I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you implying that shoplifting should not be punished? Wouldn’t lack of enforcement or punishment for wrongdoing only lead to more wrongdoing? Isn’t the well-accepted viewpoint on this website that if the cost of violating a law is lower than the profit, that is what companies will do. What makes you think people won’t make the same calculation?

The way to solve this problem is to make the cost significantly higher than the benefit. Suggested reading: Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs. Of any person who has ever run any country, he solved this problem in the most effective way.

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Der_Einzige 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I've spent a lot of time in Singapore. Not a nation that should be emulated.

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s1artibartfast 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Why?

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mothballed 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A couple that some people might not like

1) Execution for drug trafficking without violence

2) A slight majority of the populace eligible for public housing gets it via essentially a regressive tax system where a gigantic slice of the populace (immigrants) fund the housing they can't use, creating a very bizarre government-imposed scenario where housing actually becomes radically cheaper the better positioned you are to be wealthy.

Of course there are arguments for both.

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dmitrygr 2 hours ago | parent [-]

1. Sounds good. I bet that lowers the amount of drug-related gang violence like nothing else would.

2. Same as in USA. I fund a lot of housing I cannot use via my taxes.

	▲	mothballed 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		2 is not at all like the USA. USA has an ostensible progressive taxation for public housing -- the people on section 8 / public housing are poorer population than even the legal immigrants that can't get it. Singapore's is regressive; they tax their massive % of population of ineligible immigrants so the citizens can have it essentially without means testing. It functions largely as a transfer of wealth from less rich to more rich.