike."
- alkonaut 4y agoA cheap deodorant (Dove/whatever) is like $2-3 in expensive parts of Europe. That's not worth stealing. What makes them $8 or $10 in manhattan? It's an expensive area and I guess there aren't many large stores to buy from but more smaller pharmacies, but that still doesn't explain why there is a 2-3x price difference for deodorants in particular.
- Ekaros 4y agoCommercial real-estate. When your store cost at least 10k or even more in rent. You have to sell awfully many deodorants to cover it. And labour isn't exactly cheap either if you want to get some.
- alkonaut 4y agoThat's a good explanation of general price differences between an expensive and a cheaper area, e.g. that Manhattan prices would be 50% higher than more rural New York prices. But I was under the impression here that deodorants in particular were 2-3x more expensive on manhattan, but that the difference was smaller for other goods. Usually the US (Even the most expensive parts) would be a lot cheaper than e.g. Oslo or Zurich. That's not the case unless there is something else going on here , e.g. that they aren't the same product due to different size and so on.
- dlkf 4y agoIn Sweden, deodorant sticks are smaller than what I’d get in Canada. There’s also an appalling lack of variety. In particular, you never see Old Spice. I think there is a lucrative business opportunity in bringing American deodorant maximalism to the nordics.
- alkonaut 4y ago> deodorant sticks are smaller than what I’d get in Canada. This must be due to the size of the north american armpit. > There’s also an appalling lack of variety. In particular, you never see Old Spice. There aren't any Tim Hortons either but I'm not sure if "Brand X is missing" and "There is no variety" is generally the same thing.
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoSo not getting in to read article - but Given the amount of theft in America, and size of Amazon's American revenue and sales, can we figure out what percentage of Amazon's revenue is generated from fencing stolen goods? on edit: IIRC AWS is 70%, Ad revenue is half of retail (30%), that means criminal revenue has to be less than 15% and I would think probably significantly less than half of that even. Maybe 2% at most? on second edit: I wonder if every corporation has a percentage of its revenue that is criminal, like how processed food has a percentage of bug parts. You would think not, initially, but just voicing the idea makes it strangely attractive as a concept.
- ragazzina 4y agoI love how the article explains to me, a non-native English speaker, not from the US, what the very popular "Rite Aid" and "Target" are, but lets me understand the industry jargon "shrink" from the context by myself.
- Laarlf 4y agoWell that stinks
- Reason077 4y agoDon't stores in Manhattan employ security guards? Most busy central London shops certainly do, at least at busy times of day. That seems to sufficiently deter shrinkage, without having to resort to lock boxes on the shelves. Sometimes you'll see high-value items (like expensive bottles of alcohol) with security tags that need to be removed at checkout, but I don't recall seeing locked down shelves.
- einpoklum 4y agoUS society is cuh-razy. You guys somehow manage to foster so many bored criminals so as to resort to messing with deodorant in pharmacies. Are they out of banks to rob? Illegal drugs to sell? Come on!
- cafard 4y agoIt's not just Manhattan. At certain CVS stores in Washington, DC, one must find a clerk to open the door in front of the deodorant. At most of the ones I know, one must find a clerk to get access to razor blades.
- sonzohan 4y agoThe great irony of the discussion is the number of people discussing theft, having used the wget grep trick or the archive link.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
- uoaei 4y agoWhat part of The Economist is "left"? What part of "organized retail crime" is not a "complicated conspiracy theory"? What makes "organized retail crime" a "transparently obvious" explanation?
- solardev 4y agoPretty sure Marx called upon workers to seize the means of protection to bring forth a new world odor.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nhoughto 4y agoSame in SF, I assumed it was because of the homelessness problem. Seems more likely than shoplifting gangs..
- HWR_14 4y agoThe homeless population (including those in shelters and cars) is < 1% of SF's population. Even if they used products at the same rate as the rest of the population and stole 100% of what they used, they would be responsible for less than half of retail shrinkage.
- xyzzyz 4y agoHomeless people steal stuff mostly not for their own consumption, but to sell it.
- compiler-guy 4y agoWhich would make this a gang problem, rather than a homeless problem.
