[HN Gopher] So thieves broke into your storage unit again
___________________________________________________________________
So thieves broke into your storage unit again
Author : goldenskye
Score : 233 points
Date : 2024-10-06 01:09 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (oldvcr.blogspot.com)
| Simulacra wrote:
| This is heartbreaking. The storage facility insurance scam is one
| that needs to be investigated by the government. It's a
| tremendous rip off and covers nothing.
| komali2 wrote:
| I wonder if an insurance company operated as a co-op would be a
| better arrangement. Interested parties pooling money to pay out
| to the one unfortunate one who has a disaster. Could
| potentially invest the pool in super low risk investments as
| well for a little upside.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Mutual insurance companies have been a thing for hundreds of
| years. Some well known US mutual insurance companies are
| State Farm, Amica, Mutual of Omaha, and most non Elevance
| Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliated insurance companies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance
| asveikau wrote:
| Most insurance in most industries is a racket.
| floydnoel wrote:
| The famous Lloyds of London started as a gambling coffee
| house. Gambling and insurance are closely related, and offer
| the same bargain: the house always wins.
| cromulent wrote:
| > the house always wins
|
| Well, until Lloyd's _did_ lose a lot of money in 1991, and
| the Names had too much exposure. Berkshire Hathaway cover
| them now, I believe.
| kstrauser wrote:
| There are a million reasons why you should never do this, but I
| would be tempted to use storage unit #3 as the place to keep my
| land mine collection.
|
| Edit: "You have a land mine collection?"
|
| No, but after storage unit #2, I'd daydream about starting one.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Booby-trapping your property is illegal even in the reddest of
| red states.
| senectus1 wrote:
| id put a bank of ultra bright white LED lights facing the
| door and a speaker with a recording saying this footage has
| been sent to a remote location. thank you for closing the
| door behind you.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That would be one of the million reasons why I wouldn't do
| it.
|
| I didn't say I'd actually do it. I'd surely daydream of it.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I imagine it'd be a lot cheaper and legally-viable to store
| your collection of electronic burglar alarms. Especially if
| they dial a human when triggered.
|
| There are some neat videos out there where people make their
| own with Arduinos etc.
| lazide wrote:
| How about (accidentally) still charged high voltage
| capacitors?
| metadat wrote:
| Do they typically stay charged for only a few days at most?
| kstrauser wrote:
| Well, you might need to stop by frequently to visit them.
| praptak wrote:
| Where I live the "accidental" part doesn't really get you
| off the hook. Negligence is better than intention but
| still.
|
| If it kills someone or causes grievous bodily harm, it's
| still on you. Yes, even if it's a burglar. You also have to
| think about the fully legal situations when it's
| firefighter or a cop with a warrant. Or an edge case like a
| stupid kid.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Where I grew up, problem thieves would just go missing,
| to be found years later dead at the bottom of a mine
| shaft.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm not saying I condone it...
|
| ...but I understand.
| praptak wrote:
| Well this at least doesn't kill a random person who has
| to empty your storage for legit reasons and sets off a
| land mine.
| Karellen wrote:
| So that's what happened to Captain Carnage!
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > If it kills someone or causes grievous bodily harm,
| it's still on you. Yes, even if it's a burglar.
|
| Honestly, the laws in your locale are unjust and need to
| be rewritten. There should be absolutely no liability to
| the owner (or renter) of a property if someone
| burglarizing it gets hurt accidentally.
| praptak wrote:
| Well it kind of depends on what exactly happened. For
| example there are building codes, like "no deadly drops
| without guardrails". If you leave something like this
| then you are breaking the law. If somebody dies because
| of this then it's on you, _even if they were breaking
| another law_.
|
| I'm not sure how you could rewrite self defense law to
| cover this case.
| syntheticnature wrote:
| Laws against booby trapping and the like are fairly
| universal. Even without criminal penalties, the liability
| if you catch someone innocent should give you pause.
| userbinator wrote:
| Make them play sounds of approaching footsteps and gunfire.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.
| mdaniel wrote:
| > There are some neat videos out there where people make
| their own
|
| The "glitter bomb" series is pretty funny:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxhDk-
| hwuo&list=PLgeXOVaJo_...
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It's a fun fantasy. Work a few more elements into it:
|
| - you're hit by a bus, and your family is clearing out the
| storage locker.
|
| - management is alerted to a bad smell coming out of several
| units, and they have to enter yours to verify that you're not
| accidentally storing dead raccoons.
|
| - the police are serving a warrant on a unit, and accidentally
| open yours due to a typo.
|
| - a homeless teenager just needs a place to sleep for the
| night.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I'm not sure you grok the concept of "fun fantasy".
| 762236 wrote:
| Suggestion to authors: be pithy
| lostlogin wrote:
| It's 3rd on HN right now, I'm not sure they need to change
| their approach much.
| mplewis wrote:
| Observation: no one asked
| Magi604 wrote:
| Good old insurance companies, always looking for ways to get out
| of having to pay out for claims.
|
| I mean, I guess it is their job, so can't really fault them for
| that.
| Spivak wrote:
| I've always wondered how expensive a good insurance policy is.
| One that is actually good for you the policy holder and
| enforced by contract. Like no haggling over market value
| because the items are insured for specific amounts.
| eastbound wrote:
| The international code of insurances says goods cannot be
| insured for more than their worth. The intent was to avoid
| perverse incentives, the result is our current society.
| dataflow wrote:
| > The international code of insurances says goods cannot be
| insured for more than their worth. The intent was to avoid
| perverse incentives
|
| Would you mind explaining what the perverse incentive is
| here? If I want to insure a pillow that I claim is worth $1
| million, why should it matter what others are willing to
| pay for it?
| zabzonk wrote:
| depends on the premium, obviously
| dataflow wrote:
| _What_ depends on the premium? In my mind, you state the
| item and the value, they tell you the premium they would
| cover it at. Where 's the perverse incentive, and why is
| it relevant what anybody else would pay for it?
| listenallyall wrote:
| If you intend to insure a pillow for $1 million, expect
| the premium to cost about $999,950.
| dataflow wrote:
| I wrote as much in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41755211
| listenallyall wrote:
| Then why did you object to zabzonk's comment?
| dataflow wrote:
| Because I don't see what the perverse incentive is?
| zabzonk wrote:
| burning your house down?
| dataflow wrote:
| Have you seen the other threads?
| praptak wrote:
| If they let me insure my stuff for 100x of what it's
| worth, I lose all the incentive to prevent damage.
|
| Even in the legit cases the insurance companies have to
| account for the "don't worry, it's insured" mindset.
| Keeping the ceiling on the insurance value is intended to
| leave at least _some_ of the incentive to prevent the
| damage with the owner.
|
| The insurance companies cannot rely solely on the "don't
| be careless" contract clause.
| dataflow wrote:
| > If they let me insure my stuff for 100x of what it's
| worth, I lose all the incentive to prevent damage.
|
| So what, though? Can't they just adjust the premium to
| account for that? It's not like they can't do their own
| modeling of what the item is likely worth -- if they see
| it's 1% of what you stated, then they can just as well
| cite you a ridiculous premium so that you wouldn't feel
| it's worth it. What's wrong with that?
| praptak wrote:
| In theory nothing, in practice it's just not worth it.
| Mind that the bad effects would also spread broader than
| a voluntary contract between two parties.
|
| We'd have to fund the courts to resolve the inevitable
| insurance fraud accusations, not to mention the
| additional firefighting crews to put out the additional
| fires that consume the $1 pillows.
| js8 wrote:
| The incentive would be for you to have a "happy pillow
| accident" in which you get $1M. Of course, you might
| think that's good for you but the rules have to apply for
| everybody, by definition.
| dataflow wrote:
| > The incentive would be for you to have a "happy pillow
| accident" in which you get $1M. Of course, you might
| think that's good for you but the rules have to apply for
| everybody, by definition.
|
| This doesn't pass the smell test, though. The premium
| would take care of that. You've told them you have a
| pillow, and that you want it insured for $1M. They could
| easily look at it and go "hm, this is worth $10", and
| give you a absurd premium of $999,900 in exchange for
| your absurd valuation. So happy accidents won't be worth
| it anymore. What's wrong with just letting the premium
| take care of it?
| rocqua wrote:
| The premium would be 1M. Maybe .99M if they have reason
| to assume not everyone will be fraudulent.
| dataflow wrote:
| Sure, whatever. The exact value of the premium has no
| bearing on the point I'm trying to make.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| > What's wrong with just letting the premium take care of
| it?
|
| Offering a deal that nobody honest would take is a waste
| of time for everyone involved.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Offering a deal that nobody honest would take is a
| waste of time for everyone involved.
|
| I'm not suggesting any insurer should be forced to offer
| a deal. They're welcome to just shrug and tell you to
| pound sand. What I don't see is the logic behind having
| an international code _prohibiting_ the offering of such
| deals. Is the international code trying to dictate to the
| insurance company what is worth their time?
| smallnamespace wrote:
| The international code is also defining the key
| distinguishing factor of insurance: it makes the insured
| whole against a risk that _they actually have_.
|
| There are ways to bet on things where you don't have that
| underlying risk: gambling, derivatives markets,
| prediction markets, etc.
|
| These aren't insurance and aren't regulated as such.
| hansvm wrote:
| Walking back from the pillow analogy a bit, I'd happily
| pay for homeowner's insurance that also covered lost
| wages, a temporary rental place, legal fees, and the
| other incidentals likely to arise in a fire or flood (as
| opposed to paying whatever high deductible I'm
| comfortable with on top of those other large, unknown
| costs). Adding those to the policy would necessarily go
| beyond the home value. Is that level of excess allowed?
| js8 wrote:
| You have simply rephrased the actuarial rule "don't
| insure item for more than its actual value". The
| "premium" you describe just inflated the value of the
| item.
| dataflow wrote:
| I don't see how this answers my question.
