Is shoplifting wrong?

Years ago, when we lived in Boston, we were broke and (by and large) unemployed. It was a very cold winter, and our heat had been cut off. We had a fireplace – but we didn’t have wood to burn. I therefore became fairly expert at shoplifting those faux-log things from the nearby Caldor’s. I didn’t feel bad about it then, and thinking back on it I still don’t feel guilty. It’s okay to shoplift from large corporations to get things you actually need. The harm to Caldors of losing the faux-logs is considerably less, realistically, than the harm to us of having nothing to burn in our fireplace.

Other kinds of shoplifting – if done from Wal-Mart or the equivalent – don’t particularly bother me, although I don’t shoplift anymore myself. (It would be nice if I was too moral to shoplift, but truthfully I suspect I’ve just got too vivid an ability to imagine consequences.)

To tell you the truth, other than a very poor relationship of risk to
reward, I don’t see what’s so immoral about stealing small amounts from
Wal-Mart. The harm caused by shoplifting from mega-corps seems extremely diffuse and theoretical; no one will miss a meal or shiver in the cold because someone lifted a walkman from a Fred Meyer.

Now, I do understand that overall, the efforts of thousands of shoplifters combined DO make things worse – they reduce profit for the chain, and (arguably) they therefore cause Wal-Mart to raise prices. (Or perhaps to pay Wal-employees less). But on the other hand, the shoplifters also create jobs for all those Wal-Mart security people who wander around trying to spot shoplifters.

In any case, the aggregate harm of thousands of shoplifters is rather like the aggregate harm of millions of Americans driving more than they need to, or eating meat, or any of hundreds of other minor harms to the zeitgeist. Yes, it’s bad, but it’s bad on such a minor level that I can’t feel any real anger at the individuals involved.

Note: Due to this post being published as Alas was switching commenting software, the original comments to this post – 143 of them, at last count – have been “stranded.” They can still be read here. However, please leave any new comments in the new comment system (link below).

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42 Responses to Is shoplifting wrong?

  1. 1
    Zelda says:

    I believe that one of the things that makes Wal-Mart different is that they clearance clothing that doesn’t sell. Other stores INCINERATE it. Imagine burning up a bunch of perfectly good clothes just because there’s a price below which you choose not to sell it. That’s wasteful and un-environmental. A couple of petty shoplifters are irrelevant in the overall scheme.

  2. 2
    bean says:

    Over in the other comments to this post, Charles had said:

    How much mitigation is required to serve as an excuse? What does it mean for an act to be completely mitigated, but not excused? Do you merely mean that if I steal fire wood I should realize that I am doing wrong, even if it is necessary? Or do you mean that I should freeze rather than steal wood? I can fully understand the former, since it is what allows thrill shoplifting and need shoplifting to be distinguished, but the latter makes no sense to me. While the former is true, it also depends on how you handle moral calculus. Should I feel bad for taking an action which I have evaluated and decided to be the best available option, or should I feel no remorse for the harm I cause as long as it is a result of the best available course of action? Personally, I tend to feel bad for the harm I cause whether or not I could have avoided causing the harm (although I feel worse if I don’t feel that I am justified in causing that harm), but I think that it is valid to decide that you should only feel bad about the things that you would do differently if you had them to do over. It seems to me that Bean is in the later camp, and that you are with me in the former camp.

    I’m not so sure that I do fall into the latter category — at least not fully. I mean, if I were to find out that the waitress had to pay for the meal out of her tips/paycheck, yeah, I’d feel bad. Would it necessarily stop from doing it if I was in the same situation? Well, as I said before, I’d try not to do it when the waitron is going to punished (if there’s a way for me to know beforehand). But if it was that or continue going hungry, I’d do it again. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t feel bad for the waitron, I simply wouldn’t necessarily consider it an impediment to my doing what I felt was necessary. I also never said I didn’t feel “bad” about doing this sort of thing, in general. I simply think that in certain circumstances, “feeling bad” about doing something like shoplifting or dine-n-dashing is far better than going hungry or freezing.

    To extend this, as I stated before, I try not to patronize any business that has these sorts oppressive, unethical business practices. Now, if I were to talk to a waitron from that restaurant I was, in effect, boycotting, I might feel bad for them. By not going to that restaurant (and paying), they’re losing possible tip money, and the restaurant is not getting my money (and, of course, if enough people do this, the waitron in question may end up being laid-off). So, I feel bad for the waitron, but it’s not going to change the fact that I’m not going to patronize that restaurant.

    Again, IMO, it comes down to where you lay the blame. At the feet of the corporation/owner who has the ability to change their policies so that the ones harmed aren’t the ones who could less afford it, or the ones who “make it possible.” I think the blame lies the restaurant/corporation who unfairly punishes their employees for events beyond their control.

  3. 3
    kirsten says:

    just a couple of comments concerning the base from which i speak.

    1. for the most part, i think it’s justifiable to steal wood when faced with the other option of freezing, after all resources have been exhausted.

    2. regarding what it means to have an action completely mitigated without being excused — the distinction has to do with accountability. if an action is considered excusable, then there is no responsibility or accountability. mitigation is, essentially, in my book, an explanation for why someone chose to take a certain course of action without abdicating responsibility.

    all i’m trying to say is that these situations are not black and white. it’s important that when someone makes the choice to engage in an action, even if it is the better of two (or more) possible actions in the context of a situation, they need to realize that there reverberating effects.

    of course the corporation/owner that punishes their employees for events beyond their control is acting in a way that’s horribly immoral.

    i just can’t get beyond the notion that if you’re in a situation where you’re hungry and you have the option to steal, knowing that there might be unintended consequences to others, and you choose to do it, then that isn’t somehow a issue of character. someone in a similar situation might decide to deal with his/her hunger in a different way. people have vastly different ways of dealing with necessity and desperation. some ways are better than others.

    this doesn’t negate the blameworthiness of the company/owner. it just is an added dimension to the situation.

    this is just a topic which bean and i disagree on, most likely because of our differing world views. at this point, it’s just going around in circles.

