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Copying my other comment here. There definitely is a moral issue >busting people who are shoplifting items that they either need to survive or items that they

by feet 4y ago

Copying my other comment here. There definitely is a moral issue >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 Property rights should not be above human life. Full stop.

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
What country are we talking about. In the US nobody needs to steal to survive. The homeless don't even need to steal to survive.
- trs8080 4y ago
  What country are /you/ talking about? In my city, there are homeless people living in tents under every overpass, in every empty lot, parking lots, tennis courts, in broken down cars, etc. You think these people have trust funds?
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    No, but they have food in the cities they decide to camp in, which are selected due to weather, social services (e.g. calling Seattle as "Freattle"), and lax enforcement of camping rules.
    - trs8080 4y ago
      I see the exact opposite of these claims.
      - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
        You mean, homeless people choose to shelter in cities with bad weather, poor social services, and places where the police aggressively crack down on encampments? I once took a greyhound bus across country. From Mississippi all the way to LA, the bus would stop at each prison, pick people up..they were all going to one place (LA), many of them for the first time. They had nowhere else to go, an open bus ticket, and knowledge that they could survive in LA. These days, Portland and Seattle are increasingly popular places, not just sunny California.
  - voldacar 4y ago
    You are actually proving their point by noting the plethora of homeless people who are surviving
    - micromacrofoot 4y ago
      "surviving" in slums of filth and crime while likely costing taxpayers more than homing them would (not to mention the high prevalence of mental illness among the homeless) it's just outright idiotic policy to accept the current state of homelessness in many major cities, it's inhumane AND expensive
      - voldacar 4y ago
        I generally agree with the second part of your comment, but it is still true that homeless people survive fine, their quality of life is just usually bad. This is very different from starving to death and needing to shoplift
        micromacrofoot 4y ago
        It's a little more indirect than you're presenting, but it is still a fraught situation where people have significantly shorter lifespans. Starvation is unusual, but murder, exposure, overdose, and withdrawal are common. A lot of these people shoplift to keep up a physical addiction that they can not easily or safely move on from.
        josephcsible 4y ago
        How can letting people shoplift stop them from getting murdered? Also, I wonder how many people die of overdose who would have survived if they had less money to buy drugs with, versus how many people die of withdrawal who would have survived if they had more money to buy drugs with.
        micromacrofoot 4y ago
        letting people shoplift doesn’t make it better, but arresting them doesn’t either (often worse)… it’s just the symptom of a greater problem
- jakear 4y ago
  More people steal to "survive" that you probably realize. In my experience with lower income college graduates (arts degrees, for instance), the question of where to go to steal food for the day is a common discussion point. Could they survive by going to food banks instead? Probably. Or by taking any other job. But stealing is easier, less "degrading", and more inline with their career goals. That said, the system works. Some people get small personal servings for free; others pay extra for their full family's meal so the store can make up for the breakage. It's that same terraced pricing structure every SASS loves.
gjs278 4y ago
cafard 4y ago
Is it OK to bust middle-class shoplifters, such as a number of my high school and college acquaintances?
- mikkergp 4y ago
  Not really, no, why do we think the legal system is the solution to every problem. Besides the fact are they even doing all that good a job at this?
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Huh? In my city, shoplifters can walk out with 70 inch TVs while the police watch them do it (shop lifting is decriminalized). Everyone who isn't a shoplifter is pretty pissed off about it, I think the police are there to prevent mob justice from happening.
- satsuma 4y ago
  it's a sad state of affairs when the shoplifters make more than loss prevention.
Grim-444 4y ago
You're assuming a) that they're shoplifting items needed to survive, and b) that there were no other, legal, sources of the items they needed (food banks, ebt, welfare, etc.) that they could have chosen to make use of instead. Of course the fact that you chose to insert some political anti-capitalist quip nonsense shows that you're not really interested in arguing from good faith and instead mostly just want to further your propaganda.
voldacar 4y ago
If you think the average shoplifter is like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread, you're deeply out of touch with reality
karencarits 4y ago
