[ale] [OT] rant - decadence in society - DRM

[David Ritchie]

On Thu, Mar 24, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> On 03/23/2011 10:58 AM, Ron Frazier wrote:
>> Later in the message, I'm going to rant about DRM.  However, first, I
>> want to rant about decadence.  You walk into a Target or Walmart or
>> Costco or ANY store.  You look over your head, there is a camera
>> pointing at you.  You get to the door to walk out, there is a canyon of
>> sensors you have to pass through.  You go bowling, there's a policeman
>> parked outside and officers roaming around in the building
>> continuously.  Heck, you send your kid to a public school, and THEY have
>> cameras, policemen, and metal detectors everywhere.  You go buy a pair
>> of sneakers.  They have RFID tags built in.  Your wife or relative has a
>> baby in the hospital.  They put a bar code on the mother's wrist and the
>> baby's wrist so the baby doesn't get stolen!  (I appreciate the
>> proactive stance by the way.)  You buy a Nintendo / Sony / Microsoft
>> game console for you kid at Christmas.  Someone follows you home from
>> the parking lot and robs you in your driveway and takes the unit.  You
>> go to the thrift store, find that really neat thing you want, and put it
>> in your cart, turn your back for 5 seconds, and someone takes it out of
>> your cart and buys it right out from under you.  60% - 70% of students
>> surveyed say they cheat on tests.  WHY are all these things happening?
>> You might say, because we can.  We have the technology for sensors and
>> surveillance.  These are simply crimes of opportunity.


Camaras in stores are there for two reasons: loss reduction and to
document events related to
slips and falls (a big business cost is people faking falls and suing
retailers, evidently). Huge
problem in grocery stores...

W.R.T. causes (IMO): Increased anonymity and increasing cost of
security personnel and equipment make it less like that people will
not get away prior to the police showing up.

Another piece, IMO, is that there are more and more people who don't
believe in a God. As a result, they are not fearful of divine
punishment. I feel that such individuals may be just a little bit less
restrained in these areas than those people who do worry about such
things. They see more upside than downside - and since the moral
calculation is surpressed and only an economic one remains, there is
less restraint there. A big part of the problem is that societies only
work well when the bulk of people are self-regulating in their
behavior - something that is becoming increasingly less common.

Similarly, people who aren't afraid of going to jail are more willing
to take the chance than those who are afraid. If you are missing
meals, jail may not be such a bad deal. In that vein, the rich have
much more to lose than the poor. Also, once you get the scarlet 'F' of
a felony conviction
on your record, there are a lot of jobs that are simply closed off to
you. Cube that difficulty if the
person was convicted of a sex crime.

-- Dave