  4. 4
    Morrigan25 says:

    I do hope that everyone who got all high and mightly on Amp and Bean for their choice on how to survive (by shoplifting necessities) made a nice donation to your local food bank since posting…

  5. 5
    NIgga says:

    HAHA SHOPLIFTING IS COOL

  6. 6
    Jeremy Reinier says:

    Amp said-

    –In any case, the aggregate harm of thousands of shoplifters is rather like the aggregate harm of millions of Americans driving more than they need to, or eating meat, or any of hundreds of other minor harms to the zeitgeist. Yes, it’s bad, but it’s bad on such a minor level that I can’t feel any real anger at the individuals involved.–

    If millions of Americans drove less often in fuel efficient cars, we could reduce carbon dioxide emmissions by an extraordinary amount. If millions of Americans stopped eating meat, it would have a significant effect on the meat industry. The point is that it is this kind of thinking that allows people to continue behaviors that DO have significant impact on society. The reason shoplifting is wrong is BECAUSE of the aggregate harm it does to companies.

    That being said, if I had to choose between starving and shoplifting a loaf of bread…well, you gotta do what you gotta do. There is a difference between stealing something because you want to and because you have to.

  7. 7
    batgirl says:

    “You are thief”
    “I stole a loaf of bread”
    “You robbed a house!”
    “I broke a window pane. My sister’s child was close to death. We starving-”
    “You will starve again! Unless you learn the meaning of the law. . . “

    Just ask yourself: when you saw or read Les Miserables, with whom did you sympathize? It really wasn’t the law, was it? You want Jean Valjean to escape, didn’t you? Let’s all just keep taking stuff from Wal-Mart and stop pretending to have guilt.

  8. Pingback: Is Shoplifting Wrong? | elephant journal

  9. 8
    confanity says:

    Shoplifting is wrong. Shoplifting is stealing, and stealing is wrong. The choice between stealing and death is pretty much always a false dichotomy. So you’ve got no food to eat today, or no way to heat your house, and no money to buy it? No job, piles of debt so you can’t take out a loan from any legitimate source?

    Have you no friends who can help you, to spot you a couple dollars or give you a sandwich? Even a little bit removes the “need” to steal. A dozen eggs provide a lot of nutrition for cheap. Ramen noodles are a college-student classic; leave out the sodium-filled flavor packets and you’ve got a source of calories to power your body. Find the fruits and vegetables that are cheap, eat them for your vitamins and minerals. If all else fails and you can find no friends or even strangers who will even give you an egg to save your life, find a soup kitchen.

    Need warmth? You can get it for free in most public-access buildings. Most of them you can’t sleep in, true, but it’s a decent temporary solution, and if your area has a homeless shelter, you’re in the clear. But even without that, if your concern for firewood is heating rather than cooking, why not just get a blanket? (And if you need to cook, many places that sell microwave foods will have a microwave you can use.) I spent a decade sleeping in an unheated room (in Iowa), with a good blanket in the winter and my own body heat to keep me comfortable, so I know that even in below-freezing temperatures you don’t actually need firewood to survive. Hell, I’m currently on a low budget lifestyle, typing with a coat on my back and fingerless gloves on my hands because the heat’s not turned on in my apartment. Learn some thrift.

    The “but the food/clothing/whatever would otherwise go to waste” argument is interesting, but deeply flawed. If it’s on the shelf, you have no way of proving that if left unstolen it would never have been bought. So store X burns excess shirts? If you must take them, if your imagination is so poor and your pride so important that you cannot find another way to feed and clothe yourself, then take them from the dumpster… or just accept that even waste, while unfortunate, is the right of the person who owns the object. The possibility that I will wear a pencil’s graphite down with doodles, for example, or chew on it and eventually break it, does not give you the right to steal my pencil, even if I do both of those on a regular basis.

    Being resourceful and imaginative, or just using some common sense, can help you survive for an awfully long time on awfully meager resources. Even begging is an option, and while it may be embarrassing, refraining from it in a time of dire need simply means that a person who chooses to steal is deciding that their own pride is more important than another person’s right to keep what they worked for. The moment you steal to protect your pride is the moment you give up any right to owning any property yourself.

    The idea that stealing from big corporations is a victimless crime is also fallacious. There is, as has been noted in the comments, a cumulative effect, and the loss might well result in the cutting of staff or even the closing of a store (and thus the loss of the jobs of all its staff, and an increase in the hardship of all who shopped there). Even a cut in one worker’s paycheck, or one worker failing to get a raise because there’s not quite enough money in the budget, means you’re effectively stealing from that worker. And the argument that theft creates security jobs is nothing more than a broken window fallacy. Thinking that stealing from large corporations hurts no-one simply means that you don’t really understand how things work.

    To put it another way: the sum of human endeavor is to create wealth. If you work, you create wealth and are recompensed for it with a chit (money) that can be traded in for other wealth. When you buy a good or service from someone, you are keeping the wealth in the system constant by trading some of yours for some of theirs. When you steal, you are removing wealth from the system without putting anything into it; you are making the human race that much poorer. True, there are other forces at work (entropy, war, etc.) that reduce humanity’s wealth. True, petty theft is not likely to destroy Walmart, much less humanity itself. But unit of wealth stolen from any facet of civilization is a unit by which the entire civilization becomes that much poorer.

    I wonder if those who try to justify stealing, say, firewood or food on the grounds that they “need it to survive” would similarly justify stealing an equal amount of money. I wonder if those who claim that stealing from “faceless” entities like Walmart is okay would be willing to rob those entities with an unloaded gun (thus assuring that they can cause no physical harm to any individual). If the value you steal is unchanged but you balk at the methods, then all you’re doing is using pretty words to hide that what you’re doing is wrong.

  10. 9
    Mandolin says:

    “the sum of human endeavor is to create wealth. ”

    Good fucking lord. How are you going to prove that one?

    And if you’re not going to prove it, but claim it as an unprovable assumption (which you really are forced to do), then well, how can you be shocked that people disagree with you because they don’t take that assumption as a matter of faith?

  11. 10
    confanity says:

    @Mandolin: I suspect that you have misread my statement. I did not say that the purpose of human endeavor was the conscious explicit creation of wealth. Nor do I mean “wealth” as in “a large number in a bank account.” I mean it in the sense that Paul Graham lay out: “Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. You can have wealth without having money.”

