* Stealing something back
* Stealing Hitler's secret plans
* Stealing a portion of everybody's property/income, but providing vital protection, infrastructure and social services in return.
* Stealing the heart of a girl from a guy who abuses her.
* Stealing land from the commons to efficiently put it to work
* Stealing land at market value to create a public works project that benefits the rest of society
Property rights is a critically important idea that helps to serve a society. It's not an end unto its own, nor is it an unimpeachable moral imperative.
"A Scottish miner was walking home one night with a bunch of pheasants he had poached from a local landowner's estate when the landowner appeared and demanded that the miner hand over the pheasants. "Why should I hand them over to you?", asked the miner. "Because this is my land and those are my pheasants", the landowner replied.
"OK", said the miner, "where did you get the land from?" "From my father", said the landowner. "So where did your father get it?", the miner asked. The landowner replied: "From his father, who got it from his father, and so on. This land has belonged to my family for 500 years!"
"Well", the miner continued, "how did your family get it 500 years ago?" "Oh, they fought for it", answered the landowner. "OK then", the miner said, "take off your jacket and I'll fight you for it!"
NB I first read this in The Poor had No Lawyers - described as "how this country was stolen from its people":
There are reasons to make it private, but it's quite different from, say, a sculpture. Clay is nearly worthless, so if an artist turns it into a valuable sculpture, that value was created. Obviously, there's a spectrum here. Even land typically requires an investment to make it useful for anything.
Food is largely created; especially something like sausages or cheese. So the tale of the miner above doesn't really apply. It may not even apply well in that case, if the pheasants were feeding on crops cultivated by the landowner.
Say someone says "let me search your car, what have you got to hide?" What argument can you use against it? The problem is that we've been manipulated to believe privacy has no real moral claim. In reality, you should be able to just say "it's private" and not feel compelled to provide further explanation.
It's not so different from being punched in the stomach. You aren't going to die, so what's the problem? You heal and everything is fine. So why won't you let me punch you in the stomach?
Theft is, similarly, a moral issue. If I make something, and someone takes it, I will feel bad. Much worse than if I had to sell it to pay taxes (even if I disagree with the tax policy).
> The problem is that we've been manipulated to believe privacy has no real moral claim.
I agree. We've also been manipulated to behave as if we believed property rights automatically trump other morals.
My point isn't that we should ignore the morality of these issues. My point is the morality of these issues can't be talked about in isolation because moral values aren't orthogonal to each other. Morality also shouldn't be discussed without taking pragmatic realities into account. You have to balance the two. Not everything is cut and dry.
How about, "A 2 year old was kidnapped 10 minutes ago from the apartment complex you are leaving from. We need to be sure the child is not in your trunk."
Good luck getting society to give you a free pass in that situation.
Tell it to the ghost of Houdini.
Virtue of Selfishness puts the case succinctly:
"The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values."
"The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his own work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life.
The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property.
There is no such thing as “a right to a job”—there is only the right of free trade, that is: a man’s right to take a job if another man chooses to hire him. There is no “right to a home,” only the right of free trade: the right to build a home or to buy it. There are no “rights to a ‘fair’ wage or a ‘fair’ price” if no one chooses to pay it, to hire a man or to buy his product. There are no “rights of consumers” to milk, shoes, movies or champagne if no producers choose to manufacture such items (there is only the right to manufacture them oneself). There are no “rights” of special groups, there are no “rights of farmers, of workers, of businessmen, of employees, of employers, of the old, of the young, of the unborn.” There are only the Rights of Man—rights possessed by every individual man and by all men as individuals."
> If a situation forced you to choose between compassion and property rights (Maybe you're asked to steal a life saving medicine for someone else in dire need), which do you choose?
The Objectivist answer is that sickness (like hunger) is not a sudden emergency but a predictable element of human life. Because of this, people invest in researching and manufacturing medicines, or studying to become doctors. They own the products of their labour, and are entitled to trade them (or donate them) as they see fit.
Many people would say they agree with this, but that there are some situations where rights should be compromised. The thing to understand is that rights are principles. In Objectivism, principles essentially encapsulate long-term pragmatism: principles are concepts you should always follow if you want good long-term results. (Rights, for example, encapsulate the principles to follow in the social realm). There will always be bad effects to violating principles, even if there appears to be a short-term gain.
