5 ms·

> Doing some digging, I found incontrovertible proof that my foreman of ten years---ten years!!!---had been stealing from me. > I simply told him I would never

> Doing some digging, I found incontrovertible proof that my foreman of ten years---ten years!!!---had been stealing from me. > I simply told him I would never give him a raise again. And he understood that---due to radical inflation---his salaried buying power would keep dropping and dropping, until it was chiseled away to nothing. So he quit. Just to play devil's advocate here, and I'm not saying that stealing is wrong by any means, but this just makes me feel like the reason he was stealing to begin with was that his income was too low to live off of.

DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago
Difficult to say without having background for such situations. As a latin american myself I think it's not far fetched to say that in LA there is an ominous sensation that there is always someone taking advantage of you: your boss, your employer, your government, your politicians, the police, etc., so taking advantage yourself, although immoral, is "par for the course". Theory of broken windows and a way to carry on.
danlugo92 5y ago
My family ate beef/chicken leftovers (from butchers and such) when they moved to my city. They never stole. Stealing is never OK.
- loceng 5y ago
  You can't imagine any circumstance where it's okay?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  We should all be clamoring that stealing is never OK. But NOT with examples of poor people scraping for food. Stealing is a deep problem in our society, and poor people have nothing to do with that.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    I would argue that the real issue is being in a position where you would need to steal food during a time of relative prosperity. I know no one should be forced to be a charity but there should be a line somewhere that as a society we do not cross.
- frgtpsswrdlame 5y ago
  Stealing is okay in all sorts of situations. Many things in life are more important than the rule of property.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    Scale up this mentality, you have South America
    - frgtpsswrdlame 5y ago
      But I didn't say all stealing was okay, I said some stealing definitely is okay. I still think that's true. Some things in life are more important than property.
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        Out of curiosity, what are some things that are not more important than property rights in your opinion?
        QuercusMax 5y ago
        Intellectual property rights?
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        Good one, I agree.
      - kortilla 5y ago
        Like what? Having a nice watch? Some Nike shoes?
      - nybble41 5y ago
        > Some things in life are more important than property. If the property isn't important, why are you stealing it? Personally I don't really care whether you think it's moral or not to steal, as long as you acknowledge that a victim of theft has an equally moral right to "steal" back what was taken, and to use a similar justification to steal a proportional (additional) amount from perpetrator. "Turnabout is fair play" and all that.
- Grimburger 5y ago
  Stealing food to survive and not die of hunger while there's abundant waste all around is not "ok"? I'd imagine that strong allcaps viewpoint would change in certain circumstances.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    Dumpster diving or getting "waste" to survive is not stealing, is being resourceful. It is like "hacking" vs. "cheating" the system, subtle difference. Nobody "owned" it since it was thrown away - unless you think racoons have rights...
    - 8note 5y ago
      It's still owned by the person while it's in their trash can, til the trash is collected. It's stealing; just not stealing the owner is likely to care about. Sometimes they do, and put locks in their dumpsters though
      - mgh2 5y ago
        Maybe they lock dumpsters because of liability https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/if-i-give-a-homeless-person-free-food-left-over--m-4560026.html https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/if-i-give-a-homeless-pers...
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        Around here, dumpsters are often locked to prevent dumping. The apartments across the street are plagued by dumpers who come at all hours and fill the dumpsters, mostly with construction debris it seems. Residents end up just piling shit on the ground around them.
      - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
        No most countries consider trash abandoned property and free for anyone to grab.
  - MomoXenosaga 5y ago
- munk-a 5y ago
  Lets say that the manager's incontrovertible proof proves to be incorrect and neither party has committed a moral fault. The system the manager has leveraged for enforcement is protected from any sort of rebuke (I assume you can't sue someone for failing to make CoL adjustments in Argentina) so freezing someone's salary essentially just comes down to a form of wage theft. Bear in mind that in America, I'm not certain about Argentina, wage theft is the most expensive crime (summed across all instances) worse than burglary, stealing office supplies, or even robbing your employer. I agree that stealing is generally not OK - but maybe lets start by addressing the most prevalent form of stealing - by the powerful against the powerless.