    Read this way, I feel that my statement is not at all difficult to prove. The dramatic decrease in infant mortality (compared to that rate in a state of nature) is a form of wealth that human civilization has built up over time through inventing medicine and creating medical infrastructures. The fact that smaller proportions of the population freeze to death in winter, dehydrate or overheat in summer, starve, or are murdered by other humans or killed by wild animals than before, is a measure of the wealth that humanity has created. Electricity, its availability and all the things we use it for — lighting, heat, communications, etc. — are a measure of wealth. The fact that you can travel across a continent in days instead of requiring months is a measure of wealth. Everybody who makes something, even something that is consumed, like food, or who performs a service that someone finds valuable, like giving a massage, is creating wealth and adding it to the human sum.

    Knowledge is wealth. Buildings are wealth. Longer lifespans and higher standards of living are wealth. Your children surviving to adulthood is wealth. Sufficient food to keep a population alive is wealth. Contact lenses are wealth. The fact that there are about seven billion people alive today, and that any of us have permanent housing, clothes on our backs, teeth, instant global communications, etc. is all the proof one needs that the sum of human endeavor over any length of history you care to name is, in fact, an increase in humanity’s collective wealth.

    I don’t particularly recall being shocked when people disagree with me, but in this case I feel that no one can help but agree as long as my terms are clearly explained. I hope that the above helps, then, and that next time your confusion is expressed in more concrete, less antagonistic terms.

  12. 11
    joe says:

    You said “the sum of human endeavor is to create wealth.” Now that you’ve defined your terms I’m going to try and translate it into smaller, simpler words.

    The sum of human endeavor = mostly people work
    create wealth = get things they want.

    So your point is that “mostly people work to get things they want.” I can accept that as an axiom.

    But the rest of your comment is dumb. Barry is claiming that he stole from a rich person (corporation) from necessity. I’d rather he didn’t do that. But I’m happier that he did that than I would be if he died from over exposure.

  13. 12
    confanity says:

    Joe, somewhere between us there seems to be some confusion over the meaning of words. “Sum” is a total, the result of addition. “Create” is to cause something to come into existence or assume a new (and, it is often implied, more useful) form. To put it into simpler words, then, my comment about “the sum of human endeavor” doesn’t have anything to do with intent, as you said, but rather that

    “When you add together everything that every human has ever done, the result is that things people want and value and use are constantly being made.”

    When considering that “sum,” I further argued that any work you do is, at least in theory, a further addition, trades are neutral, and theft is a subtraction.

    As for the rest of my comment, despite because of the strength and thoroughness of your deconstruction, I am unchanging in my belief that the need to choose between stealing and dying is imaginary. I still believe that the theft in question was not truly necessary. That it was, in fact, nothing more than a lack of thought, a pointless clinging to pride, that made theft seem “necessary” when in fact begging, borrowing, charity, thrift and thinking outside the box can all meet or remove the so-called “need” to violate another human’s rights.

    When a man steals firewood, are there any trees on his property that he could have cut down or trimmed but chose not to? Are there places where he could have gathered fallen branches? Could he have saved a little in some other area to pay for it? Could he have borrowed some money from his friends? Could he not at the very least swallow his pride, go to people with firewood or money, and just tell them “Please, I must have firewood or I’ll freeze to death, won’t you help me?” Perhaps in some times and places there truly are or have been situations where there are only two choices, thieving or death. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, there are other options and the thieves are simply willing to violate the rights of others instead of thinking or working a little harder, or swallowing their pride.

    So. We’re all happy that nobody died, yes. But if this Barry only stole at the time because there was literally no other option available to him, then surely by now, when he has access to a computer and the leisure to be active on the internet, he must have gone back to his victim and paid for that wood, yes? Because if he has money to spare and hasn’t paid his debt, then it wasn’t really theft of necessity — it was just plain theft.

    (And if he has done the right thing and paid for the wood he stole… then that brings us back to my point that you don’t truly need to steal if you can beg or borrow!)

  14. 13
    Mandolin says:

    I’m so glad that you know exactly what is necessary in other people’s lives.

    Also, even from a broad perspective, your take on sums and wealth is very culturally situated. If you wanted to limit it in some way, to, say, Western or American culture, you might have an argument. Plenty of cultures function without anything approximating an economy; past and presently, some function without any permanent accumulation of goods; if you are defining wealth without either of those things, then you are defining so broadly as to be utterly meaningless. I could, in that case, define the sum total of my cats’ experiences to be labor in the service of creating wealth. And if property rights are inherently sacred in that framework, then stealing the labor of animals or even plants for food calories is a violation.

  15. 14
    Robert says:

    I’m out of work and bored. Would it be OK for me to hit the local bookstore and five-finger-discount a couple copies of “Hereville” for my kids?

  16. 15
    Ampersand says:

    An administrative note: The link to the original comments on this thread was broken. I’ve replaced it with a working link. So if anyone wants to review the original comments, they’re once again available.

    Secondly, my original post wasn’t claiming that there’s nothing wrong with shoplifting from major corporations. Rather, I was claiming that it’s a pretty minor harm:

    The aggregate harm of thousands of shoplifters is rather like the aggregate harm of millions of Americans driving more than they need to, or eating meat, or any of hundreds of other minor harms to the zeitgeist. Yes, it’s bad, but it’s bad on such a minor level that I can’t feel any real anger at the individuals involved.

    So with that in mind, Robert, do I think it would be “OK” for you to shoplift “Hereville”? No, I don’t, if “OK” means “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.” Do I think it shoplifting “Hereville” would be a major moral wrong? No, I don’t.

    That said, shoplifting a $32 item (2 books) from a local bookstore is not the same as what I was talking about in the original post, which was taking something of significantly lower value from a major national chain. I do think what you’re talking about is, in fact, morally worse than taking a candy bar from a Walmart. As a percentage of their bottom line, $32 to a local store is much larger than 75 cents to the Walmart corporation.

  17. 16
    Ampersand says:

    I wonder if those who try to justify stealing, say, firewood or food on the grounds that they “need it to survive” would similarly justify stealing an equal amount of money. I wonder if those who claim that stealing from “faceless” entities like Walmart is okay would be willing to rob those entities with an unloaded gun (thus assuring that they can cause no physical harm to any individual). If the value you steal is unchanged but you balk at the methods, then all you’re doing is using pretty words to hide that what you’re doing is wrong.

