[sinecure]

Walmart also announced they are closing 4 locations in downtown Chicago due to profitability issues related to crime. Choosing not to prosecute criminals and releasing those that are caught immediately only emboldens and worsens crime. This country needs to crack down on crime swiftly and harshly until order returns.

[tehalex]

Nothing released by Walmart mentions crime or safety - only profitability, while the news about this whole foods does.

Chicago is a large city and none of these are really downtown. There used to be a small walmart that was actually downtown, but that closed a number of years ago - I do not recall why. There aren't really a lot of Walmart stores in Chicago - there was some kind of fight between the city and company around needing to pay living wages to get the approvals.

Of the closing ones I know the Lakeview store, it is a small/neighborhood store and in a fairly wealthy/pricey location. IMO it was never a great fit for the area's typical resident - there are many other higher end options within walking distance or with parking (which this walmart did not have) - several grocery stores, trader joe's, walgreens, target, whole foods, etc. Without parking or being that close to the subway, it was never the the kind of store that would serve a large area. I'm not at all surprised this one is unprofitable and closing.

[BenSahar]

Walmart has ever turned a profit in Chicago.

They even mentioned that in their press release today regarding these closures.

https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2023/04/11/walmart-an...

[capableweb]

Yeah! Why figure out why crime happens in the first place (it cannot be poverty and unavailability of safety nets for people, impossible!) when you can just put all those p̶e̶a̶s̶a̶n̶t̶s criminals in prison instead, so we don't have to deal with it.

[UberFly]

I am pretty damn poor but don't commit crimes. Crime happens when people decide that's the route they want to take over other routes. It's as much a cultural thing as it is an economic thing. There are wide swaths of the public now in the US making excuses why crime is the best option for many.

[jimmygrapes]

Discussion of why crime happens is multifaceted of course, but there is a significant part of it that is essentially forbidden to address in circles where the discussion matters. You end up with wishy-washy "dogwhistles" that get shouted down as x-ist, or at best, shrugged off and blamed on generational poverty/oppression/trauma. All of which can be true, but that doesn't help solve anything.

There is no solution, other than a vast cultural shift towards a refusal to stop glorifying cultures that glorify criminal behavior. This includes the suicidal grimy juggalos and trailer park meth cowboys, the brand- and status-obsessed inner city wannabe crip, and the fuck you I got mine and the fuck you I want yours mentality prevalent across the country (world?) equally.

I repeat: there is no solution to crime. There is only mitigation and reaction.

[kritiko]

I remember that Ben Horowitz includes a lot of rap lyrics in The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Don’t a lot of tech bros love music that glorifies criminal behavior?

[procgen]

We can do both.

[threeseed]

> This country needs to crack down on crime swiftly and harshly until order returns

Please provide the data that shows this approach will work.

This has been tried for decades in every city across the world and it has been shown over and over again that simply being "tougher on crime" does not work.

What seems to work is a multi-faceted approach targeting root causes like inequality, drug use, homelessness as well as better policing.

[bequanna]

Only a small group of people are responsible for the majority of crimes. The same people keep committing armed robbery, shootings, carjacking, etc. until they are physically stopped from doing so.

Keeping criminals in jail so that they cannot commit more crime will absolutely reduce crime. The elimination of cash bail and downgrading of felonies is a joke.

[yucky]

Worked in New York.

[tenebrisalietum]

Did the drug war work?

[infamouscow]

It's a false equivalency to equate the war on drugs with a city failing to maintain public safety.

[dylan604]

that's a matter of perspective my friend. it's working just fine for some, but not for the majority of people.

[omegaworks]

You are ascribing zero agency to multibillion dollar corporations. They are deliberately closing stores in vulnerable neighborhoods to maximize the political blowback against labor gains. Chicago just elected a union leader mayor, who committed to a program to address crime's root causes. He dared to mention poverty and inequality in his campaign.

Walmart doesn't want this. Walmart thrives on the price-sensitivity of the impoverished and deliberately undercuts local businesses to funnel every cent of profit to the Walton family. They are playing the long-game here: demolish Brandon Johnson's appeal by depriving the neighborhoods that voted for him access to groceries, and keep their chokehold on their non-union workforce in an era of rising living costs.