Comment by Gigachad
11 hours ago
The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved. You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
But like you say, many things which have been crimes were based on unethical laws. It's easy to two sides this issue, less crime would on a whole be a good thing but some level of committing crime and getting away with it is required for society to progress.
> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
In the US it is actually even worse than that.
The government and large corporations (basically the same people owning it all) will spy on you 24x7 for anything that they dislike you doing.
But if your bike (car, etc) is stolen right in front of many cameras providing video evidence, police will not do anything about it.
I know first hand people who have crystal clear video evidence of theft, gave it to the police, and they just don't care to do anything about it.
> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.
That’s also true for many states that don’t have the same coverage of CCTV and total lack of privacy.
These are NOT two sides of the same coin.
Where is petty street crime solved without massive government intrusion?
Japan for starters, Taiwan for seconds.
1 reply →
> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.
Petty crime in China was also "essentially solved" before there were cameras anywhere.
> You can leave your bike unlocked because if anyone stole it the police would find them and return it since they can track the thief on a network of cameras.
Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months. That's better than the US, but it's not exactly economical.
The modern solution is that you don't own a bike. You use the rental bikes instead. They're not as good as the bike you'd own, but if they get stolen it's not your problem. (And they have trackers installed, so it's not much of a problem for the rental company either.)
Using a very lightweight lock for the frame and ideally having a saddle and wheels that can't come off without tools would change things economically, especially if the bike is cheap but good enough.
The issue is having to rely on luck and the fact that humans are risk and loss aversive even when the risk is worth it.
"Leaving my bike unlocked in Shanghai 10+ years ago, it was stolen about once every one or two months." Seriously? How many times until you started locking it up?
> The end state is something like China, where petty street level crime is essentially solved.
PRC netizens, and who knows what percentage of them are real but presumably more than 0, will defend this when I talk with them about it. How the surveillance makes them feel safe, how they wouldn't feel safe without it.
Hm, maybe, I'd prefer the person looking over me while I slept to be someone I know, but I guess everyone knows brother Xi. Regardless, the implication seems to be that we need the requisite police state to go with it, when Taiwan and Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well, yet are liberal democracies. Both countries are also comparably safe to the PRC. So there certainly seems to be some middle ground. I don't know about Japan, but I've not heard of issues of private companies exploiting the CCTV for profiteering purposes, or like, cops using it to stalk people, or the government using it to engage in civic oppression (post constitutional reforms).
I think we just need sensible levels of surveillance with proper safe guards. I'm quite happy with a network of CCTV that can track down the driver who just bulldosed and killed a kid on the their bike. I'm not ok with Amazon building their own network of spying doorbell cameras to sell adverts.
> Japan both have basically total CCTV coverage as well,
Japan is nowhere near "total CCTV coverage"
China is an ethnically and culturally homogeneous society, with their ethnic minorities being about as different from the Han majority as the Czechs are different from the Slovaks. if China was to experience Western levels of diversity, inclusion, and cultural enrichment, then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK.
"then no amount of surveillance could possibly help prevent crimes, petty and otherwise. just look at the UK."
I don't understand your argument. Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies? Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?
>Are you claiming UK has as effective a surveillance network as China?
a more effective one.
>Are you suggesting surveillance cameras are somehow less effective in diverse societies?
I'm suggesting that certain cultures are less risk and conflict averse, to put it in the most politically correct way possible, and are less disincentivized from committing crimes by the possibility of brief imprisonment.
They're racist. The argument is racism.