| smallnamespace wrote:
| > why should it matter what others are willing to pay for
| it?
|
| Because the actual value of the item determines your
| incentive to commit fraud.
|
| If you insure a $10 pillow for $10, when you damage your
| pillow, you personally will definitely be out $10's value
| in goods in the hope you'll recover that $10 later. Since
| your only outcome is mildly negative, you don't have any
| incentive to file a false claim.
|
| If you insure your $10 pillow for $1 million, as soon as
| the insurance is in hand, will have a strong incentive to
| destroy the pillow and try to collect a million dollars,
| since $1 million - $10 = $999,990.
|
| This incentive exists regardless of what premium you had
| paid for the insurance (since it was a prior cost), and
| can't really be perfectly mitigated. Yes, you can
| criminalize fraud, ask for evidence, etc. but courts
| aren't perfect and it's always possible to be clever and
| fool people.
|
| Also, some people are honest, and others are dishonest.
| An insurance company can't perfectly tell ahead of time
| who is who. Let's say I quote you $500k premium to insure
| your pillow for $1mm. A fraudster will see this as an
| opportunity to profit by $500k - $10. An honest person
| would see this as a terrible deal. Therefore only
| fraudsters would take this deal. If you continue to work
| backwards, as an insurance company you know there's no
| premium that you could quote that would end up in honest
| people taking this deal--there's no stable equilibrium
| where the premium charged ends up outweighing the
| (potentially fraudulent) claims.
|
| Btw, this situation is famously described in George
| Akerlof's paper _The Market for Lemons_ (he called it
| "market collapse"):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons#Condi
| tio...
|
| Another way to see this: rationally as an insurance
| company, if you ask me for a policy for $1mm on a pillow,
| due to the risk of fraud I will likely be quoting you
| close to $1mm as the premium. You (as an honest person)
| rationally would never take this policy. Therefore, I
| shouldn't even bother offering it, to save everyone
| involved time and energy.
| rocqua wrote:
| The difference between gambling and insurance, is whether
| you have an insurable interest.
|
| It makes the market for insurance much better if everyone
| actually has insurance. Because it reduces cost. It also
| keeps the industry legitimate, preventing gambling
| legislation from applying, and anti-gambling activists
| from targeting insurers.
|
| You'll have to go to a bookie if you want to gamble.
| dataflow wrote:
| I don't follow the logic? How does above-market-value
| insurance discourage people from having insurance?
|
| I don't get the comparison to gambling either, that reads
| more like an appeal to emotion than actual reasoning.
| schoen wrote:
| You can read about it at
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurable_interest
|
| (I don't know if that will make you more sympathetic to
| the legal rule or not.)
| dataflow wrote:
| You're definitely right -- it's interesting, but it's not
| making me any more sympathetic, because I fail to see why
| the lack of insurable interest is something the premium
| can't account for, and they fail to provide any
| explanation of that.
|
| As far as insurance gambling goes, it feels fundamentally
| different? In gambling, the "house" that sells you the
| ticket sets the rules and introduces the element of
| chance. In insurance, the entity selling the financial
| product here is in no way in control of the outcome,
| which is the exact opposite of gambling.
| rocqua wrote:
| Because premiums will rise across the board, so people
| with an insurable interest pay premiums set for people
| who intend to gamble or manipulate their insurance.
|
| By demanding an insurable interest, insurance companies
| keep out gamblers and frauds. It also helps strengthen
| the idea that insurance shouldn't be abused or
| manipulated for a payout.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Because premiums will rise across the board
|
| I don't see why this is true. The insurer still knows the
| item and its market value. So if the insured amount is
| higher than the market value then it only needs to
| increase the premium in those cases, not for everyone
| else.
| rocqua wrote:
| As for gambling. The point isn't gambling is evil, but
| that others think gambling is evil, so being associated
| with gambling is bad for business.
| dataflow wrote:
| If it's bad for business then don't do it? That doesn't
| justify an international code.
| Spivak wrote:
| Surely there's some middle ground between the sibling
| thread where it's insured for 1000x and the situation I and
| many others find ourselves in with insurance dealings where
| the insurance company digs up some sale in a private
| database by a wholesaler in Szechuan, calls that the
| "market price" and then cuts you a check that doesn't even
| come close to replacing the item, usually a car.
|
| I would love a clause in the contract where for non-rare
| goods you have the option to have the insurance company
| make you whole by buying you a same model, same trim or
| higher, same miles or lower, same year or newer car. Like
| you claimed the market price was less then half of what _I_
| can buy it for, use whatever contacts you clearly have and
| buy it for that.
| genewitch wrote:
| homeowner's insurance approaches this if you know your agent
| (as in you've physically seen them) and the two of you have
| an understanding that you're going to be recording the
| purchase price (or market price, whichever is lower), date of
| purchase, serial numbers, and any other identification of all
| objects you want insured. If you do this, my understanding is
| that they cannot then do "replace toaster: $8; replace TV,
| Onn brand 42inch $170;" and so on. If your item's market
| price goes up in the meantime, the policy will have verbiage
| as to how that gets resolved. For example if i have a policy
| on something that is no longer being made, i can either be
| reimbursed for the price or a suitable replacement.
|
| Generic, cookie-cutter, boilerplate policies probably net the
| insurance companies a fair amount of profit. People who
| actually care about the _actual items_ they are insuring are
| possibly the highest risk, and as such, the premiums are also
| the highest. In my state, an umbrella policy that would cover
| my home, land, frontage, vehicles, farm equipment, well pump,
| etc is ~$500 /month, with limits of around $1mm (this was 8
| years ago or so, they probably went up in premiums). a half
| million on two vehicles is only about $200/month and
| homeowners varies but is ~<$100/month. The issue is how i'd
| get the rest of the stuff i said insured, because in my
| state, the homeowner's policy doesn't cover anything but the
| home (and contents to a limited extent) and whatever you call
| a tree on your property falling down and causing injury or
| damage not due to negligence.
| js8 wrote:
| It's not their job. It would be easy to adopt laws requiring
| insurance companies to separate insurance pool money (used to
| pay out insurance) and operational money (used to pay employees
| and profits), and have these separated when showing the price
| of insurance. That would reduce the moral hazard of insurance
| companies paying profit out of the pool.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It can actually make it worse, and creates different Hazards.
|
| When it does work is when insurance has no influence on the
| price of goods, and is a minor consumer. For example, when
| fire insurance pays to replace your goods that burnt up.
|
| When it doesnt work is when insurance is the predominant
| purchaser of those goods. A good example would be US health
| insurance, which has an 80/20 rule just like your proposal.
| Health insurers by law (ACA) must pay out 80%, with 20%
| allowed for opex and shareholder returns. The Hazard is that
| as an industry, to increase returns, you want the cost of
| care as high as possible, thereby maximizing your allowable
| profit.
|
| It is a similar problem to how power is regulated in
| California, which has a mandated profit cap as a percent of
| costs. As a result, these regulated companies have the
| highest opex and cost of power in the nation of approximately
| $0.50/kwh
| js8 wrote:
| What you're talking about is a market failure, basically
| admitting that markets don't decrease prices in many cases.
| Which is a much deeper rabbit hole.
|
| My proposal even doesn't say what the ratio should be. If
| there wasn't legally defined maximal price margin (say
| 20%), I don't see what it would change in your argument -
| the companies would be free to ask for even more.
| Conversely, there is nothing that prevents the companies
| from lowering the margin as a result of competitive
| pressure from consumers.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't know if I'd call it a market failure or a
| regulatory failure, or where the line is defined in the
| economic literature.
|
| The difference between a cap system and a uncapped system
| is the incentive to increase the base price as well.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| No, their job is to accurately calculate the expected value of
| the losses, then collect a premium slightly higher than the
| expected value, turning an unpredictable, potentially high loss
| into a predictable small one. Reverse gambling, basically.
|
| 1. Know your insurance contract, know what's actually covered
| and what not (sometimes describing the same facts in two
| different yet truthful ways will result in your claim being
| accepted or denied) and have a non-shit insurance company
| (check reviews that talk about how they handle claims or ask
| friends that had claims).
|
| 2. "Self-insure" risks where the variance won't hurt you. In
| other words, if you can grudgingly eat the loss if it happened,
| don't get insurance and eat the loss if it happens. If you have
| a lot of disposable income, you don't need insurance for
| something that won't noticeably shift your budget. Likewise,
| pick high deductibles. What would you rather do: Eat a $300
| loss, or have paid $200 in additional premiums and spend two
| hours of filling out their paperwork?
|
| 3a. An exception is if you just really want the peace of mind,
| are willing to pay for that, and think you can find an
| insurance company that will actually pay.
|
| 3b. Another exception is if you think they miscalculated the
| premiums. I know that this is unlikely, but it ties into the
| "peace of mind" criteria - if you think a risk is more likely
| than it actually is, just insuring it might be an easy way out.
| The premium might also be accurate for the average, but you
| might also think or know that you are at a significantly higher
| risk than average.
|
| For the latter two points, I like to consider insurance cost
| "per decade" or "per lifetime".
| spencerflem wrote:
| But they can offer a lower price than competitors or collect
| more profits (to taste) by having a lower expected value of
| losses by screwing you over
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > No, their job is to accurately calculate the expected value
| of the losses, then collect a premium slightly higher than
| the expected value, turning an unpredictable, potentially
| high loss into a predictable small one. Reverse gambling,
| basically.
|
| No, premiums don't need to cover payouts. You have to pay the
| premiums before you get any payouts, so the company invests
| them and makes money that way.
| gruez wrote:
| That's still basically the same thing if you take into
| account the opportunity cost of the premiums rather than
| the raw dollar value.
| hansvm wrote:
| Off-topic, I find people have a similar misunderstanding
| of FAANG compensation. Functionally, the salary + RSU +
| bonus + refresh structure is equivalent to a larger
| salary (enough to cover fees for the following procedure)
| where you take out 4-yr loans every year to invest in the
| company stock. With that in mind, listing the realized
| stock growth when describing total compensation always
| felt a bit disingenuous.
