Bank Robbing a Terrible Business, Statistically 207
isoloisti writes "Three UK economists got access to national data on bank robberies. The conclusion is that robbing banks pays, but not very much. Average take is about $19k per person per robbery. But, there's a 20% chance of being caught per raid. To make an average income, a robber needs to do two jobs per year, and has greater than 50% chance to be in the slammer after 2 years."
Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
I RTFA but I didn't see any reference to the general intelligence of the robbers. From what I've always understood, intelligent bank robbers are generally not caught while those who just wandering into a bank with a paper sank and a finger gun end up getting busted quickly. You know, because they make it obvious who they are.
Re:Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligent bank robbers get government bailouts, and don't go to PMITA prison.
Silly bank robbers use a mask and a gun, and have much worse outcomes.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a person a gun, and the can rob a bank
Give a person a bank, and the can rob a country.
The best way to rob a bank is to own one. (Score:4, Insightful)
The best way to rob a bank is to own one [amazon.com]. And it's only gotten better for the robber barons over the past 30 years.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Give a person a bank, and the can rob a country.
Absolutely, when there is no one watching what you are doing and the regulations are off the rails...it makes robbing a countryand its people so easy.
Just loan on the front and bet against those loans on the back...then ask for a bailout when things come crashing down (which banks knew would happen) and reward your board with big bonuses courtesy of the tax payers you already robbed...isn't double dipping great...especially against the middle class and poor.
Re:Intelligence not a factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
They can't just slap a single probability on a type of crime like this.
There are so many varying factors in getting caught, intelligence being a huge game changer.
Of course you can, just like you can slap a single probability on the chances of getting cancer, even though there are many factors that affect and even dominate an individual's chances.
That's the way statistics work. They tell you the average, but any individual trial (whether in the sense of a bank robber's take or a roll of the dice) may fall far outside of the average.
Of course when talking human behavior you the individual have control over some of the factors so you shouldn't just go with the statistics like you would at Vegas. Which is what most criminals seeing this statistic will do -- tell themselves that they are above average and can make bank robbery pay off. Of course they aren't going to get caught. They're too smart.
And then 20% of them do and become another statistic.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Give them a political office, and they can accept money from the bank ...so the bank can legally rob a country
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some generations hence, people will tell stories to children where the mean, greedy third little pig is the villain because he did not build houses for the other two little pigs and the wolf.
I think Ayn Rand already wrote that fairy tale. The difference was that when she tried it, it was over 1,000 pages long.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Realize that today a lot of banks don't handle the physical money - they only handle digital money, so being a bank robber is soon futile.
To get cash you need to stand in the ATM queue.
The downside is that robbing a supermarket can give a better payoff.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
"Which is the greater crime, to rob a bank or to own one?" --Bertold Brecht
Re:The best way to rob a bank is to own one. (Score:2, Insightful)
Investment itself is a thing of value, by making capital available for productive uses.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
this is too earnestly true to read as proper sarcasm.
i need a drink.
Re:The best way to rob a bank is to own one. (Score:3, Insightful)
The capital would be available for productive uses if it were not hoarded by the idle classes.
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was an A is A objectivist for a while; I enjoyed Atlas Shrugged the first time around. When I started seeing some personal success, I saw that hard work does not always equal success; many of the brightest and talented hard workers I knew got fucked, not rewarded, and it's often a crapshoot or who you know more than talent and hard work. You get up and try again if you're good at it and enjoy what you do, so that part is true, but talent doesn't rise simply because it's talented. Objectivism is an ideal, just like sharing the communist wealth means everybody gets a fair shake is an ideal.
It was a nice life lesson; I know now that anybody advocating the extreme is pushing an ideal on you, not a true way to live your life. Hard work, living a happy life, and helping others when you are both able and willing to do so is the way to go; and if you get some sort of crazy good benefits offered to you along the way, pounce like a puma.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:2, Insightful)
The answer is to rob a bank of-course.
Owning a bank is a business, like any other, except when government gets involved, guarantees the debt that is taken (FDIC), guarantees the credit and loans that are given out (FHA, F&F), creates environment where giving out fake loans is profitable (Fed, IRS, FHA, F&F, FDIC, HUD, all of this).
Banks are businesses, saying that a business is 'crime' is strange at least, since people use them voluntarily (until again, gov't makes it impossible not to use one).
The true questions should be: "which is a greater crime, to rob a bank or to rob the country to subsidise a bank?"
Re:Everyone already knew this. (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that hard work and talent often don't equal success on the first try doesn't mean they don't equal success. It just means that there's a large element of randomness in play at all times, and even hard work and talent don't necessarily give you high odds of success in any one endeavor. However, hard work and talent do tilt the odds in your favor, so -- except for people who get extraordinarily unlucky -- hard work, talent and persistence do equal success. On balance, I'd say that persistence is the most important of those traits, followed by hard work, with talent coming in a distant third. Which isn't to say talent isn't valuable -- in many cases it's essential. But it's almost never enough.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is not. A bank has power over an economy that no other institution can match.
LOL. Tell that to the drug dealers, oh, everywhere.
You are getting confused about "criminal" versus "illegal." Criminal is criminal, no matter the law. Illegal is when the law recognizes that something is criminal. But many businesses are actively criminal in that they steal from their customers, and actively harm their communities. The law has simply been bought to permit them to behave this way. Doesn't make it any less reprehensible.
Re:Stupid thieves (Score:2, Insightful)
No, it is not. A bank has power over an economy that no other institution can match.
- not in a free market economy. In a gov't controlled fake money, fake credit, fake insurance economy, with huge impossible to service debts - yes.
In a free market economy? Absolutely not, a bank is just another business - storing people's deposits that are not to be loaned out and making loans with deposits that can be loaned out, where the client of the bank is informed that his deposit is partially loaned out but he is making some interest on it. And of-course in case of making loans without gov't involvement, banks do require sufficient collateral.
My point is that a business that satisfies consumer demand (and I did put the word VOLUNTARY there, by the way), is not a crime.
Of-course I am not saying that a business of murdering people for example is not a crime, that is a criminal offence, I thought people don't need me to spell things out that precisely, but given this gem:
LOL. Tell that to the drug dealers, oh, everywhere.
, apparently they do.
And by the way, I don't see anything wrong with drug dealers, it's not the drug dealers that are the problem, it's the government there as well, because the government is stealing one of the fundamental rights of people - property right, by declaring drugs illegal.
How is that a property right? Well, first of all growing and possessing drugs is like any other property.
Secondly, property includes your body, your eyes, your kidneys, your brain, etc. Either you own them or you don't, and when gov't tells you that you can't put something into your body yourself voluntarily, they are also stealing your property rights.
It's the government that is immoral in all of these cases, banking or drugs, and it's the government that causes the criminality surrounding these activities.
simply put, don't do hands-on jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
You can make lotsa money at gas stations, don't be the one behind the counter (be an executive in one of their high rise offices)
You can make lotsa money stealing cash, don't be the one handling the cash (be one of them Wall St businessmen that lie, cheat, and steal from people everyday).