Comment by fluoridation
3 days ago
If the store is going to be tracking this information, it could just as easily show a message to the offender. "Hey, we're on to you. Knock it off, or else." Going straight for the jugular is just rude.
3 days ago
If the store is going to be tracking this information, it could just as easily show a message to the offender. "Hey, we're on to you. Knock it off, or else." Going straight for the jugular is just rude.
How about stealing is just rude. Theft is terrible. Trying to justify stealing power tools “bec it’s a big corporation” further degrades society and creates a dishonest low-trust culture.
I live in Illinois and look forward to collecting my $2k check for this but the reality is that the only person to blame for the theft is the person committing the theft. The same way we don’t blame women for how they dress or just because someone is trusting that doesn’t make it right to attempt to steal.
If the company prefers to allow the theft to continue as long they get to press charges, instead of taking more immediate measures that would stop the theft outright, such as banning the person (which must be feasible if they're tracking the person by facial features), somehow I don't think it must be having much of an impact. Note that I'm not defending the thieves here. I'm just saying that this approach seems unnecessarily vindictive and not useful to solve the problem which, let's remember, is "people steal", not "thieves go unpunished".
> stealing is just rude. Theft is terrible.
you, I, and probably most people on HN have the privilege of seeing it this way. for others, it's sometimes not a moral question, but a question of survival or at least dignity.
I know, how terrible the thieves are so hard-up they have to eat that pair of Jordans. Or those Milwaukee power tools. Oh my, what a terrible world...
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[flagged]
So are we talking about minimizing theft or maximizing justifiable human suffering?
Clearly the system people have voted in has failed to minimize theft as it is left unprosecuted too often. Thus rational and moral actors have to work inside system people voted for. And that is to reach state where crimes are properly prosecuted.
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If the state fails to punish a criminal, the suffering is externalised to the rest of society. How is that fair? Why should the moral people put up with that?
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Stealing from Home Depot doesn’t make you a “sociopathic criminal”. It’s shoplifting, not murder. Besides, people who are stealing building supplies are probably doing it because they’re hard up for money and trying to make more on whatever jobs they have. They’re not stealing some random superfluous consumer goods, they’re just broke and trying to make a little more money.
It’s really not that hard to understand - unless you exist solely in the white collar Silicon Valley bubble and have never known a struggle in your life. The fact that you think they “deserve no sympathy” is straight up creepy. Who are you, Marie Antoinette? Who is the real sociopath here?
> white collar Silicon Valley bubble
This is not helping. You should not make up an enemy that does not exist.
There are many otherwise "sane" people that like punishment, many of these people are the ones that has led a life of struggle. Go back to the reason of an eye for an eye, it is compelling even if it has been disproven.
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