| pkteison wrote:
| Nobody will give you an unsecured loan for 100 percent of
| your salary, but tech companies will happily grant you
| rsus for that much.
| hansvm wrote:
| 100% is a bit uncommon. Take that at face value though.
| BigCo tech companies have much lower salaries than what
| you can get elsewhere. Compare a salary of X/yr plus a
| 4-yr RSU grant of X/yr to a salary of 3X. You absolutely
| can get a 50% partially secured loan for 4X to obtain
| similar payment characteristics to the BigCo offering
| (speaking in round numbers to keep the math simple, and
| ignoring fees, hedging, ... because they change exact
| thresholds and other minutiae rather than the core of the
| argument).
| saulrh wrote:
| If you use the disc lock the storage facility sells, you'll
| likely pay an additional markup on it, but it's also
| guaranteed to be acceptable to their partner insurance
| company.
|
| I'm surprised - I'd have expected the facility's locks to be
| guaranteed to be _unacceptable_ so as to minimize the insurance
| company 's payouts. Insurance agencies already do worse on a
| daily basis, this level of consumer-hostile bullshit would barely
| even register.
| icehawk wrote:
| If they are deemed unacceptable, I now get to make the argument
| of negligence on the part of the storage facility, as they are
| the ones who sold it to me and I can reasonably assume that
| since they suggested it, and the insurance policy, that it is
| fit for purpose. I might then be able to make the case of
| fraud.
| loopdoend wrote:
| > I'm not even sure what the notarization step was accomplishing:
| the inventory sheets aren't affidavits.
|
| The percentage of people who see the word "notarized" alongside
| "inventory sheet" and simply give up must be quite high.
| Notarization accomplishes nothing besides causing a headache.
| Insurance companies don't make money by paying out claims, you
| know.
| lazide wrote:
| That, and it would make it harder to claim mistake/accident if
| the insurance company tried to Prosecute for insurance fraud.
|
| The number of cases of people adding random expensive things
| that would be added to insurance inventories during a claim has
| to approach 90% if there is no potential for consequences.
| meowster wrote:
| Notarization just proves it was you who signed something, it
| has nothing to do with the contents of the document.
|
| Unfortunately a lot of people think notarization gives some
| kind of legitimacy to a document, or likely in this case, it's
| probably not the hassle of getting it notarized, but used as a
| scare tactic to prevent some people from committing insurance
| fraud by listing inflated or made-up items (people might
| conflate it with perjury).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It proves not just who, but when. This can be pretty relevant
| in a number of situations.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| It also makes it feel more serious, deterring insurance fraud.
| Since it has only upsides, no downsides, for the insurance
| company (except that they'll get bad ratings from customers
| which they clearly don't care about in this scenario, as most
| customers don't shop around for them), of course they demand
| it.
|
| > Insurance companies don't make money by paying out claims,
| you know.
|
| This is why if you want actual insurance (not "check the 'you
| must have insurance' box") you don't pick the cheapest company
| _and_ check reviews, ignoring any reviews that don 't mention a
| claim.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Illinois did away with notarization requirements for almost
| everything a few years ago. Now you can just sign things under
| penalty of perjury and it's done, which is the right way to go
| about it.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I used to work security and making rounds in a place like this
| would give me chills. Running into thieves at 3 in the morning is
| one of the most terrifying things you will ever experience.
| raincom wrote:
| How did you deal with such terrifying situations?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm not the person you asked, but most people like that -
| opportunistic burglars, etc - are no more keen to run into
| the police than you are to run into them. They'll just run.
|
| Granted, the equation changes dramatically when various drugs
| are involved.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Thankfully they always ran away.
| nytesky wrote:
| I feel it's like walking in the woods in the south -- you make
| a lot of noise so you don't surprise a rattler? Were you
| walking stealthy so they don't hear you coming?
| User23 wrote:
| Having to pay the fence to get your stuff back is so California.
| In the more civilized states pawnbrokers are expected to know the
| risks of buying potentially stolen property, and if they do they
| get to eat it.
|
| Maybe that's why property crimes short of grand theft aren't
| really enforced in California?
| coolspot wrote:
| > property crimes short of grand theft aren't really enforced
| in California
|
| There is a hope we will undo this soon.
| willyt wrote:
| Yeah I was surprised about that one 'Handling stolen goods' is
| a criminal offence in Britain and if you can prove ownership of
| something you get it back. If you're an innocent intermediary
| and you bought a stolen item without knowing you have to make a
| civil claim against the person you bought the item from to get
| the money back.
| meowster wrote:
| Same here. I believe in most U.S. states, _knowlingly_
| possessing stolen property is a crime. If you didn 't know,
| you just have to forfiet it to the lawful owner.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| That is the most surprising part to me. If the pawnbroker
| doesn't bear the risks of buying stolen goods they are not
| disincentivized from buying stolen goods, which creates a
| larger market for selling stolen goods which in the end
| increases the market for property crime.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| At this stage I'd probably thank thieves for clearing out my
| garage.
|
| Last time I cleared out my old stuff there was nothing I could do
| to get people to take most of the crap at zero cost.
| bodyfour wrote:
| What is annoying to me is that in this internet-connected age,
| the storage units I see still don't have better per-unit
| security.
|
| Just a phone alert to say "door to unit #xyz has been opened"
| would be a huge improvement. Wire up a cheap webcam for extra
| credit.
| jwagenet wrote:
| I'm pretty sure most large storage operations (U-Haul, extra
| space, etc) have per unit door sensors which work in concert
| with customer check in/out to verify authorized openings.
| meowster wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they don't: source I've helped move people's
| stuff in and out of a couple of different places. My
| experience is very limited, so if you have more data points
| where you have seen such things, please share.
| vel0city wrote:
| I have never encountered anything like this at storage units
| from a wide scale of corporate ownership, different levels of
| newness, and different levels of affluence in the area. Not
| saying they don't exist but I've never seen any reasonably
| priced storage units that bother with this level of tracking.
| renewiltord wrote:
| If thieves had emptied my storage unit before I married my wife
| and she made the decision for me, they would have been doing me a
| favour.
|
| I don't think any advanced security storage solution is likely to
| get many clients since they usually choose based on pricing.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I'm stunned by the idea of making the pawn shop whole.
|
| As I understand UK law, if you buy stolen goods, the original
| owner can just claim it back and you take the loss - simply to
| discourage buying with knowledge it was stolen.
|
| I guess the pawn shop would go out of business but it does seem
| if you let them act as a fence you are solving for the wrong
| problem
| gary_0 wrote:
| [deleted]
| delichon wrote:
| Laws against fraud, like 18 U.S. Code Chapter 47 and others
| in each state?
| erinnh wrote:
| Id say your friend being put behind bars would do the trick.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| They would just arrest the person who pawned the items.
| bombcar wrote:
| They're likely trying to prevent the situation where the pawn
| shops become entirely uncooperative, but there's still a
| tragedy of the commons situation occurring.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| This is a periodic public service announcement that there is
| not, and never has been "a tragedy of the commons situation".
| Even the author of the concept, Garret Hardin, has
| acknowledged that he made mistakes in his understanding and
| research.
|
| Resources held in common have historically been subject to
| significant control via social, civic and legalistic
| processes. What is typically referred to as "a tragedy of the
| commons situation" never turns out to be what Hardin
| originally suggested - individuals taking advantage of the
| lack of controls. Instead it is invariably individuals who
| first dismantle the control systems in place in order to
| pursue their own selfish ends.
|
| This matters because the "tragedy of the commons" concept has
| been used to suggest (successfully) that communities cannot
| manage commonly held resources, which is false. What is true
| is that communities frequently cannot manage a sustained
| attack by selfishness and greed against their own systems of
| management, and that's a very, very different problem.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Can you elaborate?
|
| My understanding is that overfishing and climate change are
| prime and valid examples of the tragedy of the commons.
|
| You seem to be claiming that the problem is with systems of
| management, but the entire point of the tragedy of the
| commons is that it happens when there _isn 't_ management.
| Which is abundantly the case at the global level of
| international waters and a shared atmosphere, because there
| is no such thing as a world government, nor do most people
| want one.
|
| So how exactly has there "never... been a tragedy of the
| commons"? How are overfishing and CO2 not _exactly_
| tragedies of the commons? What other principle explains why
| they weren 't solved decades ago?
| clcaev wrote:
| The planet's air and international waters are truly
| public resources, at least currently. I'm not sure if I
| would call them a commons.
|
| Speaking of which, Elinor Ostrom's book, Governing the
| Commons, outlines the conditions for the successful
| management of a commons. Notably neither private
| ownership nor governmental control is ideal, the best
| outcomes are by cooperative organizations where those
| with a direct stake in the commons are the managers.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _I 'm not sure if I would call them a commons._
|
| I don't understand why not. That's the literal definition
| of a commons in the political economy sense -- a public
| resource everyone can take from freely. (As opposed to a
| public resource that is managed via licenses, auctions,
| limits, etc.) On what basis would you _not_ call them a
| commons, in political economy?
|
| The entire point of the "tragedy of the commons" is the
| tragedy of overfishing, the tragedy of CO2 levels,
| because nobody is in charge of managing it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > That's the literal definition of a commons in the
| political economy sense -- a public resource everyone can
| take from freely.
|
| Part of Ostrom's point is that this sort of commons has
| rarely, if ever, existed. It's a misunderstanding that
| Hardin's work created or amplified. Resources held in
| common are in fact always managed and not "free for the
| taking".
