You witness someone stealing food at the supermarket, do you snitch on them?

Society does for the most part focus on catching big fish criminals though! If you check perceptions of safety in Europe, it doesn't actually correlate with changes in felonies like homicide, in the last decades where Germany has seen a reduction in homicide rates, perceptions of safety has lowered substantially as well. It looks paradoxical at first, but it isn't when you think about it. Perceptions of safety in Europe does not track homicide rates, those are really rare to begin with, it tracks the changes in petty crimes that are a lot more prevalent, because that's the type of crimes that the average person is a lot more likely to encounter and color their perception.

It will depend on the details of the circumstance. In general, the harms of normalized shoplifting for the society is greatly understated because often only the immediately present consequences are considered. It's not just "Oh who cares, they have insurance for inventory discrepancies." It also contributes to the undermining of social trust, and living in a low trust society sucks big time.

It adds friction and an extra transaction cost to every facet of society, in the form of more surveillance, more security personnel, more items behind plexiglass, more entitlement fraud investigations, more fare-dodging, more ethnic fractionalization and division, less unsupervised playtime for your children, worse safety perceptions etc. There's very broad agreement by economists that social trust is important for economic growth, and cross country studies also corroborate it.

I would probably overlook it because I am not one for confrontations and also it is not of personal cost to me (a better person than me would intervene in the typical case), but it is symptom of a deteriorating condition.

This is such an obvious honeypot/bait thread. I'm surprised anyone is replying to it.

I respect your viewpoint a lot of course, fleur, but that's not necessarily obvious to me. I think some portion of people are definitely desperate, but as to the portion I couldn't really say. I tried to look into it, and this survey[1] which categorized participants who reported shoplifting, put the plurality of them under Loss-Reactive Type (28%), people who have significant trauma/loss and compensate by shoplifting. The remaining types were:

Impulsive Type (20%), Depressed Type (18%), Hobbyist Type (18%), Addictive–Compulsive Type (9%), Economically Disadvantaged Type (7%)

The sample size is 202, so plugging that to the formula, you'd get an error margin of ±6.9% with a CI of 90%.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31043101/

In the example you gave, I don't think I would say anything. I've witnessed teenagers shoplifting before and didn't involve myself, so what confidence do I have that I would here? I sure hope though that I have the courage to step in when it matters (even though I would argue it always does). I have always despised theft, and even more so vandalism, so their misery is my pleasure.

No, I don't like snitches and I'm not planning to become one, simple as that.

And honestly, your story about the poor mother with her kids really got to me. In a fit of seasonal generosity I'd probably buy them a bottle of vodka and a chocolate bar - let the kids enjoy something, Christmas is practically breathing down our necks.

Funny side note: my son has a friend with a "von" in his last name - very promising young man, dreams of a political career, nearly became Schülersprecher this year (basically the student council head, a decent launchpad for future power grabs). Rumor has it he bought cargo pants with more pockets than principles a week before they introduced self-checkout at the Lidl next to the school. I'm genuinely impressed! Told my kid to cherish this connection - this gentleman is clearly destined for great heights, haha.

It will depend on the details of the circumstance. In general, the harms of normalized shoplifting for the society is greatly understated because often only the immediately present consequences are considered. It's not just "Oh who cares, they have insurance for inventory discrepancies." It also contributes to the undermining of social trust, and living in a low trust society sucks big time.

It adds friction and an extra transaction cost to every facet of society, in the form of more surveillance, more security personnel, more items behind plexiglass, more entitlement fraud investigations, more fare-dodging, more ethnic fractionalization and division, less unsupervised playtime for your children, worse safety perceptions etc. There's very broad agreement by economists that social trust is important for economic growth, and cross country studies also corroborate it.

I would probably overlook it because I am not one for confrontations and also it is not of personal cost to me (a better person than me would intervene in the typical case), but it is symptom of a deteriorating condition.

Hmmm... Weren't you the one who snitched on my thread about DesuMaiden like back in 2024?

@fleurbleue I remember reporting one of your threads, true - not sure which one, though. So what? Happens, just uncommon.

@LoveYourSmile It's alright, it's all in the past… Unless you're one of the killjoys who reported my Jesus thread, in which case I hope you stub your toe.

What happened to compassion over gloating, that doesn't seem very Christian to me. ☹️

This is such an obvious honeypot/bait thread. I'm surprised anyone is replying to it.

@fleurbleue

It's right to desire justice, but I acknowledge my feelings can sometimes be cruel. Please do not conflate the two. Obviously human life is more valuable than property.

But on a related note, when you see a human abusing an animal or the environment, doesn't it make you angry? You don't just want the evil to cease, you want it to cost. Now it gives me no pleasure to see a starving person beaten for trying to survive, but those who steal and destroy for fun? Let them feel the shame of their actions.

@Kwanthemaster Oh, I have nothing but hatred for people who abuse animals and wouldn't mind if they were to suffer immensely, but then again I'm not one to follow Christian precepts much. Don't forget I’m the one who was called immoral for months on end on these forums because I supported Luigi Mangione's actions. I was just kinda surprised at you saying something like taking pleasure in people's misery, since I knew you were quite pious.

@LoveYourSmile It's alright, it's all in the past… Unless you're one of the killjoys who reported my Jesus thread, in which case I hope you stub your toe.

@fleurbleue

Someone reported it?

I thought mods actively check subforums and topics.

Every time a thread gets locked, I die inside.

@thepotatoprince Apparently there was more than one snitch. Kinda funny that I have higher chances of getting reported for my threads than if I were to steal food right in people's faces. 🙃

@fleurbleue

More than one?!

It's probably not because of your threads. Maybe it's about a clash in the past.

But then again, I'm not a psychologist. I'm just guessing.

Unless there are users here who are a stickler for the rules, which is odd.

@thepotatoprince Well yeah, I wouldn't expect anyone to become a snitch if they liked me. I did clash with a number of weird individuals over the last year, from the holier-than-thou to your typical right-wingers, to someone who became bitter and hateful toward me after I didn't do much to reciprocate when they made really poor attempts to befriend me (I may still be kinda responsible for that one).