    For this argument to work, we’d have to believe that “physical” harm is the only harm that matters. But I don’t believe that; I think that terrorizing people with the belief that they’re about to be arbitrarily murdered is grossly immoral, even if the gun is unloaded. It’s a very cruel thing to do. That’s the sort of experience that can land people in therapy or leave them with PTSD.

    Imagine someone going into Walmart and terrorizing people with an unloaded gun — not to shoplift or steal anything. Would you honestly say that person has done nothing wrong?

    * * *

    In general, Confanity, I’m not sure you’ve understood that I’m not arguing there’s nothing wrong with shoplifting. I’m arguing that it’s a relatively minor wrong. (Considerably less wrong than sticking a gun in someone’s face and making them believe they’re about to die.)

    That’s an interesting idea about paying Caldor’s for the fake logs, and I briefly explored trying — at the very least, writing the store and explaining that I wanted to pay for inexpensive merchandise stolen decades ago would be interesting. Alas, the chain went out of business years ago (driven out of business not by shoplifters, by the way, but by their inability to compete with Walmart’s prices).

  18. 17
    Tom Nolan says:

    Mandolin

    Plenty of cultures function without anything approximating an economy

    I’d be very interested to see an example. I’m racking my brains, but I cannot see how a society can exist without the exchange of goods and services, the organized provision of nutrition, people who specialize in one kind of productive activity or the other etc. etc. That all adds up to an economy.

    Ampersand

    I’m arguing that it’s a relatively minor wrong. (Considerably less wrong than sticking a gun in someone’s face and making them believe they’re about to die.)

    Not many people regard shoplifting as a cardinal sin. On the other hand, shoplifting is against the law, whereas certain ethically reprehensible interrogation techniques (such as making someone believe that they are about to die) enjoy legal sanction. I’m pretty sure that you’d like the latter activity to be made illegal. Conversely, would you like shoplifting – as a very minor misdemeanour – to be made legal?

    Alas, the chain went out of business years ago (driven out of business not by shoplifters, by the way, but by their inability to compete with Walmart’s prices).

    The chain’s lack of competitiveness can only have been exacerbated by your stealing its wares. ‘Alas’ indeed!

  19. 18
    Ampersand says:

    A hunt and gather society doesn’t have exchange of goods and services, nor does it have to have specialization. (Some hunter-gatherer societies used group hunting, where the entire group would make noise to drive game animals towards nets or a cliff, rather than individual hunting.)

  20. 19
    Charles S says:

    whereas certain ethically reprehensible interrogation techniques (such as making someone believe that they are about to die) enjoy legal sanction.

    Actually, making someone believe they are about to die is a particularly nasty form of torture (one of the worst in terms of long-term damage) and is expressly forbidden under federal law.

    And the idea that the sum of human activity = wealth is either gibberish or a tautology. The sum of human activity is also the net difference between the absorption spectrum of the earth’s atmosphere with humans and what it would be without humans (and if you were an alien scientist 20 light years away, trying to suss out if the Earth was inhabited by a technological species, that would be an important definition of the sum of human activity). The sum of human activity is also the increase in acidity and temperature and nitrate concentrations of the world’s oceans (and if you were a coral on a remote Pacific atol, that is the definition of sum that would matter). If you declare the sum operator for human activity to function on wealth (for a monetized definition of wealth), then the sum of human activity is measured in the increase of wealth (by definition), but that doesn’t tell us anything about how the sum operator should be defined, or how the various sum operators should be ranked in importance, nor whether the sum of human activity should carry any moral weight at all (slavery probably increases the sum of human produced goods and services, but that tells us nothing about its moral significance).

  21. 20
    Radfem says:

    I’m thinking that it must be nice to be able to steal and get away with something even as a “revolutionary” act or some form of “direct action” because whatever security’s in the store is busy following people that they’ve profiled as shoplifters around the store. And that there’s a lot of white privilege wrapped up in that. That’s part or not all of my quandary with it. Whether that makes it more or less “moral” might be the same discussion, maybe not. One of the best discussions of stealing as a political action was I believe, Mary Crow Dog’s book, Lakota Woman…and she discussed all the nuances of it and its relation to the relationships between colonization and those colonized.

    I’ve listened to stories and I’ve certainly seen examples of well, certain men and women walking into stores and being hit up for whether they needed “help”, once, twice even multiple times and then they’re followed around the store by clerks and/or security after politely saying, no we don’t need anyone’s help. And having to deal with retailers, big chains and small independent outlets who had this belief that yes, they were having items “walking out of the store” yet if they just focused hard enough on their non-white customers, that would be enough. Is that a white shoplifter’s fault they think that way, no that’s their racist attitudes of those who hold them but it’s disturbing that some folks who are past the curve on having insight into those issues don’t think that they’re benefiting from those racist practices so they can abscond with an item and not get caught.

    From the employee perspective…yeah that can bite..I got written up once at one service job b/c some customers drove off without paying for their food. And that writeup impacted my ability to get my 10 cent raise at a performance review. I know and have spoken with other employees who were penalized. So no, unless you sit down with the employee in the store that you’re lifting and ask them how your action impacts them, then it’s really difficult to know for sure, and if you’re walking away and not coming back, you’ve shown very little interest in knowing.

    And if you do get caught, it might bite you later. Like if you got busted for shoplifting say at 19, tried to immigrate to another country, say Canada, years later to live with your husband and had to pay some serious change out not to mention wait over a year to “land” because of some petty theft conviction for stealing that $38 item 10 or so years ago. That’s strictly from the fact that actions also have personal consequences…occasionally though often who gets a slap on the wrist or less and who gets severely punished or “striked” of course depends on issues like race and class.

    I don’t know what I’d have to do if in that situation where I had to steal to survive but I’d probably feel guilty even if I did do it. I’ve talked to people who’ve done that in some pretty dire circumstances and yeah, most of them did feel guilty about it and it stuck with them quite a while after, even years in some cases.

