Originally Posted by
Kilroy1988
Right. So Italy has five times as much theft per capita as the Eastern European country in question. The only way you can say Serbians are more likely to be selling bicycles stolen from Italy than Italians selling bicycles stolen from Italy, is if you assume that people from a nation with 1/5 the average theft are committing five times as many crimes abroad.
Yet you're not questioning the reputation of the sellers in Italy.
Total nonsense.
Again, you are arriving at inaccurate conclusions (for one reason or another), and then making accusations based on those nonsensical conclusions.
Crime rates? Those statistics generally include a broad spectrum of "crimes" (or in this case thefts), so you have to dig a little deeper. Italy is actually a very safe place, and even big cities like Rome have inflated numbers due to the large number of petty crimes that take place, many of them related to the huge numbers of tourists visiting every year.
But we are talking specifically about C&V bike parts, no? We know that cycling has always been a hugely popular sport in Italy, and we know that Italy was known for building some of the world's best bikes and components during the period that is now considered C&V. Were people riding bikes in Eastern Europe? Sure they were. Was Italy more open to trading with Eastern European and Communist countries compared to other Western countries that implemented embargoes or trade restrictions? Yes. Does that account for the relatively large number of C&V parts being sold out of Eastern Europe (and no, we aren't talking about new production decals (licensed?) or parts)? I'm skeptical.
Earlier you claimed that the idea of organized crime rings stealing bikes from Western Europe and bringing them to Eastern Europe was akin to using drugs. I then posted three links (which took 2 minutes to find) that proved evidence that it is indeed a real phenomenon, and you simply decided to continue accusing me of bias, ignoring those links completely.