[johanvts]

Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

[NewJazz]

The person needs to have a stake in the infrastructure OR there needs to be a high chance of them getting caught and losing something. People with little stake in a community will strip infrastructure bare. Inequality is a significant root cause here.

[ripberge]

These copper thieves are almost always hardcore drug addicts. The “inequality” explanation is incorrect. A failure to recognize that has grave consequences for everyone.

[lmm]

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem.

Because the only solutions that work are social.

> There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

Kipling has a poem about that one, it doesn't work out.

[narrator]

>Because the only solutions that work are social.

This kind of talk from leftist politicians translates to me as : "We will use the criminally insane, and drug addicted against you in a campaign of terror until you vote in Communists. We will do everything in our power to prevent you from imprisoning these people or the people who poison them with drugs to maintain our leverage over you and increase our political power. We will only offer you one solution, vote for us, the high priests who will bring you the promised land of fixed social problems through some process we won't implement until we're totally in control and that we won't tell you about. All out solutions before then will be used to increase the problem to increase our leverage and bring about the revolution while blaming you for not giving us enough power."

I mean if any of the leftists "solutions" actually worked instead of making things worse and wasting insane amounts of money, time, property and victims lives I'd have a different view of this. El Salvador is the counter example to all the leftists blather. Most violent country in the world fixed in 3 years with 90% approval of the government by just calling b.s on all the leftists propaganda about "social causes."

[pstuart]

Prison is expensive and has downstream costs as well--it should be a last resort. There's definitely times where it absolutely is the right thing but it should not be default mode.

Note that these crimes are almost always done by drug addicts. We have the War on Drugs that was supposed to make this never happen and yet it's a fucking epidemic. So how's that war working for you, eh?

It's cheaper to get these people off drugs and redirected to being "good citizens" again, or even just give them their drugs in a controlled medical setting (like is done with methadone).

[pixl97]

Yea, this is a bunch of ignorant right wing blather.

https://smartdrugpolicy.org/decriminalization-the-portuguese...

The thing about drugs is they are actually insanely cheap. You could make a few million doses of meth for a few thousand dollars at the industrial scale. It's the black market and war on drugs that raise the cost, which in turn lead people to steal.

And as others have mentioned, jails are extremely expensive and breeding grounds for more crime in the future.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

Incidentally, that's basically the plot of Zootopia

[engineer_22]

Underrated film from the perspective of social critique.

[devmor]

Yes it’s very easy to have 90% approval and hear no downsides to your regime when you execute and imprison people for disapproval.

Oh you have some complaints? You must be a drug dealer. Death for you.

[narrator]

He didn't even execute anyone. They are all just in that prison. Do some basic research first or you show your ignorance.

[devmor]

Oh sorry, we're calling them "forced disappearances" now.

Can't be an execution if the body is never found.

[jjmarr]

The economics solution is to legalize drugs and give addicts an unlimited supply.

Addicts do not want money, they are doing this because they have a near-perfectly inelastic demand for drugs. Satisfy the demand and they'll will get high all day + opt out of society.

[etskinner]

I thought about this when my catalytic converter was stolen. Part of me was like "maybe I should just strap a two $100 bills onto it with a note pleading them not to take it. But then, of course, the type of person to steal a converter is also the type of person that would take the $200 AND steal the converter

[ohyes]

The solution is inexpensive drugs for addicts, minimum standard of living, programs for getting off drugs. But there’s an incentive to make drugs expensive and people desperate, and to punish people for their “failures” rather than forgiving and helping.

It is cheaper to avoid the situation by structuring society in a way that people aren’t willing to steal copper for quick money.

[narrator]

This is called prison, but that's pushing the easy button which is strictly forbidden.

[kube-system]

If that was the easy solution then the US would have solved it in the 1990s during the war on drugs.

[kadoban]

If prison solved a society's problems, the USA would be a utopia.

[rsynnott]

The US imprisons more people per capita than any other democratic country, and than most non-democratic countries (only North Korea and arguably China really come close). Unaccountably, it is not a crime-free utopia (it's actually fairly crime-y by rich developed standards).

