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When, if ever, do you feel stealing is morally okay?

roguenuke

roguenuke

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Most people will make exceptions when it comes to killing of some kind or another in whether they feel it is morally okay or not to kill, even when it comes to taking human life. The most common exception is "in self defense", but others include in defense of others, during war, to end a person's suffering, or even the death penalty (to name really just a few).

However, there aren't too many times people would say it wouldn't be morally wrong to steal. I think a good number of people might say in general "when a person is starving", but even then, it is going to be greatly limiting and may not actually be morally right, but rather simply not as big of a wrong as stealing for other reasons.

I personally can think of a few extreme cases where it would be morally okay to steal (trapped in a country with little hope of getting back, and little other choice but to steal because of many possible complications in trying to actually earn food, when escaping wrongful detainment of some kind, when protecting yourself against another person, the general "when starving", etc.). There are even likely many others where I would probably say that it would be okay to steal, but it would take having a very specific set of circumstances presented to me to decide that.

On the flip side of that though, there would be circumstances where some would say a person/entity is "stealing" from them eventhough it isn't truly against the law because they have a difference of opinion on ownership and whether ownership of certain property should have transferred to a particular other party or at all.

I think stealing may be the hardest to make exceptions for when it comes to right or wrong because stealing involves a man-made concept of ownership. Life is clearly, scientifically defined.

So, I ask, what, do you feel is morally okay when it comes to stealing or is it always morally wrong to steal, no matter the specific circumstances?
 
I don't consider it to ever be morally okay. There are circumstances in which I can understand the need, and I don't hold a thief in some circumstances in contempt, but it's not "right" to take what belongs to someone else. Now, that being said, if you are also including under this umbrella, the concept of taking something from publicly owned land (as an example, picking a piece of fruit on government-owned property), I don't consider that to be theft at all.
 
lizzie said:
I don't consider it to ever be morally okay. There are circumstances in which I can understand the need, and I don't hold a thief in some circumstances in contempt, but it's not "right" to take what belongs to someone else. Now, that being said, if you are also including under this umbrella, the concept of taking something from publicly owned land (as an example, picking a piece of fruit on government-owned property), I don't consider that to be theft at all.
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Do you feel the same way about say a person who was held captive (basically they were kidnapped) and they steal a gun or other weapon or perhaps just a tool to aid in their escape? Or maybe they take food on their way out to better their chances of actually making it to help? Would it be morally wrong of them to steal for that purpose?

Plus, the "umbrella" part you mentioned also goes into the whole issue of "ownership". All ownership of property/resources is a man-made concept. It is technically all subjective.

Don't get me wrong, I do see the necessity of that for us as humans, but I also can see how it causes problems with our moral objections to stealing.
 
roguenuke said:
Do you feel the same way about say a person who was held captive (basically they were kidnapped) and they steal a gun or other weapon or perhaps just a tool to aid in their escape? Or maybe they take food on their way out to better their chances of actually making it to help? Would it be morally wrong of them to steal for that purpose?

.
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To the bolded: I wouldn't consider that stealing, because the individual holding them hostage is committing a serious crime.
 
lizzie said:
To the bolded: I wouldn't consider that stealing, because the individual holding them hostage is committing a serious crime.
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But it still is stealing. Stealing merely involves taking another person's property. The fact that they are committing a serious crime does not automatically nullify their claim to that property at that point. It can justify the stealing and make it morally okay for the person to steal, but it doesn't actually change the ownership of that property legally.
 
lizzie said:
To the bolded: I wouldn't consider that stealing, because the individual holding them hostage is committing a serious crime.
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I'm not quite sure being a criminal somehow nullifies property ownership. Granted I wouldn't really be torn up about a kidnapper having his stuff taken, but I don't think that it's suddenly not stealing just because the guy kidnapped her.
 
roguenuke said:
But it still is stealing. Stealing merely involves taking another person's property. The fact that they are committing another crime does not automatically nullify their claim to that property at that point. It can justify the stealing and make it morally okay for the person to steal, but it doesn't actually change the ownership of that property legally.
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Is it stealing? Does that person who is being held against their will planning to steal that gun, take it home with them, and use it for sport or hunting? Is it something they plan to claim as their own, or are they taking advantage for the moment in order to get their life back? To me, the distinction is serious.
 
