America needs to reflect on why it's unique amongst first world countries at having third world problems.

JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> America needs to reflect on why it's unique

When it’s unique, yes. In the case, metal theft is documented in Australia, Australia, Canada, France, Czechia, the Netherlands and the UK [1].

(To be fair, I’m not seeing any sources credibly auditing prevalence versus occurrence.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_theft#Notable_metal_thef...

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aeonfox 38 minutes ago | parent [-]

Right. One instance of metal theft in any country is enough to discredit the argument. As someone who lives in Australia, I've seen it show up in the news here just once. And I've spent time in other first world countries including the US, so my opinion doesn't come from a place of ignorance.

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lostlogin 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

If you search, there is a ton about it, and it's a fast growing problem.

eg https://www.premier.sa.gov.au/media-releases/news-items/crac...

	▲	aeonfox 16 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I stand corrected. Australia has third-world problems.

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raggles 24 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not just America. People are stealing copper in very rural areas in my country; in many cases the price they get is hardly paying for the petrol to drive there. We have a whole team now in my company dedicated to repairing damage from copper theft, it's rampant.

	▲	aeonfox 18 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Very different vibe to people just doing this at scale on the side of suburban streets.

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sltkr 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

I didn't do a quantative analysis (I bet neither did you), but copper theft happens everywhere:

- https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/heilbronn/t...

- https://www.ladepeche.fr/2025/11/14/info-la-depeche-explosiv...

- https://nos.nl/artikel/2591857-na-koperdiefstal-in-veenhuize...

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aeonfox 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Basically a repeat of the sibling comment, so I won't repeat my reply.

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JumpCrisscross 27 minutes ago | parent [-]

Not applicable? I explicitly called out that Wikipedia doesn’t provide any sense around frequency. The comment you’re replying to here does.

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aeonfox 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

I just took them on their word.

> I didn't do a quantative analysis

And these seem like single data points, one each for 3 different countries, not really giving a sense of frequency. So I'm not sure what you mean.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 15 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> not really giving a sense of frequency Two of their sources are from this month, all three are from this year.