I’m having some major hangups about shoplifting, specifically how it affects employees and members of the proletariat. What do you think about shoplifting? Don’t waste my time answering if you’re not a socialist.
I’m having some major hangups about shoplifting, specifically how it affects employees and members of the proletariat. What do you think about shoplifting? Don’t waste my time answering if you’re not a socialist.
On the one hand the idea of personal property isn’t exactly based in morality, personal property is what you can acquire/keep/defend (and what your ancestors could acquire/keep/defend).
On the other hand, people have worked to produce the things in shops and should arguably be compensated.
Is the world a better place if you have the goods that you would steal or if the shops has those goods? You might be able to spend the money you saved on helping people, whereas otherwise it would just go to shareholders. But maybe by shoplifting you are damaging a service that brings people value.
Who would actually be harmed? The workers or the owners? This will have a different answer from business to business.
It also depends on your situation. Maybe society owes everyone a basic standard of living. If you have no source of income and no means to buy anything then maybe it is justified to just take things from those that have more?
Sure, which is why stealing from a smaller shop is unethical. On the other hand, stealing from a supermarket megacorporation whose products were assembled by quasi-slaves (who are not fairly compensated) sounds very ethical: in my view expropriating the thieves doesn’t make you a thief.
Also worth noting, theft is accounted for in every shop, and the shop WILL pay its bills to its providers. So whatever product you’re stealing from a supermarket will be paid to the producer, therefore stealing animal products is not vegan (i’ve heard people argue otherwise) because the animal exploiter will be paid. On the other hand, every more expensive/fair product you steal from the supermarket will take money from the pockets of the supermarket shareholders into the producers, which is laudable.
If you choose to steal something you will increase the total cost due to theft for that shop. This cost is usually passed on to the consumer in the form of raised prices.
Well it’s not impossible but it’s not automatic either. All shops account for 2-20% of broken/lost/stolen/unsold goods in their accounting. As long as you stay under that number there should not be raised prices, although it’s not exactly something you control as a shoplifter :)