  - maxilevi 5y ago
    With that logic the one doing the wage theft is the goverment for causing the inflation in the first place and not allowing other currencies to be used.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    No, if CoL adjustments were not built into an employment agreement, then it's not wage theft in any sense.
- exolymph 5y ago
  Stealing is sometimes okay, but usually the kinds of people who try to justify it do so because they infantilize criminals, which is maddening.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Being tolerant is not always a virtue. I visited countries before with very agreeable people living absolute disparity. Had they been less agreeable, they may have overthrow their inept and corrupt governments decades ago. For their own good. People in Cuba still have to line up for hours to get pitiful food rations from the government stores. Blows my mind that nonsense is still going on, decades after near everywhere else Communism has been abolished.
- oh_sigh 5y ago
  You wouldn't steal a sandwich if you were literally starving to death on the streets?
  - danlugo92 5y ago
    My family nor me ever did when so.
- l30n4da5 5y ago
  Never advocated that stealing was okay. I'm just making an observation...
kamarg 5y ago
There's plenty of well off people that steal because they want more. The fact someone is stealing doesn't lead to the conclusion that they don't have enough income to live off of. And if things in Argentina are really as bad as the business owner claims where you can't fire employees and you can't go to the police, theft is probably seen as an extremely low risk activity. For many people, increasing your income by a significant amount through actions that are highly unlikely to have a negative outcome wouldn't require much consideration.
- Izikiel43 5y ago
  > things in Argentina are really as bad as the business owner claims where you can't fire employees and you can't go to the police, theft is probably seen as an extremely low risk activity This we call Monday in Argentina
- l30n4da5 5y ago
  > There's plenty of well off people that steal because they want more. Fair counter-point. I suppose as a foreman he was probably getting paid better than most of the workers he managed.
XIVMagnus 5y ago
This is a Hispanic country, so the traditional morals and ideologies of regular people are not the same. I come from a hispanic country and lived in Miami almost my whole life. (take a guess where I'm from lol).. Basically what I'm trying to convey is that hispanics are hustlers, almost by nature. Due to living in relatively poor countries and forced to figure out new ways to survive. Not saying that Argentina is so terrible that you need to be hustling this hard, but sometimes people want a bit more. For example, my friend which was born in Argentina recently went to visit and explained to me how prices for goods that come from the U.S. are extremely expensive but rent+food is extremely affordable. Just from that little bit of detail alone, I'm guessing anyone who is hustling for more money. Is doing it because they want to live a more 'luxurious' life style. Less humble maybe?
- chespinoza 5y ago
  I think your comment is shamelessly racist and ignorant, to be honest, have you been to every hispanic country to treat hispanics like that? you'll see hustlers everywhere and in every culture and country, also Argentina is not the only Hispanic country so please try to make more educated comments, and if you feel the way you describe it as for Hispanic people, please talk about yourself and don't generalise.
  - anthk 5y ago
    I am from Spain. May I introduce you to the old "picaresca" from The Lazarillo of Tormes? We Hispanics gave the world great people, but we got lot of hustlery and bribery since the Roman Empire. Italy is like that too. A lot of great Spaniard writers said that they were fed up of Spain and the Hispanic culture as a whole, from Pio Baroja to Estaislao Figueras. https://wikiless.org/wiki/P%C3%ADo_Baroja?lang=en https://wikiless.org/wiki/P%C3%ADo_Baroja?lang=en And Pio Baroja should be the ultimate Hispanic figure, the one who put all the Christian bullshit away and fully embraced Humanism and scientific Enlightenment from the 16th Century as the students in Salamanca did, but, you know, we might have been cursed, because even if Spain was the proto-embracer of Humanism and Enlightenment, (even before Lutherans, y'all HN readers please look up "school of Salamanca"), we burned our crap down three centuries later.
RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago
This perspective of blaming the motive of the perpetrator instead of the perpetrator itself leads to blurred lines of judgement that makes establishing common rules impossible. If you have ever caught someone doing something evil, you would know just about any crime can be morally justified for a cause of some sort.

