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Theft in all the colors of the rainbow

08:50 / 31.05.02

(I know this has been touched upon in many other threads* and in many different ways, but I'm interested mostly in the shoplifting aspect of theft, which I don't think we've talked about, per se)

OK, this one's a 3 parter:

1) Is there such a thing as someone who doesn't steal--ever? I mean, no pennies taken from the penny jar at the register, no posting pictures here and stealing bandwidth, no "borrowing" money from a spouse's wallet/purse, never copying someone else's software, not even extra condiments when you/they order take-out food? I'm guessing not. Which brings me to...

2) What do you steal? Do you (or did you) shoplift? Take stuff from work? Download mp3's? Plaigarize? Took something off of the curb or out of a dumpster? Take the newspaper from someone else's property? Cheat on tests or taxes? Take someone else's intellectual property? Pawned or sold other people's things?

3) There being an entire range of theft (from the most trivial to the most encompassing), how does this fit into your personal ethics? For example: are you proud that you've never shoplifted, but also proud that you took stuff from work? Glad you've never had to sell other people's things but feel guilty that you cheated on your ACT's to get into College?

(I was just going to have a thread on shoplifting, but I think I might've made this too big for it's britches. Feel free to move it Tom & Mods if you feel this is too serious for the Conversation.)

*other threads (that I could think of off-hand, anyways) : Is theft subversive?, Wahoo Ethics

11:13 / 31.05.02

1)I don't think people like that exist. Not taking from the penny jar? That's outrageous!

2)Shoplift? Not recently. When I was three I stole a chocolate flavored tootsie pop. I never heard the end of it. Other than that one little incident, I've never taken anything from a store. Mp3s? Yep, got some of those. Plagarize? Nope. Taken something of a dumpster? Damn skippy! People throw away the oddest stuff. When I was 5, a church showed this movie "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers", so my philosophy is, if something is abandoned and nobody is around; its up for grabs. When I was 7, I found a wallet with 20 dollars in it. I took it. I am not proud of myself.

3)I don't steal stuff from school/work/stores or whatever. If nobody is around to claim something that may be sitting on a sidewalk, which is public property; its up for grabs. Really. Again, it's that "Finders Keepers, Losers Weepers" deal.

11:36 / 31.05.02

I suppose that technically Im stealing from my company when Im playing on the internet. my only justification for that is that if I dont, someone else, who is being paid more than I am, will pawn their work off onto me and use that extra time to slack. since they get paid more their slack time is more expensive to the company, and therefore I am saving them many dollars

15:17 / 31.05.02

Took something off of the curb or out of a dumpster? – Margin Walker

Is that stealing, though? From who – the Department of Sanitation?

15:44 / 31.05.02

Junk-picking isn't stealing. Although sometimes I hesitate to take stuff because I can't believe that someone meant to throw something that good away.

Also you're supposed to take pennies from a penny jar, aren't you? That's what the sign says, HAVE A PENNY LEAVE A PENNY NEED A PENNY TAKE A PENNY. You don't mean that you're supposed to keep an accounting of all the pennies you've left and taken and keep it all even? Or do you mean that there's someone who would actually swipe from a penny jar? Goodness, for what purpose? The most you could get wouldn't be more than twenty cents!

What's stealing, anyway? It's when something definitely belongs to someone else & you take it, right? So there's some grey area where something doesn't definitely belong to anyone. Like, my bosses pay for my time from 9:00-4:00; so do I or my time belong to them now? They left for vacation yesterday & I'm in the office alone and I've been on Barbelith all morning basically.

Anyway I've never shoplifted (though I tried to). I don't even take stuff really from the office, unless it's about to be thrown out (see above, about junk-picking.) I think what keeps me from stealing is when I perceive a definite line between theirs and mine. If there isn't that line, then I stop seeing it as stealing. So I guess that's my rationalization, when I do steal, that it's not stealing really.

