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Comment by aphextron | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how well this would work out in the US. Any standard parts would be stripped off those things instantly. Have you ever seen what happens to a bike after being locked somewhere for more than a couple days? It disappears piece by piece until nothing but the frame is left.

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I think what you meant to say was, "That would never work in my city".

We don't all live in the ghetto.

It's the unfortunate thing about the US. Although I don't think it's impossible, having any decent quality bike would definitely get stripped like you said. The only way I can imagine this being implemented is if there are bike lockers that completely enclose the bike. Unfortunately, that would raise the cost of the rentals to probably more than people are willing to pay.

There are plenty of bikeshares in the US -- the bikes are just built to be nearly theft-proof.

I've seen several bike shares in the US in tourist areas and they were all awfully expensive (I want to say something like $5/hour or ~$15 for the day?). They also required you to park at one of the docking stations which wasn't too bad because they had them near the tourist spots. Having the freedom of China's seems a little farfetched for the US in my opinion.

based off of related comments in here, it seems like the freedom isn't really working in China either...

I think $10 a day is reasonable if you're moving around. It's a bit more than a movie ticket, and if you rent in the morning you get a full day's usage.

Though to be honest I don't know many US cities that would be fun on a bike...

Most of these bike-share services aren't really meant for fun all-day rides. In fact, most of them limit you to 30-45 minutes before you have to return the bike to a dock. The hope is that these short 1-2 mile rides replace car trips and extends the territory covered by a bus or metro line.

This is actually how it works with Breeze bike share in Santa Monica:

$99/year membership

Includes 90 minutes free ride time each day ($7/hr after that)

Many well-placed pods, but can leave anywhere in the city for a $2 fee

Would there be a black market for bicycle parts if you could pick a bike up off the street and ride it for next to nothing? What would be the price of a nut or half a chain or a handlebar handle in a market where there are so many bicycles? Why commit a crime to purchase a bicycle, when they can apparently be shipped to your city assembled for about 50 bucks?

Unless you have a national identity tracking system and register with every mobile phone, which in China's case, it does. If someone steal the bike, they will be sorted out immediately.

The US has a per-capita GDP is close to 5x higher then Chinas. Why would theft be exclusive to the US instead of China?

Many reasons.. but it ultimately comes to one thing, Cops do not give hoot to bike theft, so the rist-reward in bike theft is favorable.

So no different from China then?

Can you speak to how much the authorities in China care about bike theft?

Cannot comment about China, but again from anectodal personal experience in India, the component of street justice in some places cannot be totally ruled out.

If you are caught by a mob while stealing .. brace for Impact!

edit: The broader point being "risk" component of theft in certain places is sometimes inhibitive in spite of apathy from authorities.

The authorities in China care nothing about bike theft.

The best theft-prevention mechanism in China is to have an old, rusty, broken looking bike.

In the case of the US per capita GDP just means that we are a country containing many rich people, not a rich country. Income inequality is extreme. When the government or private industry refuses to redistribute money downward, poor people will just take it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...

According to the "Gini coefficient" wealth inequality is actually slightly higher in China. Any other theories?

That depends on whose figures you use. According to the CIA, income inequality is higher in the U.S. That's also a figure for the entire country, not within the cities where these bike share companies operate, and I would guess that there's a much more stark divide between rich and poor in American cities.

The CIA gini coefficient is slightly higher for the US, a few percentage points, while the World Bank Gini coefficient is slightly higher for China. Your conjecture about the starker divide between rich and poor in US cities is just that, conjecture. I could guess the same about Chinese cities.

So we have no evidence yet that China has less income inequality than the US. Which makes it a very unconvincing reason for differences in crime.

I can't talk about China, but this scheme would probably work in a lot of places in Japan. I used to ride my ~$700 hybrid bike to the train station a lot. At first I locked it, but then I noticed that mine was the only locked bike. I ended up leaving it unlocked. Kept that up for 5 years or so and my bike never got stolen (admittedly I live in the country side -- not sure how successful that would be in a big city).

When I lived in the UK and Canada, I would never dream of leaving my bike unlocked. Even locked, I've had bikes stolen. Once, I locked my bike to a bike rack and they stole the whole bike rack (must have been a chore!). Most of the time, they will deflate your tyres in hopes that you leave the bike there overnight so that they will have some time to cut off the lock in peace.

Anyway, it's just cultural. I suspect that's hard to believe (it would have been hard for me to believe before I left Canada). In each culture there's a lot of stuff that's good and a lot of stuff that's not so good. People really do behave differently, but I've travelled enough to know that one culture isn't really appreciably better than another -- just different.

Because a lot more things affect crime than just socio-economic status.

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