Would You Steal

if your family was going hungry?

Do these cuts seem savage, unjustified to yourself?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3578279/Benefits-cap-slashed-26-000-20-000-family-Claimants-told-jobs-handouts-cut.html

How will some manage?

IF YOUR LIFE depended on it, then a good case may be made for stealing...


BUT, "going hungry" ?

THERE'S still charities that you could approach first, before being desperate enough to steal..     One step at a time...      

The concept of 'ownership' is a conventional, man-made concept.  It began with 'possession', over which squirmishes were fought, and then, when hunter-gatherers moved on to agriculture, futures, or stored wealth, became paramount.

Until the age of agriculture, 'stealing' didn't exist.  Then it was 'taking'.  There was no idea of ownership, only possession.  The idea of stealing is predicated on the concept of ownership, which is really simply prolonged, perhaps infinite possession.

Since the development of the concept of ownership, whole theories have evolved telling us what to do with stored value: capitalism, socialism, communism, etc.

But during Hurricane Katrina, in New Orleans, we came to realize one thing: man-made conventions pale in the face of survival.  Looting became popular, but not the kind of thing one envisions with hundreds of drunks partying down Canal Street, breaking windows and stealing junk.  It was honest survivalists, breaking into stores to obtain warmth, light, water, shelter and food for families.

Is stealing immoral?  Especially, when the concept of ownership itself is man-made and unnatural?

interesting quill

I would suggest that the answer to that depends a)upon WHAT is being stolen, and B) the circumstances under which it is stolen

so the man who steals food/clothing/shelter from a dysfunctional store in a situation of great peril is surely not guilty of any offense

however the scroat that breaks into my home to relive me of posessions which are the fruit of my labour or maybe even the tools with which to persue my labour, especially when said scroat is most likely feeding a habit or is too idle to even attend job interviews is a different kettle of fish....

the man who, starving shoplifts food is surely guilty of a much lesser offence than the gang of thieving chavs, who nick anything and everything they can, in order to sell in order to feed their habits/stupid lifestyles/ pack of 96 kids by 100 different layabout fathers

I guess as is often the case, one has to ask what would the "reasonable man" think

Well the problem with Quill's point is where a family has laboured to farm, enough food in order to survive to have this then pillaged by armed me. By this immoral view of Quill's would make this acceptable, as the view of possession is a concept, but how do you aplly what you put into as a human itself labour?
We have such concepts, in order to stop people talking from others that do put in hard work and are rewarded by their efforts, as to not have such a concept would mean, only the strong are then able to constantly take advantage of the weak.
Hence the concept has meaning

Lord Foul wrote:interesting quill

I would suggest that the answer to that depends a)upon WHAT is being stolen, and B) the circumstances under which it is stolen

so the man who steals food/clothing/shelter from a dysfunctional store in a situation of great peril is surely not guilty of any offense

however the scroat that breaks into my home to relive me of posessions which are the fruit of my labour or maybe even the tools with which to persue my labour, especially when said scroat is most likely feeding a habit or is too idle to even attend job interviews is a different kettle of fish....

the man who, starving shoplifts food is surely guilty of a much lesser offence than the gang of thieving chavs, who nick anything and everything they can, in order to sell in order to feed their habits/stupid lifestyles/ pack of 96 kids by 100 different layabout fathers

I guess as is often the case, one has to ask what would the "reasonable man" think

Agreed. I see it as a continuum, where circumstances and motives come into play. But it shows how complex it is. During Katrina aftermath, the State of California sent loads of policemen and equipment down there to help out. Some were friends and drinking buddies of mine. We had this debate continually, because of course they were insistent law-and-order types. But they came back admitting that it wasn't a clear-cut situation.

Paul Ettinger wrote:Well the problem with Quill's point is where a family has laboured to farm, enough food in order to survive to have this then pillaged by armed me. By this immoral view of Quill's would make this acceptable, as the view of possession is a concept, but how do you aplly what you put into as a human itself labour?
We have such concepts, in order to stop people talking from others that do put in hard work and are rewarded by their efforts, as to not have such a concept would mean, only the strong are then able to constantly take advantage of the weak.
Hence the concept has meaning

You make a very good point (lol...in your own inimitable way). Another dialectic over value is the unseen labor that goes/went into production (as you can see, I am now using the actual economic terms). To a pre-manufacturing, pre-agriculture people, it is completely unrecognized.

This was a constant struggle in the 1840's in the California gold country. Because of the blizzards and harsh conditions of the Sierra Madre Mountains, white men would store months of supplies in their line cabins. The Yana Native Americans, who had no concept of ownership, saw nothing wrong with ransacking the cabins for food and supplies. They didn't understand why they would get shot at.

