Lot of these comments are weird.
I’m fortunate enough where if someone stole my car, its not the end of the world. I work from home. I can afford to pay for Uber or public transportation. My life is mildly inconvenienced.
Where my buddy works two minwage jobs. Steal his car, and he’s going to struggle a lot. I helped him when his car was in the shop, and he was a mess.
And yet commenters here are going, “Poor car thief what a victim of circumstance.” While also totally cool with him fucking over others? Your empathy is fascinating.
The criminals here are the billionaires who created a system where you friend has to work TWO minimum wages job to barely get by. Don’t defend a broken system, eat the billionaires!
The criminals are also the car thieves, making their own class struggle more.
I’ve stuggeled plenty in my life as well, yet I’ve never stolen anything. I hate billionaires and I also hate car thiefs. Don’t be a douche.
What I think he’s saying by that is that we can keep having car tiefs arrested but they are the simptom not the problem.
So or we keep bashing on the consequence or we go after it’s origins
I’ve stuggeled plenty in my life as well
And this is relevant because your past experiences and current context are both universal and everybody’s life is the same as yours, so therefore if you don’t do X, then anybody who does is stupid, ugly, bad and wrong. Because if you wouldn’t do it, then literally nobody can have any reason for it
Sometimes? I mean on this server’s local it’s not so bad. But on lemmy.world’s default? Ho. Le. Phuc. I can’t imagine being a young teen and not having the wisdom I do to discern what’s really happening in the world and just going along with the memes. Talk about a ruined person.
why? it’s a conversation about the impact of theft. Theft is wrong and should be punished and shunned, but the only real solution is to attack the causes of crime, otherwise it’s whack-a-mole.
Why is it a bizarre take to say “instead of just plugging the hole the water is coming through, we should also fix leaking pipes causing the flood?”
(note italics to denote caring about several things at the same time, I think its weirder to assume crime has only one cause and one solution: the perpetrator)
Both can be true. People see his humanity, he’s not willing to put this baby in a bad position. He may very well be a victim of circumstance. But for all anyone knows, the people he stole the car from could have replied on it just as much. I know I’d never financially recover from that and I wouldn’t have a lot of empathy for the thief, but that doesn’t mean the situation isn’t nuanced.
he’s not willing to put this baby in a bad position
Probably because he didn’t want to get charged with child kidnapping. How much worse did this child’s life get because their parent’s car got stolen? “Sorry son, we had $8,000 started for you to go to college but someone stole our car when you were younger and that’s not something that you can bounce back from in this economy so you’ve got to take out loans.” Fuck him and fuck people who steal from their own class.
I make decent salary and recently my old car was hit while parked and the insurance totaled it. Those thieves paid me the bluebook, which is about 2/3rds of what it actually would cost to buy that car again, if I could even find one similar. I could likely wait a month and buy back my own car after repairs for that new price too. The insurance company probably made money out of the deal.
I figure the payout must be about the same for having the car stolen. So honestly, if anyone wants to steal my car just let me know and after you hock it for parts or whatever we can split the proceeds and the insurance payout and maybe we’ll both get ahead.
But barring the magical coming of universal solidarity, I can confirm that it sucks ass to lose your car even for the relatively stable and well off.
Yeah we used to hang horse thieves for a reason. Losing transportation can be a family destroying event, or even a death sentence.
There was a passage near the end of The Road where the child calls the father a murderer for robbing someone, but the father said he didn’t actually kill the man.
Yeah the thief is clearly an awful person. The parents are also bad. The only character in this story that deserves empathy is the baby as he will be doubly harmed by having awful parents who just suffered a dire financial set back because of the actions of the thief.
That being said it is easy to commend the thief, even though we shouldn’t, because we automatically have that empathy for the baby and disdain for the parents for being so irresponsible.
I really don’t think an “awful person” would give two fucks about the baby. It sucks he feels like he has to steal cars but that alone doesn’t make him awful and the fact that he was so concerned about the baby supports the claim that he is NOT awful
He is stealing from the baby. If he cared about the baby he wouldn’t steal from its family. He doesn’t want kidnapping charges, that doesn’t mean he cares about the baby.
If someone steals my yet to be paid in the next 2 years car, I am going bankrupt for the next 7 years. I plan to sell it once it gets paid, then buy another one. If it gets stolen, I have no perspective and financial conditions in buying a car again just by saving money.
Car dependance is a hell of a drug. The fact that urban design can put people in poverty like that is a wild idea.
professional have standards
Most people who do small crime like this do so because of the material pressure capitalism puts on them. The actual evil criminals are the few privileged ultra rich people who steal unbelievable amounts from the public despite already having way more than enough, like Trump, Bezos and Musk for example. Those are the real criminals.
When my parents got their car stolen, the robber used it for a joy ride and proceeded to crash it. I don’t disagree that there are other places to put blame, but car theft I don’t think is as financially motivated as something like stealing food or catalytic converters.
In my book stealing a car is a small crime. We are not talking about stealing the horse of someone who’s life depends on it in the old west but just a piece of Detroit trash. So no matter how a car fetishistic law system sees it, I still consider it a small crime.
The system might suck ass, but having your car stolen isn’t a small fucking inconvenience. Many people who get their car stolen are one big event, such as having their car stolen, away from being in serious financial trouble. You can lose your job because you can’t get to work. I know a contractor who had his truck stolen with all his tools in it. He was basically fucked. We’re not always talking about someone having their third BMW stolen. It’s often easier to steal a beater car than a fancy one. Fuck car thieves. You’re defending poor people stealing from people one incident away from being poor themselves. If we were talking about stealing from rich people or big businesses it’s one thing. Stealing cars is likely hurting individuals who may or may not themselves be economically distressed.
There are plenty of things to hate about capitalism but that doesn’t justify this their causing actual harm to real people. We can sit back and forth and discuss theoretical harm that the system causes but in the real world, we are forced to participate in it and should try reducing the actual visible harm caused by a thief stealing this family’s likely most expensive possession.
If you have ever been curious why socialists don’t win election and why people cling to punitive reactionaries, It’s because ideology being put above pragmatism by so many leftists. If I’m struggling antiwork and fuckcars rhetoric on social media don’t pay my bills. So we are never going to get the support needed to reform the system if we justify violence against the people forced to participate in it.
“I’m a car thief and I think you’re garbage. Maybe reevaluate your fucking trash lives.”
Sounds like he’s not a bad dude just a guy who’s struggling in life and doesn’t know what else to resort to.
i actually stole this image from Reddit r/madlads
A lot of people are agreeing that he did it only so he doesn’t take kidnapping charges
honestly very sad way to see the thing
To be fair, kidnapping doesn’t have a minimum duration before it becomes legally applicable; he already kidnapped the child the first time he drove off.
E. If it wasn’t clear, my logic above is why I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt on that one small facet of this interaction.
My understanding of US Law isn’t great, so take this with a grain of salt, but for a kidnapping to occur doesn’t the accused have to do it willfully and wrongfully?
I’d gamble it’s because being a thief is different from baby kidnapper. Not all criminals are the same. I don’t expect a jaywalker to murder me.
That part doesn’t seem that sad. It seems normal.
The sad part is that they are saying that he would do both crimes if able