- atdrummond 4y agoNo? Plenty of them do it as independent freelancers and fence it at less than reputable locations throughout the Tenderloin.
- Eleison23 4y agoDo we now? Please tell me other ways homeless people are dishonest criminals in your eyes.
- gnu8 4y agoOf course they are stealing things for their own consumption. They are merely choosing to steal a particular thing that is easy to steal and easy to convert to cash, which they can then use to purchase the diverse things they need to survive.
- 4y ago
- hyperhopper 4y agoPaywall, can't read anything past the summary of the problem
- kmstout 4y ago$ curl -s 'https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/24/why-its-hard-to-buy-deodorant-in-manhattan' | grep articleBody | jq -r .articleBody 2>/dev/null | fmt
- Terretta 4y agoBest trick on HN today.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 4y agogood trick, but it really highlights how thin the article is.
- jaccarmac 4y agoAs it happens, you don't need much content to convince people that petty criminals are scum and the only solution is more and meaner cops and prisons. After all, the retail lobby says so!
- the-printer 4y agoYou just taught me something
- cratermoon 4y agocurl -s 'https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/24/why-its-hard-to-buy-deodorant-in-manhattan https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/24/why-its-h...' | grep articleBody | jq -r .articleBody 2>/dev/null | paps --font=ETBembo | open -fa Preview
- kmstout 4y ago
- Terretta 4y agoI'd wondered if someone figured out how to turn deodorant into meth, since they started protecting it like Sudafed even after Sudafed was removed from the Sudafed boxes sold as Sudafed (phenylphrine is not pseudoephedrine and is not effective). Sudafed, baby formula, deodorant, and razor blades, together could sound like a Jesse Pinkman shopping list before he found a high school chemistry teacher to help him. At the same time, since nobody is making retail chains put lock boxes on the deodorant aisle, shrinkage best meets Occam's razor. Or would if it hadn't been shoplifted.
- xyzzyz 4y ago“Sudafed” labeled pseudoephedrine is still available for sale, I have some in my cabinet, bought this spring.
- x3n0ph3n3 4y agoTrue, but it's more complicated to acquire and not available right off the shelf.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bsder 4y ago"A Simple and Convenient Synthesis of Pseudoephedrine From N-Methylamphetamine" https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pseudoephedrine.pdf https://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume19/v19i3/Pse...
- hyperdimension 4y agoOne of my favorite papers. :)
- LawTalkingGuy 4y agoWhich is easily available in San Francisco, Vancouver, LA, etc.
- CPLX 4y agoWithout clicking is the answer people stealing and it ending up “fulfilled by Amazon”?
- jaccarmac 4y agoThe answer is that the stores claim shoplifting is way up and costing them immense amounts of money. As always, the only citations are the corporations and their lobbying group. It's standard tough-on-crime sophistry.
- jldugger 4y agoWell, the only company mentioned by name is eBay, which was used as a fence for 300k in stolen goods by a single couple. So you could maybe make a case that Amazon makes it easier for retail theft, but you also have to seemingly ban all online retailing, which seems rather anticompetitive.
- jandrese 4y agoThe article suggests "organized crime". Basically it's gone beyond petty theft to organized rings who have efficient fencing organizations. In the old days it would be hard to get much money for the stick of deodorant you just stole, but apparently criminals have figured out how to use online market places to make it profitable and have started organizing large numbers of street level thieves to get their supply.
- d3nj4l 4y agohttps://archive.ph/QlK57 https://archive.ph/QlK57
- bobbylarrybobby 4y agoThe article says prosecutors don't go after these thefts but I'd think the issue is with the cops and the number of arrests. After the BLM protests of 2020 (George Floyd) cops basically went hands off on these so called minor crimes, and so I'd imagine many of them don't even make it to prosecutors. We'd need a graph of incidents and arrests for years prior to 2020 (or months in early vs late 2020) to see the change.
- soperj 4y agoHas the number of cops shooting people actually decreased? Considering that they've never even looked for a bicycle, which is many times more expensive than a stick of deodorant, I'm seriously doubtful that they've ever have been hands on for these thefts.