TeleKat said:
I'm not quite sure being a criminal somehow nullifies property ownership. Granted I wouldn't really be torn up about a kidnapper having his stuff taken, but I don't think that it's suddenly not stealing just because the guy kidnapped her.
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It doesn't nullify ownership. I am not convinced that a hostage is actually stealing in this circumstance.
 
lizzie said:
It doesn't nullify ownership. I am not convinced that a hostage is actually stealing in this circumstance.
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If it's not stealing, that means he doesn't own it. So saying it's not stealing implies it is no longer his, and thus his ownership is nullified.
 
TeleKat said:
If it's not stealing, that means he doesn't own it. So saying it's not stealing implies it is no longer his, and thus his ownership is nullified.
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I don't think you're really understanding what I am saying.
Suppose someone's car breaks down on the highway in front of your house, and his battery is faulty, so that the driver needs jumper cables to jump his battery off. You are not home, but he just happens to see your cables sitting on your front porch, and he uses them, then puts them back, because he didn't want them for his own. He needed them for a specific and temporary situation. Is that stealing?
 
I see it as ok in times of extreme need (like near starvation or other about to die scenarios) and the person has enough excess that it doesn't harm them or the harm is minimal, such as in a situation where they have more food than they could possibly eat before it rots.
 
lizzie said:
Is it stealing? Does that person who is being held against their will planning to steal that gun, take it home with them, and use it for sport or hunting? Is it something they plan to claim as their own, or are they taking advantage for the moment in order to get their life back? To me, the distinction is serious.
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The person almost certainly would not intend to give it back to the kidnapper, so it would be stealing, no matter what the victim/thief did with the property later. And in the case of the food/water or certain other supplies, it is most likely that they would be used up and therefore not able to be returned anyway.
 
lizzie said:
I don't think you're really understanding what I am saying.
Suppose someone's car breaks down on the highway in front of your house, and his battery is faulty, so that the driver needs jumper cables to jump his battery off. You are not home, but he just happens to see your cables sitting on your front porch, and he uses them, then puts them back, because he didn't want them for his own. He needed them for a specific and temporary situation. Is that stealing?
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He would be not be taking those jumper cables with him though (most likely), but rather leaving them where the owner left them, because if he did take them, even if mistakenly, that would be stealing. While that escapee is almost certainly not going to give back whatever he/she took from their kidnapper, nor is it likely that any rescuers would give it back either.
 
lizzie said:
I don't think you're really understanding what I am saying.
Suppose someone's car breaks down on the highway in front of your house, and his battery is faulty, so that the driver needs jumper cables to jump his battery off. You are not home, but he just happens to see your cables sitting on your front porch, and he uses them, then puts them back, because he didn't want them for his own. He needed them for a specific and temporary situation. Is that stealing?
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If he returned them, then it's borrowing, not stealing, IMO.

Greetings, lizzie. :2wave:
 
roguenuke said:
Most people will make exceptions when it comes to killing of some kind or another in whether they feel it is morally okay or not to kill, even when it comes to taking human life. The most common exception is "in self defense", but others include in defense of others, during war, to end a person's suffering, or even the death penalty (to name really just a few).

However, there aren't too many times people would say it wouldn't be morally wrong to steal. I think a good number of people might say in general "when a person is starving", but even then, it is going to be greatly limiting and may not actually be morally right, but rather simply not as big of a wrong as stealing for other reasons.

I personally can think of a few extreme cases where it would be morally okay to steal (trapped in a country with little hope of getting back, and little other choice but to steal because of many possible complications in trying to actually earn food, when escaping wrongful detainment of some kind, when protecting yourself against another person, the general "when starving", etc.). There are even likely many others where I would probably say that it would be okay to steal, but it would take having a very specific set of circumstances presented to me to decide that.

On the flip side of that though, there would be circumstances where some would say a person/entity is "stealing" from them eventhough it isn't truly against the law because they have a difference of opinion on ownership and whether ownership of certain property should have transferred to a particular other party or at all.

I think stealing may be the hardest to make exceptions for when it comes to right or wrong because stealing involves a man-made concept of ownership. Life is clearly, scientifically defined.

So, I ask, what, do you feel is morally okay when it comes to stealing or is it always morally wrong to steal, no matter the specific circumstances?
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Killing a person to "end their suffering" is murder, it places the parts before the whole.