On the other hand: this approach may act to disguise some of the distress that people are actually living under so that society thinks things are less bad than they are - and so less inclined to fix the problem in the "civilized" way: by welfare schemes that guarantees a minimum of dignity and daily needs
hyuuu 4y ago
so if I just do drugs and I take your property to survive, that's okay? if I decide not to work, I can just go to any grocery stores to steal? they need to survive by stealing is a failure of the system that is in place, either education or the social support system. Accommodating for the system's failures by giving up property rights is a defeatist take at best, virtue signaling at worst.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
josephcsible 4y ago
> Property rights should not be above human life. Full stop. Sure, if someone's bleeding out on the street, and you grab a tourniquet from a nearby drugstore and run out without paying for it, you should get a pass. But I think cases like that make up approximately 0% of shoplifting. Most of the times people say that shoplifting is necessary to survive, it's not actually true.
- feet 4y ago
  That's an extraordinarily short sighted view of the needs of a living human Yes only things that can happen to kill someone within like 60 seconds are what should trump the property rights of the capital owners that have been looting the country and take advantage of the dire straights of the poor working class. Awesome
tyleo 4y ago
I live next to a grocery store with a high rate of shoplifting and I disagree. Grocery stores are not charity. The issue has gotten so bad that freezers containing frozen sea food and ice cream now have locks on them. Problems should be solved with real solutions rather than sacrificing businesses who are not equipped to solve the problem. In other words, if “property rights should not be above human life” then cities should provide for those lives through taxes and meal programs rather than letting random businesses be targets.
- mcphage 4y ago
  > then cities should provide for those lives through taxes and meal programs rather than letting random businesses be targets. I agree, but America as a nation isn't really big on social safety nets.
  - tyleo 4y ago
    In my opinion, America not being okay with social safety nets is not equivalent to shop lifting being okay. It seems to me either: * Americans care about shoplifting but not social safety nets and it would mean that society has implicitly decided that some shoplifting folks may not get the support they need. * Americans care about shoplifting and social safety nets enough to force political change. I think what doesn't seem okay to me is to say, "Americans care about shoplifting but not social safety nets... but we are going to make an end run around what society thinks and allow shoplifting as a solution to the social safety net problem".
reidjs 4y ago
People and businesses should be allowed to protect their possessions and discourage theft. People who steal should be punished if they’re caught.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
A lot of it is just to buy booze and drugs in cities where the social services are decent (food is easy to get, shelter is available if are somewhat sober), but those two things are not provided, and many see it as a survival need. It is also much more organized now: rackets have a list of stuff to steal that they can then pawn off more easily. That is why LEGOs and laundry detergent are increasingly locked up.
- feet 4y ago
  Yea let's just shit on the people who are at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis. The existence of people in poverty is absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    > at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis. A lot of them are in the position they are in now due to drugs and booze. Let's not conflate those homeless for economic reasons with the ones that just burned all their bridges via substance abuse. > absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations I used to live in Switzerland and the cops were pretty rough on the local drunks as well. They got a place to sleep at night, but were spared no quarter on everything else.
    - feet 4y ago
      >A lot of them are in the position they are in now due to drugs and booze Quite simply this is false. Mental health issues generally lead to addiction, in nearly all cases its a dual diagnosis situation with mental health issues and substance abuse which is usually due to the mental health issues. These people are just trying to cope with their daily existence and all the rich people are constantly shitting on them, telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and hiring lobbyists and think-tanks to write legislation to shit on them more. We spend so much money on stupid programs instead of just giving people fking places to live its insane in the US >They got a place to sleep at night That's the big difference. Austria also has great public housing
IAmWorried 4y ago
I'll let the other commenters do the debunking of this extremely stupid point you made - just want to point out that this is so clearly some shitty troll account. 5 months old and all the comments are idiotic crap like this.
ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
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.