- yieldcrv 4y agono, avoiding minor crimes has no bearing on whether the cops “feared for their lives” during the times they did show up
- compiler-guy 4y agoThe article claims that the BLM protests made little difference, and include a graph of various states comparing the amount of shoplifting with the amount of prosecution. Generally there doesn’t seem to be a correlation between states with large BLM protests and reduced prosecution. For example, Oregon had huge protests and weak government responses, and yet prosecutes large amounts of shoplifting. Blaming this on the response to BLM seems intuitive, but I have yet to see data that supports it.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoAs others have said, aggregating at the state level makes no sense. For example, in Austin, TX, I can't speak for retail crimes in particular but there has most definitely been a change in prosecuting other crimes. Hit-and-runs are an epidemic now in the city, primarily because the police won't even respond unless there is a major injury. I was in a hit and run, I got a detailed description of the car and license plate, and yet there were 0 consequences to the person that hit me. It actually makes more sense to run if you hit someone because there are literally no downsides (except for people with a conscience, of course). But if you looked across TX as a whole, this data would definitely not show up.
- skymast 4y agoManhattan is getting the law enforcement it demanded.
- qaz_plm 4y agoWrong
- jakelazaroff 4y agoNot really. Walk around the city and you see more cops than ever. The issue is that police don’t actually prevent crime. Putting more cops on the street is like trying to use water to extinguish a grease fire.
- esbranson 4y agoPolice usually prevent crime. Does everyone seriously need to watch and read Lord of the Flies? To see when police are absent, look to CHAZ. Did CHAZ not have one of the highest murder rates in the known world?
- pclmulqdq 4y agoThe cops are generally part of the crime problem in NYC. They also don't go after people for anything short of attempted murder (even when it's done in front of their faces), so lots of crime goes unreported.
- philwelch 4y agoNYC used to have a solution for this, it was called broken windows policing.
- jakelazaroff 4y agoThe issue is that the people most often breaking the metaphorical windows are the police themselves.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
- MichaelCollins 4y ago> "The stores are insured bro, why do you care if people steal from them? It's not your problem maaan." This is why I care. Criminals degrade society and we all suffer for their greed.
- flandish 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mattigames 4y agoBut society first needs to be in a degraded state for most criminals to exist, as most only meet their basic needs through criminal means, such as food, shelter, health and education.
- Eleison23 4y agoSociety has been persistently degraded since time immemorial, because of the presence of organized crime. The only thing that's changed since Prohibition is the genetic makeup of the gangstas who are in charge. #BlackLivesMatter came about because the police have been--somewhat unwillingly--waging open warfare against gangbangers for decades in the inner city. The gangbangers all have guns and the cops have heavy weaponry that sometimes protects them and oftentimes blows away a few low-ranked gangbangers who might've just completed initiation, or weren't even affiliated but just hanging out at a party. So what #BLM and #DefundthePolice people are saying is, enough is enough with this open warfare, you're killing children and innocent people, the cops are too powerful. But gangs offer societal structure: they offer belonging, they offer community, they offer encouragement and brotherhood. They offer economic opportunity. They offer lifelong careerism. That flavor of opportunity can't be had in a public school or a legitimate job. So gangs aren't going away; gangs are part of the fabric of society because they're providing tangible benefits for many members and non-members alike. But how will they disarm themselves? How will they offer truces to the cops and reconcile, swords into plowshares? If gangs don't go away then they need to be pacified or the open gang warfare will continue to get cops involved, and the gangs will continue to shoplift and fence and operate all sorts of low-level criminal enterprise with impunity. So what to fix? Save the family - save the world.
- fragmede 4y agoI've lived in the same city now (not NYC) for 10+ years, so I'm moderately connected with all sorts of people and not just a bubble of affluent tech people. So I'll be real, I know some sketchy people that probably do drugs or at least know where to find some. What I don't know, however, is any "fences". That is, someone that traffics in stolen goods. Or maybe I do, they don't exactly advertise their services. I've never been offered speakers that fell off the back of a truck, however. Maybe that's just me being naive. Anyway, to get to my point; turns out I do know fences - basically anyone with an Amazon account, and I know a lot of fuckers with Prime. For the low investment of polyfill bags and other shipping materials, and this one weird trick called stealing, you too can make money online! Just take your stolen goods, send them to Amazon, and they'll take care of selling them for you. All you gotta do is some computer shit, and some packaging, and then send it off to Amazon. Because your supply costs are cheap, you can undercut your competitors (but not by too much) and rake in the profit. Amazon supposedly is cracking down on this but I have yet to see any meaningful evidence of any real enforcement. The economist article avoids naming names, but what you're looking for to get started is Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA).
