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I fail to understand how this is different from organized rings of train robbers in the old, old west. Maybe we need modern day cowboys now (per my recollectio

I fail to understand how this is different from organized rings of train robbers in the old, old west. Maybe we need modern day cowboys now (per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law)? Most likely we'll have security drones, like Boston Dynamics's robot dog. Edit to say that having people hounded by security drones sounds like a terrible state of affairs. Having businesses robbed by organized gangs does as well. I think UBI and rent control or rent subsidies with high taxes on the wealthiest is a better solution in the short-term. For the long-term, philosophies that advocate for less materialism seem preferable (no need to rob if you're happy with less money etc.).

Bostonian 3y ago
[flagged]
- kranke155 3y ago
  Train robbers were also idolised
- QuercusMax 3y ago
  Part of the issue is that articles like this one tend to conflate individual poor people shoplifting small items with these organized gangs. These gangs aren't shoplifters, and calling them such is extremely misleading.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    > Part of the issue is that articles like this one tend to conflate individual poor people shoplifting small items with these organized gangs. I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way. I'm all for providing better services and support (not to mention a better structured economy) for those who are poor. I also believe "the punishment should fit the crime", and stealing low-dollar goods should result in commensurate punishment. I'm not for allowing the poor to steal with no consequences just because they can't afford stuff.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      > I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way. But what is the alternative? Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run. You can beg and try to get enough together to buy something, but it's not really a good alternative either, especially since it's not guaranteed. So at what point would someone be in their right to steal food to survive? Is it never okay, meaning they'll have to starve in the worst case? Naturally these problems should be solved long before anyone comes to the place of having to steal - but that's not the world we live in. And I'm strictly talking about absolute necessities, nothing beyond that. But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets?
      - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
        > Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run. Can we please be real about what we're talking about? This isn't early 19th century Paris from Les Miserables. On the contrary, SF has some of the best public services for the destitute of any place in the country. There are tons of places around the city where one can get free food. > But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets? My main concern is not about "a bit of money in the store owners pockets". It's abou signaling that the rules simply do not apply, that laws can be picked and chosen based on how you feel about the perpetrator. Again, I said the punishment should fit the crime: 1. The person should be arrested, and basically be given the equivalent of "We'll show you how to access services in SF so you don't need to steal in the future. If you're not caught stealing in the next X months, your record will be cleared". 2. For further infractions, they should be given escalating warnings and escalating penalties.
  - SllX 3y ago
    We shouldn’t tolerate shoplifters either. Theft is theft.
    - QuercusMax 3y ago
      But shoplifting is different from organized smash-and-grab gangs; different causes, different solutions. Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading.
      - SllX 3y ago
        > But shoplifting is different from organized smash-and-grab gangs Correct and irrelevant: they are both forms of theft. > different causes, different solutions. Different motivations is more accurate. There also isn’t a “solution” per se, but suppression tactics do exist if you have both a PD and a DA worth a damn. > Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading. I didn’t. I pointed out the obvious: theft is theft. This is a commonality between “shoplifting” and “smash and grab”. The first term downplays the violence against the storeowners by people taking their stuff (cuz it could be worse, armed robbery is also a form of theft so as much as I detest softening euphemisms, the distinction isn’t useless) and the other paints a more violent and organized picture of people taking their stuff, but ultimately the act that both describe is theft. Either way, they are criminal activities that ought to be suppressed. We shouldn’t be tolerant to thieves.