If you say that one group of people (e.g., drug companies) should have their rights violated based on the needs of another group of people (e.g., sick and poor people), you establish the principle that anyone's rights can be violated for the needs of anyone else. You end up with different pressure groups and lobbyists pushing for government handouts and favourable legislation (i.e., the current situation). Linking back to the field of medicine, one practical outcome of the push to prevent "greedy drug companies hoarding medicine" has been that medical innovation has increasingly focused on things like viagra and plastic surgery, since if they develop life-saving innovations their intellectual property rights may well be violated.
The closest thing would be say primitive hunter gatherer societies. Ever since we started having specialists that paid for their decreased production by providing greater fitness for society as a whole benefit from society has only been tangentially related to utility provided.
The creation of such a society wherein value is so related would be such a profound improvement over every society in existence wherein value seems to derive from leverage not value that it not ethical implications would surely be the primary topic of discussion.
In a bizarrely unfair real society arguing that you have the right to maximally leverage whatever value you your dad and your grandpa managed to drag away and coral seems greedy and disingenuous.
Devoting a minority of societies resources to ensure everyone has something so that they can find their own way to contribute seems to be the only sane solution to an otherwise broken system.
Secondly you mention drug companies and specifically their intellectual property in the same breath as speaking of protecting a man's ability to freely go about providing value to society but ip is a wholly artificial construct and designed to shape how value is distributed disproportionately not to empower creation of value but to empower others to extract rent from society something that seems antithetical to your own desires.
You are concerned with the government taxing and spending on handouts but not about enabling monopolies that have no basis in reality or the notion of property rights. If I have a right to my chemistry set surely if I make the right molecule my property doesn't become yours.
Basically Objectivism is a great way for those who have historically controlled the Lions share of a societies resources while providing minimal value to society in return to justify their greed.
I have a great capacity to become an asshole when I'm being glib. I would like to add that there's nothing impressive with how well casual prejudice becomes internalized because that is literally the easiest and laziest thing a brain can do.
> Judges overturned a theft conviction against Roman Ostriakov after he stole cheese and sausages worth €4.07 (£3; $4.50) from a supermarket.
> Mr Ostriakov, a homeless man of Ukrainian background, had taken the food "in the face of the immediate and essential need for nourishment", the court of cassation decided.
> Therefore it was not a crime, it said.
(...)
> In 2015, Mr Ostriakov was convicted of theft and sentenced to six months in jail and a €100 fine.
Italian judicial system "does not try anybody by a jury of peers: everyone is judged by professional judges or by a panel of judges" [1]. Thus, the compassion reserved to the jury of peers (in the form of Jury Nullification) in systems like the american one would be absent from the Italian one if not for actions like the one by this judge.
Not going to enter in the merit of the cause itself (as it's very subjective and personal experience can affect the judgement) but I agree that the judicial system can and must apply discretion in its judgements.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Code_of_Criminal_Proce...
It IS a crime, however one that court could rule to not punish the convicted. At least that is how it would probably work in my country.
It's quite simple when you think about it would you rather die in the streets from lack of food or go into a supermarket and take some to live another day hell even if you get caught you go to prison where you get fed.
There's no point in punishing these people the punishment is actually better then their current situation and any fines etc that you give them they will never be able to pay anyway all that does it prevent them from improving their situation since whenever they will start recovering a bit the debt collectors will show up to knock them down.
Besides being a cruel and unusual punishment for someone trying to better their lives it's not good for the economy either.
If you want to feel moral, go feed a poor person today. You'll feel much better. Don't assault the basic pillars of the civil society that is what has left you rich enough to be able to afford that without a second thought for a quick hit on the virtue pipe.
(Preempting one of the lines of attack I can forsee coming here, the crime is also minor and the penalty should be minor correspondingly. I would happily support some sort of very compassionate enforcement; perhaps a sentence of a few days' service at a soup kitchen which will also feed him or something. But there is still an important difference between enforcing the law even in this minor way, and declaring that certain people lack Privilege and therefore, ironically, have the privilege of being above the law, which is the sort of caustic poison that can dissolve civil society entirely.)
What history has to say is that, at many points, society has failed to provide help for the poor on a volunteer basis, and that said people have died of starvation and/or violated the law to avoid it.
