Comment by mik1998

20 hours ago

No one relies on bike theft to "survive".

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

  • "Let's go get sushi and not pay." -- Repo Man, 1984.

    That's into the absurdist territory, but it reflects the real pattern of behavior. People do go around committing petty crimes for various reasons.

    • And you presume that type of criminality would remain about the same regardless of how society is organized or what type of culture is reinforced?

      I think there are many other and better things to try than the repeated failure of trying to catch and punish crimes even more harshly.

  • There is a large amount of people who go around stealing bikes for fun and some cash; and often "street cred" or something akin to that.

    • Then maybe society should be improved upon so that a few dollars or a few minutes of "fun" or "street cred" isn't seen as such a boon to their life that people risk jail time for it.

      The US tried "tough on crime" approaches, what has it resulted in? 25% of the entire world's prison population and it still has higher crime rates than its peer nations.

      2 replies →

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.