theft is ok.....right?

[redstaruser]

greetings comrades!,
I come to you all with something that has troubled me for a while now. I know the no matter what, capitalism will exist regardless, yet, is there a way to prevent it? I wanted to know what you think on theft. Is theft ok? does it help fight capitalism. Now i dont mean theft from small ma and pa stores, we should help them out as much as we can, i mean theft from big corporate stores such as wal-mart,barnes and noble, best buy, stores like that that can afford all teh stuff that they sell. Is it ok to steal from them? Does it help fight in the struggle against capitalism? I would really like to get as much imput in this from all of you as possible. ANy comments(except negative ones ofcourse) will be appreciated. that is all comrades, adios por ahora.

HASTA LAS VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

CHE LIVES!!!!

[swapna]

Theft is sooo immoral. How can you do it. You might end up in prison for a few years.

Do u really think theft prevents capitalism. Do u think walmart and bestbuy are so stupid to bear the losses?
They increase the prices and they increase the security which ends up in burdening the consumers.

[RyeN]

Fuck that if theres a store and it has something you need take it and use it. It doesnt belong to that store, but beware of the consequences. Dont let "the man" catch you or you will have to suffer in jail.

[UnionofSovietSocialistRepublics]

RyeN Posted on Oct 11 2003, 05:11 AM
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Fuck that if theres a store and it has something you need take it and use it. It doesnt belong to that store, but beware of the consequences. Dont let "the man" catch you or you will have to suffer in jail.
i dont think thats a good view at all, as swapna said the costs just go back to the consumer any way, i would neither regard theft as left or right wing, though thieves in a very left wing society would/are severely punished as they are stealing from the people.

[chamo]

What? Like steal a pair of trainers made with child labour in a foreign sweatshop? That would cause the worker's to be paid even less, and give the business justification to hike up prices.

[truthaddict11]

you do know that it would affect employees pay. revenue goes down because people are stealing so does an employees hours.these people could be relying on those extra hours for rent. it seems like a bad idea to me. stealing does not prevent capitalism it just means a bigger burden on people.

[redstaruser]

Wll, I am well aware of the consequenses, otherwise i sure as hell wouldnt be doing it. I risk it, dont ask me why. I think employees get paid the usual wage regardless. AS far as teh sweatshops go, i dont mean anything like clothes or anything like that, I wouls never jeopardize the situation of child labor in sweatshops! I dont agree with it one bit! I mean cd's,cassettes, and books. Those are the usual items that I "rack" from big corporate stores. Nothing drastic like clothes or anything like that, i can buy that easily, i just feel that like napster and kazaa and all those places, i should be able to rack a cd i want from a store, as long as its a big corporate one i feel, stores that can afford it, and you know they can! Most of them anyway! So all im saying is that although it is wrong to steal, i mean, cmon all of our mommies and daddies have said it before, and its just moral cause, maybe now that ive explained what it is maybe now some opinions will change. Again, any comments will be appreciated. thank you

[Purple]

Seems like you just want an excxuse, or a permission to steal..........

[apathy maybe]

Property is theft.

Because everything belongs to everyone (or noone) you can't steal something from someone else.
However, you can take something which previously someone else had exlusive use of.

In todays society, it really depends. Are you a member of the upper classes? Yes then you already steal. No then it is alright to steal to live. Imagine you are starving, living on the streets wearing rags, (which I take it your not), then I see no problem with you liberating some food and cash to help you get by.

[IHP]

I disagree about theft. It's already been stated that employees wages go down, which is partially correct to my understanding. They don't increase with sales. Secondly, the more stock that is stolen equals less slaes made to the owner which equals higher prices on everything in the store.

Take for example a newsagency. Say a magazine gets stolen, the owner (this is a true account of a story I saw) must then sell four copies of that magazine to make up the loss. He's not going to do that because..well think about it. He therefore, where possible, raise the price so the loss is not as significant.

[Beccie]

I don't see how something as simple as stealing could prevent a complex industrial economic system. The whole concept seems naive to me. As other comrades have already suggested theft will probably result in an increase of price or further exploitation of workers, it is hardly going to provoke a revolution.

[marxstudent]

Are you a member of the upper classes? Yes then you already steal.

How so? If a kid studies hard in school, gets into some high school w/ IB (hard, nerd) classes, goes to Harvard, and becomes a doctor. How is that stealing?

[sc4r]

There is not actually any reason to assume that increased theft wil equal increased prices as a direct consequence.

The stores will tell you this of course. They'll tell you anything that may help them to justify a price hike.

But prices in a capitalist economy are not set by costs, but by demand, They'll charge the highest price they can get away with irrespective of costs. All that theft does really is reduce profits.

So increased theft = reduced buying demand which should ironically mean lower prices.

This is counter balanced only because reduced profit can mean that a business cecomes unattractive, shuts down, and as a consequence supply reduces, which will tend to increase prices as the average marginal use value to potential buyers rises.

The trouble with theft is actualy what it does to the psyche. It can easily instill the idea of selfishness, carelessness for others, and for society, in people. The opposite of what we would want to see Socialists feeling.

