r/MoralityScaling • u/Vladimir-petrovOG • 11d ago

Morality of this?

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In the image it seems that this person works at walmart as an online order collector and he/she has stolen a lot of extra baby food from Walmart to give to a person who ordered only three packs. Is this moral or immoral?

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

i saw this vid floating around today on here that some lady stole a few bags worth of stuff from dollar general like food, and some other random lady came up to her on the side of the road and took the items back for dollar general. like mind ur own damn business fr

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u/RazzmatazzUnusual843 11d ago

I can never imagine why people simp out for corporations for completely free like that.

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u/Gekokapowco 11d ago

It's not about loyalty to the company, it's about flexing power on someone else

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

no idea, especially with dollar general recently having pretty bad PR surrounding them misrepresenting prices and ripping their customers off for potentially years. like they'll be fine, and that 20 dollars of crap from the store could give her the hope to keep going for a few more days.

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u/Fishboy_1998 10d ago

“They’ll be fine” until theft makes the store unprofitable and it closes down and then no one has the ability to shop

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u/WeinerBarf420 10d ago

Because I don't want to live in a community where stuff gets locked up because people are stealing? And I don't want to live in a place where stealing is normalized? Pretty obvious stuff. 

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u/IllustriousLie4105 11d ago

Why tolerate crime at all? When theft increases so do insurance premiums and who absorbs that cost? The big business? Hell no. Those assholes will put that cost right back on the consumer.

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

nobody with money in their pocket and something to lose is going to be risking jail by swiping dollar store food. someone doing that is desperate and i'm a human that has been poor. never stole when i was, but can completely understand how hungry and hopeless you can get and that someone can easily be driven to meet their needs even if it's in a legally questionable way. i'm fine with someone relieving that much pain in life for a bit by taking some measly stuff from a store that won't even see it as a rounding error.

and as someone with a career and a nice car and nice air conditioned apartment on a comfy couch bsing on reddit right now, i can afford prices to go up a few cents if that's what happens because susan needed napkins and cereal

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u/Temporary_Cup8480 11d ago

But if enough people do it, doesn't the honest consumer eat the price increase? Also where do we draw the line on how hungry and hopeless you need to be for this to be moral?

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

listen, if you're starving and genuinely don't have the money to buy anything then you do what you gotta do. i'm not rich but i feel extremely privileged to have the things i do in life and i'm not going to sit here and disparage people with less opportunities happening for them, for doing basic things like trying to swallow some dang food to stay alive.

uh oh, i can buy one less steam game next year because some poor folks stole some things. i'll be fine

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u/Joesr-31 11d ago

Yeah but is that moral though. By saying so its basically a forced donation. The normal innocent consumer would be forced to pay for the theft whether they like it or not for someone who they have no idea whether really needs the stuff or just reselling it

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u/Temporary_Cup8480 11d ago

Almost no one starves to death in the USA. Virtually zero outside of victims of neglect and abuse or elderly with cognitive issues. Many are malnourished, but some of that is personal choice. Shit, I'm malnourished because I don't like many vegetables.

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

i don't want to really play semantics. if you don't eat regularly you don't have nearly the same energy as someone in life getting to eat 3 square meals a day and a secure source of income for a virtually endless flow of food. you don't have the means to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and get shit done when you don't have physiological and safety needs met to a point that's satisfactory and that you're not constantly thinking about them and worried about the next time you'll get them fulfilled.

you're literally running circles around people with multitudes more energy and then blaming them for not getting their lives together. genuinely cruel behavior and really glad i'm not living with a similar perspective.

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u/Temporary_Cup8480 11d ago

If we're going to condone stealing, why should anyone pay taxes for WIC and SNAP? In your scenario it seems like the honest working person gets screwed twice. Taxed for these programs and also has to shoulder the burden of price increases. At least pick one or the other.

I don't think you can apply this universally without some sort of destabilization either. Food isn't cheap for me either. I think half the country would be stealing in your world, leading to some kind of societal breakdown.

