Thefts – of cars, and everything else – are surging nationwide, costing the economy billions. But in our inverted world, that’s a good thing for the criminals at the top AND bottom of society, and bad only for you.
I have always had an affinity for GMC trucks. When I bought my last one, a 2021 ¾ ton AT4 HD with the 6.6L Duramax diesel engine, I wanted it to be my “do everything” truck that I could have for many years. It was everything I had ever wanted in a truck!
Then it was stolen - oddly enough, one year to the day from when I got it. And as I ended up finding out, Chevy and GMC trucks are now the most stolen car models in the country.
Walking out to where my truck was parked to find an empty parking spot was an upsetting and violating experience. The thought of scumbag thieves running with not only my beautiful truck, but all my personal items - even things bearing my name and address - made me feel sick.
But as it would turn out, that would only be the very beginning.
Unfortunately, as far as the institutions we trust – and pay a lot of money to in taxes, costs, and fees - absolutely no one cares. The sad fact is that, in today’s world – post-“American cultural revolution” – not only does nobody feel bad for you if you have something valuable stolen, it is actually good for the powers that be; they benefit from it happening, and they have absolutely no interest in putting a stop to it.
Let me explain.
Most auto theft these days is now being done utilizing technology - and it is easy. It used to be that auto thieves had to have some technical and mechanical know-how; breaking into a vehicle undetected, “hot-wiring,” and defeating alarms, tracking devices and killswitches all had to be in an auto thief’s skillset. Not to mention, he had to be able to do all this while not getting caught!
But all that has changed – along with everything else – due to technology.
Now, it takes only seconds to steal late-model cars and trucks, and even a slow car theft would take a few minutes. The biggest weakness: wireless key fobs and push-to-start technology.
With these systems – which consumers love – cars are basically being served up to thieves on a silver platter. This is because the key itself is never used to start the vehicle in such systems; a signal is used, bearing nothing more than a wireless transmission of data.
The most common way cars are stolen today is by using various signal repeaters or amplifiers, which can harvest the signal from your fob to your car while it is sitting in your pocket or on your nightstand. By stealing this signal with and relaying it with a simple repeater, a thief can do everything you can do with your car – unlock it, start it, and drive off casually.
But it gets better. Now, there are devices that actually hack the wireless signal to the cars themselves, with no fob present at all. (I suspect this is what was used on my vehicle, since I was on a trip over 1000 miles away when the theft took place, and I had my key with me.)
Such devices act as “master keys” for cars, using databases of signals stolen from the manufacturers. If a thief using one of these has trouble stealing a car he wants, all he has to do is update his software!
I could go on, but point is – the technology that has given us things like remote unlocking, remote start, and push-to-start may make our lives easier, but it also makes things WAY easier to steal.
But the big deterrents that used to be in place for auto theft are also gone. Auto theft (or property damage of many kinds) is simply not a priority for police anymore. Even if they did catch a criminal in the act, and care enough to arrest, fill out reports, book said criminal in jail - would the DA press charges?
In a blue city, probably not. But increasingly, no jurisdiction wants the hassle of arresting property thieves of any kind, when every arrest carries with it the potential for “George Floyd Riots” to ensue.
In not only monetary terms, but political and civil terms, it really is just cheaper to let people steal. So that’s exactly what’s happening.
At the end of the day, what recourse are you left with? Insurance, of course. You get your stuff stolen, and they do whatever in the world they can do to pay as little as possible – that’s the game. But when they settle what do you do? Go out and buy another car.
That, my friends, is the most important part of the equation in this upside-down world we live in.
At the end of the day, every car stolen means a new car gets purchased to replace it. In 2023 alone, over a million cars were stolen in the U.S. - 1,020,729 to be exact – that’s almost 2,800 per day!
That’s a 29% increase from 2020 (when America’s “cultural revolution” began.) The NHTSA claims auto theft costs Americans $8 Billion a year; but with the average new car costing $48,000, over a million cars comes out to nearly $50 BILLION by my calculations.
You’re going to tell me that’s not good for the economy, and the Wall Street crooks and their puppet politicians stock portfolios?
That’s $50 billion in sales to automakers to pay politically loyal union employees.
That’s $50 billion in revenue to levy city, county, and state sales taxes on.
That’s $50 billion in consumer spending for the spin doctors to say “look, the economy is doing amazing!”
It’s all good for them. And I guarantee you, nobody’s in any hurry to stop any of it.
Who pays for it all? We do, of course – with insurance premiums. They’ve gone up massively; just like prices at every store that has suffered from massive theft epidemics. It costs them nothing to raise our premiums, and we ultimately pay for the losses through a simple redistribution of the costs.
There won’t be any “George Floyd”-style videos of us getting beaten up financially by the system – so why shouldn’t they beat us senseless with prices, and premiums, and taxes?
In our demoralized, financialized, morally inverted system, the sensible thing for every government and corporation is to let real criminals do whatever they want, while punishing the meek, responsible, malleable law-abiding citizen, with jobs, addresses, and credit scores.
The system works exactly as it is designed, you guys.
A rule you need to learn about our morally-inverted world is this: every social, cultural, or political problem for the masses has a tiny handful of elites on the other side benefitting from it.
Once they find out how to benefit from the problem, they ramp the problem up, as much as possible. They constantly harvest wealth and energy from our fear, stress, and loss.
Given the “big picture” here, I guarantee you nobody – no cop, no security company, no politician or government – wants to protect your stuff considering the potential risks involved.