Theft carried out for the purposes of revolutionary activity, as a protest, is one thing. Theft for use is another. But it's difficult to resist the temptation to say, 'well since we already have it anyway we may as well take some benefit'. Then its easy (as someone else said) for this to become an excuse.

Personally I dont believe such petty revolutionary activity would ever serve to do anything but alienate people from us; but in principle if carried out as a 'robin hood' endeavour in which the proceeds were never used to benefit the individual thief or our movement itself directly I suppose it might.

[BuyOurEverything]

How so? If a kid studies hard in school, gets into some high school w/ IB (hard, nerd) classes, goes to Harvard, and becomes a doctor. How is that stealing?

In order to go to medical school, you need more than good grades. You need money. It is possible for some people to work and pay for it themselves but very difficult at best and immpossible for many. Therefor, usually people who are well off to start with get into medical school at all. Not to mention, being able to "study hard and get good grades" requires a good home where one is not forced to drop out of school to survive. Once the person is a doctor, they use their ability to perform an essential service to extort people out of money. If someone gets sick or injured they have no choice to go to a doctor and pay the huge doctor's bill, which they often can't afford. Perhaps this isn't "stealing" in the rigid definition of the word but at the very least it's extrotion and it certainly exploits people and allows people to because rich by living off the poor, which in my books is worse than stealing.

[praxis1966]

I think sc4r was circling around the right concept. Corporations will say anything to justify price hikes, to say nothing of wage suppression. I remember when I worked for this place called "The Great American Cookie Company" which was itself a franchise operation owned by the Deblan Corp. As soon as Clinton signed into law the minimum wage raise, the company sent out a memorandum stating that it would not be raising wages over and above the new minimum wage.

It was done in two stages. First from $4.15 to $4.75, and then from $4.75 to $5.15. Well, naturally no business in its right mind is going to allow a wage increase to cut into its profit margins, so all across the country retail prices went up in order to compensate for ballooning production costs. This really pissed me off. It took me almost a year of loyalty and hard work in order to get the measley 35 cent raise (from $4.25 to $4.60). Basically, the company had just told me that I wasn't worth any more than some ass hole who had just walked in off the street. The kicker was I actually lost money due to the fact that prices increased on every domestically produced good or service directly proportional to the wage hike.

They just had to keep labor costs between 21 and 24%. The memo actually stated that labor was their single largest expense. Like somehow I'm supposed to feel sorry for them, the rat bastards. I got 'em back, though. I quickly figured out that I could make for myself a real nice profit if I sold cookies to people and stuck the cash in my pocket.

[sc4r]

Explaining the mechanics and psychology of price changes on demand when you are talking of something ehich delivers a non financial benefit to the consumer is unfortunately rather hard, because it is subtle.

People do not have any natural concept of the use value they place on consumables expressed in their minds (particularly eith low ticket value items). Instead they have a sort of vague unquantified hierarchy of desires which have another rather vage and tenuous relative relationship to each other.

But people do LIKE to think that they have a more precise valuation. This is a common human experience, we have to crystalise our emotional needs (which are almost never easily expressable as firm objective valuations) into more concrete terms in order to allow us to make decisions and to act.

So what we do to ourselves with small items in particular is to 'price condition' we see whatever the current price is as probably reasonable (especially if it is broadly in line with other items that look fairly similar). And because of this we react to price increases, or decreases, as if it really did directly reflect against a quantified desire, As if this desire really did have a cut-off point that was finely drawn.

So to increase prices (as they always want to) businesses know that they need to overcome the price conditioning factor, to divert attention. And claiming that the price must rise because of some factor beyond their control [theft, wage increases, whatever] does this. In fact they very often claim that they are working towards a set profit margin, because this also serves to price condition people (but this time in their favour, it says 'it is good value they are trying to make it so, the only way they could reduce it is to cut down on quality, and good for them that they wont do that).

Utter bollox of course. They would raise prices every day if they could get away with it, and raise the profit margin with it.

You would possibly be amazed how much price conditioning affects what people will pay for something they want, but cannot objectively compare in any direct fashion against other desires.

[Bradyman]

Theft is a terrible thing to do. It really just provokes mistrust in people, a quality that is not beneficial for man or socialism.

[apathy maybe]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2003, 01:17 PM

Are you a member of the upper classes? Yes then you already steal.

How so? If a kid studies hard in school, gets into some high school w/ IB (hard, nerd) classes, goes to Harvard, and becomes a doctor. How is that stealing?
Lets see what he does with his doctorate.
He really has two basic options, what he does will probably fluctuate between them.

1) He can set up a practice or join one or a hospital. Cater for the rich, charge extremely high prices etc.

2) He can set up a practice in a slum area, he live on next to nothing 'cause he provides his time for free to those who can't afford it. And there are lots of those. He will provide free medicine (out of his own pocket) to those who are poor.

In the first case, he's a member of the top layer, but not the cream. In the second, he's part of the working class. By choice.

I should think that it should be obvious why being a member of the 'cream' results in theft. By hogging resources, you prevent others from having any. To stay rich you must exploit others. Even if you are like the first doctor, you exploit the rich who exploit the poor. The upper classes are parasites on society.

[suffianr]

Stealing is stealing, no matter how you look at it.