7 ms·

Tolerating shoplifting is burning the furniture to keep warm, eating the seeds for the next crop. Stores close, jobs flee, food and medicine deserts grow. Whate

• philipov 3y ago
  To help them, we need to be less tolerant of the white collar crime perpetrated by the employers in our country.
  • orochimaaru 3y ago
    How would targeting white collar crime prevent the closure of stores because of safety concerns and store losses? White collar crime needs to be prosecuted. But that won’t help here.
    • xattt 3y ago
      Targeting white collar crime opens up resources for helping the rest of society.
      • orochimaaru 3y ago
        Nope. It doesn’t. Probably goes to a fund managed by the agency that initiated the prosecution. I don’t think any marginalized community sees a single dime out of any white collar crime prosecution.
    • mxkopy 3y ago
      I don't know if you classify misappropriation of government funds, grift, and politically motivated administrative decisions as white collar crime, but that sort of stuff is a large part of the reason for why this sort of thing is culturally acceptable. The Kids for Cash scandal, I think, serves as a good example for why so many people feel disenfranchised - and it's an example of someone with authority in the system getting caught, imagine how many don't.
      • vorpalhex 3y ago
        I don't think 15 year old kids in Chicago are stealing clothes and shoes because of an insider corruption scheme impacting Pennsylvania almost two decades ago.
        • orochimaaru 3y ago
          You forgot to add electronics and video games here. I’m sure those fall under the necessities criteria for teenagers these days. A lot of the crime isn’t just necessities. It’s basically stealing to sell on the side.
          • pc86 3y ago
            Absolutely, but the majority of people who are doing that are doing it to buy food and other necessities (or, a step or two removed, to buy drugs to try to sell but for the same end goal - a better life for them and theirs). Yes there are exceptions of course but the people stealing things from Target and CVS are not selling those things to pay for their Mercedes. They're selling them to pay for basic necessities. That doesn't mean it's not a crime, and it shouldn't be punished, but it is a distinction worth noting.
            • vorpalhex 3y ago
              Overwhelmingly shoplifters are white kids with substance abuse problems. They are feeding drug/alcohol problems, not feeding their family. The vast majority of the poor in the US are.. obese. Not fat, but clinically obese. For whatever failings we have, feeding the poor and the masses is not one of them. Typically when kids do "go hungry" they are Middleschoolers or younger with... abusive parents. (Which is why free lunch programs work, it bypasses shitty parents).
            • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
              > Absolutely, but the majority of people who are doing that are doing it to buy food and other necessities (or, a step or two removed, to buy drugs to try to sell but for the same end goal - a better life for them and their I don't think anyone is shoplifting for food, at least in Seattle where food banks are stocked and ask few questions. They do shop lift for drugs, which is why LEGO, baby formula, and laundry detergent sections are locked down at many discount stores. It is shoplifting LEGOs to sell via a fence (this is very organized now) to get money to buy fent (often the shoplifting ring will give you drugs straight for the LEGO set you lifted).
    • marginalia_nu 3y ago
      White collar crime is part of the engine that creates the poverty that has people shoplifting in the first place. Between the subprime mortgage crisis and hooking 50 million people on OxyContin, this shit really takes a bite out of people's savings.
    • floren 3y ago
      It comes up in every crime discussion -- a poster runs in to point out that actually, wage theft is worse than someone beating and robbing your elderly grandmother.
      • justrealist 3y ago
        They also have to torture the numbers to make the case that it's comparable. The "wage theft" numbers they cite include like, some defense subcontractor suing Lockheed Martin for unpaid hours. It's important that it doesn't happen, but it's just a different order of magnitude of damage for the people sensitive to it.
      • somehnguy 3y ago
        I’ve never seen anyone compare wage theft to violent crime like you’re implying. It’s usually in the context that wage theft is a much larger problem than people realize - to the point that depending on which source you choose it’s either on par or larger than other forms of theft.
        • floren 3y ago
          Searching the archives for "wage theft" turns up examples pretty trivially, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37703395 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37751850 You're right that they're not saying "wage theft is worse than murder", just "wage theft is worse than all other forms of theft"
          • somehnguy 3y ago
            I don’t see any references to physically harming people in your examples. I also don’t believe anyone is implying violent crime when comparing to other types of theft.
        • Paul-Craft 3y ago
          I don't get where you're getting "on par" from. Literally the only year that other forms of theft have exceeded or even come close to wage theft was the year Bernie Madoff got convicted. That's just an accounting artifact.
  • owlstuffing 3y ago
    The two are not mutually exclusive.
  • arijun 3y ago
    To me this sounds like a “no u” argument. Whataboutism doesn’t address the op’s claim that shoplifting reduces access to stores for those who really need it.
• Spivak 3y ago
  > To help them we need to be less tolerant of such petty crime ??? Petty crime by any reasonable definition is an inferior good, above a (not actually all that large) income people stop doing it. It's not entirely clear how punishing it harder is actually going to help until you actually help the truly desperate. Now, once you do and the only people left shoplifting have no claim to any kind of "well I had to because I couldn't afford <necessity>" then you can bring the wrath of god down on it.
  • stewx 3y ago
    No one has to steal, and it's insulting to honorable low-income people to claim otherwise.
    • feintruled 3y ago
      You sure the social safety net is that good?
      • throwawa14223 3y ago
        No safety net is require to say stealing is immoral.
        • feintruled 3y ago
          I didn't mention the morality of it. The statement was 'no one HAS to steal' so I was taking it as a statement that no-one will starve without stealing which must surely be a comment on the social safety net. My three assumptions here are that some people are starving, stealing to eat is the canonical excusable crime, and that 'just get a job' is not a solution. If you disagree with any of those, then that's your opinion but we have nothing further to discuss as we start from a different premise.