If you expect that the normal order of things is for people to voluntarily donate in order to avoid hunger problems, then you have to admit that law and order will be broken on occasions, because the nominal food-providing mechanism occasionally fails.
It is never, ever ok to steal. Stealing from a supermarket is stealing from a person or people. Just because you cannot name who is affected doesn't mean it isn't people. It is black and white. The morality and legality are in alignment in this regard. This whole "shades of grey" leads to the blackness that destroys people and civilizations.
The whole point of government social programs is to provide for survival. There are organizations that provide and places to go.
Yes, well they're stealing from someone, aren't they? But of course, it's ok if someone steals from the heartless grocery store owner, isn't it? I feel as if you would have a different opinion if anybody was allowed to walk into your house without your permission and ransack your fridge (and anything else they felt that they "need").
The moral problem with theft isn't that it is illegal. The problem is that one person expended their own personal resources to create the good. The person has spent their own time, money, and/or intelligence to create some good that now has value. The thief, who has expended zero effort to create nothing, takes the fruit of the producer's labor for no work, on the basis of his "need". What kind of society does this produce, where you can take things from others solely on your basis of need?
You seem to be making the cliche mistake of associating morality with need. I hope one day you don't need to learn this isn't always correlated...
Am I not privileged enough to have an opinion that theft, as such, should not be tolerated?
I still think that we should collectively help people who are in risk of starvation.
Black and white thinking can, sure, be a result of privilege, but it can also be a product of its absence. Aside from being fallacious to attack a speaker for your presumption of what in their background might be the motivation for their ideas rather than addressing the ideas themselves, you'll also quite often be wrong on that presumption.
The Catholic Church would agree: stealing is intrinsically evil, and thus wrong always and everywhere. The way they handle situations like this is by defining "stealing when starving" as "not stealing at all, but reappropriating things according to God's design for them." They call this the "universal destination of goods":
§2408 The seventh commandment forbids theft, that is, usurping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner. There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods. This is the case in obvious and urgent necessity when the only way to provide for immediate, essential needs (food, shelter, clothing . . .) is to put at one's disposal and use the property of others.
In other words, the right to private property does not trump the right to life.
When thou comest into thy neighbour's vineyard, thou mayst eat grapes thy bellyful at thine own pleasure: but thou shalt put none in thy bag.
Quite the opposite, I'd say. Italy is a catholic country, and it is, I think, common opinion that the very forgiving Italian attitude is due to it. Protestantism and Calvinism in particular are much more strict in considering everybody responsible for their actions. Catholics can always go the the nearest priest, confess their sins and be immediately absolved from them. They don't have to deal with their conscience.
(They clearly do not agree with user stronglikedan.)
are in no position to lecture anyone on morals. Read "The God Delusion" if this isn't abundantly apparent to you from studying history and/or reading the news.
"Organization X is wrong about A, therefore they are wrong about B," is never a logically valid proposition. In fact, nothing about organization X is relevant when determining if their propositions are correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh
According to one source:
...The dominant view in Jewish law ... allows a person to steal or damage property of another to save his own life. Thus, one may break in to the house of another, or steal insulin if that was necessary to save his life. However, such a person must compensate the owner of the property.
http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/ch_stealsavelife.html
This source also says about American law:
The issue is not whether a person can steal or destroy property to save his life or the life of others since it is accepted in American law that such an action is permissible. The issue is whether such a person must compensate the owner if he did not create the danger. There are few cases directly on point but the weight of such cases conflict with the position taken by sections 197 and 263 of the Restatements. These cases and the doctrines of admiralty law support the contention that when neither the actor nor those whose lives are saved are legally at fault for placing themselves in the perilous position from which they can only be saved by destroying the property of another, they bear no legal liability for destroying that property.
Presumably, any legal finding of necessity by a judge is based on an awareness of an existence of these programs, such as they may be in the applicable jurisdiction, and a determination that they were not, in fact, sufficient to meet the need in the specific circumstance at issue.
The existence of a government program intended in theory as a general solution to a problem does not logically imply (and, in fact, often falls very short in practice) that the problem is, in fact, adequately and sufficiently addressed in all concrete cases.
> but we do all pay taxes for the specific purpose of having a better society (including things like food banks, soup kitchens, etc for people in need).
