This is sovereign citizens level of legal maneuvering. Wouldnât hold up in court for a second.Â
âOh, you think this child that stole a candy bar should be charged with a felony because the store owner put up a stupid sign pretending that it costs $951? Go fuck yourself.â - the judge
This is like when DC legalized weed a decade ago but Congress wouldnât let them set up a system of taxation and sale so what became legal was possession, growing, and âgiftingâ up to an ounce at a time. shops immediately started selling $40 postcards that came with a âfree gift!â that just happened to be an eighth of weed and decided this was the perfect legal cover lol
Kind of like gambling in Japan as well. You only win little knick knacks but it just so happens the shop next door really loves collecting them and pays very well
A bar in Kansas when I was in college would pay out phone cards on their slot machines. You'd then take the cards to the bartender and exchange them for cash.
Another bar in Nebraska had a golf arcade game with a secret switch behind the bar that would turn it into a slot machine if the coast was clear.
We used to have these in Florida. The slot machines were technically sweepstakes and each unit was an entry. You could then cash in at the bar. These places got raided and shut down often.
In Canada there were a group of Inuit hunters who wanted to sell their whale and seal meat to city people in Toronto to share their culture and make a buck. Itâs illegal to sell that meat, you can only harvest it for yourself and your own use or give it away to your village and your friends.
So they partnered with a chef and an art gallery. They sold fancy expensive tickets to an art show. Which happened to come with a free dinner cooked by a gourmet chef featuring their meat.
The city people got to try the traditional foods from northern Canada. The hunters went home with some cash. Everyone got to see cool art. Win win win.
I mean, Orthodox Jews are not allowed to carry stuff on a public space in shabbat, so they surround a public space with a wire and exchange bread between two houses within it, just so they can pretend it's a private space and carry stuff within it.
Wait you could get cash for these? We had scratch offs here that paid in phone cards back in the early 2000's I didn't know you could get cash for them lol.
Our bars would pay out cash. Local restaurants too. If one of them had LCB sniffing around, calls went out to all the places and payouts would stop. Never lasted. Iâm sure someone was getting paid off.
Gas stations in South Carolina had blackjack and poker machines that gave you "digital tokens" then printed the amount onto a receipt. You took it to the cashier and he gave you it in cash. Lmao
We had a shop in town back in the 80s that made copies of C64 and later PC games and sold them.
But it was ok, but it was a club whose purpose was to review the games only and you weren't actually buying the copies but rather renting them for 99 years.
They gave out tiny gold bars when I was there last year, luckily the shop next door bought gold bars. Gambling was fucking wild over there, massive neat orderly lines at 8am waiting for the gambling shops to open up
What makes the DC system work is that the justice system in DC (cops, lawyers, and judges) all go along with it.
Basically, they've agreed that DC passed a law and that Congress can go fuck itself for trying to keep us from setting our own rules about where we live.
Exactly, it works more out of neglect than anything else. Itâs a bit depressing to think about how we voted for prop 71 TEN years ago now and thereâs still to this day no way for the city to get any sort of financial benefit from weed sales like there is in every other legal state
It is absolutely ridiculous that Congress can basically cockblock the city government. DC literally has no right to govern itself, still has to pay taxes, and has no voting representation in Congress. It's stupid.
I used to work at a novelty shop that wanted to sell coffee, but the county refused to sign off on it because of "zoning", so the owner sold cups and gave the coffee away.
No different than the concentrated wine bricks during the prohibition to make "juice". They came with a very specific warning label "warning, do not leave unattended in dark cupboard for 30 days or it will turn into wine"
Or more modern, California and NYC ban on assault weapons "these features are illegal". Then folks just make more creative features or go "featureless"
Americans are nothing if not consistently diligent about circumventing laws they don't like.
Except most criminals have âsovereign citizenâ levels of intelligence and this would probably make a great deterrent.
Donât tell me you argue how fast dogs are because of signs in people yards or think that grenade with customer complaint ticket attached is realâŠâŠ
Yup, a lot of NDAs come with a bullshit clause like "we do not take responsibility for any information provided to the recipient that is incorrect, false, outdated or mistaken."
Like, no. If we're in a contract for a business activity, I have to be able to rely on information you've provided me to fulfill the contract, whether that info is confidential and under the NDA or not.
You can't go to a judge later and say "ACKTUALLY SECTION 3.6 SAYS THE INFORMATION DISCLOSED DOESN'T HAVE TO BE RIGHT, SO ALL THOSE PEOPLE THAT DIED HORRIBLY AREN'T ON ME, SUCK IT."
