• Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    I hate this country.

    Just so everyone is aware the news and various corporation have all admitted the shoplifting wave was bul.lshit they just made up entirely.

    • Wertheimer [any]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Yep:

      In a similar case, Target blamed shoplifting for its decision to close a store in East Harlem, and the New York Post parroted the claim—but its landlords said that the closure was actually the result of a “business decision to move to small-format stores,” and that theft hadn’t been raised as an issue at all. Last January, Walgreens’s finance chief admitted on an earnings call that “maybe we cried too much” about shoplifting in the previous year, as the company’s rate of “shrink” had actually fallen from 3.5 percent of total sales to around 2.5 percent.

      https://www.currentaffairs.org/2024/01/the-shoplifting-epidemic-is-a-lie

    • regul [any]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      It’s entirely believable to me that retail theft levels are the same or possibly lower and that the problem is simply more visible.

      Tinfoil hat on, but I did watch the Andrew Callahan (canceled, I know) video about Kensington in Philadelphia. He talks to locals there who (probably correctly) claim that concentrated visible poverty is basically modern day blockbusting, the old process by which real-estate speculators would move a single black family into a white neighborhood in order to spark those families to sell their land to the same developers.

      Obviously the end goal of visible crime is to increase support for police after BLM. Whether this is orchestrated by the cops, the politicians, or both, is a question for the reader.

      • Ideology [she/her]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        I swear I just saw a post where a shop in Oakland claimed to have closed over shoplifting and it was actually because they were sued by their workers.

        • Aryuproudomenowdaddy [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          Yeah my older relatives have been doing a lot of hand wringing over these news reports but none of them ever seem to take it a step further and wonder why thefts might be on the rise. Those people should just get a third job or something if their groceries keep costing more, their landlords are squeezing them for every spare cent and the utility companies that have been neglecting infrastructure for decades are passing on the costs of fines for entire towns burning to the ground to their customers.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        Very frustrating. I tried to help out at some of the homeless camps a few years back, and now it’s just perfectly normal for cops to be sent in by “liberal” mayors to steal and destroy everything and send everyone in to the winter night to freeze.

        • Aryuproudomenowdaddy [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          As far as I know that’s what happened to a lot of the people in the Paradise fire. They ended up in a tent village because they had nowhere to go on the outskirts of Chico and were making the city councils real estate prices suffer, so they sent in the local cops to beat the shit out of them.

    • Pandantic [none/username]
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      8 months ago

      Because these people are just thieves and wouldn’t pay for things even if they had the money to afford them. You gotta get them into the prison complex - then they will be productive member of society by funneling money from the taxpayers to the corporations.

    • trustnoone@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      Actually it’s worse, the reason why this is happening is because shops know more poverty is coming through via waves of firing that’s been happening and high cost of living.

      This way they don’t have to reduce their cost.

    • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      You know that quote about the ultimate sign of a civilized society is a drinkable river? I’m starting to think the ultimate sign of a declining/collapsing one is fucking theft alarm on a cheese-block.

    • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Bit idea - my crafting crew and I stop at JoAnn’s to get some new jewelry pliers with fresh, sharp blades, and we liberate everything with a security tag. Idk how many Loss Prevention Officers work at a time, but how can they stop us if there are more of us than of them?

      Anyway, seems like I need a crafting crew. Reqs to join are only a revolutionary spirit and love for beautifying the ordinary.

      • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        There was that thing a little while back where a bunch of masked folks walked into a Whole Foods, loaded up, walked out, and distributed it all to the unhoused while chanting about Bezos being a monster. No resistance to the action. Apparently some employees laughed along.

  • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    Lol and they will turn on him for being a cop hating communist Bolshevik and encourage people to vote against him. I guess it’s a mutual understanding. Both sides know they have to play the game and Democrats know as long as they keep giving money to cops, they’ll stay loyal, for now.