MacIntyre: The end of high-trust society

Rioting and mass looting broke out across Philadelphia last week after murder charges were dismissed in the case of a white police officer who shot an armed Hispanic suspect during a routine traffic stop. The incident was ruled as a justified shooting after bodycam footage showed Eddie Irizarry producing a weapon and pointing it at officers during the stop. The weapon turned out to be a knife, not a gun.

A swarm of criminals used the dismissal as a pretext to smash and loot Apple, Foot Locker, and Lululemon stores along with many other businesses during the two nights of unrest. A social media influencer called “Meatball” livestreamed the riots on Instagram as she encouraged looters to steal iPhones in the name of racial justice.

Although police eventually caught up with Meatball and have arrested at least 72 people in the aftermath, most of the looters will face few if any consequences for their actions. This kind of violence and theft has become a regular feature of life in American cities, and major retailers are responding by closing stores and fleeing to safer areas. Municipal governments are increasingly unable to maintain order due to highly racialized politics, and this failure will bring about the end of our high-trust society.

Civilization is a funny thing. When social cooperation is high and everything is working properly, the people barely take notice. But when the interdependent structures that allow for seamless operation start to fall apart, it suddenly becomes clear what everyone took for granted.

In a high-trust society, valuable items can sit openly on store shelves because the vast majority of shoppers will pay for them rather than steal them. Shopping carts can be left for use outside a store because most customers will return them rather than run off with them at the first opportunity. Public transit can make movement throughout the city effortless because most commuters will keep the cars clean, stand in orderly lines, and not hop the turnstile for a free ride.

A high-trust society can operate with remarkable efficiency because the people enforce the rules on themselves. No ugly and intrusive security measures are necessary, no superfluous and silly safety devices are required, because common social customs and expectations of the people guard against delinquent behavior far more effectively than any draconian top-down enforcement.

When the social norms that allow for day-to-day cooperation break down, life becomes inconvenient in little ways at first, but if the slide is not arrested, eventually the entire system falls apart.

Stores begin by placing small anti-theft tags on items that are frequently stolen, but as shoplifting escalates, those items are placed in cases that must be manually unlocked by employees. Videos now frequently appear on social media displaying stores in major cities where almost every single item, even inexpensive products like mustard and toothpaste, must be kept in locked cases due to the extreme amount of shoplifting. Some grocery stores in San Francisco, where shoplifting essentially has been decriminalized, have resorted to chaining up the doors of their freezers to stop homeless drug users from emptying them. Of course, none of these cumbersome security features really stops large-scale theft when rioting and looting occur.

The impact on the local population in these areas is obvious. On top of the physical danger, shopping in these areas becomes incredibly inconvenient and time-consuming, as employees must unlock each item the customer intends to purchase. The employees and customers begin to ask themselves if they are suckers for putting in a hard day’s work and abiding by the law while criminals routinely steal whatever they can with little consequence. Eventually, major companies realize that there simply is no way to operate at a profit or provide a safe environment for their customers and staff, and they shut down operations.

In recent months, CVS, one of the chains hardest hit by the increase in thefts, has announced plans to close 900 stores by 2024 as part of a strategy to curtail losses due to shoplifting. Its rival Walgreens also plans to close 150 stores, and Target has announced that it will close several stores in major American cities due to violence and larceny.

In response, progressives lament the rise of “food deserts” in the wake of major retailers leaving dangerous and unprofitable areas. When the major retailers leave, only smaller markets — usually stores filled with junk food, alcohol, and cigarettes — are willing to take the risk of serving the community. The left loves to blame this phenomenon on racism or capitalist greed, but the truth is that the situation was manufactured through the policies of the very same political actors who complain about those policies’ inevitable consequences.

Crime is part of the human condition. It will always be with us to some degree, but reliable solutions for reducing its severity are well known. When small violations of the law are allowed to go unpunished, criminals are emboldened and escalate their behavior. Ordinary people who would naturally abide by the law see criminals prosper without consequence and conclude it is foolish to follow the rules. “Broken windows” policing was not some new revolution in law enforcement; it was the rediscovery of one of the most basic truths of human organization. A population will mostly self-regulate if order is the norm, but the more that delinquency is excused or rewarded, the faster things will spiral out of control.

At a cookout a few months ago, I heard a story from a local police officer that I have now seen play out over and over in American cities. The young cop said that after the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, the order came from on high essentially to avoid interaction with minority communities at all costs. Even a routine traffic stop in one of these neighborhoods could escalate unexpectedly, and with the incredible bias of the press and the viral nature of social media, an officer could have his career ended in the blink of an eye. Better to avoid possible lawsuits and violent riots by simply ignoring the call when it comes in over the radio.

Again, law-abiding people in these neighborhoods suffer the direct consequences, as they are the most likely victims of these unpoliced crimes, but unfortunately, narratives of racial victimhood have reliably proven more powerful than the observable deterioration in these communities.

This lack of will to prevent crime is not simply due to racial tensions. Retailers often have a general policy of not stopping or prosecuting shoplifting because the lawsuits and bad press that result if something goes wrong are costlier than the stolen merchandise. In many cases, progressive communities believe that they are actually saving the less fortunate by removing criminal penalties. In San Fransico, shoplifting is not technically legal, but any theft under $950 has been downgraded to a level of misdemeanor so insignificant that it does not automatically trigger a police investigation. This means that drug addicts can walk in, steal $950 of merchandise to fund their habit, and walk out without worrying about being apprehended.

Several corporations have seized upon the solution of eliminating retail locations and moving entirely to an online model to serve dangerous neighborhoods. This sounds promising at first. Shoplifters and looters cannot steal products from shelves that do not exist. But let’s think this through. If a neighborhood has become so dangerous that a grocery store cannot safely operate, then why would delivery trucks full of valuable merchandise be allowed to traverse those same streets unmolested? The problem has not been solved; we are simply creating the 2023 equivalent of Wild West train robberies.

The refusal to police crime has a terrible impact on a community, but its worst aspect is the generational damage it causes. Children grow up with metal detectors in their schools, bars on every window, and every item at the store locked behind glass. This has a deep impact and changes the social expectations of an entire generation. High-trust societies crumble and fall away as the shared commitment to community cooperation is replaced with a “steal it before someone else burns it down” ethic.

A long as law enforcement, community leaders, and corporations are more worried about performative social justice than the safety and prosperity of the people they serve, there will be no end to the looting. A society that cannot find the will to protect itself from crime inevitably slides into Third World conditions.