| crazygringo wrote:
| Well if modern-day climate change and overfishing in
| international waters fall into these "rare" examples
| where the concept is true, then the concept certainly
| seems important enough to me. I mean, it's
| _mathematically true_ from a game-theory perspective in
| the first place. I don 't see why you'd want to throw it
| out.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If you go and study the _actual_ history of fishing
| territories, it invariably turns out that they all came
| /come with complex systems for managing yields. There
| wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and anyone could just
| do whatever they want". For example, if you catch fish
| with impunity because there is nobody at sea to stop you,
| you still need to sell them which means interacting the
| people (in some way) close to where you caught them, and
| markets have traditionally been one of the points of
| control.
|
| When so-called tragedies of the commons occur, it is
| invariably because someone has first attacked those
| systems of control to further their own ends. In the case
| of fishing, most traditional fishing communities and
| systems have objected to the arrival of industrial scale
| fishing, but they have been ignored and sidelined because
| of the interests of the owners of those new systems. So
| the problem is not that people/communities cannot manage
| resources held in common, it is that they cannot
| effectively resist power, wealth and greed if and when it
| arrives. But that very inability is also contingent on
| broader political and economic conditions, and is not
| inherent to the fact that the resources are held in
| common.
|
| Climate change may well be the first true example of
| Hardin's original concept of "tragedy of the commons". It
| has a number of properties that traditional resource
| "extraction" behaviors do not share (including the
| invisibility of the problem until it is too late). But
| when people talk about "tragedy of the commons", they are
| typically referring to much smaller scale situations than
| the one(s) that have led us to where we are with climate
| change.
|
| There's also a case to be made, given the remarkably
| early understanding of the consequences of fossil fuel
| utilization and the documented behavior of the companies
| involved, that climate change is precisely the type of
| failure I'm describing rather than the one Hardin did. We
| _have_ systems of control for the things fossil fuel has
| negatively impacted, but people who became very, very,
| very, very rich from their use actively subverted and
| captured them for their own purposes.
|
| I acknowledge that the shift is subtle: from the problem
| being "humans cannot manage resources held in common" to
| "human systems for managing resources held in common are
| frequently not robust enough to withstand selfishness and
| greed". Nevertheless, I think it is an important one.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I guess I don't understand your motive in what you call a
| "subtle shift" of trying to redefine away the concept of
| the tragedy of the commons.
|
| You say 'There wasn't ever "a big sea full of fish and
| anyone could just do whatever they want".' But to the
| contrary, that's basically _always_ been the case.
| Fishing boats were limited by technology and the size of
| their local markets, but once those limitations
| disappeared because of inevitable technological progress,
| then that 's exactly what happened. And we see this
| happening especially with Chinese overfishing today.
|
| You're claiming that supposed "systems of control"
| existed in the first place and then were attacked, but
| that seems entirely counterfactual to me. There was no
| system of control for a problem that technological
| progress hadn't created yet -- humans don't see that far
| enough into the future. And if four countries that border
| a sea want to limit fishing but a fifth one says I'm
| going to overfish as much as I want, well then what do
| you think is going to happen?
|
| I don't see what benefit there is in attacking the
| concept of tragedy of the commons. It's not some kind of
| fatalistic viewpoint of what _must_ happen (which you
| seem to be claiming -- "that people/communities cannot
| manage resources held in common"), but rather a warning
| of what _will_ happen when resources _aren 't_ properly
| managed. Claiming the tragedy doesn't exist seems like it
| would only benefit the people who want to to exploit our
| shared resources. By recognizing its validity, we can do
| our best to create and improve systems of management
| (especially international systems) to prevent the
| tragedies from occurring.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one. When Hardin
| first wrote about it, the message was (and was for some
| decades after it) that holding resources in common is
| doomed to failure and that is why private
| ownership/control of them is a good idea.
|
| Even with your view, there's a subtle shift involved in
| talking about it as an issue of whether or not resources
| are properly managed or not, because the question is,
| quite directly, what is the best way of ensuring that
| this happens?
|
| TOC has been routinely used over the last half-century of
| so to justify the answer to that being "privately owned",
| and reasonably given the name Hardin came up with: it's a
| tragedy of the _commons_ , implicitly not affecting
| privately held resources.
|
| > And if four countries that border a sea want to limit
| fishing but a fifth one says I'm going to overfish as
| much as I want, well then what do you think is going to
| happen
|
| It depends a lot on scale. If country #5 plans to sell
| the fish to countries #1-4, it won't work (or at least,
| it may not work). If country #5 plans to eat all the fish
| it catches and has no effective internal population that
| will be able to gain control over its fishing behavior,
| then ... tragedy.
|
| But notice the key point here: it's not as if country #5
| is ignorant about the situation. Countries #1-4 will be
| quite belligerent in their objections to #5's behavior.
| So the problem here is not that "people just blindly take
| from a commonly held resource and destroy it". It's the
| people (in this case, country #5) _willfully_ ignore the
| social structures in place to protect the fish in order
| to pursue their own greed and selfishness.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Your take on "toc" is a relatively new one._
|
| I don't think so. I'm just regurgitating what I learned
| in political science classes decades ago, and what the
| mainstream understanding still is today in the general
| media.
|
| And what you're omitting is that while yes, the solution
| from the point of view of the political right is
| privatization, the solution from the point of view of the
| political _left_ has always been _more active government
| management /regulation, international treaties, etc._
|
| You seem to be ignoring the entire history of solutions
| on the left, and treating the problem as if it's solely
| an invention of the right. I don't know why.
|
| And with the fishing example, I never suggested country
| #5 was ignorant, or that countries #1-4 wouldn't object.
| I never used the word "blindly". But you're claiming that
| people in country #5 are "willfully ignoring the social
| structures in place" and that's false. There are no
| structures and never were. (Again, see: Chinese
| overfishing.) And you're admitting "then... tragedy" in
| my very example.
|
| So I still don't understand why you're claiming ToC
| doesn't exist, except that you think it's a justification
| for privatization. But you're ignoring it's _also_ a
| justification for regulation and cooperation. Let 's not
| throw the baby out with the bathwater?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What you're omitting is that the solutions to ToC style
| problems already existed throughout time and space _until
| they were ignored /destroyed/captured by selfishness and
| greed_.
|
| Think about it: if I set you the challenge of "come up
| with a regulation model for this fishery" the nature of
| your solutions will be fundamentally different than if I
| set you the challenge of "prevent selfishness and greed
| from overriding the cultural, social and historical
| patterns for this resource use". Depending on your own
| particular political outlook, it is possible that given
| the first problem you would still focus more on the type
| of problem described in the second but that's not
| inevitable at all.
|
| > There are no structures and never were.
|
| Chinese overfishing ... when I look this up, the most
| common word associated with it is "illegal". Perhaps you
| mean the overfishing they carried out in their own waters
| before increasing (and now decreasing) the size of their
| distant fishing fleet(s).
|
| > But you're claiming that people in country #5 are
| "willfully ignoring the social structures in place" and
| that's false.
|
| In reading up a bit more about this (with China being
| country #5), I come across articles with titles like
| "China's IUU Fishing Fleet: ariah of the World's Oceans".
| So I don't think it's false at all.
|
| > But you're ignoring it's also a justification for
| regulation and cooperation.
|
| That's not an unfair point, but what I'm really getting
| at (mostly based on Ostrum's work) is that regulation and
| cooperation have always existed historically, and telling
| the story of ToC-style problems as if they haven't bends
| the solutions in ways that do not reflect the history.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Why do they qualify as 'solutions' in the first place, if
| the 'solution' cannot withstand some percentage of people
| pursuing self interest above all else? (Which has always
| been the case to varying degrees since the first
| organized polities arose ~5k to ~10k years ago)
|
| It sounds more like a hodgepodge of brittle norms.
| underlipton wrote:
| A few days ago, I was watching a video where a man took a
| walk through a Los Angeles park, which was quite run-
| down. Most of the comments were complaining about the
| "junkies" milling about, about how they'd made the place
| dirty and dangerous. I thought this was peculiar, since
| everyone (the idea that they were _all_ drug addicts or
| homeless people was doubtful) seemed to be keeping to
| themselves. The area WAS trashed, but the overflowing
| bins suggested to me that the city wasn 't putting many
| resources towards upkeep. Which itself suggested that the
| order of events was more something like:
|
| >Lax maintenance and poor accessibility (remember, LA)
| made the park undesirable for families to visit.
|
| >"Undesirables" began frequenting the park, as their
| chances of being harassed by police at the behest of the
| families who were no longer visiting was much lower.
|
| So, what is commonly seen as a tragic outcome caused by
| individuals abusing resources is really a matter of
| authorities abusing their prerogative to hold or not hold
| to what could reasonably be considered their
| responsibilities.
|
| For your examples: there are international laws and
| agreements that "govern" (maybe more like "suggest") best
| practices wrt fishing and carbon emissions, based on
| publicly-available research and inquiry. Further, the
| entities causing these issues aren't "free radicals";
| they're mostly formally-incorporated organizations that
| are subject to state regulation and their own policies
| (which, when known by the public through their actions,
| are subject to public pressure - either wallet diplomacy
| or the threat of further regulation). It's a choice for
| the US government to not hold companies accountable, or
| to not ratify, say, the Kyoto Protocol, or to ignore
| studies on fishery health in favor of placating the
| fishing industry. Same for every other country. And every
| country has some ability to influence others through the
| shape of their relations. I suppose you could exclude
| pirates.
|
| Tragedy of the commons assumes that individual actors
| haven't bound themselves together by some kind of
| expectation or obligation. The most authoritative version
| of that is government, of course, but you can have lesser
| agreements. In those cases, it's not merely a matter of
| individual entities abusing resources, but of flaunting
| self-imposed "management."
|
| ^This is the most important part of this comment, sorry
| for taking a while to get to it.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > This matters because the "tragedy of the commons" concept
| has been used to suggest (successfully) that communities
| cannot manage commonly held resources, which is false.