And also including judges that review the specific circumstances of particular cases brought before them.
and consider what the consequences are for the theft. maybe they get a fine. they won't pay it, of course, because they can't even pay for food. then the fines accumulate, which has no immediate effect on the thief and does nothing to stop them thieving, because if they can't pay for food then they can't pay a fine, no matter how much they owe. on the other had, they may, eventually, be thrown in prison for their crimes, where they'll get fed on the regular, which is practically encouragement to commit crimes. you could also kill them, but i feel that's problematic.
if you don't punish the thief at all then, in the off chance they have the chance to get back on their feet, they won't have a pile of debt keeping them down, they won't have a criminal record because they were starving, and they won't be dead.
So, never been homeless, poor and hungry, I presume?
Here's some Brecht for you:
You gentlemen who think you have a mission To purge us of the seven deadly sins Should first sort out the basic food position Then start your preaching, that's where it begins
You lot, who preach restraint and watch your waist as well Should learn, for once, the way the world is run However much you twist, or whatever lies that you tell Food is the first thing, morals follow on
You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.
We should provide aid for people who are in danger of starvation, but it does not give anybody right to steal from fellow human.
I have a personal experience with possible abuse.
I saw a man, probably a foreign (so he is probably not supposed to be familiar with local aid system), with a sign that he needs money for food because he is starving and he indeed did not look alright.
After considering the situation (well, to be honest he can be pretending), I decided to give the man 10 euros because if he really is starving, he should not stay there to collect small coins, but also as a test, such that he could be given further directions when he really is in need.
So, he took the money, hid it and continued his act.
If you choose not to then the changes are that you were actually not starving.
Of course, like I told, this is a case of possible abuse. I have no idea what was actually going on.
Not much experience with being poor/homeless, have we?
For those not faking it (which can happen too), a "starving" sign doesn't mean "I'm literally starving right now, I just need a few dollars for a burger and I'll be on my way".
It means I can't support myself, I'm dead-poor, and probably homeless, and can use all the money thrown at me to get by for a few days.
By definition the only people playing the game, are those willing to hold their nose and wade into the cesspool anyway. Nobody currently in the cesspool can seriously convince anyone that they really thought they were wading into a Randian utopian swimming pool, they knew what they were getting into. Given that intentional acceptance of the situation they're voluntarily a part of, a bag of crackers isn't much of an additional theft. Deal with it.
What is likely to happen, is when I was a kid cigarette cartons were like $10 and out on shelves for anyone to steal, but why would anyone steal a $10 carton of cigs? Now they're like $80 per carton and locked up in closets until after payment is made. So there will be changes in supermarket operations. Oh well, disruption happens.
I find it impossible to reconcile the two parts of this sentence. To me, there is nothing compassionate about even prosecuting a case like this.
I understand that people don't want to be stolen from. Of course not. Nobody wants that. We all want better alternatives.
But the world isn't perfect.
To me saying there is "never a reason to steal" is equivalent to saying you value property over someones life.
To me, that is cold and callous.
No, that does not mean I think it would be good for hordes of starving people to descent on shops. But if the alternative if starvation, then society has a problem. And theft is the smaller part of that problem.
This is a case of economics. The courts are ruling they no longer want to foot the bill, send the homeless man back to the streets and let him beg, feed, and steal from the businesses.
There is room in a justice system to convict a person of a crime without punishing that person in any meaningful way.
We certainly complete eliminate the criminality of intentional homicide when there is sufficient need. Seems to me, that the case for doing so for mere theft of chattels is much stronger. (Also, note that this is separate from the issue of whether or not conversion of chattels ought always to be a tort creating a debt for compensation from the taker to the one deprived, which should be resolved through whatever system a jurisdiction has for the resolution of debts and which may requiring repayment when the taker is capable, with interest, unless the debt is qualified for discharge, e.g., through bankruptcy or similar proceedings. But that's a different issue than criminality.)
Wikipedia has a good article [1] with a map showing the different legal systems in use throughout the world.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_legal_systems
But if you stab someone in self-defence you can still expect to be arrested and possibly put on trial. The onus is on you to prove you did it in self-defence.
Surely this could be treated the same? It doesn't mean that stealing food has been decriminalised. You'll still be arrested if caught, and you have to prove you were truly desperate.
