Right. One instance of metal theft in any country is enough to discredit the argument. As someone who lives in Australia, I've seen it show up in the news here just once. And I've spent time in other first world countries including the US, so my opinion doesn't come from a place of ignorance.
I live in New Zealand and I see or hear of thefts in my old neighbourhood (Woolston). Yet I can't recall anything about the issue on the news.
Every bit of reliable information I've had points to Meth users (although many years ago I knew of opiate users trying to get copper).
I was recently in New Orleans and had two theft surprises (one positive, one negative:
1: walking in Gretna I noticed an aluminium ladder under a house. You don't leave them visible at home because they get stolen (I presume for metal)
2: an Uber driver pointed out the theft of Aluminium guard rails. Obviously missing at road side. Needed grinders since they were welded infrastructure. I haven't seen much of that level of theft in Christchurch yet.
As a further point of contrast between the US and Oceania, the kind of copper theft happening in the OP are disabling communications systems:
> From January to June of this year, 9,770 incidents of intentional theft or sabotage on communications networks were reported, according to the Internet & Television Association, a trade group known as NCTA. That is nearly double the number reported in the prior six-month period. The attacks disrupted service for more than eight million customers.
> The cut lines have disrupted 911 emergency calls and internet and landline services, shut down at least one school and left whole city blocks in the dark.
... and to contrast, here in Australia, the mobile networks hadn't properly QAed their production deployment and access to emergency services causing an outage for 13-hours, likely causing people to die. The response was immediately establishing an inquiry and enacting new laws within 31 days of the incident.
In the past few years I've seen so many instances of day-light smash and grabs happening in the US in broad daylight filling my feeds. I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop – will that wave of criminality reach here? Certainly there's been an significant uptick of knife crime in Australia, people with mental health issues shooting cops and stabbing civilians, and the housing crisis is really causing problems around homelessness, but even still, Australia has nothing on the brazenness and scale of what is happening in the US. So when I say that third world problems are affecting the US, I refer to this broader situation.
When it’s unique, yes. In the case, metal theft is documented in Australia, Australia, Canada, France, Czechia, the Netherlands and the UK [1].
(To be fair, I’m not seeing any sources credibly auditing prevalence versus occurrence.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_theft#Notable_metal_thef...