Why Is Theft Rising Worldwide?

Theft is on the rise, but not just at American grocery stores. This is even happening at stores in Australia. So I guess the question is, worldwide speaking, what's going on? Yeah, man, look at the headlines. Recently in America, it just went viral because San Francisco Safeways are implementing a high-tech exit door where you have to scan your receipt to leave the store. Obviously, this is a very expensive system that Safeway is implementing to curb shoplifting. Shane has added new security measures at stores around the Bay Area. And Donovan shows us the changes designed to slow down shoplifters. You have a good day. Thank you. You as well. Have a nice day. It's almost like the BART fare gate. Scan a receipt, the two glass doors slide open. Safeway shopping gates, including the Mission Street store in the Excelsior district. Yeah, no, I mean, shoplifting is running rampant. It's chasing out a lot of stores. There's even a store in New York, a Rite Aid that closed down because they were losing like $2,000 a day. I actually think they closed 300 of them around America due to shoplifting primarily or poor performance. Some combination of the two. And it's not just from grocery stores and corporations. Even people, a lot of cars are getting stolen. IKEAs were getting stolen because people learned how to hack them. And then there was a lot of car parts that people are stealing. So I guess there's just a lot of stealing nowadays. And so I guess the question is, is like, what's going on, guys? This is not just an America problem. The headlines are global, Andrew. Australia's supermarket giants, high-end Canadian grocery stores. Andrew, we're talking about from petty to fetty. When I say fetty, I mean whatever Fetty Wap did or didn't do. And Grand Theft Auto, of course, guys. Let's get into it, Andrew. Let's be honest. There is a stew of factors, right? A lot of people always want to point out the carrots or the beef or the spices. But guess what? In a stew, Andrew, they're all stewed together over time. Yeah, I guess when you're watching this video, you can think about how would you rank the factors and what are the biggest reasons for this. I think one reason is, in my opinion, is that people don't mind stealing from corporations. The whole Robin Hood idea. V for vendetta. Yeah, because they're like, corporations have been stealing from us. All they care about is shareholders. They're jacking up prices. They don't care about the regular people. I'm just going to steal. Number two, it is the prosecution of crimes and petty theft. Obviously, in San Francisco, a lot of people were stealing up to $950. As long as it was under $1,000, you pretty much couldn't do anything, right? Right, right. So then, obviously, people were stealing a lot of stuff. And then security guards can't chase people down. It's a liability. All this other stuff. And then, also, I think on my list is that I think social media, there's a lot of information out there on how to steal. And it's kind of like, cool to steal stuff now. Are you referring to the Kia Challenge? I mean, that was one of them. And then, I think just like, I'm sure if you dive deep enough on any platform, there's probably, you know, hacks for everything. I think there's something to the social media angle because there's so many people flexing, Andrew, whether that's legitimate gains, fake gains, or illegitimate real gains that they've gained through whatever, scamming, you know, crypto schemes, you know, NFTs, you know, OnlyFans, Sugar Baby, selling courses, stock options with high-risk volatility. And those people seem like they're having a good time. Whether or not, like, we don't know the reality, but they're flexing on everybody else. That's going to send a signal in a more macro sense to the population. Like, oh, these people are getting all this money doing these things. Why not? What's a petty crime in comparison to that? No, you're right. And at the end of the day, people can rationalize it saying, oh, what, I stole 50 bucks from this corporation. Who cares? I got what I needed. And then, also, I'm not going to lie. There's a whole black market on reselling grocery store items. You think people are just stealing a whole bunch of, like, medicine from, like, Rite Aid and Walgreens just for themselves to use because they got a headache? No, they're going to resell it. Right. Absolutely. Let's get into the comment section, guys. Keep it civil. Let us know what you think in the comment section down below. Right now, is shoplifting or petty crimes or just theft an issue in your city right now? I mean, let's be honest, Andrew. It's big enough that we got to cover it. This comment said, listen, people are trying to steal food. Instead of making food cheaper and more accessible to those people, companies pay more to securitize the food and not give food security to the people. In the most expensive region in the state of the