- mritun 4y agoJust like that without evidence you laid an allegation on Amazon even though all facts are that Amazon does KYC and doesn’t actually let anyone sell health products (among many others) without receipts. This is text book rumor-mongering and spreading misinformation.
- eternalban 4y ago> What I don't know, however, is any "fences". That is, someone that traffics in stolen goods. Bodegas.
- duxup 4y agoCraigslist seems to still be a popular place for that too.
- psychphysic 4y agoIsn't eBay the same? So many sellers you see selling 5 of some random. It's basically those guys with a suitcase in markets selling whatever they got hold of that week.
- mancerayder 4y agoWhat's amazing is how no one is honing in on the real reason this is happening, the DA's office combined with state laws make it hard to bail people and send people to prison. That's the decision made, and it's referred to as the carceral system. It's something viewed as urgently needing reform, and that's how the progressive DA's operate. Look at Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA's program (https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Day-One-Fact-sheet-Final-1.6.22.pdf https://www.manhattanda.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Day-O...) If cops are standing around doing nothing, it's because it's pointless to engage with a suspect physically, risking yourself while by the way people around whip out their phones to video you, if the suspect will be released on their own recognizance on some lowered charge, if the charge isn't dropped anyway. You can also add, if you want to criticize cops, that they're civil workers at the end of the day, and most are in for the benefits, such as pension and healthcare, rather than pretending to be superheroes or vigilantes.
- nkrisc 4y agoThe real reason is mentioned I the article: it’s absurdly easy to sell bulk stolen goods online. As long as that’s possible, there will always be someone stealing it, no matter how many people you lock up.
- joenot443 4y agoWhy is it specifically a problem here in New York then, but wherever else I go in the country I don't see things nearly as locked up? Geography presumably shouldn't be a factor if shoplifters are only selling their loot online.
- klooney 4y agoIt's like that in San Francisco and Oakland too, although the suburbs in the bay are mostly much more chill.
- zuminator 4y agoPopulation density makes it easier to hide in a crowd and also easier to recruit teams of shoplifters. The estensive subway system in Manhattan makes it easy to escape underground. Due to traffic, police response times may be longer. Manhattan has dozens of pharmacies in the business areas, which makes it easier to hit several stores in succession and get a substantial haul.
- easton 4y agohttps://archive.ph/QlK57 https://archive.ph/QlK57
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- somberi 4y agoIt just so happened my wife and I were in a CVS (a US pharmacy chain) on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (think pooches inside Gucci bags), and I wanted to get a Deodorant. We had to call the staff to unlock small pigeon hole after another just to see what was written on the labels. As always it is not just one thing - the lady that came to help us was in a Hijab and was studying medicine and was helping her parents who immigrated from Turkey and own the operation rights of that store, on thanksgiving eve. May be I am Old, but I did not mind the locked shelves after meeting her.
- 55555 4y agoYou sound like a really nice person but I agree with the sibling commenters and I also wonder if your understanding of Turkey is accurate and balanced. https://www.academia.edu/49496498/Turkish_Women_in_the_Professions_Why_So_Many https://www.academia.edu/49496498/Turkish_Women_in_the_Profe...
- taolegal 4y agoNot sure what you're trying to get across. Am I supposed to think that locked shelves is normal or ok, should we minimize yet another needlessly bizarre and inconvenient impediment in ordinary life? Because of some romantic anecdote about a second-generation model minority?
- saberience 4y ago
- adventured 4y agoCVS doesn't lease out or franchise operating rights to their stores in the US. They own and operate all of them exclusively. They operate similarly to Walgreens in that respect.
- teg4n_ 4y agolmao so the parent post just made up their story? on the internet no less!?
