Is shoplifting good?
We're serious. Over at iPM, we're looking at whether shoplifting is on the increase? One expert told us that in some areas thieves might be seen as "freedom fighters". Do you have a shoplifting experience to share? Are you a shopkeeper seeing your margins squeezed by theft? Are you a shop security guard? Do you know something you think we should know?
Please share what you know here.
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"Is shoplifting good?"
You mean, is THEFT good. Shoplifting is THEFT.
I'd like to think the question was, at best spurious. Ultimately, either the shopkeeper goes out of business or (in almost all cases) innocent consumers are saddled with higher product prices.
Is that good?
So, how can theft from a shop be good, or even, condoned?
"One expert told us that in some areas thieves might be seen as "freedom fighters""
Well, if the "expert" is right, let's all do it (steal) and see where everything ends-up.
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Anyone who tries to pass themselves off as 'freedom fighters' when they're in fact stealing is either self-delusional or a fraud.
I've heard this argument time and again over the years from people trying to justify their crime, yet the truth is that the cost of their activity is ultimately borne by the other, innocent, customers.
Same goes for credit card fraud - it is not a victimless crime. We all end up paying for it.
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Eddie, You misspelled margarine, and if you steal it you shouldn't squeeze it.
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Ho hum. I posted on Friday's Glass Box just now and the comment vanished; when I commented that it had, that vanished too.
Blog broken?
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I worked in two shops for a total of eight years. Both were small independent businesses, on very small margins that only just managed to keep going. (Both have now closed despite dogged persistence and sacrifice by their owners.)
Both were plagued by shoplifters and the occasional night-time burglary.
99% of the shop lifters were drug addicts.
The other 1% young, I imagine they may have thought they had some 'right' to take something they wanted, but couldn't afford at the time, but I don't accept that argument. (It wasn't food, so can't be said to have been essential for life.)
I know of 60's radical Abbie Hoffman’s book ‘Steal this book’ and of the anarchist philosophy that any form of capitalism if fair game, until a true anarchist society is created and I imagine that some still believe in this .
'But Freedom Fighters'?
The majority of shoplifters are drug addicts - victims, losers call them what you will, but don’t dignify them with ‘Freedom Fighters’, they can’t even free themselves.
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Who was it who/that said "Property is theft"?
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...must have been Tony Blair. He's "enlightened".
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Frances O @ 6, Proudhon.
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And Proudhon to you, too, Chris
;o)
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yawn, "awaiting moderation", takes the edge off free speech doesn't it?
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C_G 8
You did ask for that (9) ...
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Sitting in a pub with a friend we watched a gang of youths enter the shop opposite. The smallest boy took a plastic bottle of drink from a shelf and came out. He went round the corner and drank it.
What would have happened had he been arrested? Not a lot.
Stealing is what thieves do. And they do it because they know the criminal justice system in the UK is a nonsense.
This is unprincipled, godless liberalism, not freedom fighting.
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La propriété, c'est le vol!
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Ah. It doesn't like e acute. Except after c.
NB I won't try using that letter between j and l, either.
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(NB there isn't an acute in 'est'. Feeble attempt at joke. Hmm. Must be time for my medicine.)
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There are certainly precedents: I have heard it said that "Property is theft", and property is certain etymologically the result of appropriation, i.e. "taking"...and we have also heard that "Possession is nine tenths of the law"...Our laws, of course were mostly made;-)
ed
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I think it was Ray Bradbury who proposed a society on Mars where it was OK to kill people but theft was completely unknown. I guess every society has its shiboleths.
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Someone has stolen David McNickle's userid and is posting under his name!
Now that's what I call shoplifting!
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Shopfitting good for Shopfitters
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Morality is not relative, nor does it change over time.
And taking what is not yours has ever been the wrong course of action.
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NN 20
I think that is the most heavy wieght statement I have ever read on this blog, a whole swathe of moral philosophy dealt with in one sentence.
If you believe morality is absolute then I would be very interested in the frame of reference you use.
That said, I agree that (within our society, at this time) shoplifting is wrong.
More generally
I guess the argument is that a disenfranchised youth, given nothing buy society, might feel no qualms about taking and so what if the price of a loaf goes up for a load of middle class people who can afford it and have all the priveledges the state can offer etc.
It's a powerful arguement for political change but not one, in my opinion for stealing which, as others have pointed out, impacts on everybody.
Sometimes it is moral appropriate to break the law and it is a difficult judgement for individuals about when these moments are. Likening shoplifting to acts of resistance (e.g. in Zimbabwe, occupied France etc.) seems pretty base to me.
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20-21 Morality does change over time. That is not the same as what's right or wrong, which doesn't change. I am just waiting for shoplifting to be legalised and then some "Affirming" groups to be set up to counter any objections from society.
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Stealing is wrong whether it's from shops or individuals.
I suppose the fatuous concept of "shoplifters (aka thieves) as freedom fighters" might allow a few ageing pinko liberals to attempt a little anti-capitalist sniping but they don't really mean what they say. They're just trying to show they're still "radical" and "dangerous" and it's still 1968.
Pathetic.