As with murder, an act is not morally theft if a person has a right to that which he takes. Now everyone has a right to that which is necessary for his survival and well-being (excluding for the moment cases where multiple people are in dire necessity), similar to how a man may kill in self-defense and it isn't murder. The idea that the taking of that which ordinarily belongs to another is intrinsically evil is nothing but extreme libertarian nonsense, and ignores the very moral justification for private property.

As a side note, theft is subject to a legal defense of necessity, and a person who is aware that an act of putative theft is justified, is not permitted to resist with force, lest he be charged with assault (or manslaughter if the person died, and battery if he was injured).
 
Paleocon said:
Killing a person to "end their suffering" is murder, it places the parts before the whole.

As with murder, an act is not morally theft if a person has a right to that which he takes. Now everyone has a right to that which is necessary for his survival and well-being (excluding for the moment cases where multiple people are in dire necessity), similar to how a man may kill in self-defense and it isn't murder. The idea that the taking of that which ordinarily belongs to another is intrinsically evil is nothing but extreme libertarian nonsense, and ignores the very moral justification for private property.

As a side note, theft is subject to a legal defense of necessity, and a person who is aware that an act of putative theft is justified, is not permitted to resist with force, lest he be charged with assault (or manslaughter if the person died, and battery if he was injured).
Click to expand...

It is murder, but that only makes it against the law (and not necessarily in every place). It does not make it automatically morally wrong for everyone. There are even a good many people in this country who do not think assisted suicide should be a crime, especially in cases of extreme suffering of terminal cases.

Assisted Suicide: A Right or a Wrong?

You may feel it is morally wrong, but that doesn't make it true for everyone and I am talking about individual morals, individual beliefs about right and wrong.

I'm not really talking about the law here either. It is personal views on what is right and wrong, particularly, exceptions, if any, in the morality of stealing. I am well aware of the difference between killing and murder. However, just because something is murder, does not mean that everyone agrees it should be. And conversely, just because something isn't murder, it does not mean that everyone must believe that the act is morally wrong.
 
I do not personally believe stealing is acceptable in any way. There is always another way. A crafty enough person will use natural resources around them, a not so crafty person will depend on charity, but there's no reason in this day and age to ever steal. Not in our nation anyways. I can't speak of morality of other nations because I have never been in them.
 
Stealing is stealing. But if it saves your life at the moment and it is not for gain other than your immediate life, then morality or not....go for it.
 
roguenuke said:
Most people will make exceptions when it comes to killing of some kind or another in whether they feel it is morally okay or not to kill, even when it comes to taking human life. The most common exception is "in self defense", but others include in defense of others, during war, to end a person's suffering, or even the death penalty (to name really just a few).

However, there aren't too many times people would say it wouldn't be morally wrong to steal. I think a good number of people might say in general "when a person is starving", but even then, it is going to be greatly limiting and may not actually be morally right, but rather simply not as big of a wrong as stealing for other reasons.

I personally can think of a few extreme cases where it would be morally okay to steal (trapped in a country with little hope of getting back, and little other choice but to steal because of many possible complications in trying to actually earn food, when escaping wrongful detainment of some kind, when protecting yourself against another person, the general "when starving", etc.). There are even likely many others where I would probably say that it would be okay to steal, but it would take having a very specific set of circumstances presented to me to decide that.

On the flip side of that though, there would be circumstances where some would say a person/entity is "stealing" from them eventhough it isn't truly against the law because they have a difference of opinion on ownership and whether ownership of certain property should have transferred to a particular other party or at all.

I think stealing may be the hardest to make exceptions for when it comes to right or wrong because stealing involves a man-made concept of ownership. Life is clearly, scientifically defined.

So, I ask, what, do you feel is morally okay when it comes to stealing or is it always morally wrong to steal, no matter the specific circumstances?
Click to expand...

Generally, I'm inclined to be lenient towards the poor and hungry, but there is an ethos to stealing that many of them share. Generally, that you should try to steal from the entity that can most afford it. For example, a large chain over a mom-and-pop corner store. Ideally, food that is owned by no one -- hunting, foraging, etc. But for the urban poor, often this isn't possible.

There are some societies that do generally believe in this concept, and there is actually a word for this in Korea, and I think a couple other places as well. Some store keepers even factor it into their margins without resent.

