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why shoplifting isn't stealing

tantric

tantric

Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2015
Messages
435
Location
Athens, GA, USA
Basic Beliefs
rational buddhism
maya, in buddhism, refers to a certain kind of illusion, and i'll just refer you to wikipedia for that. it should be said that buddhism doesn't beat around the bush about maya - it is the tool of Lord Mara, the demon lord of lies. here i'm using it to identify idea constructs, made of many lesser ideas that reference each other, which are presented as real and concrete things in our society. with me? a basic list would start with intellectual property, race and....corporate personhood.

when you got into a forest and pick some berries, did you steal them from the forest? of course not, forests don't own things - because they are not people. you can't steal an apple from a tree, because trees can't own things.

Corporate personhood is the legal notion that a corporation, separately from its associated human beings (like owners, managers, or employees), has at least some of the legal rights and responsibilities enjoyed by natural persons (physical humans)

-wikipedia
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and then

A recurring problem in this debate is the widespread misunderstanding of what the term "person" actually means in law, with both opponents and proponents of corporate rights and duties frequently conflating several meanings of the term. Underlying the idea that corporate personhood is a "legal fiction" is the view that only human beings are "persons." Indeed, it is precisely the treatment of "person" and "human being" as interchangeable, or co-extensive, that is behind the clamor that followed the Citizens United decision. Yet there is no compelling reason to assume, from the legal point of view, that "person" and "human being" are in fact one and the same. Legally speaking, a "person" is neither the flesh-and-blood human being, nor the responsible subject, but is merely, as Hans Kelsen argued, a "point of imputation" for rights and duties arising in legal relations
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did you get that? i'm pretty gifted at understanding badthink. i got it, i just want to go beat a lawyer. if corporations really were people, we'd have shot most of them in the head by now.

start easy. go into mal-wart and get a fat bag of mangoes, which cost about a dollar a piece. get some other stuff, but no bananas,. when you get to the self check out, put the bag of mangoes on the scanner and hit 'enter code'. then type '4011'. watch as your mangoes are now about $0.80 per pound. do not attempt this twice in one checkout. think about you sheep, what are they going to do? make you pay for them?

on the way to your home, smile a trickster smile. you're the smart monkey, the one that gets to live. you got the bananas, haha. pretechnological peoples have developed some remarkably clever ways of harvesting honey - do you really think they think they are robbing the bees.

i had some mandatory therapy last week when my fondness for theft came up (i have ferret genes). the nurse asked, what are you stealing? i replied, stuff i have to have and can't buy with foodstamps, mostly medicines. in the ghetto, that's what we call 'affordable health care'.
 
Every culture has a moral code which declares theft to be wrong, and then goes on to list what can be owned, and is covered by the ban, and what cannot be owned, and is fair game for whoever wants it.

In between these two extremes are a million loopholes in the moral code. Is it moral to steal food if you are starving?
Is it less moral to steal money and buy food? That's the crux of it. A moral code exists so a group of humans survive. A moral code is of very little use when individual survival is at stake.

On top of that, a moral code is an incredibly flexible thing. Taking honey from a hive is definitely robbery, but so what? They're bees.
 
Bronzeage said:
Every culture has a moral code which declares theft to be wrong, and then goes on to list what can be owned, and is covered by the ban, and what cannot be owned, and is fair game for whoever wants it. .
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well, considering we're recovering from a century featuring a civilization that had as one of its founding principles 'property is theft' and realized that by taking all of it.....

On top of that, a moral code is an incredibly flexible thing. Taking honey from a hive is definitely robbery, but so what? They're bees.
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actually, i thought the same thing, but decided it was probably just me. it doesn't feel like stealing when i stick my hand under a chicken and take her egg, so why bees? they're just as domesticated and it doesn't kill them. hmmmm. but of course you realize my point isn't about theft, but about deprogramming the badthink of corporate personhood.
 
tantric said:
well, considering we're recovering from a century featuring a civilization that had as one of its founding principles 'property is theft' and realized that by taking all of it.....