|
| This is not my impression. I've always heard "tragedy of
| the commons" invoked precisely to advocate that commonly
| held resources must be regulated.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The concept of "toc" is used to claim that you must have
| regulation otherwise you get a tragedy. The historical
| reality is that we have almost always had regulation, and
| tragedies happen anyway because the regulatory process is
| not robust enough in the face of greed and selfishness.
| jart wrote:
| TOC is used to claim that spaces should be owned.
| Bureaucrats will only protect a space insofar as it
| allows them to get their palms greased before leaving
| office. An owner on the other hand has their incentives
| aligned with both the space itself and its future.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Generally the textbook commons are resources which are
| not easily divided up into private ownership, like large
| bodies of water that feed a large number of people via
| fishing. Of course in some cases new technology can
| enable privatization of previous commons.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > An owner on the other hand has their incentives aligned
| with both the space itself and its future
|
| This is absolutely not reflected in the history of
| resource extraction in the United States. Time and time
| again, companies have become owners, begged to be trusted
| because their interests are "aligned", only to destroy
| the resource, and frequently the communities around it,
| and then move on.
|
| The version of game theory you're imagining an owner is
| playing (unbounded, repeated interactions) is not the
| version played by the companies that have taken ownership
| of so many resources on our planet.
| jart wrote:
| Could you give me three examples of what you're talking
| about? Are you saying like someone owns a coal mine and
| destroys the coal because they dug it up and sold it? Or
| do you mean more like they blew up the mountain to get
| the coal, to save money, so now the mountainside is less
| picturesque?
| jart wrote:
| I saw what that type of community management looks like at
| Occupy Wall Street. No thank you. Yes, it was people like
| Bloomberg who were scheming to bus criminals into the park.
| But if that weakness hadn't existed he would have never
| been able to exploit it.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There are literally hundreds if not thousands of examples
| of community managed resources throughout time and space
| that are more long lasting and more positive than Occupy.
|
| Just in the part of the world where I live, but inherited
| from the Arabic world via Spain, are the acequias of New
| Mexico. Contrary to US law, they hold water to be a
| communical resource, and are managed at the community
| level, typically with an individual elected to be the
| "majordomo" who make decisions about allocations but is
| constantly subject to input from and being overridden by
| the community itself. When acequias "go wrong" (i.e.
| there are water shortages), it is typically caused by
| some combination of:
|
| 1. an actual water shortage
|
| 2. poor decisions on the part of the majordomo
|
| 3. someone stealing from the system
|
| What it almost never is: a "tragedy of the commons" as
| described by Hardin et al.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Often there is a fairly large delta between what they pay and
| what the sell for, I always assumed part of that premium was
| absorbing some risk the item was stolen and would have to be
| returned. Under this system, why not buy stolen goods and try
| your luck?
|
| "Oh hello guy who looks like he sleeps rough, I would love to
| buy your thousands of dollars worth of power tools that you
| can't even tell me what they are for pennies on the dollar."
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's outrageous that pawn shops don't have to eat the loss in
| California. They have no incentive to check for stolen items.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agree. Around here bike theft is a huge problem and none of the
| pawn shops will deal with bicycles at all, it's too risky for
| them.
| treflop wrote:
| Don't buy insurance from the same company giving you the service.
|
| Insurance is for you and you should pick it from your own choice
| of company and you should tailor the policy for your own needs.
|
| Same with financing.
|
| In my case, I get a lot of my insurance from a guy in my town and
| he has an office that I can walk into if I need help.
| tim333 wrote:
| I tend to avoid the insurance and just pile up the money I
| would have paid to cover the losses. Depending on the type of
| insurance. But theft insurance tends to be problematic. The
| fraudulent buy expensive stuff, keep all the receipts, sell the
| stuff for cash to a friend and then claim on insurance with the
| proper paperwork. Normal people tend not to keep and file away
| all paperwork and lose out.
| treflop wrote:
| Although it's a little more complicated, generally if you can
| cover a loss out of pocket, then you don't need insurance.
|
| Insurance is for losses that will have a major impact on you.
| It's putting a price on risk.
| wjnc wrote:
| Insurers do notice that small claims (in P&C) are a
| relatively small part of claims + cost so most don't offer
| the high deductibles. As a bonus, with higher deductibles
| come relatively more lawsuits. So safer to only offer low
| deductibles. (My experience after 20 years in the sector.)
|
| In my country a family perhaps pays about EUR5k total a
| year for two cars, health, house and the assortment of
| legal and liability insurance. That is quite modest (not
| for all income classes though), since there are
| catastrophes possible in nearly any avenue of life. A
| minimalist insurance scheme would save one about EUR2k/yr.
| That just isn't that worthwhile utility wise.
| accrual wrote:
| Right. If I accidentally crash my vehicle into someone's
| property (or worse, someone) I don't want to be out of
| pocket for potentially 100s of thousands when I could just
| pay my sub-$100 premium and not worry about it.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| How to with rental cars?
|
| I don't own and no local insurers will offer me non-owner
| insurance. I have to get the crappy expensive insurance at the
| rental car desk.
| BrentOzar wrote:
| > How to with rental cars?
|
| Some credit cards like American Express offer their own
| insurance as part of the membership fee as long as you pay
| for the rental with their card, and decline the coverage
| offered by the rental car company.
| eurleif wrote:
| This is typically (including in the case of AmEx) collision
| insurance only, not liability insurance. You still need
| liability insurance from somewhere.
| dylan604 wrote:
| When I canceled my insurance after going carless, I was told
| that there would be a lapse in my coverage causing my rates
| to increase. So naturally I asked why would I cover a car I
| no longer own. Apparently, there is a type of insurance that
| covers you as a driver of other cars. Of course there is.
| Going on 4.5 years now with no insurance payments. It's been
| glorious
| maxerickson wrote:
| If you do regularly drive other cars, it can make a lot of
| sense to make sure you have a liability policy that will
| cover an incident (vs assuming that the coverage on the
| vehicles is appropriate for you). Not sure why you'd be
| bothered/dismissive that you can access a sensible
| financial product.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It was less about me driving (I don't drive since going
| carless), but more about here's a way for us to keep you
| on a monthly payment for a service you no longer need to
| avoid "lapse in coverage". That's like telling someone
| they will have a lapse in their homeowner's coverage
| while they are renting.
| Dove wrote:
| There are companies that will sell you rental car insurance
| as a standalone policy. Google "Rental Car Insurance". Last I
| was dealing with this problem myself, the policies were
| something like half the cost of what the rental car place
| wanted.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Many credit card companies offer insurance when you rent
| using them.
| HFguy wrote:
| There are yearly policies you can get if you just rent cars.
| GEICO has them for example
| nytesky wrote:
| In general isn't the consensus that storage units are a very bad
| deal for "storage". It can be useful for temporary storage for
| bulky items like furniture when renovating your house or in
| between houses, but the fees would quickly accumulate and pay for
| almost any reasonable contents.
|
| If the fees wouldn't cover replacement of the contents within 6
| months, they are too valuable to store in a storage unit.
| crazygringo wrote:
| If you don't have space in your apartment or home for items you
| want to keep, then where else are you supposed to store things?
|
| Obviously it's up to you to figure out if it makes financial
| sense. But for people in urban areas with small apartments, it
| can be a _heckuva_ lot cheaper than upgrading to an apartment
| with another bedroom.
| toast0 wrote:
| > If you don't have space in your apartment or home for items
| you want to keep, then where else are you supposed to store
| things?
|
| On ebay? Sell the stuff now, buy it again if you need it.
| Doesn't work for everything, of course, and I don't practice
| it, I've got tons of space and tons of clutter.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I believe other people are using any such storage as a
| cache, trading space for time, since even if you instantly
| found the exact replacements, you'd still pay not only
| monetarily for shipping but wall-clock for both shipping
| and the drudgery of searching for said items
|
| Interestingly, I read a blog post where someone was using
| "fulfilled by amazon" as off-site storage, but I think it
| was a pseudo thought experiment more than an actual storage
| solution, similar to those folks who use data-as-video on
| YouTube as infinite backup storage
| crazygringo wrote:
| So you're going to sell your surfboard and buy new ski
| equipment every winter, and sell your skis and buy a new
| surfboard every summer? As well as the rest of your bulky
| seasonal gear?
|
| Sounds expensive.
| dpifke wrote:
| Not to mention the time value of haggling on Ebay,
| dealing with scammers, etc.
| crazygringo wrote:
| And wasting all that money on shipping and sales tax with
| each transaction.
|
| Because yes, you have to pay sales tax on eBay, even for
| used items that already had sales tax paid on their
| original retail purchase.
| nytesky wrote:
| Surfboards mounted on the wall are a common decoration,
| so there is off season storage.
|
| You can rent skis for a season for $400, I suspect most
| rental places are than $100/month.
|
| But skis especially can usually fit in the back of a
| closet or under a bed.
|
| Kayak? Get a season pass for the rental place.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I think you're ignoring the point that if you want high-
| quality gear, it's cheaper to buy it outright and store
| it off-season.
|
| And the kinds of people who live in places where they
| don't have room to store a surfboard year-round, are the
| kinds of people who don't have a bunch of wall space for
| one either.
|
| I think you might not be totally understanding the
| concept of small urban apartments. Putting skis in the
| closet or under the bed year-round doesn't work, because
| your closet and underneath the bed are _already full_.
| (And it 's not just skis, obviously -- it's boots and
| poles and helmet and bulky jacket and snowpants and
| gloves and everything.)
| smeeger wrote:
| its almost as if people really shouldnt live inside glorified
| cubicles... as if they should in something larger. and maybe
| have a space with grass and also a little accessory structure
| with a door large enough to fit a vehicle. such a thing
| doesnt exist unfortunately
| crazygringo wrote:
| My nearby park has tons of space with grass.
|
| And why would I want space for a vehicle when I have public
| transportation that is much faster?