  22. 21
    Radfem says:

    I think that people got to make the decisions they got to make on a variety of factors…like my mother taking the third job to add to her two…but all actions have a ripple effect on others nearby. Increased shopping might mean increased security or policing which of course doesn’t impact all shoppers or even shoplifters equally. And I’ve seen this a lot because I looked into or wrote about numerous cases of this happening just in different cities in one county.

    And if an employee loses a raise because of the oppressive practices to “punish” her for someone else’s shoplifting that person has still lost their chance at a raise, or a better assignment, a promotion or even a job regardless of who’s to blame according to people outside her situation. And that raise for that employee or that promotion or job might be the difference between her and her family getting necessities or not. Is that a “minor effect” for her, I don’t know, guess you have to ask. But to tell her who to blame especially when it’s not you, just doesn’t make sense.

    And as for employees taking on the corporations who exploit them (and yeah, that definitely happens) that’s easier to demand of them than for them to do to address being stolen from (and yeah, some take it personally)…and why should they listen to that advice considering that the person who gives it may have even through necessity caused them to pay for a meal out of their pocket? Survival comes in all different forms and keeping your nose out of such larger pictures of corruption and exploitation to keep your job might be one of them.

    And yeah, hunger does have an effect on you especially when it’s not by choice. Know that from experience and from working with homeless and knowing the lack of viable resources available especially if they’re disabled. They’re larger issues here as presented but even the actions of one person or a group of them do impact others in ways not anticipated.

  23. 22
    Tom Nolan says:

    Amp

    A hunt and gather society doesn’t have exchange of goods and services

    People in hunt and gather societies do exchange goods and services, Amp. If the hunters kept their meat, the foragers their provender, if each man and woman made tools, tents, clothing for himself and herself and no-one else; if they refused to share knowledge, skills, technologies with one another, then it wouldn’t be a society at all, it would just be a group of individuals belonging to the same species.

    But that’s by-the-by. Do you agree with Mandolin that there are societies which have no economy? Or do you think that she may have been misled by the usual association of the word ‘economy’ with factories, businesses and finance, into forgetting that it actually means no more than the generation and administration of a community’s resources?

  24. 23
    Brandon Berg says:

    Does the fact that the costs are diffuse make it less bad? Sure, the cost per person is lower, but more people are affected. The bottom line is that stealing something worth $5 transfers $5 from one or more other people to you.

    Also, consider that Wal-Mart’s customers are (I think?) disproportionately poor, and that many of the things they buy there are necessities. When Wal-Mart charges higher prices to compensate for losses due to shoplifting, that means that shoplifting makes it harder for the poor to afford basic necessities.

    And yes, I realize that the economics of shoplifting leading to price increases are quite a bit more complicated than “People stole a bunch of stuff last month; we’d better raise prices this month,” but it’s hard to come up with a realistic scenario in which it doesn’t lead to raising prices in the long run.

  25. 24
    Ampersand says:

    Tom, “exchange” typically means “To give in return for something received; trade.” In that case, not all hunt and gather societies have “exchange;” some of them work primarily by sharing instead.

    As for if all societies have an economy, if you define economy as broadly as “the generation and administration of a community’s resources,” then yes, all societies have an economy. But if you define it as you did earlier — what you get when you add up “the exchange of goods and services, the organized provision of nutrition, people who specialize in one kind of productive activity or the other…” then not all societies have an economy.

  26. 25
    Ampersand says:

    Radfem,

    1) The ability to shoplift with relative impunity is white privilege. No question. (But has anyone here said that it’s a “revolutionary act”? I certainly didn’t say that.)

    2) And if I decide to walk home rather than taking the bus, maybe that’ll contribute to Tri-Met deciding to cancel that route, and maybe that will lead to the bus driver being laid off, and maybe that’ll be the difference between her and her family getting necessities or not. That settles it — I am morally obligated to take the bus rather than walking!

    It’s true that we can never know what ripple effects our actions will have. But because those effects are not possible to reliably anticipate, I don’t think it makes sense to hold people morally accountable for them.

  27. 26
    mythago says:

    So, clearly it’s OK for me to rip off Tri-Met by not paying for fares, or using forged transit passes. To claim any negative effects from my theft would be as silly as telling Amp he’d better not walk because bus drivers would lose jobs.

  28. 27
    confanity says:

    Goodness, I went to sleep and when I woke up, things had become interesting. 8^)

    Mandolin raised a fundamental issue: are property rights an inherent right of humans? I argue that they are so, as much as any right is. But what is a “right?” Let me offer a definition, Rights are those protections and privileges that members of a civilization expect to be accorded by, and in turn owe to, others. If I have a piece of food in my hand, but no right to call that food “mine,” what is there to stop a random stranger from taking my food every day? I believe that historical example (from kibbutzim to communism) demonstrates rather strongly that communal-property systems can not work unless everybody in the system knows, and is able to exert social pressure on, every other member of the system… and with seven billion people, the current mass of humanity is too large to sustain equitable sharing of communal property. So we have property rights.

    There’s also an interesting question about whether rights should be extended across species lines… you’re free to draw the line on that wherever you want, but don’t worry; even if you extend property rights to all living things, you can still subsist on fruits, which are given to the world at large in return for having their seeds scattered and fertilized.

    Here’s my take on the economy question: an “economy” is any system where value is exchanged for value, whether through currency or barter. Ampersand, you note that there are communal groups that share wealth (goods, services, and knowledge) with each other. We could argue about whether the implicit obligation of all members to contribute constitutes some sort of economy of mutual favors, but even without that, I believe that each communal group can be seen as an individual unit among the larger economy of the civilization: different groups will meet, by happenstance or plan, and trade various things of value: information about the use of plants and animals, surplus goods, genetic diversity in the form of intermarriage, and so on. Pointing out the lack of a formal economy within a single tribe has no more meaning in the broader picture than pointing out that no formal economy exists within my family.

    Incidentally, Mandolin, knowledge is a form of wealth in my book. Thus, your cats’ experience of life is in fact an accumulation of wealth. Unlike human knowledge, though, a cat’s knowledge can’t be passed on and is lost when they die. The fact that we know about quantum mechanics and DNA where, two millennia ago, we weren’t even sure whether the sun would come back each spring or what determined the coloration of a goat, shows how much wealth our species has accumulated.