- jmyeet 4y agoSo if we attribute the rise in petty property theft to organized crime gangs that still doesn't get to the issue of why. we know why and we've known for thousands of years [1]: "Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime" -- Aristotle No one grows up wanting to steal deoderant from Walgreens. A lot of crime can simply be explained by material conditions. Over the last 40 years in particular, we've seen real income be eroded. Ultimately continued profit growht comes at the expense of labor and labor has enjoyed none of the benefits of decades on increased productivity. We have a very peculiar "recession" that ultimately seems aimed at breaking labor when, for the first time in decades, people started to see a real increase in wages. That is unacceptable as it reduces profits. The Fed Chair is on the record as wanting to increase the unemployment level. [1]: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1360890-aristotle-poverty-is-the-parent-of-revolution-and-crime/ https://quotepark.com/quotes/1360890-aristotle-poverty-is-th...
- avazhi 4y ago"No one grows up wanting to steal deoderant from Walgreens" You should mix with different people. When you mix poverty and a lack of education with genetic stupidity you get some pretty obnoxious personal motivations over the population, and those motivations aren't fixed by lifting people out of poverty or trying to educate them. Some people are simply lost causes that society would be better off without, period. Pretending otherwise is naive.
- josephcsible 4y ago> for the first time in decades, people started to see a real increase in wages Who are you talking about? Other than the techbros who switched jobs for a $100k raise, which is a tiny fraction of the population, basically everyone else's real wages have plummeted the last two years.
- yalogin 4y agoPiggybacking on this thread, is stealing a common thing across the whole of the US or is it restricted to some areas? I keep getting asked how people in n San Francisco are living with crime so rampant and they send a video of gangs stealing from a store/mall.
- balderdash 4y agoits incredibly localized, the us is so large and heterogeneous in many respects
- ipnon 4y agoOrganized retail theft is common in big cities. Most Americans do not live in big cities. This is not an issue for most Americans, and the stores they shop at do not have restrictive shelving nor go out of business do to "shrinking."
- quag 4y agoThe "Most Americans do not live in bit cities" comment caught my eye. I wasn't sure if it was true or not, so I ran some numbers. Using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistical_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_statistic... Assuming 331M people in the USA, 164M (50%) live in a metropolitan area of at least 1.6M people. 189M people (57%) live in an area with at least 1M people. 230M (70%) live in an area with at least 500K people. My conclusion is that most Americans do live in big cities. However, even if all big cities have restrictive shelving practices, there are still 3 out of 10 Americans (outside of the 500K cities) that do no experience these practices. I'm in an area with 4M people and have seen the shelving practices. So I can concluded that at least 34% of Americans (who are in larger areas) have also experienced these restrictions.
- kjeetgill 4y agoI'm not sure how to consider the stats you're using here. Metropolitan areas aren't cities, the whole reason for the term is to include not just adjacent suburbs, but whole adjacent cities to major urban cities. Do we really consider an hour away and for cities over living in San Francisco?
- c_hackett 4y agoAs someone not from the US can anyone shed some light why deodorant and other personal care goods are so expensive in the US? The prices are so ludicrous compared to the UK that on my trip I had to take a photo as friends would have thought I was exaggerating when telling them! Take for example Dove Men+Care antiperspirant. In the US what is a rather compact can 3.8oz/107g was on the shelf at $9.55 (plus sales tax). I've just checked a well known UK chemist (boots) and 150ml of the same brand is £1.70 and 250ml is £2.00 (both including sales tax). Not really sure why the US measure aerosols in g and the UK measures them in ml but the price difference alone is jaw dropping.
- balls187 4y agoPrices are based on what the market will bare. In 2004 I spent part of my honeymoon in London. At a pub, I paid £10.95 for a burger. At the time it was ~$2 to £1, so it was effectively a $20 burger. My friends thought I was full of it when I said I paid $20 for a burger.
- greggman3 4y agoPaid $20 for a burrito and a coke in a dive taqueria in the SF mission. Just a few years ago that would have been under $10. Curious if they give a discount to the local Latino population who's average income is fairly low.
