The ONLY reason I don’t is for fear of being caught, because I do have the moral obligation of caring for and providing for my family.
I don’t think people should steal from Mom and pop shops, but massive corporations (Walmart, Safeway, yada yada) have stolen enough from ALL OF US in term of life, liberty, and happiness, that I believe theft from them is in fact morally justified.
Edited wrong word
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There is though…
By stealing from shops you aren’t harming the corporation, you are harming the people who dont steal because those shops just put the prices up a bit more so that they still meet profit margins.
theft is never morally justified. we are morally obligated to change the systems that allow them to steal from us. we become just as bad as them if we steal as well.
upvoted because it probably is unpopular.
If you don’t like them, don’t do business with them, but if you steal from them you’re stealing from shareholders, who often include pension funds as major stakeholders. So yeah, the CEO and board might be dicks but taking from someone’s gran’s pension is low
Have you been listening to Cheap Dirty Horse – On The Rob?
If the corporation is bribing our representatives in Washington then it’s open season.
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Many areas in North America are food deserts. Theft causes big box stores to leave and the economy of scale makes it unlikely for smaller shops to replace them
You literally just told us about your moral obligation not to steal. You didn’t even google synonyms lol
If you want to be a thief, fine, whatever. But just don’t try to dress it up like you’re doing a morally good or even a morally neutral thing. You’re a thief who thinks they’re entitled to property and things that they didn’t pay for.
I don’t understand why people have such an issue being moral and knowing right from wrong when the victim isn’t immediately obvious. For one thing, stealing is wrong period. But if we have to play this game, stealing from corporations affects ordinary people much more than the rich executives/shareholders of these companies. The businesses close and move, people lose their jobs, they start locking everything up or not carrying all the same items in high crime areas, it creates food deserts because grocery stores won’t operate in these areas, etc.
Your local county prosecutor might want to have a word
The public has the perfect tool to stop exploitation from companies, you all vote in politicians that will regulate these companies. Its harder then theft for a lot of people so they resort to that, but the power to curtail these corporations has always existed.
I’m confused as to what, in terms of life, liberty, and happiness, was stolen from you? Do you mean profits made from your purchases? Or smaller stores that couldn’t compete that were closed and therefore “taken” from you?
I don’t have any moral qualms against stealing, but I’m also not going to pretend like theft/crime statistics aren’t a factor in where stores decide to do business. Have you ever gone shopping in a shitty area?
https://youtube.com/shorts/bmaoNLSHx_w?si=dM9oZ40dJ6Pm_lti
Stealing is stealing you’re either all for it or not, people will always find a find a way to justify something
So TWO wrongs make a right?? I don’t think so.
Honestly if corporations can steal poison and do us harm. If corporations like health insurance can take to your money and deny your care. If Wells Fargo can steal millions from people opening fake accounts and no one go to prison. If large retailers can steal millions in wages and pay fines of a fraction. The I give zero shits about stealing from them.
so brave “i’d totally be robbing from the rich only i’m afraid to”
so why are you even telling us? what’s the flex?
The insurance companies they hire to cover their merch first demands they lock up the merch, and eventually drops their policy, so they liquidate and close the store and move elsewhere to start over, so now all the jobs go away and you live in a food desert.
They steal from us every time they raise prices and blame it on someone/thing else when we all know it’s shareholders always demanding more and more.
What a horrible take. I hope you don’t teach your kids this crap.
Us individuals also have zero moral obligation to steal from massive corporations.
Do you seriously think stealing a carton of tide pods is going to hurt Walmart in any significant way? Realistically speaking? All that is going to happen is they raise prices to compensate for the loss, and people will still shop at Walmart because it still is overall the least expensive place to shop considering all factors.
People are only as moral as they can afford to be.
You’re just fucking it up for other people. The reason they are huge and cheap is mostly because of logistics. You’re making it more expensive for others because they put it all in their margins
The management staff can lose their bonuses and / or their jobs for “excessive shrink”. It’s not victimless
Theft is theft.