| smeeger wrote:
| so you dont have to rub against a homeless man who smells
| like piss on the train, dont have to be screamed at by a
| crazy homeless person on the train, and so that you dont
| have to rely on tweaker infested, crooked ass storage
| companies for one of the most basic aspects of existing
| in the world.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| Sounds like trains in your area need to have better
| security and ticket checkers.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Those workers couldn't maintain an urban apartment near
| transit, so they are all homeless and too busy with their
| clinic appointments to work.
| 8note wrote:
| "Couldn't maintain" is a weird description of "renting
| urban apartments as Airbnb's is more profitable for the
| landlords"
| rondini wrote:
| Having a preference for large suburban homes is fine, but
| your view of vulnerable people in your community is
| gross. It sounds like you'd rather insulate yourself from
| the failures of your local gov't, which is a privilege
| many people don't have.
| PhilipRoman wrote:
| >dont have to be screamed at by a crazy homeless person
| on the train
|
| This was a great reminder of how differently public
| transport is perceived in different places. Don't recall
| the last time I've seen someone (much less a homeless
| person) scream there, maybe once >10 years ago? (for
| reference, I commute by public transport every day)
| kjs3 wrote:
| He's probably never been on public transport.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Please let me introduce you to the insanity of UK house
| prices...
| bluedino wrote:
| True, but it's just another one of those illogical things
| people do.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| You could apply the same logic to the stuff inside your
| house, which is just a glorified storage unit. Why are you
| paying premium to store that stuff, when you could downgrade
| to a studio apartment or a tent?
|
| The bottom line is, if you want to own stuff, then you must
| store it. You know what is more expensive than storage?
| Buying stuff you need or want and reselling it, again and
| again. Or leasing it in general. Some stuff has poor resale
| value, takes a lot of energy to choose and accumulate, and is
| not easy to replace.
| immibis wrote:
| It would be illegal to live in a tent.
| wakawaka28 wrote:
| Even if it was legal, most people wouldn't like that.
| nytesky wrote:
| Well, when you are writing an apartment, people do
| generally go for the cheapest smallest place they can
| afford.
|
| But when you're buying a place, you're looking to have
| isolation from shared walls, and generally a larger
| property will appreciate more in value than a smaller
| property With some limits in both directions up and down in
| size.
| dpifke wrote:
| When I lived in a condo in San Francisco, I had a storage unit
| for my camping and outdoor gear. The alternatives would have
| been: a) buy a new tent/cooler/propane stove/etc. every 2-3
| months, or b) not go camping regularly. I absolutely did not
| have room to store a kayak at home, and my neighbors would have
| been annoyed with me dragging muddy/dusty gear through the
| communal hallway to my unit.
|
| When I left SF, I spent about 18 months traveling before
| permanently moving in anywhere. I did the math on "cost per
| cubic foot to store vs. cost to replace" then, and
| interestingly, furniture and most housewares didn't make the
| cut--except for a few sentimental items. An unexpected bonus of
| instead donating that stuff to Goodwill was that when I moved
| into my new place, I got to outfit my kitchen with much nicer
| stuff than what I had previously accumulated.
|
| (Now I live in the Midwest and have a garage for the outdoor
| gear, which in addition to vehicle storage, also doubles as
| machine/metalworking/woodworking shops.)
| roland35 wrote:
| What a story! Most people probably would just give up. Dealing
| with storage units is why I try to eliminate all the extra
| "stuff" in my life... George Carlin had a great bit on stuff:
| https://youtu.be/MvgN5gCuLac
| bluedino wrote:
| An acquaintance of mine was stealing big-ticket items from a
| storage unit. Campers, boats, etc.
|
| Of course he eventually got caught. The insurance company had
| already paid the owner of one of the campers, so it went to
| auction, and he bought it. Kind of funny.
| bko wrote:
| The indifference of this by everyone involved is infuriating.
| This criminal activity is treated as natural as rain, just
| something us 98% of people have to endure.
|
| It's important to remember that accepting crime, especially low
| level crime like this is a policy choice. It's the same people
| doing the same crimes over and over. They have run ins with the
| law and they just get let go to continue terrorizing the rest of
| us.
|
| For instance, the number of state prisoners that have had 15 or
| more prior arrests is over 26%. You can cut crime. You can just
| prosecute these people and take them out of society for their
| most destructive years (18-40) and we can end this madness.
|
| Even a 15 strikes and you're out policy would make a huge impact
| on the quality of life for the rest of us
|
| https://mleverything.substack.com/p/acceptance-of-crime-is-a...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The US already incarcerates vastly more people than most
| comparable nations. And yet this level of incarceration does
| not seem to have had the effect you want.
|
| It seems that you imagine that the crime is somehow intrinsic
| to the current group of people committing it, and that by
| removing them from society, their behavior would not recur.
|
| While there are arguments for this sort of thing, it is also
| based on a wilfull misreading (or no-reading) of what we know
| about the reasons why people commit crime at all.
| bko wrote:
| Explain to me why someone that's been arrested 15 times
| should be let go to terrorize others.
|
| That person that has been arrest 15 times before cannot
| continue to commit crime if he's behind bars. You don't need
| to "read" the data to come to this conclusion.
|
| People commit crime in large part because they can get away
| with it.
|
| It's not complicated.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| That's not really the issue though (and for the record, I
| agree that a person _found guilty_ of what they were
| arrested for 15 times should be incarcerated).
|
| The problem is: why is this person doing this, because
| there are at least two outcomes:
|
| 1. we lock them up, and a part of the problem is gone
|
| 2. we lock them up, and someone else steps in to do the
| same thing
|
| From my perspective, there's ample evidence to suggest that
| #2 is more likely, and thus even if locking them up has
| some moral weight behind it, it isn't likely to be a
| solution to crime in general.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >and for the record, I agree that a person found guilty
| of what they were arrested for 15 times should be
| incarcerated
|
| but you know damned well that most of the time it doesn't
| even go to trial. they're arrested, released, arrested,
| released, charges pressed, charges dropped; an endless
| merry-go-round. eventually people stop even reporting
| crime, why should they bother when the criminals don't
| get put away?
|
| >From my perspective, there's ample evidence to suggest
| that #2 is more likely
|
| why? this is like the "lump of labour" fallacy but for
| crime.
|
| and yes, getting rid of just a few career criminals does
| disproportionately reduce crime. here's a funny natural
| experiment from ireland:
|
| https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/crime/number-of-
| burgla...
| bko wrote:
| There's only so many people that are criminally
| predisposed. The org doing bike thefts will stop if the
| penalty is high enough. Singapore has low crime because
| they prosecute aggressively. No one seemed to fill in for
| arrested gang members in El Salvador (extreme example)
|
| Then there are the crazy person punching an Asian lady on
| the subway crimes and these fall squarely in 1
| maxbond wrote:
| You've blinded yourself by othering them. "There's only
| so many people criminally predisposed" - that may be
| comforting, but it's too naive to build a policy around.
|
| 100% of people would commit crimes under the right
| circumstances. As an extreme example, 100% of us could
| sustain a life changing head injury that renders us more
| violent and aggressive than we were before, and that
| could happen at any moment. The most kind and timid
| person you know could turn into a monster if they fell
| down the stairs. _You_ could turn into a monster if you
| fell down the stairs. The only thing you can do to stop
| that from happening is to protect your head, it doesn 't
| matter how good or virtuous you are presently.
|
| You can't incarcerate your way out of crime. An eye for
| an eye makes the whole world blind.
| snozolli wrote:
| _100% of us could sustain a life changing head injury
| that renders us more violent and aggressive than we were
| before, and that could happen at any moment_
|
| Then I should be imprisoned if I present a threat to the
| public. I don't understand what your point is.
| maxbond wrote:
| If you think that there is a distinct group of people who
| commit all the crimes (as was suggested), and we can
| solve the problem of crime by locking all of them up,
| than you are mistaken. Or rather, that group is
| "everyone."
|
| It's an easy trap to fall into for two reasons. It would
| appear that you and those you know aren't capable of
| being criminals. This is more comforting than it is true.
| Everyone, including good people, has the potential to do
| something horrible; the problem of evil isn't that it's
| present in a certain group who we can imprison, the
| problem is that it's present in us all.
|
| The second thing which makes "lock them all up" a
| seductive proposal is that it's cynical. Cynicism can
| feel like the opposite of naivete, so it can feel like
| you're being clear eyed and realistic about the situation
| and that the people you disagree with (say, prison
| abolitionists) are naive bleeding hearts. But cynicism is
| actually just another form of naivete. It's making the
| same error - blinking while staring into the abyss - with
| different aesthetics.
| dimensi0nal wrote:
| > Everyone has the potential to do something horrible;
| the problem of evil isn't that it's present in a certain
| group who we can imprison, the problem is that it's
| present in us all.
|
| But some people are actually more predisposed towards
| criminality than others. We aren't blank slates.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The extent to which criminality (or any particular human
| behavior) is driven by circumstance or "nature" is (and
| for millenia has been) a matter for considerable debate.
|
| It's clear that both contribute, which is important
| because that means there are neither "ur-criminals" nor
| "not-criminals". While some may, by their nature, be more
| likely to commit a certain type of crime, none are free
| from the possibility of doing so under some
| circumstances.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Then I should be imprisoned if I present a threat to
| the public.
|
| The problem with this is that's it is extremely easy for
| people to define "threat" in ways that are convenient to
| them or that support their prejudices, a la _Reefer
| Madness_.
| snozolli wrote:
| _we lock them up, and someone else steps in to do the
| same thing_
|
| Crime isn't an internship program.
| immibis wrote:
| You don't have to commit a crime to be arrested. You just
| have to do something the police don't like - like holding
| up certain signs in a public space.
| bko wrote:
| Read the study
|
| > 73% of the prior offenses are violent and 80% are
| property related (obviously non-exclusive)
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > why someone that's been arrested 15 times should be let
| go to terrorize others
|
| First, correct the assumption that multiple arrests mean
| you're just living your life "terrorizing" society. Perhaps
| start with using words that are objective and neutral, not
| just to fan the flames of passionate rhetoric.