country, no less sickening. So this is sort of like blaming it on the machine and the system saying, listen, the system made people insecure, so they're trying to secure their diets by doing something illegal, right? For sure, man, especially with inflation and the prices rising at the grocery store. Like, man, I do think something needs to step in. I'm assuming it would be the government to help push down some prices, especially in the cities that need help. There is macro downside pressure on the poor demographics in America, right? Dude, if you're poor and you're not making any more money at your job and then eggs are getting more expensive or 30% more expensive, that's cutting into your life. But of course, Andrew, there's a lot of valid arguments against this as well. And somebody from SF said, and people wonder why SF is going to ish. Look at this comment. Basically saying, like, so what are you saying? Like, just because it's bad, everybody's going to break the law and the whole society is going to fall apart. Right, right. It's definitely, I mean, I don't think either comments solve anything. They're just different perspectives. Somebody said, would you open your own market and then practice what you preach by just giving away everything that you worked hard for? Obviously, this person is taking more of the perspective of a small business owner themselves, a small market entrepreneur. I do think that in general, there's just a lot more distrust in the big systems that usually were running the country like behind the scenes. But now there's so many documentaries or so much conspiracy theories and so much information about how they run. And then so you almost get to know a corporation better and therefore you feel less bad about stealing from them. It's true. Somebody said these thieves are driving up the prices and causing stores to close. Yeah. So here's another thing. It is true. If you steal enough from a store, that store is probably going to close down eventually. And then there's no store there. So now you're hurting that community. Maybe you're not from that community or maybe it is your community. But either way, if you steal from a store in your community and that store shuts down. Somebody said, but there are still plenties of agencies that give food away for free. There's the EBT. There's et cetera, et cetera. It depends on what state and county you're in. But there are multiple programs to solve this. This other person came back and said, get off Capitalism's D. Just because it didn't screw you guys or your groups or your families as much, you guys will never understand. I do think I am aware. I don't know how prevalent that the free food is. But I'm pretty sure the other side of it is the black market that people want to resell stuff on. Right. No, you see it in. Let's be honest. In New York, people getting a bunch of Ferrero Rochers and going straight to the. Let's be honest. The old Asians, they like Ferrero Rocher. They selling it on the low. It's definitely it's weird. Yeah, there's a there's a market for it, though. Yeah. I mean, like you said, like you can just put stuff out on a blanket nowadays if you're in like a certain big city. Right. But like we said, people got bad situations that they're going through, too. I have a lot of empathy for that, too. Somebody said, but these grocery stores made so much money during covid for the execs and the shareholders. Well, this goes sort of goes back to what you're saying. You're not just saying like disconnected from corporations. People literally see that those stocks or those valuations went during a period where that's the only place you could buy from. Somebody says you guys would have no idea what it's like until you are in that situation. Yeah, I mean, I do. I do think that's true. But I guess what's the solution? Somebody said, let's just make it life harder for everybody because we won't prosecute crime. How about a thousand hours of community service? And someone said, let's be honest. In 2023, nobody cares about the community anymore. Somebody says, well, these will be everywhere soon. Like basically people are saying this is just going to encourage new technology to come into play. Like people are basically going to put up these high tech doors and spend more money to secure. Those Amazon go stores where you just pick an item up and then it scans and then you buy it as you walk out. That's going to be more prevalent. Yeah. Somebody says, yeah, man, it's all about Japan. How come we can't have our moral fiber like Japan? Yeah, the classic. Why can't we be like Japan, dude? And then somebody said, do you know what the Japanese did in World War Two? And someone said, yeah, they were really evil in World War Two, but they still didn't steal. That aspect of morality is just or violation of morality is not part of their nature. That's really funny. I saw this one quote from the former U.S. Labor Secretary, and he said, follow