  - brk 3y ago
    Leaving the store with items you didn't pay for is theft on any level, and bad for business.
- roflchoppa 3y ago
  At least in the old west you could fight for yourself, with restrictions to firearms the fight becomes one sided. Remember the Fed has stated they have no responsibility to protect you. Inb4 yeah both sides of the political parties are to blame for restrictions.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    what on earth does the Fed have to do with self-protection?
    - kyleee 3y ago
      Just read it as “the government”; I don’t believe they are talking about the federal reserve
      - roflchoppa 3y ago
        LOL the fed, yeah them too!
- RC_ITR 3y ago
  Please don’t start political flame wars on here for no reason. Your point is not amplified by doing that.
  - wait_a_minute 3y ago
    San Francisco needs more police officers.
    - RC_ITR 3y ago
      Please stop trying to make flamewars happen in a forum specifically moderated to not have them. You have literally everywhere else on the internet to argue left vs right, some people want to have a different style of debate and come here for it (since it is designed for that different kind of debate). EDIT: To be clear, that different style of debate is trying to understand and solve problems rather than just lay blame for political points. EDIT2: Please focus on the constructive part of your statements. I think it’s fine you want to hire more police, that was not the rule breaking part of your argument (the entire argument had to follow the rules). The mostly unrelated attacks on straw men political parties and specific politicians are the problem. EDIT3: I agree that more police officers may be part of the solution. I think they are not, however, a panacea and we should spend more time thinking about the aspirations of what we want downtown SF to be more than thinking about how to remove people we do not like from it.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
fourseventy 3y ago
Instead of giving criminals UBI how about the police actually enforce shoplifting crime?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Ain't gotta be either-or. Give everyone UBI and enforce the daylights out of crime.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    You've got my vote and my PAC dollars. Run!
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    I dunno. Doing basic due-diligence level investigation of law enforcement policy and effectiveness first is a good idea. I'm a fan of UBI, but you may also want to do a web search or two before saying UBI should be 'U'.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      Both fair points, and realistically I’m not even really a fan of UBI given that it’ll be captured by landlords as increased rent. The real point I’m making is that these things are not actually at odds and they shouldn’t be portrayed as such.
      - retrocryptid 3y ago
        Sure. I'd buy that.
- wait_a_minute 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - delecti 3y ago
    Despite calls to defund the police, it hasn't happened, basically anywhere (and certainly not in any big cities). From last October: > Police department budget up 4.4% since 2019, despite SF officials making bold promises to defund https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen... The police budgets are as bloated as ever, and they remain as useless as ever.
RC_ITR 3y ago
The question you should be asking is if this is actually a shoplifting problem vs. a massive decline in SF’s willingness to shop in person. I sure don’t know anyone who talked about going to the downtown Nordstrom to buy anything. And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears. This is an important question because while a scapegoat feels nice (they always do - look at the glee people are inserting into their comments here), if this is a preview of what all urban centers look like in 25 years, we better start thinking up answers now rather than later.
- avs733 3y ago
  to add - the scapegoat here is also particularly useful to take attention away from consumer changes that would effect to operate expensive retail properties. Not saying it is one or the other, just that nordstrom would be particularly motivated to shift blame because of what the alternative says about their broader business model. So maybe not taking them at their word. That being said, i'll note that I'm SHOCKED how normalized shoplifting has become not just among 'the criminal element' but among my social set which is decidedly not your typical criminals. Stealing, especially from self checkouts, is increasingly openly discussed in my experience - and generally framed as 'its them paying me for doing their job of checking me out' or 'countering inflation/corporate greed'. Whether I agree with the morality of it or not and juts note that it is increasingly normalized. More broadly, I struggle with feeling sorry for corporations when the public lives under a never ending stream of abuse from corporate policies and control (c.f., everything being a subscription).
