this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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I don't report shoplifting people either because they desperately need it while the CEO of the franchise earns millions. When shoplifting is a common thing forcing the store to put products behind locks, society has failed as too many of the population are struggling financially.
This was back in 2023, but I once got the estimated losses from shoplifting from the four major UK supermarkets (Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury's) and compared them to the shareholder/investor payouts. In all four cases, the latter was greater and it wasn't even close.
It was 2020, covid was in full force, all prices went up. Ahold said they were forced to do so, due to extra shipping fees etc and shortages due to covid. Many people were struggling financially. Their personnel also couldn't get raises while they were more exposed to get covid, had to work more due to colleagues being ill. The store chain said the profits on products was minimal, that they were struggling not to sell products at a loss. That they had no choice but to raise prices, while also bleeding themselves.
Turns out that year they had more yearly profits than ever before. Check this chart.
I'm unable to steal. I'm too honest for that, my autistic brain just can't. But I so much believe companies like Ahold deserve to be stolen from. Fuck them.
The CEO of the franchise doesn't hurt at all from stolen products. If they see a product is being stolen often, they just increase the price so everyone else pays for it.
Why would they increase the price, that would only make more people steal it. Also, with the price wars between stores (which is huge here in The Netherlands), they can't afford making things more expensive while their competitor keeps it at a low price. Usually they do more checks at the self checkout counters with certain products as certain combinations of products are common with stolen items. Also, contrary to what they claim, they also check certain people based on their looks. I know because I'm never checked, but when I dye my hair purple I'm checked 14 out of 15 times (yeah I counted). Also my darker skin colored friends are checked more often while the store keeps claiming it's all random.
Yeah, the locking products up thing is not happening here at all (except for valuable electronics, jewellery etc obviously) but also most of everyone can comfortably afford the necessities around here
Same in my country. It only happens in countries with vast amounts of poverty.
If you're a good person, and someone desperately needs something, why don't you just offer to buy it for them? Why make them go through the indignity of having to risk shoplifting?
If they get away with it, the store will raise its prices to make up for the shortfall, and you'll be paying for it anyhow.
Literally gave a guy $100 once (everything in my wallet) so that he wouldn't need to keep begging in the parking lot. I was working minimum wage. Problem is, now I literally don't have enough money to do that again. Now see, maybe if the next person also did this, that might help solve the problem. Perhaps it might evolve into a community of people paying it forward and helping the brother next to them in a slowly strengthened network of support.
In other words, a much more expensive, unsustainable and unreliable version of a strong government funded social safety net.
Give a man a hundred dollars, he'll feed himself for a day. Teach a man how to make a hundred dollars... you know where I'm going with this.
So you're one of those "just get a job" idiots...
Maaaate. You're telling people they are naive, but you are the perfect example of what that word means.
How so?
You sound like a white guy, living in a reasonably rich country, who went to school then got a job, who never had a struggle in his life, who never saw other countries except for holiday destinations, who got his world info from populist politicians and sensation newspapers and Facebook like sources. How far off am I? You sound like you haven't seen anything from the real world.
You really thought that was a smart argument to make, didn't you?
Mate you sound exactly like me when I was 16. I had an opinion on anyone who wasn't forming to society standards. I grew up in a middle class white neighborhood in a rich country. Then when I grew older and left my parents I was struggling financially. Then I joined the navy and went to war zones and third world countries. Then I started to live in neighborhoods with a lot of struggling people around me of mixed cultures and backgrounds. My parents still sound like 16 year old me, just like you, while I know better than to judge others who I know nothing about but are different to privileged standards. I now help the struggling people around me instead.
Well, why don’t you take the opportunity to let everyone here benefit from your experience and tell us what effective help in such situations might look like?
Because it sounds like you’re still arguing for just letting them steal what they need if they can’t afford it.
They should steal what they need, as long as it's from big corporations and not from other struggling people. Because I cannot change the system, so stealing is the only option.
And help can be in the form of donating to the food bank, volunteer at the salvation army, or like me, help out at the neighborhood community house to help people with doing taxes, request subsidies like child support and apply for the food bank, provide homeless people with warm clothing during the cold months, etc. I also help with a soldering club, to repair broken devices so people don't have to buy new ones or refurbish discarded devices which will be donated to people in need.