| _dain_ wrote:
| >The US already incarcerates vastly more people than most
| comparable nations
|
| because it has vastly more crime than comparable nations. you
| have to look at what happens to crime _in the US_ over time,
| when you are more or less stringent about jailing criminals;
| predictably as you fill the jails, crime goes down, and when
| you empty them, crimes goes up.
|
| >It seems that you imagine that the crime is somehow
| intrinsic to the current group of people committing it, and
| that by removing them from society, their behavior would not
| recur.
|
| people try to smuggle this false premise into discussions
| about law and order all the time. the primary purpose of jail
| is not rehabilitation, it is to protect the public from
| criminals. you put them in jail so that they can't commit
| crimes. if they commit crimes when they leave, put them in
| jail again. jails mostly don't rehabilitate criminals, but
| that's a failure of the idea of mass rehabilitation, not a
| failure of mass incarceration. crime is a choice.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| we incarcerate at a higher _rate_ per capita, not just in
| absolute numbers. based on your apparent view of things,
| that ought to result in less crime per capita, but it does
| not.
|
| > more or less stringent about jailing criminals
|
| is quite different than "fill the jails, empty the jails"
|
| Quite a bit of research on the effect of deterrence on
| crime seems to strongly suggest that it is the level of
| certainty of being caught and punished that has a deterrent
| effect, not the severity of the sentence. This would
| correlate with "more or less stringent about jailing
| criminals".
|
| > the primary purpose of jail is not rehabilitation, it is
| to protect the public from criminals
|
| This is a statement of belief, and there are people who
| believe otherwise. I don't have a strong position either
| way, but I don't like people asserting that their opinions
| are self-obvious truths about the world.
| dimensi0nal wrote:
| The comment you replied to is talking about
| incapacitation, not deterrence.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Independent of any discussion on deterrence or
| incarceration's purpose, I think you misinterpret parent
| point as being about absolute numbers, but I read their
| point as per capita crime rates being higher, and thus
| per capita incarceration rates are as well being
| downstream of a population committing higher per capita
| offenses.
|
| America has measurably larger underclass than, say, EU
| measurable in absolute and per capita terms across
| metrics like offense rates, incarcerations, income
| equality, education...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If incarceration is always "downstream" of per-capita
| crime rates, then it presumably has little effect on the
| upstream causes of crime.
|
| And yes, the US has a larger underclass than the EU,
| which just might have something to do with why we have
| more crime, no? And if so, increasing incarceration rates
| is not likely to help much, is it?
| 9x39 wrote:
| I think I see where the discussion frequently diverges on
| these threads - you're pointing out that incarceration
| does not appear to decrease offenses, while myself and
| others are pointing out why more incarceration is an
| outcome (desired, if we're being opinionated) of more
| offenses.
|
| I think you're onto something in calling your point out,
| but at the same time, it's daring commenters to ask you
| what any society's response to crimes should be.
|
| Rather than be coy, I'll stick my neck out and claim
| incarceration is about optimizing for outcomes among the
| peaceful/orderly middle and higher classes. We don't have
| to worry about the philosophical question of why crime
| occurs, or whether incarceration will work overall, it
| works well enough to deflect crimes away from certain
| locally policed areas and demographics and that flawed
| approach is good enough to keep the unkind, leaky system
| going.
| _dain_ wrote:
| _> incarceration is about optimizing for outcomes among
| the peaceful /orderly middle and higher classes._
|
| Actually I focus more on protecting the peaceful/orderly
| _poor_. Poor people are overwhelmingly law-abiding, but
| they suffer from the overwhelming majority of crime. On
| the other hand it 's mostly naive rich people who
| subscribe to these theories that put the blame on
| everyone except the criminal, and they most of all can
| afford to insulate themselves from the predictable chaos
| when those theories are put into practice. Poor people
| don't have that luxury.
| smeeger wrote:
| american style incarceration breeds criminals. it isnt a form
| of punishment for the vast majority of people who end up in
| prison or jail. its details like these that bleeding heart
| people gloss over.
| 8note wrote:
| The US incarcerates lots of people, but how many are
| imprisoned for things that aren't crimes? You could drop all
| the folks imprisoned for stuff like driving while black, and
| make space for organized theft rings
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| One of the costs of low trust society is it forces everyone to
| think short term. You can't save if your money will be
| inflated. You can't collect if it will be stolen and no party
| will take responsibility for protecting it.
|
| "But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither
| moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
| through nor steal"
| hotspot_one wrote:
| > the number of state prisoners that have had 15 or more prior
| arrests is over 26%
|
| So one reading of this statistic is "incarcerating people turns
| them into criminals"
|
| which suggests that maybe the better way is something else than
| locking people up and giving them a black mark which prevents
| them ever getting a viable job?
| smeeger wrote:
| he gives a list of things to do or consider. supporting laws and
| politicians that catch and punish criminals effectively is
| somehow not on that list...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What laws do you believe would be more effective a catching and
| punishing criminals?
|
| AFAIK, there is reasonably clear evidence that deterrence has a
| very low impact on this sort of crime, so laws based on
| deterring through fear-of-sentence would not seem to be likely
| to have much effect.
|
| What is it that you're proposing/desiring?
| samatman wrote:
| Theft is an organized crime.
|
| That tweaker/junkie who steals your bike, breaks into your
| storage unit, whatever? He's not an organization man. The
| dude with a standing offer to pay twenty bucks for the bike,
| or ten if it's shitty? He's with an organization.
|
| What I propose is that we start _enforcing the law_ and treat
| theft as a crime, not a nuisance or fact of life. Roll up the
| organizations, toss them in prison, and repeat over and over
| until the message gets out.
|
| This isn't a problem which can be solved at the tweaker
| level. What we can do, and simply choose not to, is get every
| single dude with twenty bucks or a baggie to trade for your
| bike. All that's lacking is the political will.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| What's also lacking is any evidence of any kind that this
| would have the effect you desire.
| immibis wrote:
| Really? You want to make it illegal to buy a bike for $20?
| Ask the Soviet Union how well price controls work.
| samatman wrote:
| This comment is manifestly made in bad faith.
|
| I want the police to arrest, and DAs to prosecute,
| organized theft rings. Someone with several stolen
| bicycles is not a small businessman, he's a fence, and
| should do several years of time.
|
| It is in fact quite easy to tell that person apart from
| the guy who bought a bike on Craigslist and oops, turned
| out it was stolen.
|
| You're pretending this distinction is unclear to you, and
| insinuating that I'm proposing Soviet price controls. In
| reality, you are perfectly aware of the distinction and
| know that I'm not. That is arguing in bad faith.
| smeeger wrote:
| deterrence works. when i moved into my house it wasnt quite
| finished. i had soent a few years building it. neighborhood
| is ok but tweakers are walking around all the time. they walk
| around everywhere because they can, and to case houses. the
| people here think like you. they just let it happen. tweakers
| had stolen a lot of materials and a few tools from me at this
| point. so when i moved in, for some reason they decided it
| was a good time to try and break in. it was one guy, i caught
| him trying to get in the window. grabbed my pistol and
| confronted him. he ran away but i kept after him. he was so
| scared that he dropped his bag and begged me to confirm for
| myself he hadnt stolen. so i let him go and my neighbor met
| up with me outside my house. both openly displaying our guns.
| the getaway car rolled by, you could tell because it was
| tweakers and when they saw those guns their jaws dropped.
| like i said, this hood is ok but infested with tweakers. not
| after that night. not a single instance. not a single person
| casing houses.
|
| people like you always cite "evidence." your evidence is
| nonsense. studies that are deeply flawed an not applicable.
|
| what do i suggest? first of all, actually enforcing laws that
| are already on the books. is theft really punished or are
| these people getting away with it so often that it might as
| well be legal? and when they do get caught its a slap on the
| wrist or even a nice little vacation with four hots and a cot
| because jail and homelessness is literally normal for these
| people. i suggest punishing people severely and immediately
| for crimes that arent victimless. i suggest allowing people
| to defend themselves. and i suggest that people actually take
| ownership of their communities and drive out scum. the west
| coast does the least of these things in the country and look
| at the results. portland has a higher violent crime rate than
| mexico city... take your bleeding heart nonsense and shove
| it. and dont reply, if you want to hash this out then give me
| your twitter handle and we can have a space about it
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I see. So a few anecdotes, handwaving dismissals of a
| century or more or crime and sociological research, and a
| suggestion to move to Twitter.
| peppermint_gum wrote:
| > AFAIK, there is reasonably clear evidence that deterrence
| has a very low impact on this sort of crime,
|
| Could you share some of this evidence?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| first result from google come for "effect of deterrence on
| property crime"
|
| https://www.house.mn.gov/hrd/pubs/deterrence.pdf
|
| second result, summarizes and links to several review
| papers:
|
| https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/five-things-about-
| deterr...
| peppermint_gum wrote:
| Then I'm not sure what you mean by "deterrence". Both of
| the linked articles argue against increasing the severity
| of punishment, but they also say that the certainty of
| getting caught is a strong deterrent.
|
| This doesn't seem to be in conflict with what the GP said
| ("supporting laws and politicians that catch and punish
| criminals effectively"). It seems to me that many people
| have a problem with thieves not being punished at all.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Most of the people I have read or heard advocate for
| "more effective handling of crime" are much bigger on the
| severity of the sentence, though I don't deny that many
| will mention both. The "N strikes and you're out" angle,
| for example, is all about the severity of the sentence
| once you reach N.
|
| New HN commenter "smeeger" whose subthread we are in
| seems close to favoring violence as punishment for
| relatively minor crimes, for example.
|
| Still, yes, things that significantly increased the
| likelihood of being caught and punished do seem like a
| good idea, and do not require sentencing being changed.