How on earth are massive corporations stealing from you?
So you are why the Legos are locked up now lol
I feel you could flip most people disagreeing with you if you’d just framed this as game/movie piracy and not physical goods.
This is really selfish as retail theft affects way more people than you think it does.
Walmart loses ( about ) $ 3 billion ( with a B ) a year in shop-lifting, i don’t think we’ve stolen enough from them.
This is cope. If you steal, I hope you get what Walmart does where they let it rack up until it’s a bigger crime
Peak 2025 reddit
You don’t steal because you want to set an example for your kids or little siblings etc
I never saw my dad stealing. I stole when I was a kid but grew out of it
“It’s the companies duty to maximize financial returns for investors through any means necessary!”
My investors are me. Maximizing my return.
Then they leave and you just made their employees jobless. Great
How big does a corporation have to be to qualify for morally allowed theft model?
Try that argument in court.
This is a good way to get your account locked commenters. Be careful
Then also the reverse is true. They have no moral obligation not to cheat and steal from you.
Can you elaborate on how exactly Walmart stole from you personally?
so you argue it’s moral to be selfish and take things that doesn’t belong to you? that just shows a lot about your own selfishness and how you view the world
>The ONLY reason I don’t is for fear of being caught
Thank you for letting us all know that you are a sociopath.
That’s what I like about this sub. Sociopaths, miscreants, the maladapted, consequentialists and otherwise terminally malcontent just come right out and tell people who they are.
As a proud member of r/antiwork sub, I steal company time (time theft) on a regular basis 😉
I do work for a big corporation. Not massive. But big enough that I don’t feel bad.
Agreed. Fuck walmart and self checkout, why am i doing your job, if i miss scanning a few things oops maybe i should get training or things should be cheaper since you’re not paying a person to work
By doing so you would put the jobs of the originating people who do ordinary jobs at those corporations .
Most of the stuff is insured and the owners store their money in shares
You’re only destroying your life by committing a crime and putting yourself and many other innocents at risk of losing their jobs
stealing is actually very easy and a great money saver!
there are also benefits to improved hand-eye co-ordination, digital dexterity, peripheral vision, and general awareness of your surroundings. in an age in which we have become passive consumers, mindlessly accepting what big corporations dole out to us, zombies, shuffling around massive hypermarkets on autopilot – shoplifting offers a real chance at an active, engaged life, participating in your real, concrete, local economy like never before!
I had a collegue who used to say this:
“If you are not stealing from the company then you are stealing from your family”
Great guy
I upvoted, but only because I feel it should be unpopular, hope so.
That being said, wouldn’t it be more prudent to just earn a paycheck from them?
Top end Walmart brass actually earn decent money. Walmart also has associate stock plans.
I see these sentiments about corporate America, but these are publicly traded companies. You can share in the wealth.
Unfortunately popular, judging from the food deserts forming in certain neighborhoods.
Except it hurts the employees and customers way more. Corporations don’t just eat the cost they track shrink and overly adjust for it. They could have record profits but shrink is 0.05% higher than they predicted that means jobs will be cut and prices will go up. The CEOs will not be affected by it in the least.
I agree tbh. We owe them nothing.
Pirate games and movies to your hearts content.
🤷♂️
eh, you can tell yourself this but the corporations aren’t dumb. They’ll get their money.
It’s the same thing with pirating (I pirate stuff but I don’t pretend it’s not stealing). People think they’re sticking it to the entertainment companies, but the higher ups aren’t the ones who are losing out, they’re going to make their money.
It’s the working people on film sets that get fucked over when movies and TV don’t perform well. They don’t get hired back or they get less staff when the shows don’t perform as well as expected.
Not saying you should or shouldn’t do it, but be realistic about who’s getting the short end of the stick.
How did Walmart steal from me?
I don’t think it’s ethical to steal from rsomeone just because they’re rich. It still harms them.