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  >And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears. It sure seems like a strange coincidence that all the downtown shutdowns happened around the same time that hundreds of thousands of people weren't forced into the area 5x a week by their job and the city lost over 50k in population, likely high earning workers who could now work remote elsewhere.
- aworks 3y ago
  I think retail locations ebb and flow and it's hard to parse through other factors. I suppose I'm a data point by keeping my location and Nordstrom as a constant over time with neighborhood as a variable. 25 years ago, it was particularly fun to go shopping at Union Square/Market Street, including Nordstrom. Then that devolved into going to Nordstrom at Stanford Shopping Center. Now I prefer to go to Nordstrom Rack in East Palo Alto. In the early 90s, I was afraid to drive through the town due to drug battles. On the other hand, I still go to Hayes and Haight Streets in SF to shop, even if these urban neighborhoods can be "scruffy." Maybe I like shopping areas that are interesting but not overly threatening.
DylanDmitri 3y ago
If the people working at a store can’t afford any apartment within a forty minute commute the store will fail.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  Yet San Francisco continues to have min wage workers.
  - rightbyte 3y ago
    Never ending stream of suckers that has not realized that it doesn't work out yet. Like Uber drivers that are selling their car at a loss one mile at a time. Some might be living in rent controlled flats though.
- jankyxenon 3y ago
  It's been true for a long time that people working at that store couldn't afford to live nearby (in general). What changed in the last few years though?
  - intended 3y ago
    Covid
  - DylanDmitri 3y ago
    Stores with no nearby workers won’t spontaneously fail. But the situation is symptomatic of a precarious labor/housing equilibrium. In this precarious system, stores are likely to be toppled by external forces (Covid), and have farther to fall afterwards. Other cities, with more robust labor/housing equilibriums, are bouncing back from the pandemic just fine.
duskwuff 3y ago
> per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law Cowboys were animal herders, not police officers. You're probably thinking of the romanticized "Lone Ranger" image of the cowboy as seen in Western movies. This is almost entirely fictitious.
- nradov 3y ago
  Not entirely fictitious. Cowboys and ranch hands at times also worked as mercenaries or deputized law enforcers in 19th-century organized conflicts not unlike the urban gang wars we occasionally see today. The best known example is probably the Lincoln County War, which involved 15 murders and probably a few hundred participants at various levels.
  - retrocryptid 3y ago
    San Francisco, that we'll known expanse of American western wilderness is completely without infrastructure, which is why we routinely have battles between native americans and settlers on the Haight. And why there are routine gunfights between ranchers and farmers in North Beach.
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  Reality is less popular than romanticized ideals, and always has been. Sir Humphrey Appleby famously quipped "All government funding is symbolic." And to paraphrase: "Funds aren't distributed to government programs based on need, utility or expected benefits, but on what politicians think will convince the electorate they're spending government funds appropriately."
lnxg33k1 3y ago
Maybe you need better wealth redistribution, higher taxes, better schools, better gun control, it's different from back then because now there are rights, institutions.. the fact that someone in US on this place, that is supposed to be like a place where you find people with a certain brain power, to me it's sign of a certain decadence if the people with supposedly brain of a country say that the answer to modern crime is modern robots cowboys, it's one of those situations where one doesn't know if it has to cry or to laugh
nradov 3y ago
Enforcing the law is necessary but not sufficient. In order for luxury retailers to succeed in a particular area they have to present a safe and comfortable experience to affluent shoppers. Having a bunch of Dalek like security robots roaming the store isn't compatible with that experience.
lamontcg 3y ago
Third world wealth equality conditions correlates with third world social conditions.

