If you count software piracy, then yes. In fact, I’ll admit to having done it within the past year (without giving specific dates for obvious reasons).
I wouldn’t feel bad about stealing groceries since my local grocer admitted to price fixing and has jacked the prices to an inhumane degree. But like from a person or a small business or something, no.
No. Mostly because places where the rule of law has broken down, the response to theft is often pretty brutal. It stops being “off to jail for a short bit” and starts being “here’s a tire with gasoline in it, placed around you and lit on fire”. When all we have ever known are a society dominated by the rule of law, it’s easy to forget that part of the reason written law exists, is to keep punishment proportionate with crimes. And also how disproportionate that response could be, without the law.
I would collect taxes if I held the power of physical violence over a community. All taxation is theft, amiright?
But seriously, stealing is a crime because prevailing thought within the community is that taking something that someone else has a claim on is wrong. If the prevailing thought was that it was not wrong, it wouldn’t be against the law, but we also would call it something else… Like taxation.
I agree. Guess I should have put a /s on the slogan. But it’s still taking a portion of something that is technically owned by one person or group for the betterment of the community.
Some people see that as theft and so would call it stealing even though there isn’t a law against it. My point is that this question is asked from a particular vantage point and what constitutes theft and the law may be different from one person to another.
Well tbf if someone stole my wallet at gunpoint but used a small portion of the money stolen to buy me lunch I’d still be pretty mad about him spending the rest of my money paying off his Haliburton credit card.
Not a majority of the money is spend on corruption like where do you live in fucking Russia or something? Zimbabwe? Also noome forces you to stay in that country for sure. I also left my home country.
No, it wouldn’t. If murder wasn’t a crime- murder wouldn’t be illegal. It would just be killing someone. Stealing is a crime. If it wasn’t, it would just be taking things.
The prevailing morality is to follow an arbitrary set of rules, mostly made by and for a class of people who have dominated the political sphere for most of human history. E.g. “If this will violate Ownership™ of a thing as defined by law, you shouldn’t do it.”
Another kind of morality is to consider the effects of an action. E.g. “If this makes someone’s life noticeably harder or more miserable, you shouldn’t do it.”
Another kind is to look at the social relations. E.g. “If this enriches yourself at the cost of someone who is already worse off than you, you shouldn’t do it.”