probably $10 of meth to harm a body so that it eventually needs $50k of medical work, or $100k of dental work

The person needs to have a stake in the infrastructure OR there needs to be a high chance of them getting caught and losing something. People with little stake in a community will strip infrastructure bare. Inequality is a significant root cause here.

I prefer the 9mm solution

Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher.

If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare.

The financial damage done by the thief is presumably irrelevant to the thief, beyond the fact that sentencing is probably stricter for bigger thefts.

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem.

They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage.

> better off by just paying the theif double.

You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief.

> that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

We shouldn't motivate people to extremes. We should probably just punish drug dealers far more harshly in this country.

Or pay a guard a fair wage and comp them the $0.20 or whatever for each bullet..

EDIT: to be clear I'm not saying it should be that way, but there was a time not long ago when this was the normal way to handle the situation. I'd argue the present arrangement is more civilized.

In general I agree with you, but it also makes me wonder how these people got to this point. I think most people would burn the Mona Lisa if it meant surviving through a cold night. Our society has failed these people in many ways.

A topic I'm interested in that is upstream of what you're saying is the propagation of meaning. If somebody has no idea what the Mona Lisa or the Statue of Liberty are, then we can't really bemoan that they would not ascribe any value to it beyond its raw material.

They didn't ask to be born and have never been given an opportunity to approve the society they're born into. The price of non-conformance is deprivation, punishment and incarceration. We should rethink this.

This could be made a serious felony. If the thief doesn't plan for or attempt to get say, 25% of fair market value or replacement cost (whichever is higher), multiply the penalty by 5 years, no chance of parole.

Though I don't know if there are enough prisons for all those stealing catalytic converters.

I’d suggest considering empathy once you get past the anger, their former selves would be equally repulsed by their behavior, and for many I expect their current selves feel similarly despite their lack of control. The villains here aren’t the broken people.

It was gas-filled presumably ultra low loss RF cable, but the thief cut it into small sections so that they could take it away. You might be right about the 50% number of they had somehow managed to steal it as a single intact spool. As-is, the station even said that they wouldn’t be able to use it even now that it’s been recovered because of fears of gas leaks.

Thieves typically burn off the insulation so it's not likely to be easily reused.