The best way to get folks to buy into the social contract is to make sure we uphold the social contract for them. Penalizing folks for homelessness, addiction and poverty is a vicious, inhuman, recurring cycle. Sending the goon squad after poors to beat them into submission sends the message that the levers of power in our society are violent and dehumanizing. That's what we teach people caught in the cycle. That's how they experience society. That's the terms on which the contract are made with them.The very first post in this thread seems to indicate that, without any nuance or qualifiers, that this would be true. Which is why I don't really love a blanket statement that retail theft would simply go away if material conditions were met. Which gets to why this is a complicated issue to try to address.
So yeah, I agree, its incautious and imprecise to definitively state that people who have their needs met don't commit crimes- but its also hardly the most irresponsible thing said in the thread.