  29. 28
    confanity says:

    Ampersand: you say “my original post wasn’t claiming that there’s nothing wrong with shoplifting from major corporations.” Please forgive me, I was fooled by you saying, in your original post, “It’s okay to shoplift from large corporations to get things you actually need. ” (Emphasis mine.)

    That said… if your argument is that the scale excuses the crime, then who gets to decide where the line is drawn? What is the maximum amount that it is “okay” to steal from a corporate entity, based on its stock price or estimated profits for the quarter or whatever? And which crimes does this apply to? Am I allowed to stab my neighbor with a sewing needle because that attack is so much less severe than manslaughter? Am I allowed to kill, you know, just one person, on account of how that crime is so insignificant in comparison to genocide? A small wrong is no less wrong than a great one, and in either case I doubt you have the right to decide what scale wrongs should be measured on.

    For that matter, you assume that even an aggregate of small crimes can have no major effect. In an age of cloud computing, of donation drives, of internet micropayments, of democracies with universal sufferage, of server farms… how can you doubt that small things add up to have huge effects? A quick google search turned up this article, which estimates that in the past year, shoplifting in the UK caused 4.4 billion pounds (nearly $7 billion US) in losses!

    And even that’s ignoring the local impact. As I mentioned in passing before, stores on the borderline can be tipped into the red by shoplifting, leading to anything from fewer raises given to employees, to staff cuts, to the whole shop being closed. As Radfem also points out, specific employees can end up suffering as a result of your crime. Do you have any assurance, for example, that the staff member in charge of stocking the logs was not blamed for their disappearance, or somehow punished for not preventing their loss? What if that person’s family was in economic straits no less dire than your own?

    You respond to this “law of unintended consequences” line of reasoning with the bus example… but this is a false equivalence. The cultural mores you operate within do include a “right to property;” they do not include an “obligation to patronize every business that exists.” The bus line has no culturally- or legally-sanctioned right to expect that you ride it, and if it remains unprofitable, that is no fault or responsibility of yours. On the other hand, a store does in fact have culturally- and legally-sanctioned rights to expect that you not steal its wares, and if it becomes unprofitable, then you do in fact bear some measure of blame. You may, if you wish, visit all the people who lost their jobs when the store closed and tell them how very small your share of the blame was.

    There’s another fallacy included, though. Imagine that your sentence had continued as follows: “It’s true that we can never know what ripple effects our actions will have. But because those effects are not possible to reliably anticipate, I don’t think it makes sense to hold people morally accountable for” — anything at all, including rape and murder. The same “argument” can be applied to any crime, yet clearly morality exists. The immediate, obvious, foreseen consequences — a theft violates somebody’s rights and unfairly deprives both them and the larger human project of wealth — far outweigh any theoretical, unintended, potential benefits of a crime.

  30. 29
    confanity says:

    Explaining the gun example: I wanted to make a point that shoplifting may feel nebulous and victimless, but that the same crime is harder to justify when you’re stealing money directly from your victim’s pockets, or the store’s cash register while the cashier looks on and realizes that it’s coming out of their paycheck. But I thought that someone might argue that the inherent danger of direct confrontation and armed robbery would make that crime worse, so I quickly threw out a condition that would remove that aspect.

    In my haste, I forgot to consider the psychological harm of even a false threat to one’s physical health… but by the same token, anybody who feels that shoplifting is a “victimless crime” is forgetting the psychological harm caused to an employee who realizes that they will be held responsible for missing stock.

  31. 30
    confanity says:

    Charles S: Yes, there are other ways of calculating the sum of human activities. I just chose to ignore all the irrelevant ones. Or, in other words, just because you can name a number of irrelevant metrics doesn’t mean that my metric is also irrelevant. Let me explain in greater depth.

    With “wealth” defined as “what people want(/need),” it becomes plain to see that greater wealth per capita correlates directly to higher standards of living. If you work, therefore, you are not merely changing the number attached to an arbitrary measure of total human activity, you are also making the world a better place for everyone. It follows that if you steal, thus decreasing the total wealth available, you are making the world a worse place for everyone.

    Yes, the truth of the matter is more complicated. Not all created wealth is put to use; some is wasted or destroyed or accidentally lost. For that matter, trades are not truly zero-sum: currency-based or otherwise standardized trading systems allow specialization and therefore increase the efficiency with which wealth can be created, allowing things to be made better for everyone at a faster pace.

    A clever pilpul artist at this point might jump on my use of the phrase “per capita” and argue that since it increases the number of people among whom wealth must be shared, having babies is just as bad as shoplifting, or the like. This is not true: babies who are raised to work rather than to steal may consume some resources, but the ever-increasing nature of human wealth demonstrates that an individual is likely to produce more than they consume. (If your average human consumed more than they produced, the human total couldn’t increase, and we’d still be naked hunter-gatherers with average life expectancies under 30.)

    Incidentally, I can condemn slavery based on nothing more than the net-wealth metric: slavery, history has shown, introduces gross efficiencies and instabilities and suppresses innovation, and thus is an inferior method of wealth-generation compared to willing, fairly-compensated labor.

  32. 31
    confanity says:

    Just wanted to add, Thanks to everyone for responding! Or at least, thanks to those who were civil and thought-provoking. Double thanks to those who actually read all the way through my mountains of text! I had been worrying that this was a dead thread and that my time spent thinking would not contribute to the human sum. 8^p

  33. 32
    Stefan says:

    It has been said already that if enough people shoplifted from Wal-Mart, then Wal-Mart would go broke.So even if it’s a minor harm to shoplift 5$ worth things, it’s very wrong to advocate for such behavior on a public blog.

  34. 33
    RonF says:

    Speaking as someone who shoplifted a couple of times when he was young and stupid – shoplifting is wrong. It’s stealing, it’s theft, it’s a sin. Trying to justify it on the basis of the degree of harm it does to the shop owner or the amount of need of the shoplifter are rationalizations that do not affect whether or not the act is wrong.

    That doesn’t mean that there should not be a degree of compassion, understanding and forgiveness based on whether it’s some college kid lifting some colored pens from the bookstore (ahem …) or someone stealing food for their family. But compassion and understanding and forgiveness are things given, not taken – things that people have the right to withhold or grant or ask for, not something someone has the right to presume or demand or require.

