Property rights extend from the benefit of society as a whole. If you accept this, all that follows will make sense. A farmer produces apples because he hopes t

Property rights extend from the benefit of society as a whole. If you accept this, all that follows will make sense. A farmer produces apples because he hopes to sell them in a net-positive value transaction. The buyer gains an apple, and the seller receives cash to trade for whatever he needs. Both parties are better off. If all parties in a society behave similarly with their produced goods, the net benefit is positive utility. If stealing were acceptable behavior, the farmer would have no incentive to produce apples, or he would only produce apples for himself, and devote more of his resources into protecting and defending the apples he invested in producing. Investing time in protecting the apples by building a wall is a waste of a resource, because he could have instead grown more apples. Producing only enough for himself is also wasteful because eventually the farmer will be sick of apples (diminishing marginal utility) and it is impractical for the farmer to create EVERYTHING he needs on his own (economies of scale, learning efficiencies, and opportunity costs all cause this). When you steal, you are influencing this entire ecosystem of producers and consumers. Although your actions may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, if everybody were to behave the same way, our society could not survive as it is. Ethically, this is can be seen as a utilitarian issue. Who benefits the most from your actions? You obviously benefit, but are there other actions where more parties could benefit, or the net benefit could be greater? If there are, then under this model stealing is unethical. One could argue that stealing is ethically OK if the benefit you get from stealing (the use of the object plus the rush you feel) is greater than A: the loss by the owner, and B: the total utility that could have been had by a standard transaction between a buyer and seller. In fact, this is why people typically don't feel as bad for extremely poor people who steal to feed their family. Sure, the baker might be out a few loaves of bread, but the thieve's family gets to eat a warm meal. Is the warm meal worth more than the bakers loss? Get help. Regardless of how you decide to rationalize your behavior, society will condemn your actions, and you will be punished. Learn to deal with your impulses.