There exists a small percentage of men who will go absolutely savage on somebody for stealing from them, and the existence of those people is probably a bigger crime deterrent than the police.
So I say, shine on you crazy air tag tracking vigilante diamonds.
I don't want someone to put razor wire on their catalytic converters so that it slices thieves' fingers off. I do, however, wish to leave the impression with thieves that perhaps my catalytic converter is protected by insanity armor.
When I lived in California I wrapped a bunch of chain around the cat on my truck. Wasn't actually that secure but thieves see a ton of chain and padlocks and go "ehhhh keep moving."
Off topic, but I was very pleased with how easy a catalytic converter shield was to install on my car. It’s normally sold and installed by a dealer, but if you have any semblance of DIY skill it’s straightforward.
You'd think so, but America is the most armed country in the world and most of us have had something stolen. I think the overall sentiment is "I'm like 99% going to get away with this and pawn it for money" and they're right.
The US has a monopoly on people getting unnecessarily violent? That seems like a trope - projecting the stats of a few zip codes onto a very large and diverse nation.
Given the average lifespan is ~80yrs then the average chance you've had something stolen over over say 40 years is much higher than 2%. It's 2% per year so ~45% for 30yrs and 55% for 40yrs?
My point isn't that those number are exact. My point is 2% chance per year expands to a larger number over many years. So saying "most people have experienced theft" many not be that far off. 2% is 1 in 50 but 55% is more than 1 in 2. My personal experience is would be 10 or 11 in 55yrs depending on whether an attempt counts
bike, bike, bike, car radio, car radio, car radio, car, car radio, bike, camera/dashcam/kindle, attempt (broke window to check for loot but didn't find anything). Still cost $$$ to replace window so you could say my window was stolen.
Also I didn't just multiply by the number of years. The probably for 100yrs is 86% (not 100% and not 200%).
For most people, the chance they are a victim of theft (VOT) in year 1 is correlated to the chance they are a VOT in year 2. So the probability that they are a VOT at least once in those two years is NOT simply (1 - (1 - 2%)^2). That formula only works when the two events are independent, like two coin flips.
As an obviously extreme example, imagine a world where 98% the people live in zero-crime areas, and the rest live in places where they are robbed annually.
In such a world, the percentage of people who were a VOT in a single year would be 2%, and it would not rise as you broadened to multiple years. (The same 2% of people would be targeted over and over.)
This is all just a roundabout way of stating the unfortunate fact that some people live in bad areas.
The events are not independent. Maybe the first time you leave your bike outside you learn that it will be stolen, and then you don't do that anymore, reducing your future risk.
yes, and that 2% per year average figure takes that into account. The percent for your life is higher. You got robbed, do something to make it go down, it gets lower. Over the course of the average life, it ends up at 2% per year. It's probably highest around 15 to 25yrs old (have possessions, get robbed, learn to do differently) and lower at the end (except for getting robbed by scams which often target the elderly)
I've had multiple belongings stolen while a grad student on an Ivy League campus, presumably that is not a shit hole but one of the wealthiest areas of America.
So I say, shine on you crazy air tag tracking vigilante diamonds.