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One person digging for copper took the whole of Armenia offline: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access https://www.thegu

One person digging for copper took the whole of Armenia offline: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman... This is how you turn dollars into pennies. It suggests society is a bit broken if this seems a worthwhile thing to do.

burnt-resistor 1y ago
Like Russia and the fall of the Soviet Union when people stole power lines. Sure, big cities have problems in bad economic times with metal theft, but when every crook is out to steal catalytic converters from cars at people's homes, that's pretty bad. Macroeconomic and microeconomic cannibalism are further signs of a trend towards decay and decline. Oh and school shootings and mass shootings. And a lack of functional, universal healthcare. It will take far more, like the garbage not being picked up, for major reforms, but it will also take a charismatic leader really on the side of the ordinary people for that to manifest. Another "FDR".
- greesil 1y ago
  Or just have a police state. Problem solved.
  - mycall 1y ago
    Doesn't work, it just makes corruption more probable.
    - chillingeffect 1y ago
      Laws dont say what can't happen. They say what the people who are allowed to break laws are allowed to do. It's called norm asymmetry.
  - gdbsjjdn 1y ago
    Impossible to tell if this is satire
    - hedora 1y ago
      Repeat until true: No metal has been stolen due to inflated pricing, job creation and factory construction are at all time highs, and downtown Chicago is a mixture of killing fields and charnel pits.
      - DaSHacka 1y ago
        Most of these are already true, though.
        hedora 1y ago
        Spoiler alert: They’re all verifiably false with a quick internet search. Be sure to check primary sources, and not opinion pieces on “entertainment” networks like Fox News or Newsmax.
    - greesil 1y ago
      You could just ask :) Nobody can take a fascism joke these days. For some reason.
  - tomrod 1y ago
    What's the going rate for bribes/fees/"tips" these days?
  - victorbjorklund 1y ago
    Oh yea. Nothing is ever stolen or defrauded in russia.
    - 1oooqooq 1y ago
      but you go to jail if you report. like reporting correct jobs numbers. "problem solved"
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      To be fair (not that I much want to be fair to police states), Russia doesn't so much have a police state as an organised crime state.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
    >”Or just have a police state. Problem solved.” The you can send the copper thieves to work in the copper mines. That’s killing two birds with one stone right there!
  - jopsen 1y ago
    Deploy the national guard to protect Californian highway guardrails! :)
- hedora 1y ago
  Apparently the tariffs are at least partially to blame. According to the article, metal prices are now artificially high, so this sort of crime is more attractive. I’m worried about what happens if we don’t get another FDR (this is one of the premises of The Man in the High Castle, which is likely to age better than most sci fi TV series). FDR’s New Deal saved the entire planet from a descent into Nazism and Japanese imperial rule, and also set the stage for the scientific and economic advances in the post war period (including the moon landing, internet, etc, etc).
  - andrepd 1y ago
    It's a book, the TV series is an adaptation. Also, I'm an FDR fanboy but I still think it's rather a stretch to pretend he single handedly won WWII (or even that he single handedly defeated the great depression).
    - hedora 1y ago