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Shoplifting is what the big boys like Sainsburys and Tesco do too when they move into an area and build one of their stores with the sole intention of lifting all the other shops out of there. They say this is not there intention, nevertheless, the consequences are the same.
The other thing they do is lift land. I think I read somewhere that Tesco is now one of the biggest 'dormant' land owners in the country. That is to say, these supermarkets by up huge swathes of land for the sole purpose of being able to deprive their rivals from taking it. They seem to have little intention of building anything on it. They just bank it. This shoves up the price of local land for building houses.
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You might ask, what this has to do with the price of cheese?
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VH 22
If you're saying that what's right and wrong doesn't change then you're talking about absolute morality. What is the absolute moral truth on which you base your idea of what is, always and everywhere, right or wrong?
IOAW 23 and others who have made th point that shoplifting is theft. This is true and if we were less euphemistic I think it would be helpful. I'm thinking of 'honour killing', 'female circumcision' and so on which should be called what they are and not deemed anything less awful by bland or even positive sounding titles.
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You know what, I think there is a clever clogs sub text to some of these 'theft is always wrong' texts.
'Ah, but what about stealing to feed a starving child?'
'Then the food is rightfully the child's and it isn't stealing'
or
'Then a greater good may outweigh the wrong of theft'
is how (I hope) they reply to the obvious charges against them of moral myopia or that they can't do moral arithmetic.
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I was a witness to a shoplifting incident when a bloke who was hanging around as I used a 'self-serve' til at a well known supermarket late at night, slipped past me and bagged up a big takeaway curry bag and ran off. I raised the alarm but none of the staff gave chase or appeared interested. Clearly they just expect it, and we pay for it!
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Here, the 'can't lose, awash with government money' banks are keeping the FTSE as the only EU-US bourse not crashing as per usual.
Bernanke saying hte US banks won't be nationalised had instructive effects.
In hte US Citi stock fell, 'cos being nationalsied was their only chance.
Here it meant Brown probably wouldn't do the right thing either so the 20 to 50 percent of the banks still privately owned is a real gold mine, a winning bet to nowt.
I think that's theft, in fact daylight robbery by the private sector.
But then every penny made in paper transactions is.
Without qualification, whether in speculative bubbles, short selling or 'ordinary' profit taking.
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I have seen a grown man shop-lift. He wasn't an addict and he stole food, very basic fruit and veg to feed his family.
Was it wrong, yes.
Would I do it if I had no other option to feed my children, yes.
It isn't always so clear cut.
Also how many have scrumped apples?
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21, 26 philtblog - thanks for the comments !
And I can sum up for you the the frame of reference for thinking that there is an absolute morality in another short phrase:
this phrase has been stated by the ancient Greeks, by Confucius, in the sacred scriptures of the Baha'i Faith, in Hinduism, in the Bible, both Old and New, and also in the writings of Islam.
“That which you want for yourself, seek for others” or, conversely, "Do not do to others what would anger you if done to you by others."
It is sometimes callled The Golden Rule.
nikki noodle
xx
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NN 31
Thanks Nikki, an interesting discussion and point of view.
I would argue, however, that yours is not an absolute moral truth. It is your moral compass and very respectable it is too, but that doesn't make it an absolute moral truth. To qualify it has to be an immutable, absolute and unbending law. The trouble with such laws is that they require belief in an absolute force which has created them. That may be God or The Profound Goodness of Human Beings or some other concept but they require belief, have no proof and are therefore not immutable or absolute. So I don't believe there is absolute moral truth and therefore have to accept the rather unsatisfactory answer that morality is relative and you have to build a construct, relative to time and place, which you base your idea of morality on, and then persuade everyone else it's good for them.
In my opinion this is how/why religions began which is why all the sacred texts have expressions like yours which really mean 'for society to survive we all have to work together and trust each other to be basically good to one another' which is a very sensible stand point and one I share. But it's not absolute, it's just sensible, useful and practical as well as being nice and I think that's the best we can hope for.
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nn, it probably all depends on what is defined as 'moral', and that probably depends on who is doing the defining and the society they are in when they do it.
I agree about 'do what thou wilt as long as thou harmest none' and 'do as you would be done by' being pretty good ways to run a life, but whether they are moral or practical or religious or *what* they are called is a different matter.
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philtblog 32
thanks, again:
What is the absolute moral truth on which I base ideas of what is, always and everywhere, right or wrong, is simply 'The Other' - and this is an immutable, absolute and unbending.
[Its opposite is Self].
It does not require any force or deity or religion, as the Ancient Greeks and Confucius acknowledged.
It can be stated as an immutable, absolute and unbending law: "do unto others as you would have done unto you" - without invoking any Higher Beings at all.
And I think i can agree with you about how religions began, as a codifying of exact rules and regulations about social interactions, cleanliness and obligations.
But neither of us are talking about religion.
Morality pre-dates religion just as myth predates history. And, although many religions have incorporated the earlier Moral Codes, let's not talk about religion or Moral Codes.
What is fundamental comes before all that.
nikki
xx
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still hoping for the best we can hope for.
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How can stealing from someone who has worked to pay for what they have be good? I can't even believe this is actually a topic of discussion. It's thievery, plain and simple.
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