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Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying th
by johanvts 4mo ago
Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.
- NewJazz 4mo agoThe person needs to have a stake in the infrastructure OR there needs to be a high chance of them getting caught and losing something. People with little stake in a community will strip infrastructure bare. Inequality is a significant root cause here.
- ripberge 4mo agoThese copper thieves are almost always hardcore drug addicts. The “inequality” explanation is incorrect. A failure to recognize that has grave consequences for everyone.
- jcgrillo 4mo agoOr pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet.. EDIT: to be clear I'm not saying it should be that way, but there was a time not long ago when this was the normal way to handle the situation. I'd argue the present arrangement is more civilized.
- overfeed 4mo ago> Or pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet. I think $0.20 per bullet is far too little, considering the medical expenses the guard will face when getting the bullets removed after they are shot for copper.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo ago$0.20 isn't enough to cover good self-defense 9mm rounds, and no you shouldn't just use FMJ.
- jcgrillo 4mo agoThose +P 185gr .45ACP hollow points with the nickel plated cases are pretty sweet. But it's a hell of a lot better to not have to do some kind of Old West standoff shootout shit whenever someone wants to rob something. That was my point. It's so much better instead of hiring a posse of gunfighters, to just trust that the system will (barring anomalies like this one) unfuck itself.
- tshaddox 4mo agoIsn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher. If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare. The financial damage done by the thief is presumably irrelevant to the thief, beyond the fact that sentencing is probably stricter for bigger thefts.
- jmward01 4mo agoI highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 4mo ago[flagged]
- tshaddox 4mo agoI don’t think potential criminals need to research statistics to have a general sense of the ROI of attempting the crime. They probably have a ballpark sense of both the cash value of the stolen property and the likelihood of getting caught.
- alpinisme 4mo agoYes but those are very different time scales of consequence. Definite immediate reward or possible long term consequence. People with active drug addictions are known to vastly overprioritize the former to the detriment of the latter. I mean, they also know the risks of overdose but they’re not all getting testing kits for their drugs.
- toast0 4mo ago
- themafia 4mo ago> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage. > better off by just paying the theif double. You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief. > that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe. We shouldn't motivate people to extremes. We should probably just punish drug dealers far more harshly in this country.
- razakel 4mo ago>That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief. The UK does that - a scrap dealer can only pay by bank transfer or cheque. That way there's a paper trail.
- SoftTalker 4mo agoSame in the USA. I had to show my drivers license to sell a couple of old lawn mowers at a scrap yard. The thieves don't sell directly to the scrap dealers. If there's money to be made, there will always be a way to work around regulations.
- NewJazz 4mo agoYeah you really need to make sure there is a high chance folks are caught in the act.
- johanvts 4mo agoI dont see how insurance solves it. The station had insurance and the crime still happened. Insurance doesn’t seem to take the thieves motives in to consideration at all, works the same for theft and earthquakes.
- 4mo ago
- zeafoamrun 4mo agoI prefer the 9mm solution
- lmm 4mo ago> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. Because the only solutions that work are social. > There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe. Kipling has a poem about that one, it doesn't work out.
- narrator 4mo ago>Because the only solutions that work are social. This kind of talk from leftist politicians translates to me as : "We will use the criminally insane, and drug addicted against you in a campaign of terror until you vote in Communists. We will do everything in our power to prevent you from imprisoning these people or the people who poison them with drugs to maintain our leverage over you and increase our political power. We will only offer you one solution, vote for us, the high priests who will bring you the promised land of fixed social problems through some process we won't implement until we're totally in control and that we won't tell you about. All out solutions before then will be used to increase the problem to increase our leverage and bring about the revolution while blaming you for not giving us enough power." I mean if any of the leftists "solutions" actually worked instead of making things worse and wasting insane amounts of money, time, property and victims lives I'd have a different view of this. El Salvador is the counter example to all the leftists blather. Most violent country in the world fixed in 3 years with 90% approval of the government by just calling b.s on all the leftists propaganda about "social causes."
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo agoIncidentally, that's basically the plot of Zootopia
- engineer_22 4mo agoUnderrated film from the perspective of social critique.
- devmor 4mo ago
- driverdan 4mo agoFrom an economics perspective the solution is to legalize everything. Black markets cause incentives like this.
- amanaplanacanal 4mo agoYep. Meth costs pennies to make. Sell it cheap in liquor stores and nobody would do this any more.
- phainopepla2 4mo agoMeth is already incredibly cheap. Meth addicts would definitely still engage in this behavior even if meth were free, because they still need money for rent, gas, food, whatever.
- narrator 4mo agoThis is called prison, but that's pushing the easy button which is strictly forbidden.
- kadoban 4mo agoIf prison solved a society's problems, the USA would be a utopia.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- kube-system 4mo agoIf that was the easy solution then the US would have solved it in the 1990s during the war on drugs.
- joquarky 4mo agoPutting people in prison has substantial costs.
- TitaRusell 4mo agoIn my country it was eventually accepted that some people are too far gone. The junkies got their daily ration of drugs until they died of natural causes. I don't think America is culturally capable of doing that though.
- rsynnott 4mo agoThe US imprisons more people per capita than any other democratic country, and than most non-democratic countries (only North Korea and arguably China really come close). Unaccountably, it is not a crime-free utopia (it's actually fairly crime-y by rich developed standards).
- dfxm12 4mo agoIt's not an economy problem, it's a policy problem. We can choose to treat drug addiction like a disease. We can choose to give people health care. We can choose to give people money to keep their lives together. Law makers would rather this happen though.
- ohyes 4mo agoThe solution is inexpensive drugs for addicts, minimum standard of living, programs for getting off drugs. But there’s an incentive to make drugs expensive and people desperate, and to punish people for their “failures” rather than forgiving and helping. It is cheaper to avoid the situation by structuring society in a way that people aren’t willing to steal copper for quick money.
- etskinner 4mo agoI thought about this when my catalytic converter was stolen. Part of me was like "maybe I should just strap a two $100 bills onto it with a note pleading them not to take it. But then, of course, the type of person to steal a converter is also the type of person that would take the $200 AND steal the converter
- Tangurena2 4mo agoThat is one point made in the essay *Million Dollar Murray". This Malcolm Gladwell essay is nominally about power law distributions, but also makes the point about homelessness, drug abuse and car emissions/pollutions. Denver is one domestic city that has a small program that hands apartment keys to homeless people. "Murray" cost the public health system at least one million dollars during his lifetime.
- rsynnott 4mo agoThere's the criminal guilds approach from Discworld, I suppose (in which thieves, assassins etc are regulated and given quotas). May be some practical problems.
- jjmarr 4mo agoThe economics solution is to legalize drugs and give addicts an unlimited supply. Addicts do not want money, they are doing this because they have a near-perfectly inelastic demand for drugs. Satisfy the demand and they'll will get high all day + opt out of society.