Warm Up to Massive Crime Wave
Most of us spent too long in relative comfort to imagine how bad it will get in just a short time.
Economic depression is here. It’s going to get worse and take a very long time to pass, easily a decade. It doesn’t matter who or why, nor even that this was planned for us. It’s here.
You can easily find reports from all across the US of copper thefts. In some places, they have begun stealing high tension lines while hot. This means the folks stealing it include genuine technicians, or people who were smart enough to get the training somehow before stealing. And it’s not just copper; all recyclable metals are being taken.
In our minds, we need to imagine anything in large quantities and unattended. If there isn’t a living, breathing guard — and maybe needing to be armed — then anything worth stealing will be gone. So in one case we had fellows removing metal highway guard rails. Think of all the infrastructure which isn’t being actively guarded. It won’t matter if it takes some work to disassemble or cut something; that can be done quicker than you might expect.
Then there is all the other stuff folks might imagine they can sell. Nothing is sacred; one batch of thieves hit a disabled children’s camp. They knew what it was.
At the same time, tax-sourced budgets are collapsing. A great many jurisdictions are scaling back or disbanding police forces. In many places they have long stopped responding to certain classes of crime reports. Now you have to come in and file, and who knows whether any action will ever be taken?
I won’t bother to analyze it right now. This is just a warning to thinking people. Look for things you would never imagined before. It’s going crazy.
Crime in the United States is at record lows right now. What do you say about that?
Your stats are out of date or you cite highly massaged statistics. Most government agencies have recently changed how they report crimes, and I’ve seen independent research indicating a large number of incidents downgraded without justification. I could go on, but it’s not important. My post refers to something in the near future.
This was part of the culture shock I experienced when I lived in Indonesia many years ago. Anything of value (even low value by American standards) was stolen within moments if not actively guarded. We had neighbors stealing the water out of our roof tank with a siphon hose. When thievery becomes constant it dooms the mass of people to permanent poverty. It costs the victim more to replace stolen property than it does for the thief to steal it, especially when homes or machinery are gutted. Someone on the Vox Popoli blog summed it up as doing thousands of dollars in damage to make $30 in a scrap copper sale.
Thanks, Robin. Your experience makes you one of the few in the US who know what to expect.