[joquarky]

Putting people in prison has substantial costs.

[TitaRusell]

In my country it was eventually accepted that some people are too far gone. The junkies got their daily ration of drugs until they died of natural causes.

I don't think America is culturally capable of doing that though.

[tshaddox]

Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher.

If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare.

The financial damage done by the thief is presumably irrelevant to the thief, beyond the fact that sentencing is probably stricter for bigger thefts.

[jmward01]

I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.

[tshaddox]

I don’t think potential criminals need to research statistics to have a general sense of the ROI of attempting the crime. They probably have a ballpark sense of both the cash value of the stolen property and the likelihood of getting caught.

[alpinisme]

Yes but those are very different time scales of consequence. Definite immediate reward or possible long term consequence. People with active drug addictions are known to vastly overprioritize the former to the detriment of the latter. I mean, they also know the risks of overdose but they’re not all getting testing kits for their drugs.

[toast0]

They probably didn't independently come up with the idea to steal cables or catalytic converters either.

It's all word of mouth. But if half your buddies get shot [1] or jailed when they steal cables for drugs, it probably doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Same thing when your buddy finally fills their trailer full of cats and brings them to the scrap yard to find out they can't get anything from that anymore. Unfortunately, there's a lag, but afaik, cat thefts drop pretty reliably after they become economically useless... not all the way to zero, some people don't get the news very fast.

[1] this is not an endorsement of lethal force to deter cable theft

[47282847]

Criminal punishment research consistently shows that reality does not follow initial intuition here.

https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annur...

"Unfortunately, so far, the existing empirical work has not had a central place in policy, legislation, and political discourse.”

(“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result”)

[swiftcoder]

> In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher

Humans are notoriously bad at evaluating probabilities. They'll buy lottery tickets at 1:300,000,000 odds, and are upset when an 85% shot in XCOM misses...

The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

> The likelihood of being harmed would need to be basically 100% before folks would stop taking the risk.

Your terms are acceptable.

In all seriousness, there are cultures in the middle east that do (or did) this sort of thing. Losing a hand for stealing, etc.

[kelnos]

That's not a 100% probability of being harmed, though. That's only if you get caught. Most criminals believe they won't get caught.

[cjbgkagh]

They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders.

[swiftcoder]

> They are less likely to reoffend if harmed, most crimes are done by repeat offenders.

Since most current-day legal systems severely limit employment opportunities for former criminals, it's pretty hard to determine whether they would re-offend in a society that didn't inflict continual punishment in this way

[close04]

That just leads either to disproportionate or cruel and unusual punishment (not every object has the inherent level of danger so your $200 property must be rigged to kill or severely injure on attempted theft), or to raising stakes where the criminal is willing to do much worse since the outcome could anyway be death or severely body harm.

If getting shot for $1000 is on the table, might as well come with a gun and shoot first, and topple the whole tower while at it.

When you punish a baggie of drugs with 20 years in prison or potentially getting shot dead in the street, drug dealers escalate to containers of drugs. Where are you going to escalate the punishment? For those who feel like they get nothing from society no punishment works effectively, they are already in a prison with no future.

[hiddencost]

There's another theory which says that if people have health care, food, shelter, education, and liberty, they won't commit crimes like this. Just a thought.

[alexgieg]

Those are pre-requisites, but not enough.

You also need society to have local cultures, as well as the culture at large, that actively oppose such behavior as immoral and/or shameful, with enforcement by peers. This I say based on two well-proven models, the sociological typology of societies as guilt, shame, or fear-based, and the psychological model of the six stages (level of complexity) of moral reasoning, that shows that up to 85% of the adult population worldwide derive their values from group-affiliation.

Atop that, individuals themselves need hope in the future, meaning the perspective of improving upon the baseline that those pre-requisites provide, since a baseline is emotionally neutral. The perspective of remaining at exactly that same baseline year after year after decade isn't sufficient.