Bostonian 3y ago

[flagged]

kranke155 3y ago
Train robbers were also idolised
QuercusMax 3y ago
Part of the issue is that articles like this one tend to conflate individual poor people shoplifting small items with these organized gangs. These gangs aren't shoplifters, and calling them such is extremely misleading.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > Part of the issue is that articles like this one tend to conflate individual poor people shoplifting small items with these organized gangs. I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way. I'm all for providing better services and support (not to mention a better structured economy) for those who are poor. I also believe "the punishment should fit the crime", and stealing low-dollar goods should result in commensurate punishment. I'm not for allowing the poor to steal with no consequences just because they can't afford stuff.
  - Timon3 3y ago
    > I consider myself liberal, but this sentence highlights the point a lot of people have issue with: that somehow many "on the left" have rationalized theft as being OK if you're poor. That is absolutely the point at which society and the social contract breaks down, because it becomes exceedingly easy for anyone to rationalize taking something from others because "they deserve it" in some way. But what is the alternative? Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run. You can beg and try to get enough together to buy something, but it's not really a good alternative either, especially since it's not guaranteed. So at what point would someone be in their right to steal food to survive? Is it never okay, meaning they'll have to starve in the worst case? Naturally these problems should be solved long before anyone comes to the place of having to steal - but that's not the world we live in. And I'm strictly talking about absolute necessities, nothing beyond that. But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets?
    - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
      > Let's look at a dirt-poor person who hasn't eaten in multiple days. Sure, there are places you can try to get donated items, but those are getting more and more over-run. Can we please be real about what we're talking about? This isn't early 19th century Paris from Les Miserables. On the contrary, SF has some of the best public services for the destitute of any place in the country. There are tons of places around the city where one can get free food. > But surely at some point a human life is worth more than a bit of money in the store owners pockets? My main concern is not about "a bit of money in the store owners pockets". It's abou signaling that the rules simply do not apply, that laws can be picked and chosen based on how you feel about the perpetrator. Again, I said the punishment should fit the crime: 1. The person should be arrested, and basically be given the equivalent of "We'll show you how to access services in SF so you don't need to steal in the future. If you're not caught stealing in the next X months, your record will be cleared". 2. For further infractions, they should be given escalating warnings and escalating penalties.
- SllX 3y ago
  We shouldn’t tolerate shoplifters either. Theft is theft.
  - QuercusMax 3y ago
    But shoplifting is different from organized smash-and-grab gangs; different causes, different solutions. Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading.
    - SllX 3y ago
      > But shoplifting is different from organized smash-and-grab gangs Correct and irrelevant: they are both forms of theft. > different causes, different solutions. Different motivations is more accurate. There also isn’t a “solution” per se, but suppression tactics do exist if you have both a PD and a DA worth a damn. > Conflating all retail theft is simply misleading. I didn’t. I pointed out the obvious: theft is theft. This is a commonality between “shoplifting” and “smash and grab”. The first term downplays the violence against the storeowners by people taking their stuff (cuz it could be worse, armed robbery is also a form of theft so as much as I detest softening euphemisms, the distinction isn’t useless) and the other paints a more violent and organized picture of people taking their stuff, but ultimately the act that both describe is theft. Either way, they are criminal activities that ought to be suppressed. We shouldn’t be tolerant to thieves.
- brk 3y ago
  Leaving the store with items you didn't pay for is theft on any level, and bad for business.
roflchoppa 3y ago
At least in the old west you could fight for yourself, with restrictions to firearms the fight becomes one sided. Remember the Fed has stated they have no responsibility to protect you. Inb4 yeah both sides of the political parties are to blame for restrictions.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  what on earth does the Fed have to do with self-protection?
  - kyleee 3y ago
    Just read it as “the government”; I don’t believe they are talking about the federal reserve
    - roflchoppa 3y ago
      LOL the fed, yeah them too!
RC_ITR 3y ago
Please don’t start political flame wars on here for no reason. Your point is not amplified by doing that.
- wait_a_minute 3y ago
  San Francisco needs more police officers.
  - RC_ITR 3y ago
    Please stop trying to make flamewars happen in a forum specifically moderated to not have them. You have literally everywhere else on the internet to argue left vs right, some people want to have a different style of debate and come here for it (since it is designed for that different kind of debate). EDIT: To be clear, that different style of debate is trying to understand and solve problems rather than just lay blame for political points. EDIT2: Please focus on the constructive part of your statements. I think it’s fine you want to hire more police, that was not the rule breaking part of your argument (the entire argument had to follow the rules). The mostly unrelated attacks on straw men political parties and specific politicians are the problem. EDIT3: I agree that more police officers may be part of the solution. I think they are not, however, a panacea and we should spend more time thinking about the aspirations of what we want downtown SF to be more than thinking about how to remove people we do not like from it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

fourseventy 3y ago

Instead of giving criminals UBI how about the police actually enforce shoplifting crime?

ethanbond 3y ago
Ain't gotta be either-or. Give everyone UBI and enforce the daylights out of crime.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  You've got my vote and my PAC dollars. Run!
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  I dunno. Doing basic due-diligence level investigation of law enforcement policy and effectiveness first is a good idea. I'm a fan of UBI, but you may also want to do a web search or two before saying UBI should be 'U'.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    Both fair points, and realistically I’m not even really a fan of UBI given that it’ll be captured by landlords as increased rent. The real point I’m making is that these things are not actually at odds and they shouldn’t be portrayed as such.
    - retrocryptid 3y ago
      Sure. I'd buy that.
wait_a_minute 3y ago
[flagged]
- delecti 3y ago
  Despite calls to defund the police, it hasn't happened, basically anywhere (and certainly not in any big cities). From last October: > Police department budget up 4.4% since 2019, despite SF officials making bold promises to defund https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-department-funding/12321818/ https://abc7news.com/sfpd-budget-defund-the-police-departmen... The police budgets are as bloated as ever, and they remain as useless as ever.

