Firstly, I think it's interesting and very American-centric that people disparage this thinking and believe it is an American thing. This is very normal in large parts of the world. Go to the Philippines and security guards are regularly armed -- search the internet and the first photo has two men with pump action shotguns guarding a McDonalds. Go to Thailand and see people put up big walls around their property with spikes and broken glass and barbed wire around the top. Go to France and police regularly patrol with assault rifles (real ones, not semiautomatic painted black). Go to Mexico and people cement bars in front of their windows. Go to the Middle East, Africa, South America, the subcontinent.
And what you see in these coastal California cities is a result of this thinking, that it's always something else to blame and people should feel guilty for wanting their property to be secured or offenders punished or deterred.
And it's not nearly so simple as you say. Easy to steal or low consequences of stealing absolutely contributes to things being stolen. If one in every 4-5 container has been burglarized, surely there's a good argument things need to be made a bit more secure sitting around handwringing about the state of society and admonishing anybody who doesn't sympathize with the criminals certainly won't solve it, as California has demonstrated.
It's not that there aren't other factors that could be improved on a societal level to reduce this kind of crime, to be clear I'm not arguing that.
> I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Must be nice to be so privileged. You know who suffers the most from street crimes, burglaries, and that kind of thing? It's poor people. Petty criminals know the police will descend on them like a ton of bricks if they went and started robbing rich people places. Just because you might not see police everywhere does not mean it is not protected by the threat of violence and incarceration.
And what you see in these coastal California cities is a result of this thinking, that it's always something else to blame and people should feel guilty for wanting their property to be secured or offenders punished or deterred.
And it's not nearly so simple as you say. Easy to steal or low consequences of stealing absolutely contributes to things being stolen. If one in every 4-5 container has been burglarized, surely there's a good argument things need to be made a bit more secure sitting around handwringing about the state of society and admonishing anybody who doesn't sympathize with the criminals certainly won't solve it, as California has demonstrated.
It's not that there aren't other factors that could be improved on a societal level to reduce this kind of crime, to be clear I'm not arguing that.
> I walked around last year, in an opera house, public building, no one in sight, empty building, unlocked doors, there were paintings on the walls, and I identified audio equipment for at least $10k, and it was not unlocked by mistake. Then it struck me, that we've done well in society when we can have this.
Must be nice to be so privileged. You know who suffers the most from street crimes, burglaries, and that kind of thing? It's poor people. Petty criminals know the police will descend on them like a ton of bricks if they went and started robbing rich people places. Just because you might not see police everywhere does not mean it is not protected by the threat of violence and incarceration.