With all of the above provided, petty crime is minimized to the point only people with severe personality disorders commit them. There's no way to fix this, but it becomes so low we're now talking of Japan levels of per-capita crimes, if not less.

[devmor]

Japan, the society with such a corrupt criminal justice system that being arrested for anything regardless of guilt is generally considered the end of your prospects in life?

[kelnos]

Both things can be true, that Japan's criminal justice system is awful, and that Japanese people have a strong culture of respect for the commons and community.

[devmor]

Yes, not only are both true, but one is the consequence of the other's extreme.

When you socially punish people for sticking out, even harmlessly, eventually you end up criminally punishing people for sticking out, even harmlessly.

[rdbl27]

You are glossing over the fact that Japan severely punishes crime, and acquittals are almost unheard of.

[jeffrallen]

It's not a theory. It's socialism and it works fine in Scandinavia, Switzerland, and a bunch of other places.

[johanvts]

Im Danish, and I approve of the welfare state system, but we still have people cutting down EV charger cables etc here.

[tadfisher]

The answer is, you still do socialism, and you also pay someone to go around busting scrap yards that buy obviously-stolen material.

Just focusing on the demand-side dramatically reduced incidences of catalytic converter theft in the US. You still get the occasional attempt, but basically no scrap yard will take catalytic converters without a title to the vehicle with matching VIN, and most will want to see the vehicle.

Yes, requiring paperwork to scrap wiring is bureaucracy manifest. But legitimate people just do not roll up to scrap yards with a van full of tangled 4/0.

The big catalytic converter buyer was so brazen, he had a mobile app. Free markets for stolen scrap is just beyond tolerable at this point.

[ithkuil]

Italy is no Denmark but you still require to register before selling you scrap copper.

I think it's a reasonable response for a real problem and refusing to do this due to some idealistic free market principle appears to me to be a sign of fanaticism.

[apelapan]

Scandinavian scrap metal thieves organize trucks and cranes to steal copper roofs from old churches and rip down railroad overhead lines all the time.

Free healthcare and education, guaranteed housing and social safety nets make little difference.

Some people will stop at nothing to get more, no matter how much they already have. (Applies to billionaires and paupers alike). I guess you could call it having an entrepreneurial spirit.

No one steals car stereos anymore though, because you can't sell them to anyone. That mechanism could be put to more work. Heavy, EU-wide supervision and enforcement against scrap metal dealers would probably make a difference.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

The replies to you illustrate this is provably false. Socialism has yet to work anywhere it's tried.

[intended]

Nope.

The surest disincentive is knowing you will be caught, not the penalty.

If you can get away with it, then what value the penalty?

[kelnos]

The data doesn't agree with you, as others in this subthread have noted with references.

[intended]

I saw only one submission to a paper, would you be willing to share links to the other references you mention?

[kelnos]

Economics is a bad place to look for a fix for social problems.

Look at incentives, instead: housed, well-fed people with financial security and a feeling of purpose in life tend to commit fewer crimes, so let's fix wealth/income inequality, as well as our pathetic social safety net.

Not saying that will fix everything. People still commit crimes, both rich and poor alike, because they want a shortcut to having more than they have. But eliminating desperation would certainly help.

[dfxm12]

It's not an economy problem, it's a policy problem. We can choose to treat drug addiction like a disease. We can choose to give people health care. We can choose to give people money to keep their lives together. Law makers would rather this happen though.

[Tangurena2]

That is one point made in the essay *Million Dollar Murray". This Malcolm Gladwell essay is nominally about power law distributions, but also makes the point about homelessness, drug abuse and car emissions/pollutions. Denver is one domestic city that has a small program that hands apartment keys to homeless people. "Murray" cost the public health system at least one million dollars during his lifetime.

[rsynnott]

There's the criminal guilds approach from Discworld, I suppose (in which thieves, assassins etc are regulated and given quotas). May be some practical problems.

[driverdan]

From an economics perspective the solution is to legalize everything. Black markets cause incentives like this.