  35. 34
    Radfem says:

    Radfem,

    1) The ability to shoplift with relative impunity is white privilege. No question. (But has anyone here said that it’s a “revolutionary act”? I certainly didn’t say that.)

    2) And if I decide to walk home rather than taking the bus, maybe that’ll contribute to Tri-Met deciding to cancel that route, and maybe that will lead to the bus driver being laid off, and maybe that’ll be the difference between her and her family getting necessities or not. That settles it — I am morally obligated to take the bus rather than walking!

    It’s true that we can never know what ripple effects our actions will have. But because those effects are not possible to reliably anticipate, I don’t think it makes sense to hold people morally accountable for them.

    Thanks, for your response.

    Actually yes, on #1 on the prior comment thread, the poster who said basically that ripping off a big chain bookstore was some sort of community improving behavior b/c the big chain was taking from an independent bookseller in that neighborhood. I disagree with that for so many different reasons not the least of what might be the impact on that neighborhood especially if there’s more calls for service for example. Or the big chain engages in profiling which though morally wrong and stupid is what it’ll do which is its fault but I don’t think those that “lift” from the story and are able to be overlooked (and if they’re progressive on these issues, they know that) have their hands completely clean either. And the smaller independent bookstore, well maybe that’s what they want either. to have their customers engage in theft someplace else to “help” support them. I’ve met a lot of owners of independent book stores (and yeah, chains have messed many up just like Amazon and the internet will mess up most of the big chains eventually) and from what I know in talking to them, none of them would advocate such “direct action” on their behalf.

    That’s a lot different than stealing from necessity. But yes, you agree that it’s white privilege and you know that. So how does that make you feel? And I’m not trying to put you on the spot because I think everyone who benefits from racial privilege (just like with gender privilege) is faced with that issue especially if they care about it…if not back when engaging in the behavior that affords it then maybe later? Life’s filled with moments where we do that…go through our actions and think about them and what we’d do differently…what we’d do differently now.

    And on related issues (not what you said), I find it hard to believe that people are so damn interested in the struggle and exploitation of a labor class when they’re ripping them off or even the corporation they’re working for. I’m not talking about you in directly or in general. Or telling people like waitresses or retail people including from WalMart who to focus their anger or displeasure from a safer vantage at least on that issue. And I know from experience on some related issues pertaining to sexism in the workplace that can be a struggle in ways that you don’t always anticipate which does cause for some reexamination. If the person who ripped me off and cost me a raise I really needed came back and told me they felt my oppression which is why they were sticking it to the corporation, I’d have tried to stop myself from slapping them frankly. Because I wouldn’t need them to tell me who to blame for what action, or what the larger picture was, and not to get too caught up in the details and why listen to a person who’s used you without even knowing you possibly risking your employment and livelihood to make some point? If you want to really coalition build with people on these issues that are much different than yourself, you’ve got to respect total strangers to you enough not to use them this way. And that includes the employees of that big chain book store b/c I agree, big chain bookstores often don’t treat their employees well or fairly and they’re racist at hiring to boot.

    #2 is a false analogy b/c you’re removing the legality of the issue. Taking the bus is a legal act that might be your choice to varying degrees depending on issues like economics, access to car and gas and mobility. Shoplifting is illegal practically everywhere. I’m surprised to hear you conflate the two, maybe a better comparison would be to avoid paying when you take public transit (i.e. subways) which I think is a much better means of comparison though it raises the same impact of that “ripple” effect that I was raising. Not paying for transit might impact fare costs, ability to pay or layoff employees and increase the policing of stations and transit vehicles.

    No, you’re not morally obligated to take the bus and you’re not morally obligated not to shoplift. I think, there’s some assumption that the legal issue and the moral issue go together. I’ve met people who said they stole for necessities which is why I’m not really into judging individuals as much (though I think if you do blog on it, you should prepare for that!) but I’ve found is that even necessary decisions foster guilt feelings about them sometimes years later and I don’t think it’s hard to figure out why that happens. I do think that necessity and morally obligated are often very separate things though they often get confused.

    Like I said, people got to do what they got to do and I’ve heard stories far worse than anything here, just some food for thought. As for moral accountability, I think that’s ultimately coming from inside the person and I’ve met people who have stolen and done much, much worse than that and most of them do that…and spend years doing that and that’s not addressed enough either…the fact that many people do feel guilt even when something is necessary.

  36. 35
    Radfem says:

    Hey, the site’s loading much faster! But is the time to reedit a post much shorter now?

    As for working at Walmart and similar places, in my city the official unemployment rate is over 15% and is actually much higher because the main industry which is new construction has collapsed. It’s third in the nation for the ratio of applicants for positions to people filling those positions. So Walmart which is preparing to do more P/T hiring is attracting a lot of people. Ditto Target, which has its own issues.

  37. 36
    Epicurean says:

    Hiya!

    “Is shoplifting wrong?”

    I’d say it is and isn’t. It’s unjust according to the moral/legal code of our society. And it should be. Property rights are beneficial since the goods and services we see are there in part because companies feel relatively certain that the things they offer will be profitable for them.

    But theft is a reality. People are going to steal – whether they are rational or not to do so. The aggregate effect of people stealing (and countermeasures to prevent theft) will be included in prices. Which means everyone (those who steal and those who don’t) have a reason to be against (at least other) people stealing. We should promote an moral code that doesn’t condone it, and get people to internalize it.

    However, there are other questions such as: “Should I personally feel guilty/ashamed about stealing?” and “Is it prudent to steal?”

    Guilt is an emotion people feel (or don’t) subjectively. Others (like those who are stolen from and customers who pay more) have reason to try to get you to feel bad about it… But if you don’t feel it, then you just don’t. There are no incorrect emotions. You’ve either internalized the feeling that stealing is something to feel guilty about or you haven’t.

    Whether it’s prudent depends. The consequences of stealing can be heavy. It’s considered shameful, comes with legal penalties and can so on. But if you feel reasonably certain you won’t get caught, it might be in your self-interest to do so. Especially if not stealing means that you’re not going to be warm.

    Love the blog. It’s nice to see a discussion questioning a very basic moral claim.