- balls187 4y agoWas just telling my girlfriend—the nice thing about inflation is hotel restaurant prices haven’t yet caught up.
- flutas 4y ago> Take for example Dove Men+Care antiperspirant. In the US what is a rather compact can 3.8oz/107g was on the shelf at $9.55 (plus sales tax). I've just checked a well known UK chemist (boots) and 150ml of the same brand is £1.70 and 250ml is £2.00 (both including sales tax). Not really sure why the US measure aerosols in g and the UK measures them in ml but the price difference alone is jaw dropping. First for the price info. I live in [state capital city] but we're not a big tourist destination and that can ranges between $4.09 and $10 locally. Prices can vary drastically based on the retailer and location in even a city. For the actual difference in product, I'm fairly sure this is just a misunderstanding (and a reasonable one at that due to our crappy weight system). The US version is listed at 3.8OZ "NET WT." not "FL. OZ", so the 3.8oz should be the weight of the actual deodorant inside, not the volume of it. Whereas the UK version being listed at 250ml I assume it is the volume. I don't have a good estimate on the actual volume/weight difference of the two products though. Maybe someone could grab a can from a US store and do the math on the actual volume of the container?
- z9znz 4y ago[flagged]
- public_defender 4y agoExpert in stolen goods here. I was talking to a NYC colleague the other day about how there are trends in favor of not punishing people for certain criminal activity in the city. We were talking about driving with a suspended license, but I asked about shoplifting. She said, "Oh, no. That's on the opposite trend. Not only are they prosecuting it to the maximum, but they just changed the law to make it easier to hold people on bail for shoplifting." She made it clear that shoplifting was never a low priority for prosecution, but now it's a higher one. I understand that the claim in this article is that aggregators/sellers/fences whatever should be surveilled and prosecuted (more), but just wanted to add this tale from the courthouse and emphasize that the street-level shoplifter will be the target of most policy interventions here, which is the least effective and least humane strategy.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Thorrez 4y agoIdeally they would get the street-level shoplifter to inform on the shoplifter's boss in order to get a low sentence or immunity, so that the real kingpin can be caught.
- rullelito 4y agoExpert in making stuff up perhaps.
- public_defender 4y agoIn polite company we say "lawyer."
- Oxidation 4y agoThe other thing that's interesting from their state graph is that it disagrees with the "people fleeing anarchist California to orderly Texas to escape rampant crime" meme. Not only does Texas have higher rates of larceny theft[1], it is the biggest outlier on the graph in terms of lack of prosecution for it - no other state is further below the trend line. [1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/232583/larceny-theft-rate-in-the-us-by-state/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/232583/larceny-theft-rat...
- axutio 4y agoMost of the comments here are ignoring the difference between regular old shoplifting and the trend driving the increase discussed in the article, which they're referring to as "organized retail crime". I think it's very fair to have differing attitudes/moral thresholds for an impoverished mother shoplifting a week's worth of baby formula versus "a couple in Alabama [which] pled guilty to shifting $300,000-worth of stolen baby formula on eBay". My reading of the article suggests that the trend discussed is a result of the latter, which is more recent and problematic, and not the former. Comments here discussing the morality of crime or a desire for policy change are missing this distinction.
- dls2016 4y ago> Most of the comments here are ignoring the difference between regular old shoplifting and the trend driving the increase discussed in the article, which they're referring to as "organized retail crime". I guess, but conversely I'd argue that organized retail theft has been around pretty much as long as supply chains have existed. That's the mob's bread and butter. The phrase "riding shotgun" is in common use. Perhaps mass shoplifting from the store is a new tactic, but personally I look at this situation and ask, "what has changed"? For one, we've sort of collectively realized how terrible modern jails are (Rikers anyone?). And that's good. A second conclusion I draw is that retail stores have been gutted... walmart-ized... every ounce of efficiency wrung out of them. Have you ever been to one of these massive retail outlets and had trouble finding anyone that works there? A few months ago everyone was clutching pearls about some 150 yd stretch of train track in LA that was continually being robbed... and I can make a wild guess that this was the result of 1) skeleton crews, 2) minimal security on the ground and 3) shipping containers that are running with sub-standard defense mechanisms because they're simply too much work (slows down loading, probably break a lot, etc.). Yes organized crime should be punished, but these companies seem to throw up they're hands and say "Gee golly, we have no idea why $20 million dollars of merchandise watched by 5 overworked, low wage employees and 1 loss prevention officer is such a target! It's a mystery!" I don't hate mega corporations (ok maybe a little), but they definitely have a hand in creating this situation. And it's rarely commented upon when discussing the recent rise in shoplifting. (Edit: I forgot my favorite shoplifting fact... up until recently, reports showed that both shoplifting and wage theft "cost the economy" around $40 billion per year. Comparing prosecution rates of the two crimes is left as an exercise for the reader.)