| dimensi0nal wrote:
| Incapacitation, not deterrence? If someone is in prison, they
| can't reoffend.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| We already have the highest incarceration rates in the
| developed world - I'm not sure that more people in prison
| is the right solution.
| hansvm wrote:
| I think there's precedent for shipping them to Australia.
| It probably costs less to taxpayers, and it doesn't even
| harm Australians since our thieves are less dangerous
| than their spiders.
| underlipton wrote:
| Because outsourcing parts of our economy to Pacific
| countries has worked out so well in the past.
| Carrok wrote:
| Please provide a list. Keep in mind you yourself added
| "effectively" as a criteria.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| The items he listed have extremely direct impact on YOUR
| ability to reduce theft. You just suggested something very
| broad. I might make the point that punishing criminals
| effectively will potentially reduce overall crime, but has no
| direct reduction on the crime in the article. It would be very
| hard to show any law which specifically targets the type of
| crime OP posted about, but I'm open if you have seen
| legislation proposed or enacted which targets this crime in a
| major city.
| UberFly wrote:
| Property crime is so far down the list on police priorities.
| Criminals know this. Soft on crime - even if it's due to lack
| of resources and is "only" property crime - means more crime.
| underlipton wrote:
| The only effective way to deal with property crime during
| or after the fact is with increased surveillance. The
| success of Meta Ray Bans may make the decision for us, but
| until then, it's fair to point out that this is, in fact, a
| conversation about how much freedom we want to give up for
| security.
|
| It seems more effective and less intrusive to deal with the
| upstream socioeconomic causes of crime (too much
| inequality, not enough opportunity, an overemphasis on
| materiality and consumption, and an underemphasis on
| community and expression).
| immibis wrote:
| Politicians who claim to be tough on crime are usually just
| tough on black people and drug users, which helps nobody.
| immibis wrote:
| Easy to say "never use a storage unit" when you have a long-term
| home.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The key takeaway I think people are overlooking is that there's a
| level of intelligence and persistence in thieves that make
| physical security an intractable problem with exponential cost
| scaling as you patch "holes."
|
| So from a systems approach, the better solution likely is
| something like:
|
| Employ and provide safety for the people stealing from the units
| so they do not feel compelled to steal.
|
| Imagine if the money spent securing these things, which is a
| multiple of this persons efforts, were spent on solving the root
| cause? Sounds like a better return on investment
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Imagine if the money spent securing these things, which is a
| multiple of this persons efforts, were spent on solving the
| root cause? Sounds like a better return on investment
|
| The root cause is social inequality of various kinds (including
| drug dependency). That should be something for society to
| resolve, not a burden for storage unit or home owners on their
| own - short of automated guns, there's not much any individual
| can do to keep out thieves.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| You're partly conceding that this level of corrupting and
| mistrust is just what we have to live with. It has not always
| been this way though.
|
| Side note. If I also accept it this is why cryptocurrency being
| able to reduce the cost of securing a transaction is still
| interesting to me. When you use a bank you don't see the army
| of night guards, vaults, auditors, and IT people keeping it
| safe.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| On the other hand, I hear a lot more about crypto wallets
| getting hacked than I do checking accounts at large banks.
| tightbookkeeper wrote:
| I'm just saying that aspect has appeal, not that you should
| bank with bitcoin.
|
| Of course, you don't hear about internal bank problems
| either.
| Dove wrote:
| Physical security isn't an intractable problem, but effective
| security requires expensive expertise and maintenance. The cost
| of good security is why you keep your spare couch in a self
| storage center but your jewelry in a safe deposit box.
|
| In theory, a well designed security system at a self storage
| center could be good enough to deter thieves relative to the
| value of what's stored there. In practice, the fact that owners
| pay for the security, insurance pays for break ins, and
| customers are supposed to evaluate the whole mess leads to a
| lot of naivete and show and not a lot of effective solutions.
| Show me a self storage place that guarantees you against the
| loss of your stuff and I'll show you a storage place with
| effective security. I'll also show you one that's more
| expensive that the competition and doesn't have much to show a
| consumer to justify the surcharge.
|
| Looking at self storage places locally, they all seem to
| compete on price. When I eventually found one that seemed to be
| competing on security, it was 50% more expensive.
| istjohn wrote:
| The storage unit industry is one of the most awful, customer
| hostile industries I've encountered. It's impossible to get the
| local facility on the phone, publicly listed phone numbers are
| all redirected to a national call center where reps are unable to
| even accurately quote prices. TFA covers the insurance kickback
| scam. Then after I moved into my unit, I discovered 75% of the
| units in my facility could be broken into with zero tools because
| the padlocks provided by the facility had enough slack in the
| shackle that if you rotated the lock 90 degrees there was room
| for the bolt to slide the half inch needed to clear the bolt hole
| in the strike plate. Then there was the rodent infestation.
|
| The paradox is that the monthly cost of a unit will quickly
| exceed the value of whatever is stored there unless the items
| have sentimental value or are very expensive. In TFA, their
| losses from theft was $500 and their insurance limit was $2,000.
| Within two years they would exceed that in rent payments on the
| unit. A Google search suggests the average storage unit tenancy
| is only 10 months. That's reasonable. Long-term storage only
| makes sense when the value exceeds what can reasonably be
| entrusted with the lax security of a storage facility.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The paradox is that the monthly cost of a unit will quickly
| exceed the value of whatever is stored there unless the items
| have sentimental value or are very expensive.
|
| This is a tough one to manage psychologically, although it's
| almost certainly also true of nearly anything you are storing
| in your own home. The difference of course is that home space
| is bundled inflexibly--you usually don't have the option of
| paying 2% less for 2% less space.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That's why it isn't true of your home. The cost of storing an
| item in your home (assuming you didn't buy a bigger house
| just to store the thing) is 0.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Not actually zero. Closets stuffed full of stuff means more
| time wasted trying to find what you need and more time
| spent finding a place to store a new item.
| s0rce wrote:
| But you could downsize if you didn't store so much useless
| junk! I'm guessing billions in Bay area real estate is
| storing junk.
| tshaddox wrote:
| My point was that you could try to think of your storage
| unit as if the size and monthly cost of your home _was_
| more flexible, i.e. you _can_ just pay 2% per month for 2%
| more space.
|
| When you chose your house there were presumably several
| options with different amounts of storage space at
| different price points. You could just treat the addition
| of a storage unit as increased granularity between those
| housing options.
| ebiester wrote:
| I think there are three use cases:
|
| 1. You are temporarily moving to a place outside your local
| area, or to a much smaller place. I was moving around for a
| year and a half, so I left my furniture and non-valuables in a
| storage unit until I would be settled again.
|
| 2. You live in a small unit in a big city. $100-$150 for an
| extra 50 square feet a month might be cheaper than the
| equivalent space and is a great choice for occasionally used
| items. if it's 4 dollars a square foot for living space or 2
| dollars a square foot for storage space, that's a deal.
|
| 3. Short term holding: You're moving out of your rental in
| July, in AirBnbs until September when you've closed on your
| house.
|
| If you're in a suburban house and don't have enough space,
| that's a bad reason to have a storage unit.
| mycall wrote:
| 4. Liveaboard who wants to keep some stuff on land just in
| case a boat sinks.
| FartinMowler wrote:
| Wow, that's a somewhat rare edge case. Let me see if I can
| beat that (hold my beer): 5. Astronauts for Boeing
| Starliners who are not certain when their return flight
| will be.
| s0rce wrote:
| I've used them in situation 1, my lease was up in current
| city and I had a new place in the new city so needed to move
| but the new job was paying for the move but it wasn't
| organized yet. I just put everything in storage and left the
| key with a friend.
|
| For situation 3 I was able to leave stuff with family but I
| would have paid for storage again. I lived in a few furnished
| places for a year.
|
| I plan to use it again for situation 2 when my free storage
| situation ends. My place is tiny and I can just store
| something in the facility next to my office for cheaper.
|
| They have their place. The argument that people pay more to
| store something then the value probably applies to all the
| junk in people's homes/garages. Must be billions in real
| estate in the bay area storing old junk.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| I could also see seasonal storage for things that you might
| not want to leave outside for 1-2 months a year.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Sometime the storage places are not what they seem. Some are
| really about doing something with the land until its value goes
| up, hoping some developer will buy it the future. That is, it
| just has to be a low effort to pay for some management and
| property taxes, while waiting for the value to go up. They
| won't bend backward to "satisfy" customers, so speak.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Nothing gets broken into in Texas, when everyone has a gun, no
| one fucks around in the dark. Just sayin'
| fragmede wrote:
| I can see how you want to feel thats true, but the stats don't
| seem to say that's true. There's plenty of car theft and
| burglaries happening in the state, page 37 and 38.
|
| https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/crim...
| malshe wrote:
| You hope you simply forgot to add "/s" at the end
| araes wrote:
| So many of these stories sound like some JRPG.
|
| Your reward for being such a diligent and highly achieving
| collector ... is the thieves target you preferentially. "You
| gained a Torture++ Level, Congratulations!"
|
| You spent so much effort solving the last burglary, and chose
| such a highly secure location ... that now the thieves view your
| collection as a high level challenge.
|
| ... and are immediately notified of the available achievement.
| Some Prison Warden voice announces "There's a griefer, diligence
| punishing achievement available in Borg sector # of #." Their
| thief tools immediately 0-Day, exploit, jackpot, lottery level up
| to be better than your facility.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| My ex-wife demanded that we store some awful, terrible wicker
| furniture after a house move, so I put these cheap monstrosities
| into a $40/month storage unit in a semi-desolate area of town.
| The unit was broken into three or four times but the thieves
| didn't do me the favor of actually stealing anything. On the last
| break in I contemplated just leaving them a note with $20 inside
| pleading with them to just take the damned things.
| wgrover wrote:
| Your post reminded me of Mark Twain's very funny short story
| "The McWilliamses And The Burglar Alarm":
|
| https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story...
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