Our rule demands one do everything they can to help the poorest -- not just spending one’s wealth and selling one’s possessions, but breaking the law if that will help.
Sounds simply dreadful. Not an attractive way to live and not an attractive society to live in.
Not that normal people would ever try to live this way. I suppose you could terrorize them into saying they were trying to live this way.
By the way, breaking into buildings, stealing food, and then donating some money to a fashionable cause is thrill seeking and attention whoring, not philanthropy.
Hungry people will try to eat whatever they can. Tired people will try to sleep wherever they can. Unhappy people will try to feel better however they can.
Criminalizing these activities is incredibly costly and doesn't truly solve anything.
People are quick to question the morality of desperate unhappy poor people when they break the law when they don't have enough resources or options, and yet we rarely consider the immorality of those who hoard incredible wealth they don't need, when there are desperate unhappy poor people in need.
Shouldn't those with great power have the greater responsibility?
History has a lot to say on this topic. I don't think it supports the thesis that people should just be allowed to steal because Privilege. Society is much better off with some people helping the poor and law and order being maintained. It's rather a black-and-white view to think we must choose only one or the other.
If you want to feel moral, go feed a poor person today. You'll feel much better. Don't assault the basic pillars of the civil society that is what has left you rich enough to be able to afford that without a second thought for a quick hit on the virtue pipe.
(Preempting one of the lines of attack I can forsee coming here, the crime is also minor and the penalty should be minor correspondingly. I would happily support some sort of very compassionate enforcement; perhaps a sentence of a few days' service at a soup kitchen which will also feed him or something. But there is still an important difference between enforcing the law even in this minor way, and declaring that certain people lack Privilege and therefore, ironically, have the privilege of being above the law, which is the sort of caustic poison that can dissolve civil society entirely.)
So if you were starving to death, you wouldn't consider stealing some food to survive, but would hold firm to your principle "Poverty is not justification to excuse bad or illegal behavior"..and die? No. It sounds like the principle of someone who's never been near poverty.
In this world, being rich is more often the justification, if any were asked for, of bad and illegal behaviour, and on a grand scale.
Can we skip the "crime" part here? Perhaps just give money to people in poverty? Wouldn't it be better to prevent them from committing a crime to begin with?
I don't think anyone is saying poor people should be allowed to rob banks or mug people. The article is about stealing small amounts of food to stave off hunger.
Stealing from people and using some of the money on them does not make stealing morally right. Same goes for extortion. It looks like you want to continue living off of crime.
But that's the whole point. These thefts aren't people going hungry feeding hungry needy starving mouths. You have some people wanting to believe it's only people who have no other recourse to dying --they have to steal. No, most destitute poor people do not steal. They do without, go live with relatives, friends, beg, sell blood, dumpster dive, etc., but they're not gravitating toward UP boxcars. Those are run of the mill opportunist criminals.
I would seriously consider doing robberies where I can make more money with less effort, assuming that the risk was fairly low.
You would? Do you think of respecting others, their property and the law as some kind of luxury you could do without if you were sufficiently needy?
We could have a philosophical discussion about free will and the irresistible forces of circumstance, but in order to have a civil society we have to at least pretend that people are responsible for their own actions and will respect the law even if they might not get caught breaking it. And indeed, most poor people aren't thieves.
Yeah stealing food so that you can sell it on the black market lol.
Most poor people are not thieves, they are decent hardworking people and don't want to be associated with crime thank you very much. Stop glamourising theft
So busting people who are shoplifting items that they either need to survive or items that they can sell to survive to say, pay rent, because our capitalist system has shit on them and left them with no options
I dislike that kind of attitude towards the poor, it's infantilizing and strips people of their agency, it's like the modern "noble savage", just some others who are pure of heart and can only be corrupted by the evil influence of the system.
I've been dirt poor, I've been homeless, I've been alone in a foreign country with no one to turn to, I've lived in such shit places that my neighbour got shot down with an AK not 100 meters from my doorstep ... in Europe. I still didn't steal.
There are systemic issues which keep people down, that doesn't excuse immoral and illegal behaviour. I've known a lot of criminals, they're by and large scumbags, not some modern robinhoods stealing for the sake of their family because of capitalism.
It's absurd to justify theft, even if it's unsecured. If those people need food, there are organizations and charities that are out there to provide for that.
I'm not sure how you can fully support the idea that you should take from the rich. With that concept, I should introduce someone poorer than you and have them take from your wallet. (It demeans how they, "the rich", got there, it demean's society's valuation on their work)
I presume you're opposed to theft, unless, of course, the target is a rich guy. It's a fashionable double standard to live by. Often, if not usually, envy is somewhere lurking in the background, and certainly some kind of utilitarianism.
The only licit way to confiscate that money is to show that it has been acquired illicitly, at which point it should go to those from whom it was taken, if possible. Even then, doing so may cause more harm than good, depending on the circumstances.
And mind you, living is an ongoing cost. Poverty is not a thing to be solved, but something we must continuously respond to, in healthy ways. The proverbial selling of the Mona Lisa to buy rice/housing/etc isn't the way to go. And human beings do not live on bread alone.
Sounds simply dreadful. Not an attractive way to live and not an attractive society to live in.
Not that normal people would ever try to live this way. I suppose you could terrorize them into saying they were trying to live this way.
By the way, breaking into buildings, stealing food, and then donating some money to a fashionable cause is thrill seeking and attention whoring, not philanthropy.
reply