[jplusequalt]

>the better our police are the lighter the sentences can be.

>If the chances of catching are near 100% you only need a smaller deterrent

I would rather live in a world with marginally higher petty crime rates with zero surveillance, than a world that has no petty crime but where there are Flock cameras on every corner and drones patrolling overhead at all times.

Peter Thiel and his ilk are creating Big Brother.

[robocat]

> marginally higher petty crime rates

And what is a petty crime these days?

Within the last year in Woolston Lyttelton and Brighton: I've been assualted unprovoked, I've had the outer unit of my split heatpump stolen (for Al, $$$ to fix), I've had outdoor plumbing damaged (for Cu, $$ to fix), I've had the rim stolen[1] off the back of my parked car, last week my friend had tools stolen that they can't afford to replace.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but the above petty crimes are unacceptable to me or my friends.

Nothing has been reported because that just costs time and doesn't resolve the problems.

In small groups of people society is surveillance (yes, often detrimentally). I've lived in small towns and the surveillance is extreme. Society has got worse at encouraging/enforcing good society.

I loath surveillance capitalism, but systemically I'm unsure what the answer is.

I finally gave in and installed a Eufy brand camera (my security friend used that brand and installed it, although I can't recommend the UI). I don't think that it will even help. Ironically the security friend was broken into recently and had their security camera stolen.

None of the above was motivated by hunger or good reasons: it was real scumbags for the situations I know the perp, and likely drug users for the metal thefts (or perhaps kids - two brass taps are not worth it).

[1] https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360962317/its-bit-epidemic-m...

[inigyou]

What are the police doing about it? I bet nothing, and they'd continue to do nothing if they had mass surveillance killer attack drones.

[robocat]

The police are just part of a broken system: they seem to be as constrained as I am.

In my very limited experience, individual officers seem well intentioned. They are extremely well trained in the privacy rights of crooks: I'm guessing crooks use that to their advantage. Tht outcome feels like gaslighting if you're a victim trying to understand what is going on.

I assume it is possible to get involved in politics to make some systemic change. But that costs too much (selling my soul to become a politician, not just time and money).

I'm an engineer type that at least sees solutions to systemic flaws. I have worked on enough broken software in enough broken businesses to know my limitations to effect change.

[jplusequalt]

>Society has got worse at encouraging/enforcing good society.

How you could you possibly quantify this? It's so vague to mean anything, and worse, this sort of rhetoric is the moral licensing that gets poorly thought out policies passed through congress.

>I loath surveillance capitalism, but systemically I'm unsure what the answer is.

The answer should never be to make privacy impossible, because the government will take advantage of that.

[robocat]

I have more than a handful of decades personal experience which intelligently applied has value even if just a single sample of a voter.

+/-fortunately voters do matter.

I can't vote for much in the US given that I'm in New Zealand.