A Fundamental Failure

Property rights are human rights.

Shrinkage.

No, not the George Costanza variety, but rather the retail industry term for losses due to shoplifting, employee theft, employee error, and other improper human activity.

Back in my restaurant days, we had the occasional dine-and-dash, scam artists, employees giving unauthorized free stuff to customers, cashiers "snuffing" checks or pocketing cash from the till, and kitchen workers stealing food. We managed as best we could, and took measures, and fortunately kept those losses down to a tolerable level.

We were able to do so because we had law enforcement on our side. Customers who refused to pay would get the "pay or get arrested" choice from police, and while we never had a theft big enough to prosecute, the option (and threat to prospective crooks) was always there.

I cannot fathom being in that industry if the law enforcement apparatus didn't have my back.

Yet that is exactly what's happening in some major metropolitan areas in the country. Police have been handcuffed by new laws that downgrade low-level theft of property crimes and by district attorneys that won't prosecute, and store owners are faced with a horrible choice: take what few measures they can to slow shrinkage and raise prices on their products to offset their expenses and losses, or give up and shut their doors.

In New York, retailers are locking everything behind plexiglass and key. In San Francisco and Portland, retailers large and small are closing their doors.

Even in the smallest-government forms of social order, a social contract exists between citizens and government: the protection of individuals' rights. We cede power to central authorities in exchange for the promise and duty to act as our proxies in protecting us from aggression and transgression. Rather than living in an anarchic chaos, where defending our selves and our stuff is up to us, we set up structures so that such defenses are conducted in an orderly and rational manner by proxies, aka people employed by government and led by representatives we elect.

Protection of individuals' rights is as fundamental a job of government as can be. In a free society, where I am not a slave to the State, the fruit of my labor is included in my assortment of rights. In short, property rights are human rights.

What we are seeing in this "progressive" adjustment of non-prosecution of minor crimes such as shoplifting, turnstile jumping, and other "minor offenses that have no impact on public safety" is an abandonment of that most fundamental of government duties. Masked as "reform" of a system that has treated some unfairly (yes, reforms are needed, as I've blogged many times, but these aren't them), they can only be viewed as a side-door approach to wealth redistribution, when they are not overt pandering to certain voter blocs.

Why is shoplifting tolerated? Some will say "the shoplifters can't afford to live otherwise, and the businesses can afford it." Some claim "they only shoplift because the system and the nation keep them down." Some come up with other excuses, as or more vacuous and absurd.

Some argue the problem is overstated, exaggerated by law-and-order types who are masking their own bigotries and racism. I say, when a store spends real money on putting plastic guards on its products, and major retailers are shutting down locations, such deflections fail the reality check. Business owners don't spend their own money without cause.

Yes, there are ways to improve law enforcement and prosecution. Yes, the existing system has flaws and problems, and yes, we incarcerate too many people. We need to understand that "crimes against the State" must be sorted from "crimes against others" in such reforms. Shoplifting falls into the latter category, and failing to prosecute it is not only a dereliction of a core duty, it's a social corrosion that will erode the structures a functioning society needs to survive.

And, yes, there are people who want* this corrosion, because they want* our liberty based society to collapse. Those people would have no power if we didn't elect their proxies.

Some may be reminded of "broken windows policing," which produced significant improvements in crime, but infringed the rights of many in its implementation. We mustn't fall into the trap of binary thinking. Yes, it is possible to prosecute crimes against others without infringing on individuals' rights. Prosecuting shoplifters is a good thing to do. Stop-and-frisk based on the thinnest or most contorted of justifications is not. Removing laws against victimless crimes from the books would be good as well.

Then there's "policing for profit." In its various forms, it remains one of the things that governments have not* abandoned. Ticketing and fining people for minor offenses "against the state," such as minor traffic infringements, dirty yards and other picayune code violations, civil asset forfeiture, and so on fosters the adversarial relationship between police and communities, but you don't hear many politicians or prosecutors eager to give up that revenue stream.

The message is pretty clear. It's OK for private-sector business owners to lose money to theft, but messing with the State's revenue stream is a big no-no.

Does this all sound upside-down to you?

Yeah, me too.

Failing to protect property is a human rights violation.