I take great care to keep my bike dirty. I regularly maintain and grease the transmission clearance and bearings, but the frame must always be a little greasy and muddy, the handlebar tape slack and the saddle full of tape for fictitious repairs. Every part is carefully chosen for its quality and style mismatched with the others.
Anti-theft strategies can fail simply because some thieves are not in a fit mental state and act irrationally. I once had a bike frame damaged because I had it secured to a bike rack, and someone tried to steal it by grabbing the rear tire and yanking on the bike in the hopes that the lock would fail. Instead it snapped off a small chunk of the frame behind the rear axle. This was an aluminum frame on a $400 bike too, I was kind of impressed at how hard the bum must have been going at it.
People steal the weirdest things: a couple of months ago someone got into my pickup and made off with a hitch pin that happened to be sitting on the floorboard. Resale value might be... two dollars?
After having 2 bikes stolen back in college, my last (brand new) one was haphazardly spray painted rusty-brown and had cotton stuffing taped to the underside of the seat.
That one never got stolen, despite having it for much longer.
I'm all for discussing the different and various causes of that, and the comment you replied to is very awkwardly phrased but since you asked the question here is the beginning of an answer:
Depending on the country statistics can help. In France 30-40% of theft are committed by foreigners, which only represent ~8% of the overall population. If you narrow down to specific areas it gets even more obvious, in Paris it's ~75% of thefts
Out of these ~60% are from Africa/Middle east, the rest mostly from EU and non-EU Europe (mostly far east) or Asia.
Well, but that's correlation and not causation. You (they) can't attribute the lack of theft to the performance of the melanocytes for certain population.
Melanocyte, culture, poverty, mob mentality &c. everyone find an explanation that fit their narrative. All I know is that living in or visiting Paris from time to time is ... interesting, I know people who did a political 180 because of it. In the metro it's 90+% of thefts and 60+% of sexual assaults
Have you been to Copenhagen? In most places people leave their bike on the street without lock, sometimes for few days. Maybe not carbon superbikes but a lot of 0-400€ bikes along the streets at night.
For what I saw it is a cosmopolitan city but not sure about that.