In my city there are many social systems to help people. I help people use these systems. If your city/country doesn't have systems like these, you can help by setting them up with foundations.
A group is as strong as the weakest link. If we ensure the weak will have a better life, the entire group (our society) will profit from it with less substance abuse, less crime, better quality of life, heath and and safety. Improving quality of life starts at the bottom, not at the top.
This is naive. Sure, in a perfect world everyone helps people in desperate situations or they have support structures that can help them. This is not that world. Sure some shopplifting is for unnecessary stuff but most of it is from desperation because people struggle to afford necessities. It is a much better approach to blame the systems and structures that lead to people having no other options rather than blaming the poor people just trying to get by.
By your logic why aren't you, presumably a good person, paying for every persons groceries who cant afford them. Is it because you are actually a bad person? No, its because that is neither feasible nor tenable. And the CEOs of large corporations actively work to maintain things as they are because they make incredible wealth.
As to increased prices, every corporate grocery store or big box store has insurance and works losses into their budgets. They can easily absorb it without increasing their costs. On the other hand do you know what the most common form of theft in the US is? Wage theft. So the same CEOs making bank also keep pay from employees who are already struggling.
In short, fuck the corps, shoplift if you need to, don't be a snitch if you see someone else.
No, you are naive. Yes, grocery stores do calculate losses into their budget and thus are able to absorb a certain amount, but you know who pays for it? Everyone who doesn't shoplift, by paying more than they'd need to so the store can afford the insurance policy. No store can absorb unlimited losses, they'll simply close up shop if they can't turn a profit, and then your neighborhood will turn into a food desert.
Cool strawman. Obviously unlimited losses would ruin anyone but that is impossible and most stores operate well within their expected loss margins, so markups are arbitrary or caused by inflation. Backing up a bit, you are again blaming the more vulnerable group in this. Be mad at the CEOs and politicians that keep people poor, not the poor people trying to survive. Crime drops in direct proportion to drops in poverty
Also, you keep repeating corporate propaganda. It is more common for these companies to use shoplifting as an excuse to close stores that they already intended to close rather than closing them because shoplifting was actually a problem.
Okay, so if unlimited losses are impossible, everyone should just steal, right?
That is the most bad faith interpretation of what i said. When i said it was impossible i meant that in reality the vast majority of people will not steal, not that everyone should steal all the time because there will never be consequences. And i am not saying that stealing is morally good in all cases. I am saying that large corporations, their executives and the politicians they fund keep people in poverty so they can become ultra wealthy from the record profits these companies make (weird they can make record profits while everyone is apparently stealing so much stuff from them), so yeah, if a poor person steals from one of these companies to get medicine they need or food they can't afford, i think they should and that we should not condemn them for it. I would rather a company lose a buck than someone go hungry. And even if it was true that it was happening at a scale where they had to increase prices, i would gladly pay that if it meant my neighbor could eat without being arrested. These companies are not struggling and theft of this nature does not happen on a scale to warrant any of their current interventions including increasing prices.
I find it interesting that you refuse to engage with my actual core argument and instead have opted for picking at random sentences. Engage with this: the systems that cause and deepen poverty are the problem, not the poor people tryong to survive. These systems are perpetuated by large corporations and the ultra wealthy, they are the ones you should be angry with. You are closer to the person stealing to survive than you are any billionaire.
Okay, in which cases would you say that stealing is morally good?
Please be as precise as possible. This is very important.
There was a comic on here a while back that had a hungry guy walk up to the grocer and ask for a job. The grocer said no. Then he asked for food and the grocer said no. So he took the food.
If you can't get what you need to survive using the social system (unfortunately it's currently poorly regulated crony capitalism), and you can't get what you need through charity, then you TAKE what you need to survive.
Any system that lets you die when you were willing to work is a failed system.
There are currently several comics on here that feature talking animals. That proves talking animals are real.
This is my last response to you because you are disingenuous and I'm tired of writing the same things again and again. If you are sick and starving and the society that you belong to refuses to effectively aid you I would argue it is morally good to steal from companies that create and perpetuate the systems of oppression. This is not a hard thought experiment. It is the same as saying there are times where it is morally right to lie. You once again refuse to actually engage with the core of my argument. Your ideas have no substance and your analysis of these situations is elementary to the point that I think I may be arguing with a teenager. I'm done, bye.