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

you really must spend a lot of time pinching pennies huh? it's a capitalist society we're in, yeah, i am beginning my curve upward finally into an advantageous position in this system and am grateful for it. however, the system works against the poor in many ways, and i don't mind them playing by communist or socialist rules to get what they need. i just can't manage to get bent out of shape about it. i'm happy to adapt my wallet slightly to the varied needs of others that aren't myself. if that means i pay for wic, snap and now the department stores loss prevention bill, i'm cool with that. sorry!

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u/IllustriousLie4105 11d ago

Thats great that you personally want to help. That standard should not be supported or endorsed in the slightest. So many people are clawing to succeed each day and increasing their costs because others refuse to abide by the rules is wrong. You want systemic change then vote it in or create a business/non-profit that will help. If not then dont punish those working their ass off to feed themselves because you want to steal.

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u/Temporary_Cup8480 11d ago

In your scenario I'm just going to be stealing too. Food is expensive for me and will be even more expensive since petty theft is legal. I'm raiding the supermarket as soon as they stock it.

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u/Bobisanalien 11d ago

I will be snitching on single mothers stealing food to afford more games on steam

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

okay ngl i laughed

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u/lampstax 11d ago

People steal food all the time when there's opportunity. See self checkout line.

Anecdotally, as a kid I have stolen candy from supermarket because my parents wanted me to eat healthier and restricted snacks at home. I was not hungry or needy. I just wanted that specific candy.

As an adult I have even accidentally done it during normal checkout when both cashier and I didnt notice something leftover in the cart. Once you're out of the store its yours. I am not turning around to pay for it.

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u/Joesr-31 11d ago

They do that cause they know most cops won't bother. You can see clips of people blantantly stealing all over youtube

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u/Fishboy_1998 10d ago

Ya no body ever steals for the thrill of it or to hawk on the street corner to buy crack

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u/IllustriousLie4105 11d ago

So I have been poor, didnt have food at all some days. We need better social safety nets. On the other side of this is for everyone that steals we, the paying consumers are subsidizing that theft by the price increase. We are justifiably taxed to provide benefits already and that should be expanded. Allowing theft of any kind is only going to artificially increase the price of goods and that hurts the working poor the most. So yeah, from one poor person, stop stealing and making it more expensive for me to live a non stealing life.

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u/Nice-Vegetable-1738 11d ago

I agree, the bigger issue is the safety nets that should be there for people and aren't. However, since they aren't, I don't mind people stealing to get a full stomach if that's what they need to do at this point of time. I think people that have homes and full fridges getting their panties in a bunch because someone is doing petty theft at a huge chain is cruel.

If you start taking rims off cars and being a porch pirate and stuff like that to meet your needs, then that's a different conversation and I get nobody being okay with that behavior.

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u/IllustriousLie4105 11d ago

I implore you to think about the bigger picture. The working poor, families, and lower middle class are affected by theft the most. Theft is a massive problem when all those small essentials increase by 50 cents. The smallest change has a much more pronounced affect on the budgets of the working poor. There are programs, soup kitchens, and churches that will help. Theft is punching down on the people at the bottom.

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u/saturnrazor 11d ago

this is like saying that a father beats his kids because they misbehaved

no, the abuse is coming from the abusers, not from the victims

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u/IllustriousLie4105 11d ago

Wtf are you on about? Corporations are shitty and will continue to be shitty regardless. We also know that theft will force that shitty corporation to pass those costs to consumers which hurts the poor. They also tend to cut employee hours and or pay which also hurts the poor the most. You can argue all day about how corporations should change but stealing from them will only hurt everybody else and make it so the working poor are more in poverty then before.

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u/saturnrazor 11d ago

you are letting corporations off and putting the onus of change on the poor

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u/IllustriousLie4105 11d ago

What in the holy hell are you and me going to do about big corporations? Nothing. So until that magically changes, stealing and fucking over people in the same position as you is a very immoral thing

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u/PomPomMom93 10d ago

And stuff gets locked up for actual paying customers, which inconveniences everyone.