Since I meant to be serious, and not present a sophomoric straw man, let's narrow things down to a specific example I gave: Which should police investigate mor

Since I meant to be serious, and not present a sophomoric straw man, let's narrow things down to a specific example I gave: Which should police investigate more - shoplifting from Walmart or wage theft at Walmart, and why? My question is meant to probe what goes into your decision to prioritize investigating two related types of crime which can both take place at Walmart. It is meant to be more head-to-head than jliptzin's series of questions early in this thread "Someone want to explain to me why my tax dollars should go towards protecting target and Walgreen’s inventory? When they have one security guard in their entire store? When police could instead be spending that time finding the driver of the truck that smashed into my car and drove away?". How is your [2] at all related to shoplifting? It feels like you are trying to raise the emotional level by switching to manslaughter. This alternative topic has consumed endless discussion over the years. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_New_York_City_Subway_shoo... and https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-12-16-8604030893-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1986-12-16-860403... from the 1980s as two examples. NYC has had a long time to refine how to handle something like your [2], and there is no way it makes sense to discuss it futher here. > I don't think the police should be doing most of the work at the store, but I think the police should take the apprehended criminals from the store when called. Right, but the top-level topic centers more about Target is locking things up, and how shoplifters can grab-and-run, and why Walgreens seems to only have "one security guard in their entire store". Larger companies already expect "shrink" (theft by employees and customers) and factor it into their calculations of how much staff to have, how much security to have, the effect of locking up particular items, the use of self-checkout vs. cashiers, etc. They have long ago figured out how to maximize profit in the face of shoplifting. In your terms, Walmart already allows crime to go unpunished because they don't want to spend enough to identify those crimes. The police response - no matter how good! - is rather useless if over-worked employees don't notice the shoplifting so never contact the police, or if the police physically can't arrive until many minutes after the thieves have left. Low wage employees of large companies, as a general rule, do not get paid to risk bodily harm to stop thieves. Your [2] is a rare exception, ... and also not an employee of a large company. In general discussion, the argument is the city should direct the police to do more to help prevent shoplifting. Which means the big companies will go to their spreadsheets and figure out how to spend even less money on security and staff, ending up with more profit as the government ends up subsidizing their security.