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Comment by AngryData

1 day ago

Theft is solved by making society better, not worse. Make people not want or reliant upon crime to survive.

No one relies on bike theft to "survive".

  • No one goes around stealing bikes just because they want to do bad things.

  • That's right, people steal bikes because they are inherently evil and want to make baby Jesus cry.

    I think it's ok to define "survive" as an addict who needs (<-also loosely defined) a fix.

    You don't generally commit serious white collar crime, tax fraud or do crypto grifts to survive. For petty street crime, I don't really see any other motivation.

    • There are a lot of teenagers stealing bikes and other stuff for fun. It's common, and in many circles very "cool". Doesn't have to be inherent, really.

"reliant upon crime to survive"

Do we have any sources that people are stealing to survive? What definition of surviving are we using here?

> Theft is solved by making society better, not worse.

Phew, good to hear. Here I thought it would be a hard and complex problem, with lots of unknown unknowns, difficult political compromises, a generation-spanning efforts and many potential solutions with uncertain outcomes, partially contradicting each other.

Instead, we just have to make society better. So, what's step 1?

  • Step 1 could be not turning the world into a an Orwellian nightmare and outlawing mass surveillance, from both government and private corporations.

    And if you are still worried about theft in the mean time, you could try looking at wage thefts which has a value greater than all other forms of theft combined.

    • > Step 1 could be not turning the world into a an Orwellian nightmare and outlawing mass surveillance, from both government and private corporations.

      That would make society better, I agree, but I don't see how that would lead to a reduction in theft, or crime in general.

      > And if you are still worried about theft in the mean time, you could try looking at wage thefts […]

      I'm not worried about wage theft, no. I am worried about theft of my personal property, though. And I notice that you haven't proposed any credible path to reducing it, beyond an incredibly generic "make society better", whatever that means and however you want to achieve that.