[amanaplanacanal]

Yep. Meth costs pennies to make. Sell it cheap in liquor stores and nobody would do this any more.

[phainopepla2]

Meth is already incredibly cheap. Meth addicts would definitely still engage in this behavior even if meth were free, because they still need money for rent, gas, food, whatever.

[zeafoamrun]

I prefer the 9mm solution

[jcgrillo]

Or pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet..

EDIT: to be clear I'm not saying it should be that way, but there was a time not long ago when this was the normal way to handle the situation. I'd argue the present arrangement is more civilized.

[overfeed]

> Or pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet.

I think $0.20 per bullet is far too little, considering the medical expenses the guard will face when getting the bullets removed after they are shot for copper.

[kQq9oHeAz6wLLS]

$0.20 isn't enough to cover good self-defense 9mm rounds, and no you shouldn't just use FMJ.

[jcgrillo]

Those +P 185gr .45ACP hollow points with the nickel plated cases are pretty sweet. But it's a hell of a lot better to not have to do some kind of Old West standoff shootout shit whenever someone wants to rob something. That was my point. It's so much better instead of hiring a posse of gunfighters, to just trust that the system will (barring anomalies like this one) unfuck itself.

[themafia]

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem.

They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage.

> better off by just paying the theif double.

You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief.

> that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

We shouldn't motivate people to extremes. We should probably just punish drug dealers far more harshly in this country.

[razakel]

>That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief.

The UK does that - a scrap dealer can only pay by bank transfer or cheque. That way there's a paper trail.

[SoftTalker]

Same in the USA. I had to show my drivers license to sell a couple of old lawn mowers at a scrap yard. The thieves don't sell directly to the scrap dealers. If there's money to be made, there will always be a way to work around regulations.

[NewJazz]

Yeah you really need to make sure there is a high chance folks are caught in the act.

[freeopinion]

I'm sure different jurisdictions are different, but many places don't allow random people to show up with a suspicious pile of metal. They have to file photo ids and sign a document. Sometimes there is a waiting period for payment. A 24-hour waiting period is amazingly effective at dissuading bad actors.

[cucumber3732842]

>You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief.

So then they'll just sell to middle men.

And worse, in typical "what we need is a new law" fashion, you've taken a situation where one-ish person (the thief) has a financial incentive to see that the bad thing persists you now have two (the thief and the fence)

Also, electricians (the primary group who'd hold the licenses because they're scrapping a bunch of copper legitimately that stuff could be mixed into) already get enough undeserved make-work at society's expense as a result of their licenses. They don't need another side gig.

[kelnos]

> They have. It's called insurance.

In other words, economists haven't solved the problem. Insurance just kicks the can down the road.

> You could also just require a license to scrap copper.

That doesn't work. The UK and US already have laws to make it hard to sell illegally-gotten scrap metal. But black markets and "laundering" will always exist as a workaround. These things are riskier, and result in lower returns for the thief, but it doesn't stamp out the problem.

[johanvts]

I dont see how insurance solves it. The station had insurance and the crime still happened. Insurance doesn’t seem to take the thieves motives in to consideration at all, works the same for theft and earthquakes.

[dlcarrier]

Historically, the insurer would provide or contract out loss prevention, or require the insured to do so, e.g. security guards to prevent theft, fire fighters to prevent fire damage, bounty hunters to prevent loss of bail bonds, etc.

In many ports of of the world, governments now have a monopoly on several of those services, and it's illegal for insurance to play a part in them. When such governments don't then provide those services, the insurance market collapses. Either the prices rise substantially, or especially in areas where rate changes are prohibited, insurers stop providing services.

[toast0]

It's pretty hard to protect outside plant with security guards. Burying the outside plant helps, but only until those who would steal cables figure out how to operate a backhoe.

It's also pretty hard to bury cables that lead to the top of an antenna.

[dlcarrier]

I license doesn't stop someone from doing something illegal. It doesn't cost much for the equipment to turn scrap copper into billet.