The risk of this approach, I fear, is that it could be exploited by clever lawyers as a loophole for people who aren't really all that poor. The truly poor won't be able to afford a lawyer.
How in the world would that work? The amount stolen would have to be only sufficient satisfy your hunger, and presumably they would need to not have obvious other means. Such as funds for a lawyer.
It might be different in Italy, though.
But what a collosal waste of resources. What does a trial cost the state? It would probably be cheaper to just... feed the hungry people.
My dad works at grocery store and initially, they were allowed to bring the food home once it expires for a symbolic cost (10% of the price or something). Soon after that, the employees started to hide food so that they can take it home almost for free. So it didn't last long.
Expired food in many countries ends up in food pantries as the date for canned and dried food has more to do with freshness/taste than actual health issues. So its already being socialized.
Or even petition the government to set one up paid by their taxes.
Consumption in the absence of real production is not sustainable.
At some point the reduction in margins means the shop worker/repairman/etc that would be paid for his work no longer can be supported/afforded, adding to the poor. At some point shop owners, current and would be, would choose not to do business in then-marginal districts of town: the underserved and marginally poor would be more likely to be further underserved and see the balance tip towards poverty.
All things being equal, there is nothing wrong with compassion. But there are other, better ways. This ruling is neither compassionate, moral, nor ultimately effective. When one considers the unseen consequences of this sort of thinking, along with the abandonment of a legitimate purpose of government, in this myopic ruling, one can only marvel at the direction of Italian society.
I mean, the production means are far more than enough to accomplish that and in the western world, only a society where wealth distribution is deeply unbalanced can have people going hungry, so that's the problem we need to address.
> the production means are far more than enough to accomplish that
Theft is commonplace in markets and supermarkets. It's calculated into the cost of doing business. Back when I was a teenager working in a supermarket, one store claimed 15% of its revenue was lost to theft every year. (Its prices were also among the highest for any food store, so i'm sure they still did well)
I doubt they'll just let people ransack their stories, but they may decide to be more lenient in terms of calling the cops when they catch them.
Fun anecdote: Working in front of the store, you would sometimes notice people trying to pull scams. The best scam I ever witnessed was over chicken nuggets. There was one guy finishing paying for some food, one cashier, and me bagging the food. Right as this first guy was paying for his food, another came up right behind me and barked in my ear that he couldn't find something in the frozen food aisle. I turned and tried to explain where to find his item. When I turned back around, the last item for the current customer - a box of frozen chicken nuggets - had.... disappeared. Just gone off the counter. The customer was still there, though, and the cashier hadn't seen anything. So we had to get him a new item. It wasn't until he and the distracting guy left that we realized they were working together.
I'm sure their prices could have been lower if they didn't have up to 15% shrinkage as well.
And, having known several people who worked in loss prevention, it is well-established that the lion's share of that theft -- both of cash and goods -- is by employees.
Lets say, I'm an Italian businessman. I have a vending machine that costs 5,000 euros. Your feel good ruling told all the drug addicts they could smash it for the snacks inside. You arrest them and whether or not you convict them doesn't matter to me because I'm out 5,000 euros now and the government isn't going to reimburse me. I can't sue them because they have no assets.
So yes, there are social consequences here that are not address by the court system.
While I agree with you in principle, placing the burden on an entity far removed from the local context will always leave people underserved or forgotten entirely, in which case their instinct to survive will hurt the local business owners regardless of whether they would have helped voluntarily or not.
Unless it really is a true basic income.
Ironically, this is going to hurt the working poor the most who work at low margin restaurants, retail shops, etc as people just grab whatever they want because there is no more law protecting them. It also seems like a good way to get into beatings or even knife fights as small business owners and workers get fed up with thieves and now have an apathetic police that won't protect them. Those in high volume areas like food stands at train stations will feel the brunt of this, meanwhile I suppose the kinds of restaurants an Italian judge dines at won't even notice. If Italy wants to expand its welfare state benefits, then it should do that through its legislature via taxation, not via judiciary decree attacking its poorest workers. If the Italian poor can't find these socialized benefits then someone needs to ask by the welfare state is so inefficient and find a way to fix that.
