A friend was a property manager in Sacramento. His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper, that currently pays ~$5/lb. If people are really working this hard for steel at $0.04/lb, then transformers and air conditioners will have to be installed in vaults.

My GF works with energy infrastructure in Colombia and they have lots of issues with people stealing copper, I didn't verify her claim but she said despite not having natural sources of copper Colombia had significant export volume of copper, pretty much all stolen. Her company has launched multiple investigations and unveiled gangs and networks repeatedly.

> His biggest headache was replacing the electrical equipment thieves would demolish to get to the copper

It's one of the reason trains get stuck in Europe: thieves stealing copper cables. They've been found to steal, too, heavy road grate if they were of any value: which created actual serious accidents (where a car's tire falls into the hole).

Regarding the electrical cables for trains, one solution is, slowly , replace them with cables with basically the same properties but 1/10th the copper.

Other funky solutions have been implemented: chemical sprays with a composition that is watermark and that cannot easily be removed. So when caught the thieves cannot deny because for x weeks the watermark stays, invisible and harmless, on their skin.

One question of course is: what does society think we should do with thieves who create road accidents and who render trains inoperable?

> ~$5/lb

Copper sells over $6 per pound these days: https://www.kitco.com/price/base-metals/copper