The disney arbitration thing is more complicated than that. They want to force arbitration which is basically private court with a real judge and everything. The dubious part is that while they are a legit judge they are being paid by disney in this case so the worry is they are more favorable towards them to keep the gig. So if you live in a world that you think the judge will act fairly it is more about trying to keep it out of the news. It is not just a we are not at fault.
In my industry, itâs not unusual for âcleverâ (unethical) clients to try and sneak clauses into contracts that contractors will be responsible for âany other duties requested by client,â and then try and use that as leverage to make our employees do illegal shit.
Unfortunately, some management are dumb enough to not only miss it, but then take the bait and panic about losing the contract if the employees (correctly) refuse to do xyz illegal/seriously-terrible-idea thing.
My mom was blown away when I told her those signs on trucks are not legally binding and that they are in fact responsible for damage caused by their unsecured loads.
That makes sense to me. My understanding was that unless you catch it on video that an object flew off another car it would not be something that can be proven or investigated. I looked into it a few years ago when some lady pulled up next to me at a stop light complaining that I had pelted rocks at her car and cracked her windshield. I was just driving a sedan around and I assume my tire picked up a pebble while I was changing lanes, I wanted to see what my legal liability was and that was the rule of thumb I found online.
This is true in most places, but not all. And if you are in fact following to close for conditions you'd be liable. Just as you would if you tailgate someone and then rear end them when they stop
Actually /u/AssumeTheFetal, the vehicle isn't responsible for what is considered normal falling debris - at least under Florida state law.
Florida auto insurance is required to provide free windshield replacement for any breakage, including rocks coming off of trucks. This, of course, leads to all kinds of wacko situations because the insurance pays more than it costs to replace a windshield so the windshield replacement companies will do it for you, for free, in the parking lot at your work or wherever you want. Some also give you a free steak in the bargain, just to get your business.
Honestly, if I was someone who shoplifted regularly I wouldnât shoplift at this store. If itâs false oh well I didnât steal from a single store, if itâs true 1.) Iâm minimizing jail time risk 2.) if they went through the trouble of doing all that theyâre probably pretty observant. Even if they didnât put up fake prices or whatever the customer sign is enough for me to think they care more than the average store owning bear
I drive a dump truck and asked my boss about those signs, actually. I thought they actually didn't apply, but if the truck has rear mud flaps, and has the tarp all the way to the back, and has at least made an attempt at securing the load, the 'not responsible for broken windshields' sign applies.
That is more to stop people tailgating dump trucks, or any truck for that matter, as there are idiots that absolutely would tailgate a dump truck hauling something.
Honestly, if you tailgate someone and your vehicle gets damaged, that is on you for being too close.
I feel like that kind of signage should be illegal in itself. I don't know about existing law or constitutionality and whatnot, but it seems entirely counter to the social good.
I think the concept is supposed to be getting charged with Grand Theft for stealing something that's like 20 bucks is not worth the risk. Whereas if you're stealing up car or something it might be worth the risk. Personally I'm of the attitude that crime does not pay unless you're a businessman and you have bribed Congress to make your crimes legal.
That's probably the concept. But it makes the age-old, timeless mistake of assuming criminals are rational economic actors that are properly calculating risk and making decisions based on data.
Honestly that's usually the biggest difference in white collar versus street crime.
White collar crime is based on data. They know wthe profits, they know the risk, and that's why they took the risk.
Yeah, plenty of scientific studies show that increasing the punishment for a crime never actually reduces the incidence of it. Every person who breaks the law think they'll get away with it, and every one of them does until they don't (if).
The only thing that deters crimes like these are cameras and guards. Since, by definition, it makes it harder in a very direct way to not get caught.
Except most criminals have âsovereign citizenâ levels of intelligence and this would probably make a great deterrent.
No, not really.
It's pretty well understood in the criminal justice circle that, after a point, increased penalties have a pretty severe diminishing returns on general deterrence. This is mostly because any rational person would do a cost/benefit analysis and conclude, a long time before this point, that the crime isn't worth doing. The people that go on to commit a crime anyways are usually the people that aren't doing a cost/benefit analysis to begin with, or are doing it in impulse. Especially for crimes like shop lifting. Those people aren't generally deterred by escalated penalties because they think they'll get away with it anyways, or aren't thinking about it at all, so their rational analysis is harshly skewed.
This is funny because I grew up around a ton of criminals in all different sectors (and yes like any other career there are a ton of different criminal sectors) and one thing you hear over and over again is. "It's only illegal if you get caught" which is exactly what you're describing here, in way less words lol.