      It’s possible an “average” president could have done OK, but I’m comparing to his predecessors. It’s hard to see how the isolationist macroeconomic geniuses that created the Great Depression would have built a war machine that could have won the war. I doubt they would have wanted to. It’s more likely that, like the Bush family, they were supporting Hitler behind the scenes during the war. That crowd’s running the US today. We need another FDR.
      - mystraline 1y ago
        FDR was an appeasement to the business community in opposition to IWW, socialists, and communists. Not too much later, is when you get 'National Day' or Labor day, as opposition to international workers day, or May 1. FDR was just a moderate capitalist. But still a capitalist. Money/power gets more money/power.
        tormeh 1y ago
        [flagged]
- gcanyon 1y ago
  Power line theft was my first thought as well. I was just at the FDR library and one thing that stood out was how uncertain/experimental he was: we think of FDR's work as "public works, new deal, social security, WWII" but per the library he came in basically saying, "this is a hard problem and what we've been doing hasn't worked. so we'll try other things, and some of them will work, some won't. we'll do more of the former and less of the latter over time and get better at fixing this."
thaumasiotes 1y ago
> This is how you turn dollars into pennies. It seems important to note, as the article you link does but you do not, that there is no allegation she was trying to steal or damage the cable in use. She was digging for unused cables buried long ago. That may not be a high-value activity in most contexts, but it is a value-added activity.
- lmm 1y ago
  > there is no allegation she was trying to steal or damage the cable in use. She was digging for unused cables buried long ago. That feels like a polite fiction to me. Every cable thief presents themselves that way.
- noelwelsh 1y ago
  You need to consider the externalities of the activity, which in this case includes taking a whole country offline. I strongly believe this would make the whole activity a net negative. I very much doubt that recycling some copper wires produces more value than the cost of losing the Internet and fixing the cable. Recycling old cables is probably valuable, in isolation, but not when this can occur.
  - imoverclocked 1y ago
    Now we are pretty deep in the weeds ... but ... what about the value-added activity of finding a single point of failure for a critical resource? It seems hard to compare the value of material goods against the stream of time.
    - noelwelsh 1y ago
      My understanding is that ISPs have good maps of their cables, so I doubt the SPOF was something that didn't know about. However, I take the wider point that calculating all the externalities is at least difficult and probably impossible. At the very least, updating their threat model to include "Grandma with spade" was probably some benefit they gained :-)
littlestymaar 1y ago
It turns out society-wide prosperity doesn't naturally arise from maximization of individual egoism. Who knew…
- contingencies 1y ago
  This is the force keeping India trapped in poverty. Turns out indoctrinating a caste system at all levels of society fundamentally dissuades young people from engaging in objective thinking about social outcomes for others and normalizes self-first thinking. China has adopted capitalist egoism wrapped in a reinterpreted Confucian family-unit ideal but has the guiding party to ensure stability (read: political security) and economic function remain on the agenda. Anyone attacking infrastructure will be dealt with severely (this was the leadup to the Xinjiang crackdown post 911, a small Uyghur group had been bombing the rail lines). That said, I did have a fiber optic line to one of my offices in China disconnected by a copper thief ~2008. Unheard of recently.
indigodiddy 1y ago
[dead]