RC_ITR 3y ago

The question you should be asking is if this is actually a shoplifting problem vs. a massive decline in SF’s willingness to shop in person. I sure don’t know anyone who talked about going to the downtown Nordstrom to buy anything. And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears. This is an important question because while a scapegoat feels nice (they always do - look at the glee people are inserting into their comments here), if this is a preview of what all urban centers look like in 25 years, we better start thinking up answers now rather than later.

avs733 3y ago
to add - the scapegoat here is also particularly useful to take attention away from consumer changes that would effect to operate expensive retail properties. Not saying it is one or the other, just that nordstrom would be particularly motivated to shift blame because of what the alternative says about their broader business model. So maybe not taking them at their word. That being said, i'll note that I'm SHOCKED how normalized shoplifting has become not just among 'the criminal element' but among my social set which is decidedly not your typical criminals. Stealing, especially from self checkouts, is increasingly openly discussed in my experience - and generally framed as 'its them paying me for doing their job of checking me out' or 'countering inflation/corporate greed'. Whether I agree with the morality of it or not and juts note that it is increasingly normalized. More broadly, I struggle with feeling sorry for corporations when the public lives under a never ending stream of abuse from corporate policies and control (c.f., everything being a subscription).
ribosometronome 3y ago
>And I don’t think the root cause was shoplifting fears. It sure seems like a strange coincidence that all the downtown shutdowns happened around the same time that hundreds of thousands of people weren't forced into the area 5x a week by their job and the city lost over 50k in population, likely high earning workers who could now work remote elsewhere.
aworks 3y ago
I think retail locations ebb and flow and it's hard to parse through other factors. I suppose I'm a data point by keeping my location and Nordstrom as a constant over time with neighborhood as a variable. 25 years ago, it was particularly fun to go shopping at Union Square/Market Street, including Nordstrom. Then that devolved into going to Nordstrom at Stanford Shopping Center. Now I prefer to go to Nordstrom Rack in East Palo Alto. In the early 90s, I was afraid to drive through the town due to drug battles. On the other hand, I still go to Hayes and Haight Streets in SF to shop, even if these urban neighborhoods can be "scruffy." Maybe I like shopping areas that are interesting but not overly threatening.

DylanDmitri 3y ago

If the people working at a store can’t afford any apartment within a forty minute commute the store will fail.

throwawaysleep 3y ago
Yet San Francisco continues to have min wage workers.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  Never ending stream of suckers that has not realized that it doesn't work out yet. Like Uber drivers that are selling their car at a loss one mile at a time. Some might be living in rent controlled flats though.
jankyxenon 3y ago
It's been true for a long time that people working at that store couldn't afford to live nearby (in general). What changed in the last few years though?
- intended 3y ago
  Covid
- DylanDmitri 3y ago
  Stores with no nearby workers won’t spontaneously fail. But the situation is symptomatic of a precarious labor/housing equilibrium. In this precarious system, stores are likely to be toppled by external forces (Covid), and have farther to fall afterwards. Other cities, with more robust labor/housing equilibriums, are bouncing back from the pandemic just fine.

duskwuff 3y ago

> per my recollection, cowboys played both sides of the law Cowboys were animal herders, not police officers. You're probably thinking of the romanticized "Lone Ranger" image of the cowboy as seen in Western movies. This is almost entirely fictitious.

nradov 3y ago
Not entirely fictitious. Cowboys and ranch hands at times also worked as mercenaries or deputized law enforcers in 19th-century organized conflicts not unlike the urban gang wars we occasionally see today. The best known example is probably the Lincoln County War, which involved 15 murders and probably a few hundred participants at various levels.
- retrocryptid 3y ago
  San Francisco, that we'll known expanse of American western wilderness is completely without infrastructure, which is why we routinely have battles between native americans and settlers on the Haight. And why there are routine gunfights between ranchers and farmers in North Beach.
retrocryptid 3y ago
Reality is less popular than romanticized ideals, and always has been. Sir Humphrey Appleby famously quipped "All government funding is symbolic." And to paraphrase: "Funds aren't distributed to government programs based on need, utility or expected benefits, but on what politicians think will convince the electorate they're spending government funds appropriately."

lnxg33k1 3y ago

Maybe you need better wealth redistribution, higher taxes, better schools, better gun control, it's different from back then because now there are rights, institutions.. the fact that someone in US on this place, that is supposed to be like a place where you find people with a certain brain power, to me it's sign of a certain decadence if the people with supposedly brain of a country say that the answer to modern crime is modern robots cowboys, it's one of those situations where one doesn't know if it has to cry or to laugh

nradov 3y ago

Enforcing the law is necessary but not sufficient. In order for luxury retailers to succeed in a particular area they have to present a safe and comfortable experience to affluent shoppers. Having a bunch of Dalek like security robots roaming the store isn't compatible with that experience.

lamontcg 3y ago

Third world wealth equality conditions correlates with third world social conditions.