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Cargo theft, led by food and beverage, is surging across the U.S.
- walrus01 4y agoDoes anyone remember the news from several years ago regarding the massive theft at a Canadian maple syrup reserve? Apparently the barrels were drained and refilled with water.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoThat I actually don't mind because the government controls the production and distribution of maple syrup in Canada and unfairly harms independent growers in favor of its own cartel.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThis made me chuckle because of the analogy to bearer bonds. “They’re insured by the government! Don’t be a hero, everyone gets to go to their family.” But maple syrup.
- Waterluvian 4y agoI tap my own trees. Don’t tell the government, I guess? I haven’t actually heard of this before. Are you talking about how they regulate quality and grade in order to prevent low-quality knock-offs from hurting farmers? I’ll have to ask the local syrup farmers in town next time I’m at the market what they think.
- colechristensen 4y agoWasn’t the issue that they put a cap on production to keep prices higher?
- Waterluvian 4y agoOh. I’m not aware of that. That would be a contentious thing to do for sure.
- fabianhjr 4y agoA reserve to stabilize prices not unlike what many oil-dependent and oil-producing countries do. (Oil-producing countries reduce sales if prices drop, oil-dependent use their reserves if prices rise)
- gruez 4y agoIt's also cartel behavior and detrimental to the wider economy. Just because "many oil-dependent and oil-producing countries" does this doesn't justify it.
- Overtonwindow 4y agoPlease tell us more! I watched a documentary, but here's an article I found. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-19/world-s-maple-syrup-market-has-quebec-cartel-calling-the-shots https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-19/world-s-m... Edit. Another article and I found the documentary, it was Dirty Money on Netflix https://capx.co/an-unsavoury-business-the-story-of-canadas-syrup-cartel/ https://capx.co/an-unsavoury-business-the-story-of-canadas-s...
- chiph 4y agoThere's a lot more to this than I thought would be. One of those things that is simple in theory but complex in practice. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJvMQTQB-BI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJvMQTQB-BI
- jt2190 4y agoNot sure if you're tapping maple trees in Canada, but this is about Quebec, specifically the "Strategic Reserve" of the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers [1]. In general, Canada allows for controls on the supply-side in agriculture, including limiting imports. The alternative is to take the approach used in the U.S. of allowing prices to fall to unsustainable levels but then providing cash subsidies to producers. There has been a decades-long conversation about this between the two countries, of course. [1] "The World's Only Reserve of Maple Syrup" https://ppaq.ca/en/sale-purchase-maple-syrup/worlds-only-reserve-maple-syrup/ https://ppaq.ca/en/sale-purchase-maple-syrup/worlds-only-res...
- Waterluvian 4y agoWhich is ridiculous because every Canadian knows what a full cask of Grade A Amber feels like in the hands. If you’re going to pull this heist, don’t get sloppy. Use Clamato.
- t-writescode 4y agoSo, people are starving and so they’re stealing food - even to organized crime levels of food theft?
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoThere is no connection between "people are starving" and organized gangs stealing $200K of cargo at a pop. The organized gangs aren't Robin Hood. They aren't giving it to hungry people.
- t-writescode 4y agoAre you missing the global context of how much more expensive food is? Sure they might not be “giving it to hungry people” that you know; but they themselves might also be hungry, or people they know. We have no idea what they’re doing with the food; and that means both of us don’t know.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAt that scale, they’re likely profiteering off a commodity whose value is outpacing the logistics security. They’re making prices worse for everyone.
- t-writescode 4y agoSure, but that’s not my point. My point is that this is a further reflection of the tipping point of food prices that we are experiencing.
- Waterluvian 4y agoAh yes. I agree. The fact that criminals are stealing food now does indicate it’s becoming more worthwhile to steal. Prices are going up.
- 4y ago
- solatic 4y agoThe question is, where is the food and beverage going to? Containers don't have $214k of a balanced variety of foods, they have thousands of boxes of cereal. No thief is eating their way through a shipping container's worth of cereal. Prior articles (e.g. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-products-on-amazon-and-facebook-marketplace.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/17/the-fight-against-stolen-pro... ) have written about how Amazon is turning into a semi-legitimate fence for stolen goods; the seller-thief can list the stolen goods, ship to an Amazon warehouse, where Amazon provides the marketplace for a cut of the proceeds. The FTC may not care enough about Amazon turning into a front for counterfeit goods; will the FTC finally wake up and target Amazon for dealing in stolen goods?