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Like Russia and the fall of the Soviet Union when people stole power lines. Sure, big cities have problems in bad economic times with metal theft, but when every crook is out to steal catalytic converters from cars at people's homes, that's pretty bad. Macroeconomic and microeconomic cannibalism are further signs of a trend towards decay and decline. Oh and school shootings and mass shootings. And a lack of functional, universal healthcare. It will take far more, like the garbage not being picked up, for major reforms, but it will also take a charismatic leader really on the side of the ordinary people for that to manifest. Another "FDR".

greesil 1y ago
Or just have a police state. Problem solved.
- mycall 1y ago
  Doesn't work, it just makes corruption more probable.
  - chillingeffect 1y ago
    Laws dont say what can't happen. They say what the people who are allowed to break laws are allowed to do. It's called norm asymmetry.
- gdbsjjdn 1y ago
  Impossible to tell if this is satire
  - hedora 1y ago
    Repeat until true: No metal has been stolen due to inflated pricing, job creation and factory construction are at all time highs, and downtown Chicago is a mixture of killing fields and charnel pits.
    - DaSHacka 1y ago
      Most of these are already true, though.
      - hedora 1y ago
        Spoiler alert: They’re all verifiably false with a quick internet search. Be sure to check primary sources, and not opinion pieces on “entertainment” networks like Fox News or Newsmax.
  - greesil 1y ago
    You could just ask :) Nobody can take a fascism joke these days. For some reason.
- tomrod 1y ago
  What's the going rate for bribes/fees/"tips" these days?
- victorbjorklund 1y ago
  Oh yea. Nothing is ever stolen or defrauded in russia.
  - 1oooqooq 1y ago
    but you go to jail if you report. like reporting correct jobs numbers. "problem solved"
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    To be fair (not that I much want to be fair to police states), Russia doesn't so much have a police state as an organised crime state.
- BuyMyBitcoins 1y ago
  >”Or just have a police state. Problem solved.” The you can send the copper thieves to work in the copper mines. That’s killing two birds with one stone right there!
- jopsen 1y ago
  Deploy the national guard to protect Californian highway guardrails! :)
hedora 1y ago
Apparently the tariffs are at least partially to blame. According to the article, metal prices are now artificially high, so this sort of crime is more attractive. I’m worried about what happens if we don’t get another FDR (this is one of the premises of The Man in the High Castle, which is likely to age better than most sci fi TV series). FDR’s New Deal saved the entire planet from a descent into Nazism and Japanese imperial rule, and also set the stage for the scientific and economic advances in the post war period (including the moon landing, internet, etc, etc).
- andrepd 1y ago
  It's a book, the TV series is an adaptation. Also, I'm an FDR fanboy but I still think it's rather a stretch to pretend he single handedly won WWII (or even that he single handedly defeated the great depression).
  - hedora 1y ago
    It’s possible an “average” president could have done OK, but I’m comparing to his predecessors. It’s hard to see how the isolationist macroeconomic geniuses that created the Great Depression would have built a war machine that could have won the war. I doubt they would have wanted to. It’s more likely that, like the Bush family, they were supporting Hitler behind the scenes during the war. That crowd’s running the US today. We need another FDR.
    - mystraline 1y ago
      FDR was an appeasement to the business community in opposition to IWW, socialists, and communists. Not too much later, is when you get 'National Day' or Labor day, as opposition to international workers day, or May 1. FDR was just a moderate capitalist. But still a capitalist. Money/power gets more money/power.
      - tormeh 1y ago
        [flagged]
gcanyon 1y ago
Power line theft was my first thought as well. I was just at the FDR library and one thing that stood out was how uncertain/experimental he was: we think of FDR's work as "public works, new deal, social security, WWII" but per the library he came in basically saying, "this is a hard problem and what we've been doing hasn't worked. so we'll try other things, and some of them will work, some won't. we'll do more of the former and less of the latter over time and get better at fixing this."

thaumasiotes 1y ago

> This is how you turn dollars into pennies. It seems important to note, as the article you link does but you do not, that there is no allegation she was trying to steal or damage the cable in use. She was digging for unused cables buried long ago. That may not be a high-value activity in most contexts, but it is a value-added activity.

lmm 1y ago
> there is no allegation she was trying to steal or damage the cable in use. She was digging for unused cables buried long ago. That feels like a polite fiction to me. Every cable thief presents themselves that way.
noelwelsh 1y ago
You need to consider the externalities of the activity, which in this case includes taking a whole country offline. I strongly believe this would make the whole activity a net negative. I very much doubt that recycling some copper wires produces more value than the cost of losing the Internet and fixing the cable. Recycling old cables is probably valuable, in isolation, but not when this can occur.
- imoverclocked 1y ago
  Now we are pretty deep in the weeds ... but ... what about the value-added activity of finding a single point of failure for a critical resource? It seems hard to compare the value of material goods against the stream of time.
  - noelwelsh 1y ago
    My understanding is that ISPs have good maps of their cables, so I doubt the SPOF was something that didn't know about. However, I take the wider point that calculating all the externalities is at least difficult and probably impossible. At the very least, updating their threat model to include "Grandma with spade" was probably some benefit they gained :-)

littlestymaar 1y ago

It turns out society-wide prosperity doesn't naturally arise from maximization of individual egoism. Who knew…

contingencies 1y ago
This is the force keeping India trapped in poverty. Turns out indoctrinating a caste system at all levels of society fundamentally dissuades young people from engaging in objective thinking about social outcomes for others and normalizes self-first thinking. China has adopted capitalist egoism wrapped in a reinterpreted Confucian family-unit ideal but has the guiding party to ensure stability (read: political security) and economic function remain on the agenda. Anyone attacking infrastructure will be dealt with severely (this was the leadup to the Xinjiang crackdown post 911, a small Uyghur group had been bombing the rail lines). That said, I did have a fiber optic line to one of my offices in China disconnected by a copper thief ~2008. Unheard of recently.

indigodiddy 1y ago

[dead]