Glasgow’s parking lot thugs get entrepreneurial (opens in new tab)

Indeed, if these entrepreneurs moved to the US then they could coerce the parking tickets with firearms. Efficiency would skyrocket!

Take the internet tough guy act somewhere else...

Don't gun toters have a saying like "If you are going to pull your weapon, you better be prepared to use it." Would you actually be willing to shoot someone over a parking pass? Or are you suggesting that this type of scam doesn't happen in the US at all because the risk of getting shot by running this racket are too high? I don't understand how guns are relevant here.

It stops people from selling you used parking tickets?

You're advocating shooting minor criminals?

I'd suggest this is strongly regional (and observe that Glasgow is in Scotland, not England, but anyway...) - I have had to input part of my number plate when buying a physical ticket (as opposed to online/phone ticketless billing) but it's been a rare occurrence.

Interesting... I've never seen such a machine here in England (seen some that automatically scan your registration plate and print it on the ticket, though, e.g. at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5).

Around Greater Manchester, reg-tracking ticket machines are still the exception. It might have something to do with costs -- i bet they break more easily (they need input buttons) and cost more upfront.

Or it might be that local authorities here are still somewhat sympathetic to the little guy... It's supposed to be Old Labour territory after all.

I'm sure you know this, but Glasgow is in Scotland, not England.

(I was worried others would be confused by your comment).

Well the transferring of a ticket from one vehicle to another is not (to my mind) particularly amoral. After all the space has been paid for. By forbidding transfers the council effectively get paid twice for the space when someone leaves early. Maybe this over-lap is built into their business model, but I doubt it. It's free money for them.

I think this demonstrates just how eager people are to conflate the meanings of the word "entrepreneur" with the word "hustler."

Really? My observation about the US is that there's hardly ever a policeman around. Oh sure, they exist and they'll turn up (often en masse) when called, but otherwise they don't leave their cars. There doesn't seem to be such a thing as a policeman walking a beat, at least not here in California, which tends to increase low-level antisocial behaviour.

For instance, if you walk down University Avenue in Berkeley you'll see all sorts of people engaged in various levels of borderline-illegal dickishness -- blocking the sidewalk, harassing passersby for money, standing on a street corner with a ghetto blaster on full blast, whatever. Police officers go past in their cars but don't stop unless something serious is happening. If they were patrolling up and down on foot then they'd have the ability to slow down and talk to the troublemakers and hopefully move 'em along.

According to this list (and associated discussion) at Nationmaster the US doesn't have an unusually high number of police officers per capita:

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_pol_percap-crime-polic...

At 2.84 per thousand that's a bit more than the UK (2.04) but less than Germany, Italy, Portugal, Latvia and other countries.

"Compared to other illegal activities they might have engaged in such as selling drugs..."

The author didn't really assume they would be dealing drugs, he just wanted to show the advantages of their current scheme over another common illegal alternative.

Also (strangely) carries the assumption that these guys can't be multitasking and looking for other moneymaking opportunities, which might or might not include dealing.

I suppose it's tax free, but I'm pretty sure that he could have earned quite a bit more if he'd worked a steady job for 15 years and was as diligent about saving money as he must have been.

edit: Then again, I suppose that's £100k a year, which might be kind of tough to earn without spending money on a degree first.

I don't know about innovation - I can't think of anything off the top of my head that has been innovated by the criminal and/or darker sectors of society. I can certainly see a massive demand for certain innovations (that are later created or innovated by other sectors), but I wouldn't conflate the two. This isn't like military applications where you may see inventions created and used for nefarious purposes then later retooled to support society as a whole.

Although, come to think of it, I suppose you could possibly consider reliable P2P transfer an offshoot of the piracy world, but I doubt you'd get too many people to admit that :) So I'm not entirely correct, but I think its a bit of a stretch to say that its quite often the case.

Not even a "scam" but definitely an example of moral hazard: I used to live next to a pub which had very little parking which was always full. Across the street was a large parking lot which mainly serviced a bank. Posted signs said that the parking lot was for "customers only" (of the bank) and indicated that violators could be towed. But of course, people driving by at night looking for parking to go to the pub would assume that since the bank was closed, there would be "no reason" for them to be enforcing this rule. Unfortunately, the tow company contracted to enforce it did have about a hundred good reasons. From what I could see they managed to catch a few people every single night. The pub knew it was a problem: they put signs inside the pub warning people not to leave their cars there. Obviously, they had probably had some pretty pissed-off designated drivers (or would-be drunk drivers) at 2 a.m. and having to cab it across town to collect their car.