I think you might have it backwards. Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse. No matter how normalized, if there’s even a rare chance of consequences most people who can afford to pay will pay. That these crimes might be increasing (stats that prove that and aren’t junk are “hard to come by”) is evidence not of the theives not holding up their end of the social contract - but of employers, businesses, and governments not holding their end up.
> Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse.
That this is not the obvious conclusion is alarming. We've been talking about the costs of poor social safety nets and high income inequality for decades.
I know of a few European countries that have very strong safety nets, and this behaviour is significantly on the rise there also (first hand experience). There has been a slow-motion withdrawal of enforcement for 'small' crimes which I think leads to larger ones ala the 'broken window'. I think part of this is because it is so arduous a process to convict & incarcerate someone.
Broken windows policing is a garbage + debunked theory about crime, btw. It “worked” in NYC where it was famously deployed, because we were in the middle of massive decrease in violent crime. Not because it worked.
There is the broken window fallacy, and the broken window fallacy fallacy:
> A 2015 meta-analysis of broken windows policing implementations found that disorder policing strategies, such as "hot spots policing" or problem-oriented policing, result in "consistent crime reduction effects across a variety of violent, property, drug, and disorder outcome measures".[36] As a caveat, the authors noted that "aggressive order maintenance strategies that target individual disorderly behaviors do not generate significant crime reductions," pointing specifically to zero tolerance policing models that target singular behaviors such as public intoxication and remove disorderly individuals from the street via arrest. The authors recommend that police develop "community co-production" policing strategies instead of merely committing to increasing misdemeanor arrests.[36]
if you read the abstract of the 2015 study you’re quoting from:
> The strongest program effect sizes were generated by community and problem-solving interventions designed to change social and physical disorder conditions at particular places.
That doesn’t sound like broken windows policing. That sounds like fixing actual broken windows.
With ML we might have efficient ways of detecting enforceable scenarios, but I wonder if the tradeoff of cameras everywhere and a turnstile when entering a grocery market will be worth it.
Soon we might see conglomerations of businesses pooling their data together for global customer credibility scores.
> I think you might have it backwards. Petty theft doesn’t cause systems collapse - it’s the result of systems collapse.
It is probably a positive feedback loop: some system collapse causes some petty theft, which causes more system collapse, which causes more petty theft...
> hat these crimes might be increasing (stats that prove that and aren’t junk are “hard to come by”) is evidence not of the theives not holding up their end of the social contract - but of employers, businesses, and governments not holding their end up.
Why not both? Much of the shoplifting in my area is for drug money (at least the blatant kind you get to see up front). Now, one could claim employers are wrong for not letting someone addicted to fent work, but maybe not. Definitely how they got to that point is some fault of society, however.
It's by far not the most people who drive this. Non-enforcement of rules gives the worst individuals free reign. Enforcement works on the margins, and in this case the margins is basically all that matters, at least UNTIL the collapse.
reply