DoctorDabadedoo 5y ago

Difficult to say without having background for such situations. As a latin american myself I think it's not far fetched to say that in LA there is an ominous sensation that there is always someone taking advantage of you: your boss, your employer, your government, your politicians, the police, etc., so taking advantage yourself, although immoral, is "par for the course". Theory of broken windows and a way to carry on.

danlugo92 5y ago

My family ate beef/chicken leftovers (from butchers and such) when they moved to my city. They never stole. Stealing is never OK.

loceng 5y ago
You can't imagine any circumstance where it's okay?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
monsieurbanana 5y ago
We should all be clamoring that stealing is never OK. But NOT with examples of poor people scraping for food. Stealing is a deep problem in our society, and poor people have nothing to do with that.
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  I would argue that the real issue is being in a position where you would need to steal food during a time of relative prosperity. I know no one should be forced to be a charity but there should be a line somewhere that as a society we do not cross.
frgtpsswrdlame 5y ago
Stealing is okay in all sorts of situations. Many things in life are more important than the rule of property.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Scale up this mentality, you have South America
  - frgtpsswrdlame 5y ago
    But I didn't say all stealing was okay, I said some stealing definitely is okay. I still think that's true. Some things in life are more important than property.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      Out of curiosity, what are some things that are not more important than property rights in your opinion?
      - QuercusMax 5y ago
        Intellectual property rights?
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        Good one, I agree.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      Like what? Having a nice watch? Some Nike shoes?
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > Some things in life are more important than property. If the property isn't important, why are you stealing it? Personally I don't really care whether you think it's moral or not to steal, as long as you acknowledge that a victim of theft has an equally moral right to "steal" back what was taken, and to use a similar justification to steal a proportional (additional) amount from perpetrator. "Turnabout is fair play" and all that.
Grimburger 5y ago
Stealing food to survive and not die of hunger while there's abundant waste all around is not "ok"? I'd imagine that strong allcaps viewpoint would change in certain circumstances.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Dumpster diving or getting "waste" to survive is not stealing, is being resourceful. It is like "hacking" vs. "cheating" the system, subtle difference. Nobody "owned" it since it was thrown away - unless you think racoons have rights...
  - 8note 5y ago
    It's still owned by the person while it's in their trash can, til the trash is collected. It's stealing; just not stealing the owner is likely to care about. Sometimes they do, and put locks in their dumpsters though
    - mgh2 5y ago
      Maybe they lock dumpsters because of liability https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/if-i-give-a-homeless-person-free-food-left-over--m-4560026.html https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/if-i-give-a-homeless-pers...
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        Around here, dumpsters are often locked to prevent dumping. The apartments across the street are plagued by dumpers who come at all hours and fill the dumpsters, mostly with construction debris it seems. Residents end up just piling shit on the ground around them.
    - tick_tock_tick 5y ago
      No most countries consider trash abandoned property and free for anyone to grab.
- MomoXenosaga 5y ago
munk-a 5y ago
Lets say that the manager's incontrovertible proof proves to be incorrect and neither party has committed a moral fault. The system the manager has leveraged for enforcement is protected from any sort of rebuke (I assume you can't sue someone for failing to make CoL adjustments in Argentina) so freezing someone's salary essentially just comes down to a form of wage theft. Bear in mind that in America, I'm not certain about Argentina, wage theft is the most expensive crime (summed across all instances) worse than burglary, stealing office supplies, or even robbing your employer. I agree that stealing is generally not OK - but maybe lets start by addressing the most prevalent form of stealing - by the powerful against the powerless.
- maxilevi 5y ago
  With that logic the one doing the wage theft is the goverment for causing the inflation in the first place and not allowing other currencies to be used.
- nate_meurer 5y ago
  No, if CoL adjustments were not built into an employment agreement, then it's not wage theft in any sense.
exolymph 5y ago
Stealing is sometimes okay, but usually the kinds of people who try to justify it do so because they infantilize criminals, which is maddening.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Being tolerant is not always a virtue. I visited countries before with very agreeable people living absolute disparity. Had they been less agreeable, they may have overthrow their inept and corrupt governments decades ago. For their own good. People in Cuba still have to line up for hours to get pitiful food rations from the government stores. Blows my mind that nonsense is still going on, decades after near everywhere else Communism has been abolished.
oh_sigh 5y ago
You wouldn't steal a sandwich if you were literally starving to death on the streets?
- danlugo92 5y ago
  My family nor me ever did when so.
l30n4da5 5y ago
Never advocated that stealing was okay. I'm just making an observation...