- partiallypro 4y agoThis is such a big nationwide problem that Target actually mentioned it during their earnings report (this is stated in the article.) Some states/cities have made it near impossible to prosecute these people, so the risk/reward is very favorable to stealing and reselling. Some stores have even closed down in certain areas because of it. When we talk about "food deserts" in some cities, it could one day be we have massive deserts of no retailers at all, and it will largely be a government policy failure. The videos of organized ransacking of stores are honestly insane. The stores are somewhat powerless because of liability, and the new laws that have raised the level in which the law even cares. I don't think the "broken window" policy is the end-all, it has some problems but allowing "small" theft rings does not generally put areas on a good trajectory. These goods are almost always getting 3rd party listed, be it Amazon, eBay, Facebook Marketplace, etc.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y agoI don’t know of any states that have made it near impossible to prosecute shoplifters. What are you referring to?
- nxm 4y agoHaving the penalty be a slap on the wrist and having the person is released same day, it’s essentially the same as not prosecuting them. NY state bail reforms, and in San Fran; “ In 2014, a ballot referendum passed that downgraded the theft of property less than $950 in value from a felony charge to a misdemeanor.”
- acdha 4y agoThat’s not the same claim at all - those people can and are being prosecuted: bail wouldn’t matter if they weren’t! Similarly, changing the threshold for a felony theft charge doesn’t prevent anyone from being prosecuted.
- factsarelolz 4y agoStores aren't calling the police and if they do the police don't show up. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-09/skelton-organized-theft-proposition-47 https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-12-09/skelton-...
- meanmrmustard92 4y agoSome speculated that prosecutors had gone soft on looting after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. But it is hard to see any such trend in the data: generally states with more shoplifting prosecute more shoplifters The claim is about the time-series comparison, and the rebuttal is about the cross section comparison. Is the journalist in question stupid, gaslighting, or both?
- hellfish 4y agoYou just don't get the message ig? Maybe if you just stop thinking and accept that 2+2=5 it will make sense :)
- joenot443 4y agoIt's funny they say it's "hard to see any such trend in the data" of arrests in a post-Ferguson America when the data is so apparent and its meaning so contested that it has its own Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_effect It would be totally illogical to pretend that such massive sweeping change in public perception of policing would have no effect on the activity of the police themselves.
- lupire 4y agoThe rebuttal was explaining the trend that does exist.
- pitaj 4y agoWhere do they explain that the trend doesn't exist? They make no statement that applies over time.
- Our_Benefactors 4y ago
- squokko 4y agoLOL. I thought this was going to be an article about why people in Manhattan don't wear deodorant because the city already smells so bad.
- giggyhack 4y agoThieves are the problem, not Amazon FBA. Yes, there are stolen goods there, but the vast majority of sellers are legitimate businesses who buy wholesale and sell things like deodorant/graphics cards/phone cases/canned soup.
- russellbeattie 4y agoWhat is behind this unwelcome article on HN? Some speculated that HN is increasingly filled with the type of right wing extremists who lose their minds at the mere thought of BLM. But it's hard to see any such trend in the comments... Weasel word dog whistles are fun, no?
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoHow bizarre. In my country supermarkets have self checkouts. You'd think they'd lose a ton of money on shoplifting. Maybe it is because society hasn't broken down thanks to a social welfare safety net?
- QuizzicalCarbon 4y agoI have not been to a modern supermarket in the U.S. that didn’t have self-checkout. Self-checkout is common.