Why am I disingenuous? Were you or were you not making the case that theft could sometimes be considered morally good?
I find it more disingenuous of you to try and just brush over that by asking me to engage with a completely different argument about the system being the problem.
The system does not care if you steal from it. As you said yourself, the CEO of the supermarket does not pay for the losses out of his own pocket. He'll just raise prices or lock things up behind glass so that ultimately, we're ALL paying for it. Your so-called "charity" ends up costing everyone.
Like, have you considered that there may be elderly ladies on fixed incomes that also need to buy toiletry items and cannot afford paying extra price increases just because you decided it was okay to let someone else steal?
Okay, turns out I lied because now you are making an actual argument. I called you disingenuous because you weren't actually saying anything meaningful or actually engaging what i was saying.
I never shied away from the fact that i think stealing is sometimes the more moral option nor did I brush past this. Sometimes stealing is good if it keeps people alive. I think more people being alive is good. The system being the problem is not disconnected and i think is the bigger point here. I think your anger is fundamentally misplaced and that this misplaced anger and frustration is harmful to vulnerable people in hard sotuations while codifying the current systems that keep people poor and vulnerable.
Almost no large corporation experience a level of theft that requires them to increase prices. Many large stores have been having record profits, while the value of stolen goods amounts to less than 1% of the generated profits. So if an elderly woman on a fixed income can't afford her groceries anymore, it is most likely not because theft caused a store to raise its prices, but rather because executives decided they could get away with raising those prices. I reject the notion that these large corporations are actually significantly impacted by theft no matter what they say because the numbers tell a different story.
Again if elderly folks cant afford necessities it doesn't help to blame other poor people. The system is the problem so we need to change the system, not punish other poor people harder. You cannot separate my argument for theft being moral under certain circumstances from the recognition of the system being the actual problem. The former is the branch the latter the root, and if you want to effect meaningful change you need to strike the root.
Ideally i want a world where everyone has access to everything they need without stealing, where everyone has equitabble access to food, energy, clothing, etc, but we arent there yet and the system perpetuates injustice which sometimes requires on to shoplift to survive.
I'm glad you're willing to have a respectful debate, and I'm certainly not trying to be disingenuous, but this is a complex topic and it warrants some measure of diligence. We're talking about people's lives here, after all.
Sorry, but this claim is going to require some evidence.
First of all "many" may be doing a lot of heavy lifting here, but even without that, you do understand the difference between a single store turning a profit, and the entire company doing the same, right?
It is certainly possible that the company as a whole was only profitable because they closed underperforming stores, because that would free up a lot of expenses if they can let go of all the employees and either sell the real estate (or stop paying rent for it), so unfortunately the company as a whole making a profit does not prove that theft isn't hurting them. You can survive a fight while bleeding from a head wound as long as you get first aid soon enough, but that doesn't mean you won the confrontation.
Here is a link to an article from the Brookings institue where they dig into research about this. It goes through basically everything that i have said.
Also, yes I understand that an individual store can be unproffitable while the larger company still makes a profit. I would argue that if these stores are in areas that would become food deserts then there is a responsibility to keep them open even if they are not profitable. I think either government subsidation or, even better, government run grocery stores would be a better option than letting companies decide this.
I do find it interesting that you have not addressed the things i have brought up about the causes of shoplifting. Most people who steal don't do it for fun or profit but because they are desperate. If so many people feel like they need to steal to survive that it is driving stores under i would blame the systems that create this scenario not the people. You are acting like we can examine shoplifting without looking at the context surrounding the issue. It doesn't just happen. If you really want to stop shoplifting so bad then we need to bring people out of poverty and provide the resources they need. So once again i will say blame thw companies and politicians that create these conditions, not the poor people who have to survive these conditions. These ideas cannot be disentangled.
So I, someone who also doesn't make much money, should use the little money I have extra to pay for others, while these stores make billions profit per year? You know how much people are poor? You're doing exactly what mega corporations do: blame the consumer. I do help out some friends of mine who are poor AF. But the issue is mega corps creating vast amounts of poverty out of greed.