I watched 2 ladies losing their freaking MINDS in the Dollar Tree because a woman TRIED TO walk out with a cart full of stuff. It was like a week before Christmas. It was the shittiest dollar tree I’d ever stepped foot in and had really heard enough by the time I got to the register. They were trying to make the police come—it was really loud and obnoxious.
I was checking out and said, “do you guys even get paid enough to care so much? This corporation makes hand over fist and I doubt you’re getting paid enough to go after petty crime.” They just kinda looked at each other awkwardly. They asked if I thought stealing was OK—I told them obviously not but corporations steal the most so why should I care?
Probably not a very nice conversation on my end but jfc calling the cops frantically because someone almost stole a cart full of crap from the dollar store? A crime didn’t even occur…
My morals tell me to stay out of jail, so. There’s that.
You shall not steal
You’re harming the people who work there. No money coming in means the payroll isn’t going to be sufficient for the staff meaning staff gets laid off. Ik you’re tryna come off as a Lil rebel but that’s not how you do it
Thieves are the shit stains of society
Lot of good responses to you OP, listen to them. That said, here’s a pretty firm reason as to why. At the end of the day if we say it’s okay to steal from corporations then at some point we’re gonna have to say it’s okay to steal from an individual. There is no line that separates theft from a corporation from theft from an individual. Any argument the contrary is simply not thought out enough to realize it. Theft is theft, just as murder is murder. You’re not wrong in that not all theft is the same, or motivated by the same reasons, but it still theft. Murder, or rather killing, can be justified, but should still be seen as an incorrect and less optimal option. Just as theft should be. The problem is you aren’t really making an argument for why theft should be okay, only an argument why theft in this particular situation should be okay. These are not the same.
Edit: I just have to ask OP…what has Walmart or any other corporation stolen from you? Like that’s such a bullshit argument. It’s like blaming capitalism for people being so greedy. Ummm why do people have to steal?
The Safeway near my house nearly has everything locked up because of theft. We have to wait for someone to unlock for toothpaste, ice cream, shampoo, large jugs of detergent, and even bread. The somewhat decent Walmart near us closed down from so much debt that they were actively losing money. Stealing from these big corporations hurt the people because they have to do countermeasures to prevent theft. Also why are you acting like you have to shop at a Walmart at that? You still have the freewill to shop a mom and pop shop that is horribly overpriced and that treats their workers like shit.
Tell that to the people who live in poor neighborhoods and lost their drug stores and supermarkets because others in their community stole so much that they closed their doors
People who steal make my prices higher, so I really don’t have sympathy for your line of thought.
Coming from someone who literally lives in the city where WalMart is run from. I support this message 😌
OP is long gone. Dump and run.
This opinion cannot be defended.
Large corporations take the theft out on the workers all the time. For example when I worked at Lowe’s during Covid we had a major spike in thefts at our store. When quarterly raises and/or bonuses came up, they told us due to the amount of theft, we lost out. This happened almost every quarter.
So yeah, your theft was directly tied to our income
Posts like these are why I agreed with Tom Cotton when he said we have a huge underincarceration problem in the U.S.
Theft is wrong regardless of who the target is or what the circumstances are.
If you want to be a theif, say it with your chest.
Your morals are your own.
I don’t totally disagree with your thought.
But , stealing from large grocers can create food deserts; where if the stealing at a location becomes prominent enough that store will close up shop entirely. This is a more common issue in lower income neigbourhoods who may already be underserved and without the best transportation public infrastructure.
Me personally, I don’t steal not because of any moral obligation to the companies. But because of my moral obligations to myself, and my two sons, and the standard that I impose upon myself. But yeah, I am unbothered and not saying anything if I see someone else stealing.
And this explains food deserts.
But when those corporations make your clothes and phone, you don’t complain, do you? It’s not the mom and pop shops creating innovation and most economic value.
It’s not about the corporations. Fuck em.
I don’t steal. That’s my personal morals.
Mom and pop shops are actually worse.
Agreed, wage theft is a huge issue that goes ignored