- colechristensen 4y agoIt doesn’t work much if you’re selling individual stolen items but if you steal a truckload of something the FTC or whoever would be reasonable in requesting that lot codes/serial numbers/whatever identifying information be checked against a list of stolen items.
- londons_explore 4y agoSome countries (eg. Thailand) have a centralised government system for managing this. On every receipt, by law, is a unique barcode encoding the shop and purchase value. That barcode, when scanned, leads to a government webpage (and doing your taxes involves scanning each barcode for anything deductible, so many of the receipts get scanned). On that webpage, occasionally they ask for a photo of the best before label of the goods. The best before date usually includes the lot number. Now, the government has a list of lots of serial numbers and associated retailers. They can now easily punish those who regularly sell stolen goods.
- antihipocrat 4y agoIs cash still the dominant means of exchange in Thailand? If the discounted price of the good covered the potential deductible amount then no receipt would be needed.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoCargo theft accounts for $15-30 billion dollars lost each year, my quick search says shoplifting accounts for $15-20 billion dollars per year. Why do we hear so much more about shoplifting? Sure it's more public, but I've seen dozens of stories about how shoplifting is destroying retail and this is the first one about cargo theft I can recall.
- QuarterReptile 4y agoArticle says the average cargo theft is $214K, which I'll guess is more than average shoplifting, meaning cargo theft is less frequent. Logistics companies are less relatable than physical stores where people have been. Cargo theft is just less relatable in every way.
- imtringued 4y agoAlso the criminals end up rich and in capitalism having money increases your self worth and you are rewarded for having money no matter where it came from.
- gruez 4y ago>in capitalism having money increases your self worth and you are rewarded for having money no matter where it came from. I can't imagine what type of economic system where this isn't true. Even in communism you're rewarded for having money because it allows you to obtain more resources.
- delecti 4y agoCynically? Because people understand shoplifting more, and the media can blame it on the poor/homeless and use it as fuel to increase police budgets. Wage theft is also in the same order of magnitude (the infographic on Wikipedia says >$19 billion in 2012), and similarly doesn't get the same kind of coverage. Capital and the police scratch each other's backs.
- colechristensen 4y ago
- throwayyy479087 4y ago[flagged]
- mym1990 4y ago>Shoplifting is now legal Wut?
- IE6 4y ago[flagged]
- farmaway 4y ago[flagged]
- magicalist 4y agoWhy are we still citing a WSJ oped trying to amplify a company's press releases that even they now admit were a made up narrative?
- farmaway 4y ago[flagged]
- magicalist 4y ago> San Francisco decriminalized thefts under a dollar value of $950. This is direct, object-level proof of the original point in question. Even a cursory search will inform you this is false, so let's not swing around accusations of acting in bad faith. Shoplifting under $950 is a misdemeanor and still punishable by jail time. The argument that the only way to stop shoplifting is to have tougher sentences is the kind of galaxy brain take that gave us five decades and counting of the War on Drugs. And as I noted in another comment, there was no evidence of this rash of shoplifting these stories so breathlessly repeated, and Walgreens themselves now admit it https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli... https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcing-Walgreens-to-cut-back-in-16536960.php https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/Is-shoplifting-forcin...
- throwawayasz 4y agoEveryone deserves to eat. If state fails to feed the masses this is what happens.
- fwlr 4y agoI am surprised that logistics security is lax enough to allow for (what sounds like) simple impersonation scams to work. Even before food prices went up, these containers must have been worth at least $50k, I honestly would have expected fairly thorough identity checks before handing it over. Perhaps the impersonation is not as simple as the article leads one to believe, though.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoLiving in a high trust society is nice, and results in lower costs, money-wise and mentally. Too bad it is a fragile sentiment that is difficult to repair.
- acuozzo 4y ago> Too bad it is a fragile sentiment that is difficult to repair. Too many people have a hard time meeting their material needs which creates demand for crimes like this. A prerequisite for a high trust society is that it must be one in which very few (if any!) of its members are in a position in which they don't know where their next meal is coming from. Look at Jack London's struggle to find a meal in "On The Road" for an emblematic example and know now that US citizens are far less trusting of one another now than they were then.