Original Quill wrote:

Paul Ettinger wrote:Well the problem with Quill's point is where a family has laboured to farm, enough food in order to survive to have this then pillaged by armed me. By this immoral view of Quill's would make this acceptable, as the view of possession is a concept, but how do you aplly what you put into as a human itself labour?
We have such concepts, in order to stop people talking from others that do put in hard work and are rewarded by their efforts, as to not have such a concept would mean, only the strong are then able to constantly take advantage of the weak.
Hence the concept has meaning

You make a very good point (lol...in your own inimitable way).  Another dialectic over value is the unseen labor that goes/went into production (as you can see, I am now using the actual economic terms).  To a pre-manufacturing, pre-agriculture people, it is completely unrecognized.

This was a constant struggle in the 1840's in the California gold country.  Because of the blizzards and harsh conditions of the Sierra Madre Mountains, white men would store months of supplies in their line cabins.  The Yana Native Americans, who had no concept of ownership, saw nothing wrong with ransacking the cabins for food and supplies.  They didn't understand why they would get shot at.

Who gives a fuck about the Gold Rush?

Its nothing to do with my point whatsoever as per usual

This is about a concept introduced to protect people from those stronger taking advantage

Paul Ettinger wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

You make a very good point (lol...in your own inimitable way).  Another dialectic over value is the unseen labor that goes/went into production (as you can see, I am now using the actual economic terms).  To a pre-manufacturing, pre-agriculture people, it is completely unrecognized.

This was a constant struggle in the 1840's in the California gold country.  Because of the blizzards and harsh conditions of the Sierra Madre Mountains, white men would store months of supplies in their line cabins.  The Yana Native Americans, who had no concept of ownership, saw nothing wrong with ransacking the cabins for food and supplies.  They didn't understand why they would get shot at.

Who gives a fuck about the Gold Rush?

Its nothing to do with my point whatsoever as per usual

This is about a concept introduced to protect people from those stronger taking advantage

Ignorant and uncouth. Meh...what else to expect?

Original Quill wrote:

Paul Ettinger wrote:
 s co

Who gives a fuck about the Gold Rush?

Its nothing to do with my point whatsoever as per usual

This is about a concept introduced to protect people from those stronger taking advantage

Ignorant and uncouth.  Meh...what else to expect?

Look, its was you that put both your feet squarely in your mouth on the issuer of ownership.

Ownership is a really interesting concept. I was thinking about this this morning, when it occurred to me that a good 90 percent of people in first-world countries make their living by sacrificing 40-plus hours per week trying to make owners rich(er).

Now, there are 168 hours a week, and we're supposed to spend 56 of them asleep. So you have 112 waking hours per week, and you spend well over a third, at minimum, of them doing a set of tasks that a rich person designed to make him/herself richer.

It seems like a fairly good deal for people who make comfortable salaries, but once you get below a certain pay rate (i.e. you make just enough, or maybe not quite enough, to survive on), it seems like quite a bad deal.

Amazing how the concept of a "living wage" is considered so radical by some. How about a "thriving wage"? http://rewire.news/article/2013/03/04/a-new-direction-for-restaurant-workers-zingermans-and-the-thriveable-wage/

That looks to be roughly three times the federal minimum wage in the U.S. Wages should not be based solely upon "whatever the market will bear." There are fairness and human rights issues that should factor into wages as well.

Even hard-core anarcho-capitalists (tacitly) acknowledge this. Many agree with Locke's labor theory of property -- that if you take a natural resource and work it into a product, you have at least partial ownership of it. Shouldn't that also apply to services? I.E., if you work for a company that sells services, and you help provide those services, aren't you part-owner of the company?

Company owners enter into employment contracts or agreements in a privileged position. They have many applicants for employment and are generally fairly well-off. Wage inequality just perpetuates their privilege and is really a very subtle form of stealing from employees.

I know this is getting long-winded, but here's an example to illustrate my point. Let's imagine a very simple business -- four people running a bakery. One person is the owner; he or she provided the premises and facilities, decides what the products are going to be, makes all the major decisions.

One person is the baker. We know what he/she does. One person runs the counter, and the last person is responsible for cleaning everything.

Naturally we'd assume that the owner makes the most money. The baker would be the second-highest paid because of the responsibility of food preparation, then the counter worker, for being the public face of the bakery, and finally the cleaning person.

But all four are necessary for the business to succeed. I'm not arguing they should all get a quarter of the profit, but shouldn't they all at least be paid as though the company would not function without their work?