by feet 4y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

What country are we talking about. In the US nobody needs to steal to survive. The homeless don't even need to steal to survive.

trs8080 4y ago
What country are /you/ talking about? In my city, there are homeless people living in tents under every overpass, in every empty lot, parking lots, tennis courts, in broken down cars, etc. You think these people have trust funds?
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  No, but they have food in the cities they decide to camp in, which are selected due to weather, social services (e.g. calling Seattle as "Freattle"), and lax enforcement of camping rules.
  - trs8080 4y ago
    I see the exact opposite of these claims.
    - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
      You mean, homeless people choose to shelter in cities with bad weather, poor social services, and places where the police aggressively crack down on encampments? I once took a greyhound bus across country. From Mississippi all the way to LA, the bus would stop at each prison, pick people up..they were all going to one place (LA), many of them for the first time. They had nowhere else to go, an open bus ticket, and knowledge that they could survive in LA. These days, Portland and Seattle are increasingly popular places, not just sunny California.
- voldacar 4y ago
  You are actually proving their point by noting the plethora of homeless people who are surviving
  - micromacrofoot 4y ago
    "surviving" in slums of filth and crime while likely costing taxpayers more than homing them would (not to mention the high prevalence of mental illness among the homeless) it's just outright idiotic policy to accept the current state of homelessness in many major cities, it's inhumane AND expensive
    - voldacar 4y ago
      I generally agree with the second part of your comment, but it is still true that homeless people survive fine, their quality of life is just usually bad. This is very different from starving to death and needing to shoplift
      - micromacrofoot 4y ago
        It's a little more indirect than you're presenting, but it is still a fraught situation where people have significantly shorter lifespans. Starvation is unusual, but murder, exposure, overdose, and withdrawal are common. A lot of these people shoplift to keep up a physical addiction that they can not easily or safely move on from.
        josephcsible 4y ago
        How can letting people shoplift stop them from getting murdered? Also, I wonder how many people die of overdose who would have survived if they had less money to buy drugs with, versus how many people die of withdrawal who would have survived if they had more money to buy drugs with.
        micromacrofoot 4y ago
        letting people shoplift doesn’t make it better, but arresting them doesn’t either (often worse)… it’s just the symptom of a greater problem
jakear 4y ago
More people steal to "survive" that you probably realize. In my experience with lower income college graduates (arts degrees, for instance), the question of where to go to steal food for the day is a common discussion point. Could they survive by going to food banks instead? Probably. Or by taking any other job. But stealing is easier, less "degrading", and more inline with their career goals. That said, the system works. Some people get small personal servings for free; others pay extra for their full family's meal so the store can make up for the breakage. It's that same terraced pricing structure every SASS loves.

gjs278 4y ago

cafard 4y ago

Is it OK to bust middle-class shoplifters, such as a number of my high school and college acquaintances?

mikkergp 4y ago
Not really, no, why do we think the legal system is the solution to every problem. Besides the fact are they even doing all that good a job at this?
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Huh? In my city, shoplifters can walk out with 70 inch TVs while the police watch them do it (shop lifting is decriminalized). Everyone who isn't a shoplifter is pretty pissed off about it, I think the police are there to prevent mob justice from happening.
satsuma 4y ago
it's a sad state of affairs when the shoplifters make more than loss prevention.