On top of that, a moral code is an incredibly flexible thing. Taking honey from a hive is definitely robbery, but so what? They're bees.
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actually, i thought the same thing, but decided it was probably just me. it doesn't feel like stealing when i stick my hand under a chicken and take her egg, so why bees? they're just as domesticated and it doesn't kill them. hmmmm. but of course you realize my point isn't about theft, but about deprogramming the badthink of corporate personhood.
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The subtle point that most people miss when they concede that theft is bad, is they have just accepted the concept of private property. This is something so intrinsic to our culture, and has been for the past 250,000 years, give or take, it's possible for us consider a chicken's egg as our exclusive possession. If you ask any random person why it's possible for a person to own a tree and all the dirt under it, they're likely to furrow their brow and wonder what kind of scam you have in motion.
 
Bronzeage said:
tantric said:
well, considering we're recovering from a century featuring a civilization that had as one of its founding principles 'property is theft' and realized that by taking all of it.....



actually, i thought the same thing, but decided it was probably just me. it doesn't feel like stealing when i stick my hand under a chicken and take her egg, so why bees? they're just as domesticated and it doesn't kill them. hmmmm. but of course you realize my point isn't about theft, but about deprogramming the badthink of corporate personhood.
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The subtle point that most people miss when they concede that theft is bad, is they have just accepted the concept of private property. This is something so intrinsic to our culture, and has been for the past 250,000 years, give or take, it's possible for us consider a chicken's egg as our exclusive possession. If you ask any random person why it's possible for a person to own a tree and all the dirt under it, they're likely to furrow their brow and wonder what kind of scam you have in motion.
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Most people follow this up by asserting that Humans>Everything else. We as humans are self interested in the survival and propogation of our species alone. It's the same for everything else under the sun that eats, breeds, and dies (Assuming they have the necessary cognition to conceive of themselves as a species) so why should we be any different? Nobody quibbles over the moral implications of a lion eating another animal. And why should they?

Human morality has no place in the world of any other animal other than humans, but that works both ways you see. Just as I wouldn't impart my moral standards onto a hungry animal eating another, nor will I do so when I bereave a chicken of its unborn young.
 
All of human society is built on concepts that don't map to anything concrete, but which exist by virtue of being widely accepted.

Corporations exist; but only because we agree that they exist. And we agree that they are the kind of entity from which one can steal.

Money is similar - it exists only because we agree to act as though it exists. A US$100 bill has less intrinsic value than a sheet of toilet paper (it's dirty, one-ply and not particularly absorbent); but as long as enough people agree that it's valuable, it's valuable.

Taking stuff from Walmart without paying is exactly as reasonable as using $100 bills to wipe your arse. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as long as you reject society; but to do one, but not the other, is hypocrisy.
 
if corporations really were people, we'd have shot most of them in the head by now.
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I thought corporations were like combined companies or something. And yeah I'd try to put them in prison and let them enjoy getting raped for a decade before they're allowed to die.

go into mal-wart and get a fat bag of mangoes, which cost about a dollar a piece. get some other stuff, but no bananas,. when you get to the self check out, put the bag of mangoes on the scanner and hit 'enter code'. then type '4011'. watch as your mangoes are now about $0.80 per pound. do not attempt this twice in one checkout. think about you sheep, what are they going to do? make you pay for them?
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I will try that but I like kroger because they were around before Wal Mart killed all small stores in my community. But demonlord battle is more likely to go down at Wal Mart, you're right. I think your demonlord is an object made of pipes and wires. Somehow between corporations and people there comes is pile of wire pipes and pipe wires that jumble people minds up crazy-like. Stuff that isn't supposed to be so costly is suddenly 200% more costly - and it passes because of the Super Mario Brothers pipes every fuckingwhere. Like oh, naturally abundant things pour out of that pipe... so Ima throw half of everything I have into it. I have a gigantic wire pile in the garage. Like this thing is getting out of hand. Every time I look at it I think about this darn demonlordish you're talking about.