    *I think moral terms should be more piecemeal. Benevolent, just, honorable, and prudent (and there opposites) are not always in alignment. What’s unjust might not always be imprudent.*

  38. 37
    Epicurean says:

    RonF:

    Speaking as someone who shoplifted a couple of times when he was young and stupid – shoplifting is wrong. It’s stealing, it’s theft, it’s a sin.

    It is stealing and theft. Pretty much by definition. But that doesn’t make it “wrong.” And if it is, you’ll need to clarify.

    (Whether it’s a sin or not depends on the deity in question you believe in. I’m not a believer so I’ll leave that alone.)

    Trying to justify it on the basis of the degree of harm it does to the shop owner or the amount of need of the shoplifter are rationalizations that do not affect whether or not the act is wrong.

    I think justice is a human creation. It’s something we all come together to create to attain certain goals. Given that, if someone claims something is wrong (unjust), they have a burden of proof to show to their audience that the action has some negative effect. (e.g. Shoplifting is unjust because it takes away motivation necessary for our economic system to work, etc. etc.) Otherwise, they have no reason to care.

    Simply claiming “it’s wrong!” could be done by anyone.

    Property-rights aren’t inherent in the universe. And they’re hardly fair. No body creates land and natural resources, for instance. Somewhere along the line, somebody simply claimed the land as theirs. Why should I respect that claim? Or subsequent claims of people who have passed around these natural resources?

    Take Amp’s stealing wood. Why do the companies who claimed the forest get the right to do so? Because God gave it to them? Or because they (or their ancestors, or someone else’s who sold the land) claimed it.

    I mean, I’m not against property-rights. I think they’re great (though they may be problematic at times). But they aren’t absolutes that exist in the ether. And if you want to justify them (and rules against theft) you need to show why they should exist.

  39. 38
    RonF says:

    Radfem:

    No, you’re not morally obligated to take the bus and you’re not morally obligated not to shoplift.

    I don’t think you’re morally obligated to take the bus. But I do think you’re morally obligated not to steal. On what basis do you not think that stealing is morally wrong?

    Morrigan25:

    I do hope that everyone who got all high and mighty on Amp and Bean for their choice on how to survive (by shoplifting necessities) made a nice donation to your local food bank since posting…

    My parish teamed up with a local volunteer group this last summer. They arranged for 5000 square feet of our front yard to be plowed up and planted. We grew 3 kinds of tomatoes, 4 kinds of peppers, cucumbers, pattipan, zucchini and crookneck squash, broccoli, brussles sprouts, radishes, beets, lettuce, green beans, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, and other stuff I can’t remember. I was out there digging to raise the beds, working peat moss into the clay, putting up an 8′ fence so the deer wouldn’t eat everything, staking the plants back up when the yard flooded, and helping harvest. We donated 2000+ pounds of fresh produce to the local food bank. And we’re going to do it again this summer, God willing. So if that lends any weight to my argument, then fine.

  40. 39
    Brandon Berg says:

    Ron:
    I believe that what Epicurean is saying is that there’s no such thing as moral obligation. Things that other people do may have good or bad consequences for us, and as such we may prefer to encourage or discourage them, but that’s not the same thing.

    As every argument I’ve heard for why we should regard something as a moral obligation ultimately boils down to “because I said so” or “because God said so,” neither of which I find particularly compelling, I’m inclined to agree.

  41. 40
    Phil says:

    Could he not at the very least swallow his pride, go to people with firewood or money, and just tell them “Please, I must have firewood or I’ll freeze to death, won’t you help me?”

    If working adds to the sum total of wealth, and trading has a neutral effect, and stealing subtracts from the total of wealth…then how do you justify begging, or asking for charity? Based on the addition/subtraction paradigm you’ve given, taking something for nothing is no different from stealing.

    Certainly, one can present reasons that stealing is wrong and begging is licit, but they do not follow from the axioms that you started with.

  42. 41
    gin-and-whiskey says:

    It’s just individual choices. And it’s overly simplistic and biased to frame the choice as “freeze/die or steal.” Sure, if that’s the choice most people would steal–I suspect we all would–but that is rarely the real choice. It’s more often what we’ve SELECTED as the choice because we know the answer will be “steal rather than freeze/die” and we don’t feel like doing something else.

    The most obvious questionable choice IMO was the choice to burn firewood–requiring theft, since Amp had none–instead of burning something else that didn’t require theft. Paper is made out of wood. Old newspaper is, usually, free and easy to come by. If you roll paper tightly–or burn it in a stack–it burns slowly, like wood, because it IS wood. A stack of yesterday’s papers has the same heat output as a duraflame, but they’re free. See, also: pallets (often disposed of for free by places that use lots of them, like garden and plant shops); lumber offcuts (local lumberyards, wood shops, construction sites); dumps and street disposal (wood furniture is… wood! Chair legs burn nicely;) supermarkets and book stores (cardboard boxes are great;) etc.

    Seriously. I have heated a hell of a lot of houses without Official Firewood Products, so I know of what I speak. It’s less convenient, but oh well. It’s free.

    But assuming that we skip over all the “don’t steal” stuff, there are still a lot of interesting choices to discuss, including:

    -the choice to steal firewood, instead of blankets. Should you steal a more expensive item if you believe it will reduce, overall, the need for stealing in the future? (I’m assuming it would. I’ve lived for prolonged periods in 40 degree houses. It’s certainly doable) Think of it as “stealing fishing rods instead of fish,” if you want to discuss it Biblically.

    -the choice to steal from Caldor’s instead of somewhere else. That gets into the whole corporate thing.

    -the choice to focus all thefts on Caldors, instead of spreading them around. That gets into your own ability to “judge” Caldor’s as being unworthy. It also raises an interesting counterargument to the “don’t judge!” defenders.

    As every argument I’ve heard for why we should regard something as a moral obligation ultimately boils down to “because I said so” or “because God said so,” neither of which I find particularly compelling, I’m inclined to agree.

    Sure, there’s no really compelling objective morality out there. But I think you’re missing the most common reason for moral codes, of mutual agreement:
    A: Why should ____ be a moral obligation on me?
    B: Because you want it to be a moral obligation on me.

    If you want to buy into a society which will protect you against ____, you have functionally agreed not to ______.