          • throwawa14223 3y ago
            >stealing to eat is the canonical excusable crime You're absolutely correct, we disagree on premises about the world. Have a wonderful day, I'm sorry for what amounts to a nonsensical response on my part.
• justrealist 3y ago
  It's not desperation! It's organized crime reselling on Amazon and Ebay! Target is't losing money because people are stealing gallons of milk they actually consume, it's because organized gangs empty the entire shelf of laundry detergent and flip it online. The romanticism here is ridiculous.
  • idiotsecant 3y ago
    Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs. You do that when you fall down the rabbit hole of not having other options. If we do our job of educating and providing very basic social services and opportunities for young people it turns out that crime rates get lower and we get to harness the collective human potential of a generation instead of paying to lock them up. Unfortunately we have to rely on the better nature and responsible long term planning abilities of humans to get this done. One human might be able to stick to a plan that becomes impossible for 5.
    • justrealist 3y ago
      > Happy, well adjusted people don't form organized shoplifting gangs Happy and well adjusted people form shoplifting gangs with the risk/reward calculus says that they can make a lot of money with 0 risk! "Don't shoplift" is not some innate ethical virtue that humans adopt when they are happy and healthy; by trying to lean on virtues without maintaining a system for enforcing them you are simply spending down unquantifiable social capital in order to avoid making hard decisions.
      • idiotsecant 3y ago
        I think you're wrong. Most people aren't kept from stealing because they're afraid they'll get in trouble. They are kept from stealing by an innate sense of social fairness. If you meet a man on the road in the middle of a remote forest in which you cannot possibly be observed do you murder him and take his things or not? If not, why not?
        • 3y ago
• gustavus 3y ago
  > Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift, amplifies. We need to keep in mind most of this shoplifting is not out of desperation or people needing things in most cases. Despite what people like to complain the US does have some social programs and beyond that almost every major city I've been in has multiple food banks and other organizations that help with people in extreme need. I'm not saying they are perfectly adequate, and I'm not trying to be scroogesque by saying "are there not workhouses or prisons?", merely to point out that first off there are lots of people that are desperate that don't turn to retail theft. In order to frame the real root of the problem. It's organized crime. Here's how the scam works, there are various drug addicts, they will do anything for their next fix, they are the ones performing the actual theft. They then sell what they steal to the middle managers who will give them money or drugs for the merchandise. The middle managers then turn around and deliver it to what I'll call "HQ" which then turns around and sales it online, and they are able to underbid their competitors by virtue of having very low operating costs. There was a wonderful article about how this scam was being run with a baby food ring operating out of Florida, but it is a similar story in multiple areas. I put this out there to disabuse some people of the seemingly naive notion that these poor shoplifters are noble "Jean ValJean" types trying to steal bread to feed their family, and the truth that many of them, although held captive in the throes of addiction and mental health crises, are cogs in a machine of organized crime which although viewed microscopically doesn't seem like a big deal, when expanded up cause true societal destabilization.
  • qingcharles 3y ago
    Yes. I would guess that most drug dealers take more payments in stolen merch than they do in cold, hard cash.
• drewcoo 3y ago
  If people are burning the furniture to keep warm, cracking down more harshly on furniture burning probably doesn't make the people less desperate for heat to live. If people are desperate enough to eat the seed they know they need for the next crop, policing seed use more strictly won't make the people less desperate for food. In fact, it probably makes them more desperate. Why would you think being less tolerant of shoplifting would make the people less desperate?
• WalterBright 3y ago
  > Whatever desperation drives people to shoplift That assumes they are desperate, and not just find it easier to steal than to work.
  • scoofy 3y ago
    It’s a two tiered system. I live in SF, and when I see a man grab a rack of jackets at target and walk out, it’s obvious the act of a desperate and drug addled individual. When I see an efficient group of people in a Lexus breaking into cars or luxury stores, or the groups reselling fenced merchandise on 24th and Mission, it’s obviously organized crime. The one fuels the other. There’s little reason for a desperate man to steal 10 jackets (he only needs one or two), unless there is a fence willing to buy them. There’s little reason for organized crime to break into cars or shops when others are willing to do that work for them, they can focus on selling the goods on Facebook Marketplace or eBay.
  • qingcharles 3y ago
    The truth is weirder than that. In sections of society it is frowned upon to have paid employment. It is seen as being a loser. A decent percentage of shoplifting is done by those with drug addictions, but a bigger percentage is done by those who are not desperate or in need, but simply because it is seen as the respectable way to earn money. Source: I am a criminal and have spent a serious portion of my adult life in custody
    • WalterBright 3y ago
      Thanks for the frankness. I went to Caltech, perhaps the university with the most extensive honor system. It was wonderful. I never had to watch my back, or lock my dorm room door. The rest of the students liked it, too, and we watched out for each other. I don't know of any student who stole, but surely it did happen. Their fellow students would turn them in and ostracize them, so they usually just disappeared. It's the way I want to live. I've tried to use that in my life ever since. Sometimes, I get taken advantage of. But usually, I've found that people reciprocate, and it's nice. The D Language Foundation is run that way. We like it. (In contrast, a friend of mine attended a different university. His second day, his dorm room was looted clean.)
• trinsic2 3y ago
  I agree. And, we need to be more aware and action orientated towards our judicial systems to enforce the law and making sure people get treatment/help. I think this should probably start with our police and judicial systems
• ip26 3y ago
  Just a few weeks ago, NPR did a segment on how reducing traffic enforcement (because it disproportionately impacts minorities and the poor) has significantly increased the number of people hit and killed by cars… mostly minorities and the poor.