And if your stuff does go missing, the first place the police or an insurance company will look for a culprit is YOU. And that brings me to the next part of this saga.
Over a month after my car was stolen, after I had already been paid out by my insurance company, I got a call from a Fort Worth detective asking if I was aware that my truck was in an auction house in Indiana.
I said of course not, and he replied saying “if you have anything to tell me about this incident, you had better tell me now, because I’ll figure it out sooner or later – and I’ll make things as hard on you as I can if you make me work for it.”
I was beside myself – though I had done everything right, I was somehow being accused of arranging my own truck theft and committing insurance fraud!
As I came to find out later, there was a paper trail saying the following things happened:
- I hired a trucking company to pick up my truck over an hour from where I live, and had it shipped to a diesel shop in Gary, Indiana for service at a cost of over $5,000.
- The truck was shipped there with a blown motor and transmission, with a work order to get it repaired as quickly as possible. The total cost of that repair, plus rush fees: $51,000.
- Because it was a big order, I was asked to come in – from Fort Worth, TX to Gary, IN – to sign notarized paperwork ordering the repair, which I supposedly did.
- When the repair was done, I was nowhere to be found, so they slapped a mechanic’s lien on it and sent it to an auction house. The auction and storage fees cost another $5,000.
- Lastly, because the VIN was registered stolen, the sale – to a customer in Wyoming – was held up, and the Fort Worth PD was notified.
- At this point, I am supposedly on the hook for $61,000 in fees – on a truck that only cost $67,000 to replace entirely, and which mind you was still under manufacturer warranty!
But all that isn’t even the good part. The craziest part of all was that all that paperwork was backdated, to several weeks before my truck was even stolen.
Rather than believe that the paperwork was forged and backdated – especially the notary paperwork – the detective on the case believe I somehow arranged to have the truck stolen from myself, constituting insurance fraud.
I was furious at these allegations, and immediately began providing photos, work orders, and even photos of me going through toll booths to prove I had the truck the entire time. It wasn’t until video footage was secured actually showing my truck being stolen that the detective let me off the hook!
That whole ordeal stressed me out, damaged my credit (which caused my replacement truck to be financed at a higher rate) and raised my insurance premiums on my next truck. So in addition to being victimized by a crime, I’m also being financially victimized by my bank and by my insurance company, and will be for a long time.
Why? Because I, as the responsible citizen, am an easy target; the low-hanging fruit.
Real criminals are hard to catch (and these were obviously skilled criminals given the sophistication of the whole operation.) But people like you and me are easy targets. Even if you fight back – and believe, me, I do – these big institutions can squeeze us because we are already in their hands.
And at the end of the day, remember: a rise in auto theft is good for auto manufacturers. They experience ZERO downsides from high theft rates of their vehicles, and it is no wonder that no major automakers, despite their vast industrial and technological resources and multi-billion dollar budgets, haven’t put any effort into reducing theft.
Think about it: it takes a legion of FBI hackers to get into a $1,000 iPhone (and Apple won’t even help) but to steal an $80,000 car, all a thief has to do is hold a signal repeater up to your bedroom window while your buddy unlocks the door!
Why? Well, it’s not irrational; quite the contrary in fact.
The more cars that get stolen, the more people will come back and buy new ones. And the only people paying for this theft en masse is us yet again, with raises to our insurance premiums. The system is so obviously tilted in the favor of automakers and thieves, you’d wonder if they aren’t in it together!
That means – you’re on your own. Nobody at any level of power is looking out for us. We have to look out for ourselves, and each other.
That said, I have done some research on how to actually prevent theft of a vehicle that I’m using on my new truck, because I apparently went from owning one of the most stolen pickups in Texas to THE most stolen pickup in Texas (a RAM TRX.)
And while pricey – it’s a heck of a lot better than going through all this again.
The system I decided to employ is called IGLA, and it is essentially a “digital killswitch” for your car. It piggybacks onto your electrical system to make its activation dependent on the presence of a special fob, or by inputting a PIN using a secret combination of buttons. Without one of those present, the truck will turn into a 7,000 pound brick.
On top of that I added a vehicle surveillance system (Drone) which involves a sophisticated system of sensors to the car to monitor for impacts, tilts, broken glass, rolls in any direction, and any electronic operation the vehicle takes. Whenever any one of these things happens, my truck immediately sends a report to my phone. And of course, it includes tracking, so I can see my truck from anywhere in the world.
Stacked on top of that is a handful of Apple airtags in hard-to-find places, a neutral plate (which blocks the ability of the vehicle to be put in neutral and towed off), and even a relocated horn.
Last but not least, a good old-fashioned “Club” (yes, that old, silly Father’s Day gift from the 1980s) just to make sure thieves know: my truck is going to be a pain in the ass to steal!
As you can see, I’m not taking any chances this time around.
Point is, it’s the same thing I always say: WE ARE ON OUR OWN. All the institutions we’ve placed trust and money into have been infiltrated and subverted by the same kinds of people, who see Americans as financial livestock who exist to be shorn daily.
This has become “the new American way,” and even the government, which used to be the only entity powerful enough to keep the criminal corporations somewhat in check, is now controlled by those same corporations.
As the great George Carlin used to say: “it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
So look out for yourself. Criminals are completely in charge of both the top and bottom of American society, and every day the only thing on their minds is how to steal more from us in creative new ways.
But that doesn’t mean you should make it easy on the bastards!
-Cato