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New but not surprising. People involved in retail theft prevention have known this forever. There is no reliable profile for a potential shoplifter. It can be anyone.
Some people have kleptomania. Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting, I don't think she would do armed robbery or carjacking.
Mm. Human beings are moral scavengers and opportunists far more then they are corrupted by some criminal pathology. The amount of well adjusted human beings in regular good conduct that come out of the woodworks when the wrong incentives align, are numerous beyond belief. However if the costs are high enough and the opportunities aren't there, you simply don't see it. The only human beings who have consistent principles are those you'd never want to live with or be governed by. Only at the extremes of human behavior do you see moral principles at work.
This honestly has not been my experience at all. Those with the strongest principles have consistently been the only people in my life worth keeping around. If someone doesn't have any values that they'll maintain when it's painful, then you're basically dealing with a particularly cunning animal.
I never said that people who don't have principles don't have any values. I'm saying most people will quickly abandon whatever principles they imagine they have when every incentive for doing so happens to run the other way. The principles most people think others have is moral marketing people engage in.
Virtually every human being you meet has a self-concept of being a morally upstanding individual. When you walk down the street, people aren't out to murder you and steal your possessions. And yet, almost every single one of those people have no qualms about picking up a $100 bill you just dropped and treating themselves to a nice meal or a crack rock. If people had solid principles, legal contracts, law enforcement and virtually every body of government would have no need to exist; precisely because people would have stable principles that police their own behavior.
Principles are about more than tolerating difficult moral challenges to your life. It's also the characteristic of every stubborn and bull headed person out there that refuses to learn or have his mind changed. Adolf Hitler certainly had moral principles when it came to the strength and sincerity of his convictions. We all know how that wound up. My own moral calculus is don't trust people, trust incentives.
Isn't Japan famous for people consistently turning in wallets with all the money inside, and similar stories? The, people in small towns not locking their doors things also seems related. I imagine that high-trust societies exist, and modern western urban centers just happen to be lower-trust, currently. Especially in 'public' spaces. I would bet there are at least some high-trust enclaves within most major cities where the norms shift closer to Japan.
I don't know that much about Japan to say, but knowing quite a bit about Singapore, they're known quite well for the same thing. And I can assure you in a place that's literally called "a shopping mall with the death penalty," it isn't because they all have solid principles and a good heart. China (at least based on self-reported data) has some of the lowest rates of financial fraud, greatly outstripping the metrics credit card companies report on here in the US. It's also one of, If not the only country on Earth where you can be executed for economic crimes. Asian societies are some of the strictest most tightly controlled State's you'll find in the entire world. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm guessing you haven't had much experience dealing with Asia.
As far as small, closely knit towns being safe, sure that's a thing. To me there's little that has to do with "principles" about that, and that example goes to my point more generally. That these cases exist in pockets and you have to go looking for them to make them stand out in the argument.
I don't want to be confused with being a moral relativist, I'm not. I'm challenging the common understanding about how people reason morally in practical everyday terms. People aren't as principled as they would have you believe.
And yet China is the least likely of these countries to return a wallet.
https://twitter.com/debarghya_das/status/1738571424095502504/photo/1
Makes sense why they have those laws then.
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