- UncleEntity 4y agoI drive a truck. Most of the time all you need is the pickup number and they’ll either fill up the trailer or give you the paperwork for a preloaded one. Certain shippers just have loaded trailers sitting in a lot and you go grab the bills out of a dropbox and take off with a trailer without dealing with anyone — had someone take my load out of one of those once but, luckily, it was someone from the same company and both loads had the same second stop so it got straightened out before they made it hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. Still a stupid thing to do because they took the wrong bills too and they specifically ask you to read the destination address off the bills when you do a loaded call. Some places ask to see your drivers license, kind of rare though.
- keyme 4y agoI'm sure this has nothing to do with all the "defund the police" bullshit from a while ago.
- TheSecondMouse 4y agoWhy would it?
- h2odragon 4y agoMany people suspected "defund the police" would lead to an increase in crime, and said so. Often risking their reputation to do so, and being accused of racism, heresy, deviation-ism, and so on. Now that crime has risen in the past couple years, it's amazing how many people never said "defund the police" and when confronted with the evidence that they did say that "din't mean it that way."
- quags 4y agoI remember defund the police narratives. However despite these defund the police talks the majority of police budgets in the US continue to rise the last few years.
- bitcurious 4y agoThe performance of police, like of most professions, is highly impacted by morale. The defund narrative painted police work as inherently racist and oppressive, which obviously effected morale. I don’t have any specific data, but it seems intuitive and cops themselves are talking about it. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009578809/cops-say-low-morale-and-department-scrutiny-are-driving-them-away-from-the-job https://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009578809/cops-say-low-moral... and a bit here https://www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-depolicing-alternatives https://www.manhattan-institute.org/verbruggen-depolicing-al...
- quags 4y agoDefund the police came out of specific incidents, normally resulting in deaths, which are now being covered by police body cams and filming. From my own perspective the morale being affected is tied to the usually narratives of what happened in the incidents no longer being backed up by what the camera shows. Defund is the wrong word in my opinion though - if this was another professional job it would be more police training. We shouldn’t see indigents of a traffic stop resulting in the death of a driver with multiple police involved. Or why can I ask someone who lives in the woods come up with multiple names of people killed by the police that were unarmed - I’m sorry the morale is down and that it affects job performance but it can’t be that we expect to have multiple unarmed people killed a year as a normal part of the job.
- truthwhisperer 4y ago[dead]
- Mizoguchi 4y ago"It’s a sign of the economic times... " Right, people are so hungry they are teaming up and putting together elaborated plans to steal containers of (likely) booze.
- t0bia_s 4y agoWhen rich rob poors, it's called business. When poors rob rich, it's theft. /capitalism
- not_enoch_wise 4y agoGreat excuse to ignore the warnings and use AI to police the populace!
- incone123 4y agoHow would ai stop brazen container theft? unless it's powering an ED-209
- tiedieconderoga 4y agoMaybe have an AI analyze the large network of license plate readers on major roads, and make predictions about suspicious activity? Or do the same with cell location data? Most highway traffic speeds run at least 15mph over the posted speed limit in the US. You could have the AI choose who to pull over based on other factors. There's plenty of precedent for that kind of thing. Parallel construction, out-of-state plate speed traps, etc.
- horns4lyfe 4y agoIf it slows the American descent into a low trust society without functional goods and spaces not destroyed by anti social freaks, then great
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoThis a good example of the free market self correcting imbalances. Other examples include, Canada raises taxes on tabacco and the resulting huge wave of black market tabacco, the music industry and the rise of napster, and also the entire illicit drug industry. Not saying anything about these being good or bad, just that its an expected outcome.
- ouid 4y ago>adding further pressure to the high prices faced by consumers during an elevated inflation environment. Food price increases are being led by effective grocery monopolies. If cargo is being stolen and then sold, it is adding a competitor to the effetive monopolies, and one which is extremely motivated to sell quickly. That force should drive prices down, although perhaps negligibly.
- vjfrdv 4y agoNope. Every non boutique grocer makes very little margin and is all about efficiency. Seriously look at Walmart, Kroger, etc. There aren’t monopolies in commodity industries but I find it quaint you seem to someone think there are based on hallucinated first principles.