Cheating is a much greyer area for me, since it doesn't involve property. I suppose that by a lot of standards, I cheat quite a bit & have all sorts of horrid rationales for doing so.

16:30 / 31.05.02

What exactly *is* a penny jar?

Yep, pretty much everyone does something, at least occasionally, that could be classed as stealing. Taking stuff out of skips or whatever is not theft, in my book. But I would worry about it for the same reasons as Persephone.

Boringly enough, I stole a huge fuck-off roll of toilet paper from college once. Loo paper is expensive, and we had very little cash - plus, given the cost of education, it seemed kind of fair enough. However, the act gave me a bit of a thrill. Specially as the loo roll units are locked, presumably to stop impoverished students making off with a small rainforest's worth of paper every few weeks...

I also took a bit of Lego from school when I was probably about 8 - however, I felt so guilty that I gave it back the next day.

College plagiarism rules are so strict that you get your arse kicked out of school without a degree for self-plagiarism. Hence a deep-rooted fear of plagiarism or cheating of any sort. Plus, I get guilt-struck very easily, and I am not sure I could take it.

Have never stolen merchandise from a shop - don't have a moral objection to it, in relation to chainstores and the like, just don't fancy getting caught, and thankfully I don't need to... if I did, I would. However, cerchandise from small shops, intellectual property, other people's stuff for the most part - all out of bounds, morally. Stealing because you need to is fair enough, stealing to make a political stand may be fair enough. Would basically hope never to take anything to the detriment of another creature, unless I was in a desperate situation.

16:35 / 31.05.02

Merchandise, rather. Grr. I hate having to bother a moderator just so that it looks like I can type adequately. So I don't. Which brings me to another aspect of this: how about theft of other people's time? Energy? Feelings?

16:50 / 31.05.02

What exactly *is* a penny jar?

A penny jar is a small container that holds pennies. You find them at gas stations mostly. Say you buy something and it adds up to $12.01. You only have $12.00. That's ok. You take a penny from the container and everything's ok. If you get pennies with your change, usually you would toss them into the penny jar.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

18:04 / 31.05.02

When I worked at a certain comic shop that shall remain nameless... umm... that got pretty serious- to a point where I deliberately changed departments because I didn't want to have access to the safe anymore. I justified it by the fact that we were working for a bunch of bastards who were paying us a pittance. And that I'd (wrongly) been accused of stealing already. Therefore a) I didn't really give a fuck, and b) they obviously couldn't tell whether or not you were nicking stuff.

23:18 / 31.05.02

I take the Fifth on the grounds that it may incriminate me ...

Murray Hamhandler

14:26 / 01.06.02

Funny you should mention stealing from the penny jar, because that's what I do every day at the end of my shift. Some people put all of their coin change in that thing and you can make a pretty penny collecting all of that change every day. Well, enough to buy a Yoo Hoo, anyway.

I used to be quite the little petty thief in my junior high days. I shoplifted all kinds of useless geegaws, mostly just for the thrill of it. Although I wouldn't do it today, I don't feel any more opposed to it now than I did then. I did have a code of honor, though: never steal from someone who's directly affected by your theft. I'd never steal from a small business or from an individual, but the big corporate chains were fair game.

Property's a funny thing w/me. The more idealistic side of me sees only selfishness behind the concept of property, even (and perhaps especially) intellectual property. Like, everyone should have access to anything that they'd like to have, seeing as how we have plenty of stuff to go around. Everyone just needs to learn about sharing and cooperation (didn't they learn anything from watching Sesame Street when they were kids?). Theft can only exist in a world where people selfishly hoard their thoughts and possessions.

The more realistic side of me realizes that I do like having things that are mine, if only because you can't always trust other people to not fuck up your stuff. I'm actually exceedingly generous w/what I own (often to the point that things I lend out wind up becoming the property of others, unfortunately), so I'm trying to practice what I preach. I guess that I'm more for borrowing than I am for stealing, but since most institutions seem to frown on non-beaurocratic forms of borrowing, I'll have to keep my ideals in check for the time being.