To take that a little further, you could argue that the owner should just hire whoever will do the job for the least amount of money. But is that really fair to the person who gets the job, or is it actually an unfair use of leverage by the owner in order to pocket an even greater share of the company's profits?

And that, folks, is why labor unions are so necessary. The owner has an overwhelming advantage when dealing with a single employee. If that employee is represented by a union, the playing field levels. The union can negotiate with owners over what its workers' labor is worth, rather than the owner being the only person making that decision.

Re the op...


Seems if you are a Ukrainian vagrant in Italy it is perfectly ok...




And Ben... mass immigration here drives up costs of living and holds down wages!!!





http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/03/italy-rules-that-its-okay-for-hungry-poor-people-to-steal-food-5856497/

Tommy Monk wrote:

Re the op...


Seems if you are a Ukrainian vagrant in Italy it is perfectly ok...




And Ben... mass immigration here drives up costs of living and holds down wages!!!





http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/03/italy-rules-that-its-okay-for-hungry-poor-people-to-steal-food-5856497/

Gonna start calling you "Tommy One Note"

Ben wrote:Even hard-core anarcho-capitalists (tacitly) acknowledge this. Many agree with Locke's labor theory of property -- that if you take a natural resource and work it into a product, you have at least partial ownership of it. Shouldn't that also apply to services? I.E., if you work for a company that sells services, and you help provide those services, aren't you part-owner of the company?

Interesting reference in a discussion about ownership.  I have expressed many times that Marx comes directly out of Locke.  For Locke derives property from labor:

Locke, 2d Treatise, Ch. 5 wrote:Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

For Locke, you make the world your own (property) by labor.  This is the same notion that Marx uses to justify common (or communist) ownership...when production, or manufacture becomes a communal enterprise, it should become the property of the community.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:

Re the op...


Seems if you are a Ukrainian vagrant in Italy it is perfectly ok...




And Ben... mass immigration here drives up costs of living and holds down wages!!!





http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/03/italy-rules-that-its-okay-for-hungry-poor-people-to-steal-food-5856497/

Gonna start calling you "Tommy One Note"

Was just addressing your earlier post... you were talking about wage rates compared to cost of living etc... and there being a problem...


But you support the allowance of massive immigration of cheap low/no skilled labour that exacerbates the problem!!!


Mass immigration will inevitably have effects on costs of living and wages... and subsequently on extra strain/costs to the rest of public services and infrastructure... ultimately costing more money to taxpayer for extra facilities etc... while the vast majority of the low/no skilled influx will be contributing relatively fuck all towards it as their earnings mean little or nothing paid in direct income tax... although many will be claiming top up benefits /tax credits/child benefits etc... just each school place = £5000-6000 a year in normal circumstances... we are currently having to also pay to build more schools for the influx too!!!



How can you claim to care about rising costs of living outstripping wage increases and making people poorer... while also supporting mass immigration of cheap labour that makes the problem worse...!?


As well as adding to so many other problems...

I might not have monetary value to give to offset the need for food or shelter but for a days work or even a ½ days labor for a good meal or staples {what we call food stuff to take home to the family} a family/single man or woman for that matter can be fed and have a room for a length of time.  It got us through the depression years - through lay offs - natural disasters of some kind or another.

But to answer the question posed; I couldn't do it and I've been a single parent for a few years and it was tight financially and some times my son ate first and I finished up what he didn't eat...those were tight times indeed; but stealing - nope...not in my DNA.

Tommy Monk wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:

Tommy Monk wrote:

Re the op...


Seems if you are a Ukrainian vagrant in Italy it is perfectly ok...




And Ben... mass immigration here drives up costs of living and holds down wages!!!





http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/03/italy-rules-that-its-okay-for-hungry-poor-people-to-steal-food-5856497/

Gonna start calling you "Tommy One Note"

Was just addressing your earlier post... you were talking about wage rates compared to cost of living etc... and there being a problem...


But you support the allowance of massive immigration of cheap low/no skilled labour that exacerbates the problem!!!


Mass immigration will inevitably have effects on costs of living and wages... and subsequently on extra strain/costs to the rest of public services and infrastructure... ultimately costing more money to taxpayer for extra facilities etc... while the vast majority of the low/no skilled influx will be contributing relatively fuck all towards it as their earnings mean little or nothing paid in direct income tax... although many will be claiming top up benefits /tax credits/child benefits etc... just each school place = £5000-6000 a year in normal circumstances... we are currently having to also pay to build more schools for the influx too!!!



How can you claim to care about rising costs of living outstripping wage increases and making people poorer... while also supporting mass immigration of cheap labour that makes the problem worse...!?


As well as adding to so many other problems...

My whole point was that labor is cheap because owners unfairly decide it is.