I don't think it's universally true that stealing is one of the hardest ethical rules to make exception for. I think that is true in our society, which is a country existing on a huge piece of land where people are tremendously spread out and in many places, there is still a degree of tribalism in neighborhoods for that reason. Americans in particular have a very poor opinion of stealing because we aren't as pressed together as most other nations are, and our circles tend to be closer and smaller. Therefore, those units are more self-sufficient with less bleed-over from people we don't know.
 
Constantine said:
I do not personally believe stealing is acceptable in any way. There is always another way. A crafty enough person will use natural resources around them, a not so crafty person will depend on charity, but there's no reason in this day and age to ever steal. Not in our nation anyways. I can't speak of morality of other nations because I have never been in them.
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Even if that gun is right there and the best chance to escape kidnappers?

You can claim "be more crafty" all you like, but that isn't always possible and it would be plain stupid to ignore an opportunity because of moral objection to stealing another person's property rather than saving your own life (or possibly someone else's), even if it involved stealing.

And the other countries thing is kind of pointless. Countries really don't have morality, per se. People have morality. A country can be made up of a majority of people who share certain moral stances/convictions, but that doesn't make the entire country that morality or having that morality.
 
The law of nature calls it survival and maximizing personal utility. There's no such thing as stealing in nature, only to the human observer.

We have laws against stealing in order to maintain complex human social structures and to coordinate resource management. The laws are mostly hypocritical however because they apply one set of rules to one group of people while not enforcing them in another. The aristocracy "steals" from people all the time and calls it taxation, or in the case of stock market manipulation and the banking system it's blatant theft without consequence.

If strong human communities of support still existed instead of righteous individualism, people would not need to steal.
 
I have never had the opportunity, myself, but I have no moral objection to 'stealing' from a large corporation, or a wealthy capitalist. After all, they stole it to begin with.
 
roguenuke said:
Even if that gun is right there and the best chance to escape kidnappers?

You can claim "be more crafty" all you like, but that isn't always possible and it would be plain stupid to ignore an opportunity because of moral objection to stealing another person's property rather than saving your own life (or possibly someone else's), even if it involved stealing.

And the other countries thing is kind of pointless. Countries really don't have morality, per se. People have morality. A country can be made up of a majority of people who share certain moral stances/convictions, but that doesn't make the entire country that morality or having that morality.
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No one is talking about guns or kidnappers. We're talking about stealing. As US Navy and US Navy Reserve and put in a survival situation where you could steal from a local market or just fish with a sharpened stick...which would you choose? My Air Force training says I could survive on my own using the resources around me so I'm very sure yours does as well. Morality is based on culture and culture depends heavy on country and location; a Chinese Buddhist is different than a Japanese Buddhist...yet they are both Buddhist.
 
roguenuke said:
It is murder, but that only makes it against the law (and not necessarily in every place). It does not make it automatically morally wrong for everyone. There are even a good many people in this country who do not think assisted suicide should be a crime, especially in cases of extreme suffering of terminal cases.

Assisted Suicide: A Right or a Wrong?

You may feel it is morally wrong, but that doesn't make it true for everyone and I am talking about individual morals, individual beliefs about right and wrong.

I'm not really talking about the law here either. It is personal views on what is right and wrong, particularly, exceptions, if any, in the morality of stealing. I am well aware of the difference between killing and murder. However, just because something is murder, does not mean that everyone agrees it should be. And conversely, just because something isn't murder, it does not mean that everyone must believe that the act is morally wrong.
Click to expand...

To say that it is not murder required a denial of a self-evident principle, namely that the parts are not greater than the whole.

A just state would have laws that conformed to morality (and ours do in this one respect). However my mention of the law was only to point out that taking the property of another person is justified legally to save one's life, a fact that seems to escape many people.
 
Constantine said:
No one is talking about guns or kidnappers. We're talking about stealing. As US Navy and US Navy Reserve and put in a survival situation where you could steal from a local market or just fish with a sharpened stick...which would you choose? My Air Force training says I could survive on my own using the resources around me so I'm very sure yours does as well. Morality is based on culture and culture depends heavy on country and location; a Chinese Buddhist is different than a Japanese Buddhist...yet they are both Buddhist.
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I'm talking about all instances of stealing. That is the point. Stealing means simply taking anyone's property without intending to return it. That would include situations such as the one I mentioned.

Plus, hindsight is 20/20. Just because you think people should know how to do something doesn't mean they necessarily can. And not everyone has the convenience of being in a place where they can automatically take advantage of the natural environment.
 
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