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> As an example if you leave gold bars littered on your front yard people will pick them up. No amount of "putting thieves in jail" will save you. Of course th

> As an example if you leave gold bars littered on your front yard people will pick them up. No amount of "putting thieves in jail" will save you. Of course there is an amount of "putting thieves in jail" which will save you; once all the thieves are in jail, the remainder of the populace would mind their own business and walk past the gold bars. If your thesis is that literally everyone would steal those gold bars, then I have to point out that this is a very pessimistic view, and that there are multiple different places around the world where it wouldn't happen.

krisoft 3y ago
> once all the thieves are in jail, the remainder of the populace would mind their own business and walk past the gold bars Perhaps. I posit that you are going to run out of one of these things sooner than you are going to run out of thieves though: gold bars, patience of police to hunt down your stolen gold bars, places in prison. You are going to run out of gold bars because if there is a stash of them unsecured there will be some thieves who either by sheer luck, or by being better at their job than the police at theirs will succesfully get away with stealing them. You are going to run out of police patience by one of two ways: either immediately, once they hear that your unsecured gold bars were just laying in your front garden. In which case they take your report and chuck it in a drawer to forget about it. Or if you are politically well connected they will try to persuade you to secure them better. If you are literally their king and they can’t convince you to store the gold better they might try to protect it by posting a policeman next to it And then finnaly if you have so much money that replenishing the stolen gold is not a problem, and you have so much political power that the police is not able to change your storage practices then that is when you are going to run out of space in your prisons. > If your thesis is that literally everyone would steal those gold bars Not at all. But it doesn’t need to be. My thesis is that there would be enough people who would try that it overwhelms your police force destined to throw thieves in prison.
falsaberN1 3y ago
But then a new thief is spontaneously generated by greed, stupidity or "because it seemed funny", "this person has so many gold bars, surely they won't care about me taking one" and even "it was out there, unwatched, unlocked, thought it was fine to take one". And you will never know who. Maybe you put all the obvious thugs and hooligans in jail, only for some otherwise kindly old grandma to steal some bars because of the thrill of it. Or a thief from another city in passing. In other places around the world those things are controlled by close-knit communities where being seen stealing would spread the word like wildfire and ruin the thief's reputation (or end up in a beating), not because people is purer and immune to sin or idiocy. It's not pessimistic nor paranoid to lock your door. All it takes is one bad apple, even if it's one in a million.

krisoft 3y ago

> once all the thieves are in jail, the remainder of the populace would mind their own business and walk past the gold bars Perhaps. I posit that you are going to run out of one of these things sooner than you are going to run out of thieves though: gold bars, patience of police to hunt down your stolen gold bars, places in prison. You are going to run out of gold bars because if there is a stash of them unsecured there will be some thieves who either by sheer luck, or by being better at their job than the police at theirs will succesfully get away with stealing them. You are going to run out of police patience by one of two ways: either immediately, once they hear that your unsecured gold bars were just laying in your front garden. In which case they take your report and chuck it in a drawer to forget about it. Or if you are politically well connected they will try to persuade you to secure them better. If you are literally their king and they can’t convince you to store the gold better they might try to protect it by posting a policeman next to it And then finnaly if you have so much money that replenishing the stolen gold is not a problem, and you have so much political power that the police is not able to change your storage practices then that is when you are going to run out of space in your prisons. > If your thesis is that literally everyone would steal those gold bars Not at all. But it doesn’t need to be. My thesis is that there would be enough people who would try that it overwhelms your police force destined to throw thieves in prison.

falsaberN1 3y ago

But then a new thief is spontaneously generated by greed, stupidity or "because it seemed funny", "this person has so many gold bars, surely they won't care about me taking one" and even "it was out there, unwatched, unlocked, thought it was fine to take one". And you will never know who. Maybe you put all the obvious thugs and hooligans in jail, only for some otherwise kindly old grandma to steal some bars because of the thrill of it. Or a thief from another city in passing. In other places around the world those things are controlled by close-knit communities where being seen stealing would spread the word like wildfire and ruin the thief's reputation (or end up in a beating), not because people is purer and immune to sin or idiocy. It's not pessimistic nor paranoid to lock your door. All it takes is one bad apple, even if it's one in a million.