More than likely the unintended consequences will be chasing out 'poor looking' people from various shops as retailers fear legal theft. Now the poorest won't be able to buy things they need and they won't have the resources to fight this discrimination via a lawsuit. On top of that, there's no Hollywood style theft where you just steal bread cooling itself on the window sill. It will involve breaking and entering, fights with the shop owner, collateral damage (a child trampled during a chase), tempers leading to weapons use, incentivizing snatching expensive food to be sold on the black market, and other issues.
Its obvious no one thought this through. What if a hungry person decided to smash up a €5,000 vending machine to get a sandwich or a coffee? Does the Italian government pay for the repairs? I imagine it won't. This is a bad ruling for Italian small business.
Did they legalize smashing up $5000 vending machines if you're hungry too?
> Does the Italian government pay for the repairs?
Do Governments usually pay for repairs to private property?
In this context, it's clear you are both in agreement.
It's not what some people imagine, though: when you break out of jail you will still be wanted for your original crime, and when caught have to continue your sentence. And while the act of breaking out isn't punishable by itself, theft, property damage, assault etc committed in order to break out is still punishable.
The human desire to be free is acknowledged and not punished, but that doesn't interfere with the punishment of crimes.
The law argues that one cannot punish a person for loving freedom, even though the same law has put him behind bars.
1) Originally the law exists so if you cut your finger you won't go to jail for "stealing" a bandaid from the first aid cabinet or other weird trivialities. I had a bad reaction to some taco bell and "stole" an entire roll of toilet paper in the bathroom by flushing it. For unusual situations not as a way of life to eat three meals a day.
2) Another intent is very short term survival. So if you are about to collapse in a low blood sugar diabetic coma, if you realize it and immediately slam a corn syrup soda, even if you can't pay for the soda its not a crime, because the overall cost to society of a collapsed or dead person in the aisle enormously exceeds the cost of a mere can of soda. But this dude paid for some needed food and snuck out with more food for later in his pocket. If his defense was he was feeling faint and ate it right there in the aisle as a sudden unpredictable (LOL) medical need, and said he was sorry but no wallet, that would be a realistic application of the law, but filling one's pockets for later use is pretty slippery slope.
3) The financial impact of the trial exceeds the cost of the crime by many magnitudes, and all the cost comes from the taxpayer. Thats fine when its something obscure like "policeman takes bicycle to chase down a criminal" or "earthquake hits store and customer steals bandages to save lives until the EMTs arrive". I stole a hundredth of a penny of water from the public water fountain because I was thirsty. However the financial impact of having to feed every homeless person is going to be a bit high and it makes no sense not to prosecute a common crime like food theft.
4) Proportionate punishment is an issue. So for me jail would be a ridiculous punishment for a couple pieces of food, but for a homeless dude, its like an all inclusive vacation.
Edited to add 5
5) Police punishment as non-judicial punishment. Sure the judge won't convict, but stealing a pack of chips means the cops will throw you in jail for a couple days. Much like political protesting is not illegal and you won't get a conviction for it, but the cops WILL let you cool your heels in jail for hours/days. Likewise maybe the appropriate legal level of punishment for stealing a cookie is sitting in jail and explaining yourself to a judge who lets you walk. Its not a crime you can be convicted of, but its not exactly government encouraged either. This is a likely outcome of the whole situation. There are parts of the country that "enforce" marijuana laws in a similar manner, or at least there used to be.
I mean that's a lovely headline and all, but in startups lingo, it doesn't scale.
Italy has just admitted that it can't take care of its citizens' basic needs. I'm not saying it's time to eat crow, but I am saying it's time to realize that both systems have flaws and there's no reason to get righteous about one approach over another.
OK, I have an anti-agenda agenda.
> Italy has just admitted that it can't take care of its citizens' basic needs.
Maybe you don't, but you are implying that this somehow is a failure of social safety nets.
As someone else in this thread mentioned, the italian justice system is based on civil law, not on precedent (common law) so this ruling doesn't have the repercussions many seem to think. I'm not a lawyer however, so don't quote me on this.
Maybe he was drunk or slept during the food lines, or he just didn't give a fuck that day? Poor people can decide not to receive any help they are provided. It's not like we can throw them into a prison for being poor.
Somewhat doubtful that Mr Ostriakov is Italian, or from an EU member country. Very likely that Mr. Ostriakov had to illegally go to Italy to find work after Biden & co decided it was time to "liberate" Ukraine. Just a theory.