Here is an accurate picture of the world and the wire pipes. And the demonlord. Passing thru the forest of illusion brings us to the sunken ghost ship. From there we fight the demonlord and close down the pipes forever. I'm so totally feeling what you're saying even though I can only use Mario Kart to express it. Don't be fooled by the smiling trees in the forest of illusion. Must move like ferrets. Keep low. Avoid the pipe wires. The demonlord knows we're coming. It watches. Traps in the forest. Best not to tell any therapists about this. They may be working for the demonlord. This could get complicated and costly to your freedom. But what is your freedom in the first place if you're not allowed to battle the demonlord? Tough call.
 
bilby said:
Taking stuff from Walmart without paying is exactly as reasonable as using $100 bills to wipe your arse. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as long as you reject society; but to do one, but not the other, is hypocrisy.
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uh, because both attack established social contracts? so if i drink coffee but not cocaine i'm a hypocrite? actually, i might agree with that one. evolution doesn't give a rat's ass about what you think about what is happening. stealing medicine and getting cheaper food is pro-survival, the ass wiping bit isn't. though i do chop my meth with my old credit card - does that count?
 
If you are a giant gorilla, shoplifting isn't stealing as long as you put the shop back when you're done playing with it.

Eldarion Lathria
 
Not trying to jinx you but with this thinking it is just a matter of time before prison happens again. Memorizing what to say to a Circuit Judge beforehand can make all the difference. Now I don't know about you, but in my experience, it is always best to sound exactly like Samuel L. Jackson when something truly makes no sense. So note that I am speaking exactly like SLJ when I say this. Electricity comes down out the clouds, man. And the shit is up in your brain. Nobody owns the shit. Same goes for water. And people steal gold to pay for the stuff? Diamonds? They manufacture drugs to pay for the stuff! What is up, tantric?

I have stolen copper to resell... just to pay for water. Go out back and start digging. What do you see when you get down a couple feet? Yep, water magically appears. Somebody is messing with our heads. And Jesus Christ, how easy is it to collect electricity? A 150 year old book and some household items will get you all the electricity you need. So yeah, that don't make a damn lick of sense either.

I'll stop complaining now and give you some solutions. Steal a five foot pipe. Open the hellish portal to slaveland out on the street. The little metal circle with esoteric symbols all over it. That is where they horde the water. See the bolt? You can weld a crude key onto the end of the pipe that fits the bolt perfectly. Now you have free water. Have a statement prepared because demonlord is watching meters and graphs. They will come for you eventually but keeping your consumption low will keep you low on demonlord's list. As for electricity, it depends on what kind of meter you're dealing with. Stealing it can actually get you killed so I'll give no advice on it but I'll say that it is very easy. Look it up on the internet. Oh and internet is the easiest of all. If you can't steal internet you're not ready for in-store moves. Good job stealing from Wal Mart btw. You're doing good things.

What about clothing? All you ever need is one outfit but heh, for some reason people have closets full of clothes. They think it is a matter of freedom but it is not. The opposite, huh. Well, there are ways to steal clothes, especially if you're in good physical shape. Here is what you do. Put on some pants. Then put on another pair. Switch them on the rack after going to the dressing room and leave the store. sAme drill with shirts. Shirts and pants are SOOOO important, huh. Fucking idiots. BAM now you have cool new clothes, and people will want to screw you. Problem solved there. People will ALWAYS want to "screw you", considering water costs money, but getting actual sex does get easier when you have nice things. Some drugs can make stealing a cinch. I go with benzodiazepines. You mentioned you like speed but unless it acts on you as a sedative I don't suggest using speed when you go out shopping for things to steal.

Stealing is SO FUN, oh my God. The matter inside my body is stolen from me on a constant basis, so it is all fair game out here. The electricity in my brain is no different than the electricity I pay for every month. The water in my body is no different than the water I constantly steal. My body even has copper. I strip wire when I'm bored because I have a mountain of it. Then I sell it.. and I pay for my own body with the profits. Does that seem right, tantric? I think it is alright to steal anything except a living, human body. Can't steal those. Everything else has no money value in an ideal world but someone is always going to come along and steal it just to pimp It out to you.

How long have you been doing this avocado thing? Is this a decent lick? I don't like avocado but I do enjoy "stealing". I would steal any fruit. The stuff comes from trees. Totally fair game, because trees come from dirt. Soil is life, and they're essentially breaking the law when they try to sell life.