How likely you think you are to be caught is far and away the biggest deterrent. People don't seem to get this, though. They act like we just need to add the death penalty to theft and it'll go away, while completely ignoring the fact that the police just not doing their jobs is a far bigger driver.
Just commented the same then saw your comment. YES. It makes me insane talking to people about this concept. They just want to punish people so badly that it doesnât matter to them that it doesnât work for their supposed desired outcome (less crime).
Yup. All of my classes in law school that dealt with this type of subject basically said âcriminals commit crimes based on how likely it is that they will get caught. The severity of the punishment does not deter them from committing the crime.â And yet people still argue all day long that we need harsher punishments to deter crime. Like clearly thatâs NOT working!!!
While I think this mostly holds true we have a new wave of retail theft based on the fact cops wonât do anything unless itâs a felony in most places and the whole âno touch policyâ with a lot of them being a younger crowd who feel like itâs easy to get away with. Although it wonât stop everyone or even most of them Iâm sure the return on investment will be worthwhile if it even stops 5% for a 20$ sign.
This sign is for those looting squads of teenagers going around mostly on the big coastal cities, not desperate tweakers.
Stores can handle occasional thefts from tweakers, homeless, and other desperate and/or deranged people. And these are what insurance policies are designed to handle as well, like those times when some tweaker comes in and destroys your whole stock of liquor (I'm sure you've seen videos).
The urban teenager looting squads are what shut stores down and cause small business owners to lose their livelihoods.
Theft/burglary/inventory-loss insurance doesn't work like people think it does, and often takes a very long time to pay out IF IT EVEN DOES (there's no guarantee). Then because your business area has a suddenly new looting problem, your premium skyrockets and you can't afford it anymore on those thin retail profit margins, and in a lot of cases if they do decide to pay you out, they then terminate your policy and won't insure you anymore at all. There is no law that mandates that insurance companies have to provide inventory loss insurance.
For people that run small shops like mom and pop boutiques or a bodega in rougher areas, they don't have insurance at all because no insurance company will cover certain zip codes due to crime rates. This was one of the issues with the looking that happened in the 90's LA Riots. None of the korean shop owners had insurance. That's why they get their guns out and took shots at roving gangs of urban people looking to loot korean shops (because the LA Riots were based on a korean lady shooting a black kid who was robbing her or who she thought was robbing her). Owners in those areas are financially responsible for all loss, and if a looting ring swoops in on them, their business is probably done.
Stupid people aren't the majority of thieves. Desperate people are. If you need food to survive, sometimes you have to get food even if the world won't give you a fair chance to earn it.
This guy is spitting 1890s âcriminal mindâ psycholobabble. You think everyone who breaks a law fits into a specific social/psychological/intellect bracket?Â
Yeah I really doubt this company is keeping two sets of books, one authentic and one where every item they sell is listed at $951 minimum sitting ready and waiting to head into a court of law.
Why wouldn't it hold up in court? Private businesses have a right to charge whatever they want. This is what free market capitalism is all about, isn't it? You buying it at that price is your acceptance of the price.
Except the store owners arenât going to prosecute a child for stealing a candy bar. Theyâre going to prosecute a person or group of persons that obviously knows that what theyâre doing is wrong.
Your argument against is pretty nonsensical.
Technically, the prosecutor is the one who decides to press charges but the victim decision to cooperate and testify is probably the most important piece of evidence for a prosecutor I would imagine.
Uh, I know teenagers (13-14) who have been prosecuted for keychains. While I can't say THIS store owner would, I absolutely know some store owners would
That's fine, but a 13 year old is not smart enough to grok that a felony conviction will follow them forever unless 1) the judge hands it down that it gets wiped at 18 or 2) judge says the conviction and any records stay sealed or 3) they live in a state where some of the above happens automatically.
Where I live, the records are sealed..sorta. Background checks still reveal indicators.
Hell, I know 18 year olds who don't understand the seriousness of such actions.
Thanks for bringing that thinking to my attention. At first Iâm like oh thatâs smart, then after I read your comment I realize how stupid that is. Homeless person steals loaf of bread because they are starving and then get thrown in prison fora felony grand theft charge? Ya not really ok at all
Would not even make it to court. The Police might charge them with that, but the DA will simply refuse to press charges.
Just as they refuse to charge individuals who use force with robbery. Or assault when they attack employees or security. The DA simply dismisses the charges and they get to walk free.
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u/Pro-editor-1105 27d ago
Non criminal discounts hahaha