Not quite, a homeless person could invade an empty home and sleep in that bed. This is done all the time, and is somewhat covered by squatter's rights. It's currently assumed that greater than 15% of the world's population are squatters. [1]
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land–or a building, usually residential–that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.
Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004 that there were one billion squatters globally. He forecasts there will be two billion by 2030 and three billion by 2050.
Edit: With appreciation to lorenzhs
What this doesn't do is fix the problem though, it just recognizes a symptom. Why are these people forced to resort to stealing?
Nearly 50% of bank loans are non-performing (in default). The EBC is conducting a stealth bailout via Target2. Just look at the major Italian bank stocks. They are trading at deep, deep discounts. Maybe the market knows something the EBC and others don't want to admit?
I can't help but be concerned about this growing trend of governments slowly pushing off the burden of general welfare onto businesses. You see it in the US with health care being the responsibility of the employer, affordable housing mandates on real estate developers, and minimum wage increases in expensive areas. All of these "solutions" to poverty have huge unintended consequences, even if they partially address the problem. The problem of poverty isn't solved by forcing businesses to be compassionate, it is solved by governments doing their fucking job and taxing everybody equitably to do so.
Legalising stealing is basically abolishing property rights.
It's not hard to find videos on the web where a mob of shopkeepers beat the crap out of (or even shooting) someone caught shoplifting. We don't have cops to protect us from criminals. We have cops to protect people accused of crime from summary judgement.
>>Stealing small quantities of food to satisfy a vital need for food did not constitute a crime, the court wrote.
What about the loss sustained by the owner? Or perhaps if the "not-so-rich clerk" at the supermarket was in charge of the goods and had to pay for the losses? Whose going to give that "not-so-rich clerk" the lost money?
Tomorrow if a thousand "hungry" people stole "small quantities of food to satisfy a vital need for food" then what?
I mean, such "populist" rulings are ultimately antithetical to democracy based society.
I find that an utterly ludicrous claim given that the court was applying the law, and that parliament is free to change the law if they believe it is being misinterpreted.
Others would find it ultimately antithetical to society overall to threaten people with prison for a theft like in this case. I certainly would.
> Tomorrow if a thousand "hungry" people stole "small quantities of food to satisfy a vital need for food" then what?
Then society would need to decide whether to deal with that by tightening up this law, or find other ways of treating the poor with some degree of dignity.
Consider such laws a recognition that life has greater value than property, and an incentive to ensure society keeps that in mind when deciding how to structure itself.
This I agree. In fact, I am of the strong opinion that there should be very hard limits set on the ownership of certain types of properties (e.g. land, water, food). No one should be allowed to own any of such properties beyond a certain limit. [1] But once a person who owns whatever is allowed by the laws, then the law should protect the ownership of that person of that property and in case any person (needy or not-so-needy) steals such a property of other person, the law must not then take a populist u-turn to tell us grandiose sounding principles like "life has greater value than property". If the judge wants to show he/she is so "humane", he/she should pay for the loss of the owner and allow the "needy" poor to keep the food.
Some other better ways the judge could have taken: The judge could have ordered the officials overseeing the welfare matters and could have ordered them to compensate for the losses sustained by the owner. In fact, the judge had a very good opportunity to bring to the notice of that poor hungry person some of the welfare schemes that are set in place by the society.
But saying that a theft, which has caused damage to other law abiding citizen, is not a crime is not only ludicrous but is also dangerous.
>>Others would find it ultimately antithetical to society overall to threaten people with prison for a theft like in this case. I certainly would.
I am not against the society helping the needy people to survive but there are other "not-so-antithetical-to-democracy" ways of helping the needy people than just ignoring the thefts carried out by the needy people.
What was wrong on the part of the owner? Why he/she was punished? These are some very important issues here. We must not fall prey to sentiments like "thefts of food by poor hungry is okay and anyway the shop owner is always that dirty-rich person who needs to be punished".
[1] Note about private property: please note that I am not saying/suggesting that we should embrace the communist style anti-people tyrannical systems which prohibit "most"* people from owing any private property. Of course, the communists allow only the "more equal people" [2] (e.g. party chairman and his cronies in polit-bureau and few of their cronies in turn) to own almost all of the property. The "party-people" are allowed to have as much fun as they want and at whatever troubles such fun-acts of the party-people cause to other "less equal" people, the communists just ignore.