This all ends in prison of course, and that is where shit gets kooky because water, electricity and clothing are FREE in prison. Now explain that one to me. They will feed you in prison for stealing food. They will spend a hundred grand a year keeping you alive in prison, just for "stealing" things out here where we are "free" (to stay alive). It seems like something is amiss. Am I missing something or am I so totally right that the only thing people can do is disagree?
 
bilby said:
All of human society is built on concepts that don't map to anything concrete, but which exist by virtue of being widely accepted.

Corporations exist; but only because we agree that they exist. And we agree that they are the kind of entity from which one can steal.

Money is similar - it exists only because we agree to act as though it exists. A US$100 bill has less intrinsic value than a sheet of toilet paper (it's dirty, one-ply and not particularly absorbent); but as long as enough people agree that it's valuable, it's valuable.

Taking stuff from Walmart without paying is exactly as reasonable as using $100 bills to wipe your arse. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, as long as you reject society; but to do one, but not the other, is hypocrisy.
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That's what I was going to say. This is explored somewhat in the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - by Yuval Harari. Which is a pretty good read.
 
I'm taking the thread title at face value and talking about that end. Shoplifting is good . It is good for the world because the things you steal give little Asian kids something to do. See it is like a butterfly effect. They get to dig through giant mounds of discarded American tech equipment. They have small, agile fingers for sifting through caustic tech waste. They would still stay really busy if you didn't steal, so don't worry either way. They will always have something to dig through. Demons like child blood. Stores know those little kids are cutting their bare feet to get to the honey hole of quartz and gold. Basically stores sell stuff soaked with child blood. And they aren't even American children. So when it comes to stealing from them it really becomes clear that you're doing the right thing. At the end of the day it all comes down to the kids.

They actually make money from your theft if it is only small stuff you steal. Hypothetically you could steal much more expensive things that are the same size. Wal Mart has light bulbs that are $40 each, right there on the shelf. If you're a familiar face and you aren't looking all strung out or nervous you can easily get ten of them and drive to another Wal Mart (three miles away) for a refund. They only refund cash without a receipt a few times a month. They have to give you in store credit after a few cash outs. But your limit resets every month. Wal Mart is easy to work with as a shoplifter.

Hypothetically you have the more advanced option of falling when you see a puddle, random item of clothing or something else in the isle. You have to be a decent actor in that case, and no drugs in your system is a must. You have to wait for a while but they will give you $5,000 to keep you out of court. Accepting it or going for the Grammy is up to you. Grammy option has a long term commitment involving doctor visits and a lot of acting. People who don't deserve it win every year. Go for it I say. The doctor visits can get you narcotics. You said you enjoy selling drugs, right? Well that would be oodles of fun for you while waiting for your check. Fentanyl patches are a good thing to have around. People really like them, and they will like you for having them.
 
I can't see any reason why shoplefting is immoral. I haven't had the balls to do it myself, but my wife did it. She decided we needed a widget, and she found out it was simply impossible to buy a widget from anybody without them insisting on selling you a gizmo along with it. We had, predictably, absolutely no use for a gizmo. But what the heck, beggars and choosers, so she sucked it up and bought the gizmo anyway just to get the widget. Solved our problem but left us with a new problem -- stupid gizmo taking up space in our house. So she tossed it in the car and the next time she went past the place that sold it to her she just took it into the shop and left it.
 
Bomb#20 said:
I can't see any reason why shoplefting is immoral. I haven't had the balls to do it myself, but my wife did it. She decided we needed a widget, and she found out it was simply impossible to buy a widget from anybody without them insisting on selling you a gizmo along with it. We had, predictably, absolutely no use for a gizmo. But what the heck, beggars and choosers, so she sucked it up and bought the gizmo anyway just to get the widget. Solved our problem but left us with a new problem -- stupid gizmo taking up space in our house. So she tossed it in the car and the next time she went past the place that sold it to her she just took it into the shop and left it.
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And there I was thinking you were only saying that because reasons can't be seen.
 
Eldarion Lathria said:
If you are a giant gorilla, shoplifting isn't stealing as long as you put the shop back when you're done playing with it.

Eldarion Lathria
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If you simply pick it up it hasn't gone anywhere, no theft.

You're thinking of shoptaking, not shoplifting.
 
Why bank robbery isn't theft.

