It is never unethical to steal food. It is unethical to stop someone from stealing food, or report someone for stealing food, or to arrest someone for stealing food.
Edit: ITT, sociopaths thinking their rationalizations for denying food to people are moral. It is NEVER unethical to steal food, got it? If someone is stealing food, it’s because they’re hungry, and they can’t afford it. If you question that, you’re just an asshole.
“Never” and “always” are very difficult to use in a philosophical argument.
I can come up with a single ridiculous example that refutes a statement that uses such absolutes, once done the argument falls apart.
“I’m going to the supermarket to steal food so I can save up for a new iphone. I could just steal the iPhone, but that could be unethical, so I’ll steal the food instead cause that is ALWAYS ethical.”
This is such a silly discussion…
I’ll going to steal food from a homeless person, they are too weak to fight back, ethically I’m fine, it is NEVER unethical to steal food.
There is vast difference between stealing something and robbing somebody.
Indeed, but the absolute statement can be so easily twisted to meet the ends of moment, it really matters little.
Who says that the homeless person isn’t off taking a shit, their food unattended, thus back to stealing rather than robbing!
What a shitty way to think.
Maybe.
But using nuance and constructive statements is more difficult than hard line rhetoric. People gravitate to stupid slogans and simple absolute language; it is though killing and destructive to actual conversation.
In the example “it is NEVER unethical to steal food”; this isn’t a real position to take; it is grandstanding and shallow; this argument falls at the first hurdle.
Saying something like:
“Theft of food; whilst not necessarily unethical; could be at best morally neutral. The specifics of each situation need be weighed on their merits. Where a person is taking food to feed their family, and the theft doesn’t materially affect the owner of the food, such as a large supermarket chain; this act is not unethical.”
Is not a pithy and hard hitting as the stupid statement “It is never unethical to steal food. It is unethical to stop someone from stealing food, or report someone for stealing food, or to arrest someone for stealing food.”
Is it ethical to make enough food to feed everyone but then throw it away just because of capitalism?
…and then criminalizing the act of recovering said thrown away food and in some countries poison it?
Because one of these has a clear answer
I they both have clear answers, but they’re obscured by which class you’re in. Rich? Obviously it’s not wrong to hoard. Poor? Obviously you need to eat to survive. Because of this bias, the argument for poor’s needing to steal will always be the debate, always leaving room for the rich to argue against it and justify punishment for people who find ways to make ends meet.
But whom are you stealing it from? If its another poor starving family suddenly its not so clear anymore. If its the hoarding rich guy go the fuck ahead, steal it even if you aren’t starving
Exactly. This man is a role model and did what I hope I would be able to do, but I wouldn’t expect that to be standard behavior, nor would I find it unforgivable if someone wasn’t able to literally starve to death while surrounded by food. Like, it is morally wrong imo, but that’s an incredible amount of self control that I would not have expected to be possible before learning about him.
This is the argument I have issue with. The truth is that the hypothetical isn’t grounded in reality.
Hypothetically, if one stole from another within the same class out of necessity, it’s impossible for any person to assign or deny the morality of the act.
The reality is there exists such an abundance of material needs, so much so that we have landfills for when we overproduce material needs that are not profitable. The hypothetical serves to divide the poor.
That is reality when you look at the entire earth, but seen from an individuals point that hardly matters. You may also just replace bread with a resource that is actually scarce.
On the other hand, us debating this topic at all proves my original point, nobody felt like debating the other question at all.
“But until the sage is dead, great thieves will never cease to appear, and if you pile on more sages in hopes of bringing the world to order, you will only be piling up more profit for Robber Chih. Fashion pecks and bushels for people to measure by and they will steal by peck and bushel.5 Fashion scales and balances for people to weigh by and they will steal by scale and balance. Fashion tallies and seals to insure trustworthiness and people will steal with tallies and seals. Fashion benevolence and righteousness to reform people and they will steal with benevolence and righteousness. How do I know this is so? He who steals a belt buckle pays with his life; he who steals a state gets to be a feudal lord-and we all know that benevolence and righteousness are to be found at the gates of the feudal lords. Is this not a case of stealing benevolence and righteousness and the wisdom of the sages?” Chapter 10 of Zhuangzi (Stolen Chests), Burton Watson translation.
Because ethics questions love focusing on individual choices, not the systems causing the problem in the first place.
