this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2026
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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.