> If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. 25 If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
Stealing food is okay sometimes. There's even a word in German for it Mundraub.
Proverbs 6:30-31
The first judge clearly messed up. A suspended sentence would have been ideal in this case.
For example "People do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his appetite when he is hungry, but if he is caught, he will pay esevenfold; he will give all the goods of his house."
e: Previously I claimed that olives don't need preparation which is false. Sorry.
For example, on release of a blockbuster movie - the distributor will do blanket advertising saturating every channel trying to manufacture a demand - tv, internet, sides of buses, roadside-hoardings, in taxis, talk shows, newspaper native ads etc. You just can't escape even in your own home eating your breakfast cereal when the box is smeared with adverts.
If a demand has been manufactured by a catastrophic pollution of our environment, I can't blame anyone for satisfying it without paying the maker. They didn't really have a choice.
No one is saying this guy isn't responsible for stealing food, the court is saying he ought not to be punished for it given his particular circumstances.
EDIT: I'll concede this may not apply to toddlers.
Only if they have IQ below the level which is considered minimum to be responsible for your actions.
Criminal Code, article 54 – State of necessity: “A person is not punishable for having committed an act that he was forced to do in order to save himself or others from an existing risk of severe harm, a risk not voluntarily caused by him, nor otherwise avoidable, always provided that the act is proportional to the risk”.
There are cases of homeless people who stole a pint of milk from a doorstep, and who left some money, being prosecuted for theft.
Helping hungry people is a fine thing to do, as long as it's optional.
[1]https://books.google.co.id/books?id=ZRqe3iPwsTkC&pg=PA36&lpg...
And thirst being even more basic than hunger, is it excusable to steal beer when desperately dehydrated or just bottled water?
If food is deemed an inalienable right, then a tax to feed the hungry seems like a better way to avoid legal inconsistency.
The tax, or charity for that matter, to feed the poor is something that works quite well in many areas of the world, even in the evil capitalistic systems.
e: That's probably exactly what you meant. Whoops.
It is a more enlightened philosophy of justice to acknowledge that saying 'you should have known better' won't make people know better. As the concept of morality progresses from a simple Hammurabian ear-for-an-ear justice game to a nuanced empirically-founded optimization problem, it will be interesting to see whether or not people continue to take pleasure in exerting it. That the latter problem tends to be incredibly engrossing to the technically literate means many of us will respond to this quite positively.
Postscript: If morality were a solved problem, would there be as many Effective Altruists?
[1] http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug03/rehab.aspx [2] http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/00... [3] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adriana_Foster/publicat... | relevant quote : estimation of mood disorders at "12% to 30% in various homeless samples".
The inferential gap between EA and Objectivism is obviously huge, so it's not worth giving a full argument here. For the intellectually curious, though, I'll simply say that the two schools of thought fromthemorning cites both assume that the purpose of morality is to maximise the greater good (rather than, say, teaching individuals principles to maximise their own long-term personal happiness).
On the off chance that someone on the fringes of the EA movement reads this, someone who shares the concerns I once had - the ultimate issue with EA is that it's hyper-empiricist: EAs love evidence but are highly distrustful of theoretical arguments. This is an understandable position, but ultimately a mistake, because you end up unable to synthesise the vast amounts of data you gather. All truths are simplifications - what you need are rules to form correct simplifications.
Objectivism isn't taken seriously in mainstream intellectual circles but it should be, because it shows how to avoid the pitfalls of both empiricism and rationalism. (See Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology for details).
When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbour's standing corn.
Deuteronomy 23, 24-25
Ci hanno insegnato la meraviglia
verso la gente che ruba il pane
ora sappiamo che è un delitto
il non rubare quando si ha fame
They taught us the wonder
for the people who steal bread.
Now we know that it’s a crime,
not stealing when one is hungry.
But applied widely in real world, it's just won't work. There are too many people who would exploit such a system and cause chaos.
Why would this not work?
How does it address professional thieves who steal to order, now they can just argue that they were hungry. Frozen meat is often stolen as it has a high value to weight ratio.
Many small business owners are far from rich, can they steal from their suppliers to make up for the losses?