Because in our (western) society, boldness and greed are universally honored to the point that corporations are generally seen as a means to enrich their owner rather than society as a whole. If you can afford it, and it’s not explicitly outlawed, it’s ethically right.
The reason is because these questions are often aimed at dirt poor people, not at the rich. The rich are, despite being rich, often the single most stingy, thieving bunch in existence. If you leave a bowl of candy for everyone to take from, a few might take more than their share… but the rich will want to grab massive handfuls.
The rich will take the bowl, candy and all.
Then complain about the quality of the candy. And the bowl.
And the candy will rot in their mansion as they peddle far-right conspiracy theories on Twitter.
I saw some Scrooge McDuck cartoons from the 60s that had him talk about money in a realistic way. Saying that a billion dollars is an unfathomable number, and how money must be constantly circulating otherwise problems will happen.
Even a duck tales cartoon had Scrooge lose his entire fortune so he decided to start from scratch again… And then realized that the world he was able to start his fortune in is no longer there and he cannot succeed again even if he did exactly what he did prior.
On top of that, the existence of his Lucky Dime and how his luck changes dramatically if he loses it is also an acknowledgement of the importance of luck.
That is because Scrooge wasn’t written bij actual rich people. So of course he knows nuance.
Scrooge is, if you want to be really, really picky about it, a racist stereotype. Why is Scrooge even Scottish? Because the Scots have long been stereotyped as stingy and thrifty and always looking for a cheaper option or deal. If you watch older media you will inevitably run into that stereotype. The first proto-Scrooge was in a 1943 Donald Duck cartoon about making sure you had enough money to pay your taxes for the war effort. Basically it was a fight between the ‘spendthrift’ and the ‘thrift’ to either blow his cash away or use it responsibly. He was the thrift in that film.
Also canonically, Scrooge is dead. He’s been dead since the 1960s. He lived to the age of 100, born in the 1860s and died in the 1960s.
For a serious answer, because ethics is concerned with self. You already know the answer to the second question and will very likely never be in that situation. You do not know the answer to the first and have a much higher likelihood of being in that situation.
I know the answer to the first
I’m sure your thought process involves a lot more than what is mentioned in the prompt. So you most likely do not know the answer to the first, even though you think you do.
Property is theft. Food shouldn’t be witheld from those in need. Stealing bread is an artificial problem that shouldn’t exist. Ezpz
Like I said, you’re making a lot of assumptions about the first that aren’t stated. Here’s a few to get you started, though there’s many many many others.
- You are stealing from a starving family
- You are about to die from old age and are stealing from a very young person
- You just got out of jail for murdering an immigrant and are only starving due to your own life decisions
- You are starving because you wasted all your money gambling
- You are stealing from a baby
Etc etc etc
But what if you’re stealing from someone who needs it as much as you do? That’s part of why the question is difficult. We’re not always assuming you’re stealing from someone who is hoarding.
This website is primarily populated by westerners, myself included. This ethical dilemma is commonly depicted within the confines of stealing bread from a business in some form or fashion. In the common depiction its pretty black and white to me. And even if we were to entertain the idea of stealing a loaf of bread from an individual with equal need, we only have to stop and think about it for a second to realize that capitalism and hoarding still created the conditions for this to happen, in which case this continues to be an artificial problem that shouldn’t exist.
We only need to look to history to see how people actually deal with conditions that lead to food scarcity (disasters, economic collapse, war, etc). People tend to share what they have with their neighbors in times of scarcity, often times people go without to their own detriment to make sure their neighbor has what they need to survive. Oftentimes the resources they need are “looted” from businesses, but they get spread around the community nonetheless. The answer to your scenario is to ask your neighbor for some of their bread, or offer your own if you see somebody in need.
If those families are not my friends, why should I care? I had the foresight to see the bread shortage coming, I paid for the bread with my own money. I don’t see why I should give away the things I’ve spent time and energy on. Not my issue they are dumb.
If those families are not my friends, why should I care?
Basic human decency.
Basic decency does not require radical self-sacrifice or the erasure of loyalties.
Where does radical self-sacrifice and the erasure of loyalties come into play in this situation?
Me giving away the food I had planned for my friends and family.
If you have abundance, it wouldn’t thus be immoral to steal from you.
A billionaire can have all their billions planned for their family and friends as well. Doesn’t make them less selfish.