the money. The story is clear. Food corporations are using inflation as a cover up to jack up prices. Yeah. Now, is inflation real or is it is the other grocery stores jacking up the price too much? How do you feel about your grocery store where you live? You know, like, do you feel like the prices have been going up? And then, of course, Andrew, you get the comment. This is only in the Democrat state. Only a Democrat state would allow the whole city to just fall apart, turn into Gotham. Yeah. No, I'm pretty sure people are stealing probably from in every state in America. Yeah. I mean, long story short, man, Andrew, aren't a lot of things a reason pizza and the reason pizza or pie has different slices? Just like any sort of pie chart that they give in any sort of company presentation. Yeah. You know, just like I don't think you're ever going to like slow down innovation of new technologies. And I think a lot of people, when they get new technology, they use it to just commit crimes more efficiently. But now what's going to happen is that you're going to be using technology to up their surveillance, up the security doors, up that whole like the whole concept of the Amazon go where you're already your cards in once you walk in. And then anything you walk out with, you already bought. Andrew, I believe the New York MTA is trying to think of a better turnstile to stop people from stealing subway fares. Yeah. Listen, everybody at the end of the day, the more people that want to steal, the more security measures there's going to be. And do you think walking into a grocery store, David, in 20 years from now, it's not going to be the same, man. Andrew, let's take it back to Kant, the philosopher. Andrew, has the social contract been violated? Yeah. I do think that there has to be some type of reconciliation between like the regular people and the corporations. And I'm not like against capitalism, obviously. Right. You know, I'm along with it. But at the end of the day, it's like, yeah, man, like the government, corporations, everybody's got to do a little bit better because everybody's basically just acting crazy. Right. Because the corporations are trying to squeeze the consumers, the consumers, they're feeling like very rebellious. And it's not good for either side, to be honest. Right. I think, honestly, this is my big takeaway that I think is going to happen. I think, like you said, we're going to be moving more towards higher tech things, delivery. There's going to be a point, Andrew, where delivery is cheaper than going to the store. You know why? Because they're not going to have to deal with any loss of slippage or theft. Right. And they're not going to need to deal with overhead costs. Right. So, actually, they're going to lower the price online. So, even with the delivery, it's still cheaper than you going to the store and buying it. Yeah. If you think about it, a few less people are shopping at grocery stores because now you got GoPuff and all these other delivery services. I mean, it depends on what state you're in. But there's like a hundred of them. Right. And then those stores, those warehouses don't get raided and stolen from like the public stores do. So, it's really, actually, man, those public stores, unfortunately, are really paying the cost right now, man. And I'm sure they're big corporations. Obviously, I think like the CEO is eating fine. But if they lose enough money and people lose jobs, that's just going to create more people without jobs. And then it could be just a cycle. Yeah. Also, you know, what's interesting about America, Andrew, is there could be theoretically increased surveillance with, you know, obviously the progress in AI. But that's also potentially going to go against some American ideals or at least the way a lot of people interpret American ideals. So, I guess in your guys' opinion, knowing all this or having this conversation, what do you think is an actual possible solution? Is it just who will vote the Republicans in? They'll solve everything. I don't think that's necessarily true. And then I'm also like, okay, so I guess, is it just make food cheaper? Okay. How do you make food cheaper? Yeah. I'm with, you know. Dude, I went to Canada. They got these like really cheap. I don't know if they're government subsidized stores, but because you know how the exchange rate with Canada, like they're very cheap. Yeah. Like they push this like government orange juice down to like $2 for a big two liter. I saw it with my own eyes. I was in Canada. Because obviously, that's more, they have a different system in regards to capitalism, right? So, anyway, guys, pros and cons of every package. Just like I always say, man, any NBA team, always pros and cons to every offensive and defensive scheme they run. Let us know what you guys think in the comments section below. Where are we headed? What can be done? Keep it civil. Until next time, we're the Hot Pot Boys. We out. Peace.