kamarg 5y ago

There's plenty of well off people that steal because they want more. The fact someone is stealing doesn't lead to the conclusion that they don't have enough income to live off of. And if things in Argentina are really as bad as the business owner claims where you can't fire employees and you can't go to the police, theft is probably seen as an extremely low risk activity. For many people, increasing your income by a significant amount through actions that are highly unlikely to have a negative outcome wouldn't require much consideration.

Izikiel43 5y ago
> things in Argentina are really as bad as the business owner claims where you can't fire employees and you can't go to the police, theft is probably seen as an extremely low risk activity This we call Monday in Argentina
l30n4da5 5y ago
> There's plenty of well off people that steal because they want more. Fair counter-point. I suppose as a foreman he was probably getting paid better than most of the workers he managed.

XIVMagnus 5y ago

This is a Hispanic country, so the traditional morals and ideologies of regular people are not the same. I come from a hispanic country and lived in Miami almost my whole life. (take a guess where I'm from lol).. Basically what I'm trying to convey is that hispanics are hustlers, almost by nature. Due to living in relatively poor countries and forced to figure out new ways to survive. Not saying that Argentina is so terrible that you need to be hustling this hard, but sometimes people want a bit more. For example, my friend which was born in Argentina recently went to visit and explained to me how prices for goods that come from the U.S. are extremely expensive but rent+food is extremely affordable. Just from that little bit of detail alone, I'm guessing anyone who is hustling for more money. Is doing it because they want to live a more 'luxurious' life style. Less humble maybe?

chespinoza 5y ago
I think your comment is shamelessly racist and ignorant, to be honest, have you been to every hispanic country to treat hispanics like that? you'll see hustlers everywhere and in every culture and country, also Argentina is not the only Hispanic country so please try to make more educated comments, and if you feel the way you describe it as for Hispanic people, please talk about yourself and don't generalise.
- anthk 5y ago
  I am from Spain. May I introduce you to the old "picaresca" from The Lazarillo of Tormes? We Hispanics gave the world great people, but we got lot of hustlery and bribery since the Roman Empire. Italy is like that too. A lot of great Spaniard writers said that they were fed up of Spain and the Hispanic culture as a whole, from Pio Baroja to Estaislao Figueras. https://wikiless.org/wiki/P%C3%ADo_Baroja?lang=en https://wikiless.org/wiki/P%C3%ADo_Baroja?lang=en And Pio Baroja should be the ultimate Hispanic figure, the one who put all the Christian bullshit away and fully embraced Humanism and scientific Enlightenment from the 16th Century as the students in Salamanca did, but, you know, we might have been cursed, because even if Spain was the proto-embracer of Humanism and Enlightenment, (even before Lutherans, y'all HN readers please look up "school of Salamanca"), we burned our crap down three centuries later.

RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago

This perspective of blaming the motive of the perpetrator instead of the perpetrator itself leads to blurred lines of judgement that makes establishing common rules impossible. If you have ever caught someone doing something evil, you would know just about any crime can be morally justified for a cause of some sort.