Grim-444 4y ago

You're assuming a) that they're shoplifting items needed to survive, and b) that there were no other, legal, sources of the items they needed (food banks, ebt, welfare, etc.) that they could have chosen to make use of instead. Of course the fact that you chose to insert some political anti-capitalist quip nonsense shows that you're not really interested in arguing from good faith and instead mostly just want to further your propaganda.

voldacar 4y ago

If you think the average shoplifter is like Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread, you're deeply out of touch with reality

karencarits 4y ago

On the other hand: this approach may act to disguise some of the distress that people are actually living under so that society thinks things are less bad than they are - and so less inclined to fix the problem in the "civilized" way: by welfare schemes that guarantees a minimum of dignity and daily needs

hyuuu 4y ago

so if I just do drugs and I take your property to survive, that's okay? if I decide not to work, I can just go to any grocery stores to steal? they need to survive by stealing is a failure of the system that is in place, either education or the social support system. Accommodating for the system's failures by giving up property rights is a defeatist take at best, virtue signaling at worst.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

josephcsible 4y ago

> Property rights should not be above human life. Full stop. Sure, if someone's bleeding out on the street, and you grab a tourniquet from a nearby drugstore and run out without paying for it, you should get a pass. But I think cases like that make up approximately 0% of shoplifting. Most of the times people say that shoplifting is necessary to survive, it's not actually true.

feet 4y ago
That's an extraordinarily short sighted view of the needs of a living human Yes only things that can happen to kill someone within like 60 seconds are what should trump the property rights of the capital owners that have been looting the country and take advantage of the dire straights of the poor working class. Awesome

tyleo 4y ago

I live next to a grocery store with a high rate of shoplifting and I disagree. Grocery stores are not charity. The issue has gotten so bad that freezers containing frozen sea food and ice cream now have locks on them. Problems should be solved with real solutions rather than sacrificing businesses who are not equipped to solve the problem. In other words, if “property rights should not be above human life” then cities should provide for those lives through taxes and meal programs rather than letting random businesses be targets.

mcphage 4y ago
> then cities should provide for those lives through taxes and meal programs rather than letting random businesses be targets. I agree, but America as a nation isn't really big on social safety nets.
- tyleo 4y ago
  In my opinion, America not being okay with social safety nets is not equivalent to shop lifting being okay. It seems to me either: * Americans care about shoplifting but not social safety nets and it would mean that society has implicitly decided that some shoplifting folks may not get the support they need. * Americans care about shoplifting and social safety nets enough to force political change. I think what doesn't seem okay to me is to say, "Americans care about shoplifting but not social safety nets... but we are going to make an end run around what society thinks and allow shoplifting as a solution to the social safety net problem".

reidjs 4y ago

People and businesses should be allowed to protect their possessions and discourage theft. People who steal should be punished if they’re caught.

seanmcdirmid 4y ago

A lot of it is just to buy booze and drugs in cities where the social services are decent (food is easy to get, shelter is available if are somewhat sober), but those two things are not provided, and many see it as a survival need. It is also much more organized now: rackets have a list of stuff to steal that they can then pawn off more easily. That is why LEGOs and laundry detergent are increasingly locked up.

feet 4y ago
Yea let's just shit on the people who are at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis. The existence of people in poverty is absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  > at their lowest point in our society and not let them have comforts such as alcohol that the rich enjoy on a daily basis. A lot of them are in the position they are in now due to drugs and booze. Let's not conflate those homeless for economic reasons with the ones that just burned all their bridges via substance abuse. > absolutely fucking horrible compared to what most experience in the US and other OECD nations I used to live in Switzerland and the cops were pretty rough on the local drunks as well. They got a place to sleep at night, but were spared no quarter on everything else.
  - feet 4y ago
    >A lot of them are in the position they are in now due to drugs and booze Quite simply this is false. Mental health issues generally lead to addiction, in nearly all cases its a dual diagnosis situation with mental health issues and substance abuse which is usually due to the mental health issues. These people are just trying to cope with their daily existence and all the rich people are constantly shitting on them, telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and hiring lobbyists and think-tanks to write legislation to shit on them more. We spend so much money on stupid programs instead of just giving people fking places to live its insane in the US >They got a place to sleep at night That's the big difference. Austria also has great public housing

IAmWorried 4y ago

I'll let the other commenters do the debunking of this extremely stupid point you made - just want to point out that this is so clearly some shitty troll account. 5 months old and all the comments are idiotic crap like this.

ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago

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.