The OP got one right at least: there is no intellectual property, but it's usually presented as real (there are, however, patents, copyrights, and trademarks, just as there are taxes).
On the other hand, race is real, and while corporations aren't persons in the usual, colloquial sense of "person", I don't know how often they're presented as such - though it seems to me sometimes they are, perhaps in some cases of advocacy of applying criminal law to them. Applying criminal law may be just a practical way of preventing certain behaviors sometimes, but sometimes it looks to me like there is clear punitive intent towards the corporation.

But I digress. Regarding the main argument, one might go for a reductio: since corporations aren't people, that applies not only to Walmart, but also to - say - HSBC. So, the parallel argument would yield that bank robbery is not theft. But it obviously is.

A key problem with the argument is that from the fact that corporations aren't persons it does not follow that the money in the bank or the stuff in Walmart have no owner. They do, and that would be the people who legally own the corporation (leaving aside some metaphysically possible but actually improbable cases and either nonexistent or at least very infrequent cases), even if the corporation is not a person (or even if it can't be owned in a non-legal sense; the point is that regardless of that, a bunch of people own the money in the bank and the stuff in Walmart).

ETA:

More arguments. (in case someone is tempted to agree that bank robbery isn't theft!):

1. When people form a corporation, they don't give their money away. They decide to put their resources together, usually in order to make better use of them. Stealing their money after they do so is theft, just as it was before.

2. The state (or government, if you prefer) is not a person in the usual sense, either. But taking medicines from a public hospital without authorization is (in usual realistic cases, etc.) theft. So is, say, taking some books from a public library without authorization and keeping or selling them, taking weapons from an army depot, etc.

3. Yes, I know, someone might still bite the bullet. Such is life.
 
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tantric said:
but of course you realize my point isn't about theft, but about deprogramming the badthink of corporate personhood.
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So what is it about corporate personhood that you regard as badthink? It's technical jargon for judges. Are you objecting in general to specialists using their own technical jargon for their own concepts? Are you arguing that this particular jargon causes problems to the public and wish judges would just come up with a different word for their concept? Or are you claiming judges are thinking badly just by using their concept at all?

Once upon a time before there were corporations, if a guy with a wagon drove his horses too fast and smashed up your wagon with his wagon, you'd sue him, and the judge would patiently listen to him explain why it wasn't his fault, and then the judge would make him pay for your wagon. Later it became common for rich guys to hire poor guys to drive their wagons for them. The first and most basic underlying rule for societies that use courts instead of combat to settle disputes is, "Never sue poor people". So when your wagon got smashed by a poor guy who didn't have any money to buy you a new wagon with, judges decided saying "Screw you" wasn't as fair as letting you sue the rich guy who hired him. Later, when it became common for two guys to form a partnership and pool their money to buy a wagon and hire a poor guy to drive it, no problem, when he smashed your wagon you just sued both partners. The judge brought them both into court, patiently listened to both of them explain why it wasn't their fault, and then made them each pay you half what it cost to replace your wagon.

The trouble is, later still it became common for a thousand guys to pool their money to buy a hundred wagons and hire a hundred poor guys to drive them. So by the customary practice, when one of those drivers drove his employers' horses too fast and smashed your wagon, to get a new wagon you'd have to sue a thousand people, and get the judges to patiently listen to a thousand guys explaining why what happened to your wagon wasn't their fault and then make each of them buy you a thousandth of a wagon. That's lovely in theory, but in practice it's not much fairer to you than "Screw you" was. It'd take you twenty years to get even half the cost of a replacement wagon out of all those partners.

So judges came up with a more practical solution. Instead of suing all those thousand partners, they told you to sue the partnership itself. You file one lawsuit instead of a thousand, you show up in court once, the thousand owners decide among themselves who they'll send to court to explain to the judge why it wasn't any of their faults, and then the judge tells the sheriff to seize enough from the partners' pool of money buy you a new wagon. Afterwards the thousand owners will have to decide among themselves whether to operate their business without that money or to chip in enough new money to replace what the sheriff took; but you and the judge don't need to worry about that.

That's what corporate personhood is: it's the judges' novel concept of having you sue the partnership instead of suing all the partners. Sounds to me like goodthink.
 
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