Tell The Turth This Goes To The Core Of Human Instinct, Why Steal If You Have Money,

I Used To Shoplift When I Was A Kid, But Now I Just Buy The Things I Want.

damn , somebody has stolen my capital letters :(

Stealing when you have money lets you keep what you have and get something for nothing.

Ive never stolen anything really... im the "Marge" type, who pays for a grape in the supermarket... Sad, I know. I'll still kill the bastard who stole my hot pink bike when I was 8. :mad:

That I'll makes it seem as though you've been planning on it.

do you steal off of kaaza

do you steal off of kaaza
thats not stealing,its swapping :p

A large faction of the American people believes that the government steals from them. It's kind of hard to argue with that position, since so much of what the government does with the money they confiscate is either to squander it on pork barrel programs, to use it for ends that the people in question consider to be evil, or at the very best to dissipate it on a huge staff of civil servants who spend most of their time "administering" each other and produce very little of any real value.

A smaller but still substantial portion of the people believe that large corporations steal from them. This is also difficult to argue. Take the music downloading controversy, for example. As the comic strip "Out of the Gene Pool" recently dramatized, record companies hype one song off of a CD on the radio and MTV and get lots of people to go out and buy the CD. Then they discover that the rest of the songs on it are of a completely different type from the one they fell in love with, and that often the one song was not even composed by the band/artists and was produced by a different producer than the rest of the CD. If you take the CD back to the store and demand your money back on the grounds of deceptive marketing, they laugh in your face. It's kind of hard not to sympathize with people who would happily download about 100 songs to make up for the last ten crappy CDs they purchased.

It's impossible to fight either the government or a large corporation. They control the entire political system which includes the courts and the banks.

Therefore many people have reached a conclusion that the only way to achieve "fairness" is to steal money or goods or services back from the government or the large corporations.

Some people make a regular practice of doing this. Others do it less often. And a few do it so much that they may actually come out ahead, although personally I think that only unemployed people who never have any of their own money to spend could achieve that position.

But I'm willing to bet that most of us have done it a few times and therefore the only honest answer to this question is "Yes, but with extenuating circumstances."

You Canadians and residents of other countries may have a different perspective on this. It would be interesting to hear it. And perhaps it would make us Americans realize that life here is not so bloody perfect.

As I said some time ago, we human tend to go mischievous at occasions, and theft is just one of the very many mischief we wish to do...................
*steals a friend's cookie can*

I would like to add a short other comment. There are lawyers, doctors and other professionals out there that overcharge up the ass so they are stealing your money legitimatly aren't they? They use their "fees" to make you pay what they want because no one regulates their profits but themselves. So just what is ment by stealing is a matter of your perspective isn't it?

i try to get the most out of something if i feel i'm being ripped off. kind of like how ross steals everything from hotels because it's built into the cost. so if i get free refills on my tea, i make sure they keep em coming. if i buy an unlimited metrocard, i make a point to use it at every opportunity.
i make copies of music because i have no money to buy it on overpriced discs that only cost a dollar to make in the first place. it is always music that you can't buy in music stores anyway or from artists who are ridiculously wealthy while i have no money at all. so i think it's fair.

there's not much reason to rob, unless you're robbing the rich to give to the poor but i'm not a renegade benevolent theif so i avoid the theiving business altogether.
i don't believe in that "all stealing is wrong" nonsense. only people with stunted moral development and religious people blindly follow rules like that. there are plenty of cases in which stealing is morally correct.

ACTUNG
if you are answering this thread, can you also answer the following question?:

a poor man and his beloved wife live in a little village in germany. they are very much in love and pretty much live for each other's presence. the beloved wife becomes terribly ill with a disease for which there is no known cure and it is certain she will die without treatment. a scientist in that village develops a drug that will cure her disease after spending a good part of his life and fortune on it. it is so rare and hard to make that each dose costs no less than $2000 to make. assume that the wife who is close to death will make a full recovery if she gets the drug. the scientist will sell them the drug for not a penny less than $2000. the man tries to raise the money but the townspeople are also poor and can only contribute at most $500. the scientist refuses to give them the drug.
should the man break into the scientist's lab and steal the drug?

there is no "right" answer. it is your reasoning behind your answer that is important.

You ask "a poor man and his beloved wife live in a little village in germany. they are very much in love and pretty much live for each other's presence. the beloved wife becomes terribly ill with a disease for which there is no known cure and it is certain she will die without treatment. a scientist in that village develops a drug that will cure her disease after spending a good part of his life and fortune on it. it is so rare and hard to make that each dose costs no less than $2000 to make. assume that the wife who is close to death will make a full recovery if she gets the drug. the scientist will sell them the drug for not a penny less than $2000. the man tries to raise the money but the townspeople are also poor and can only contribute at most $500. the scientist refuses to give them the drug.
should the man break into the scientist's lab and steal the drug?"

I would go to the government and ask them to help subsidize the drug to bring the costs down.

I would go onto the TV stations and ask more people for help.

I would go onto the internet to see if other might help me there.

I would find a better paying job and ask to pay for the drug over a period of time instead of right away.

i would just steal it ... everything else takes a lot of time !
the scientist won´t die or starve without his cool medicament ;)

edit : btw , germany wasn´t a perfect example maybe .... people here don´t have to pay for needed drugs if they have no money :D

Is it posible to get a loan in this village? If so that'd be preferable to theft.
I would steal it, might kill the scientist if he confronted me. Thats Irrational but thats how I think I would react, If I didn't have any alternatives.
Probably going to get flamed for "killing the scientist" cause this is sci-forums not X-tian-forums. I don't think I'd be able to think clearly if my "beloved wife" was dying.

i put all the pertinant info in there. it is a poor rural village in germany, not a modern day city. he tried getting money in the village but only could collect $500. tv stations and gov help aren't an option (no such thing as tv then!). the question is simply, should he steal it? should he or should he not are the only options. now rationalize.

I download music.

I've been known in the past to steal small items from my employers--pens, printer paper, &c.

Beyond that my unfair acquisitions are best identified through extended arguments of social responsibility. In that arena, I'm a world-class thief.

i have two main options :

- steal the drug
- let my wife die

i think it´s pretty obvious what almost ALL people would do in this situation ;)

By the way:

• Reuters: "Venezuela to decriminalise theft." See http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1026900.htm

Edit:

See also: Sciforums topic - "Venezuela: Decriminalizing theft (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=32271)"

i have two main options :

- steal the drug
- let my wife die

i think it´s pretty obvious what almost ALL people would do in this situation ;)

well sure, that's what i'd do. but then we have to think about the scientist. it's the product of his life's work. he spent all his money on it. many of us are scientists ourselves and i'm sure we'd be heartbroken if we spent our life working on something to have it taken away. i'd definitely steal it but this isn't about what i'd do, it's an exercise in morality. is it wrong for him to steal it? i don't know. my answer is that it is his moral duty to preserve life above money. but really, i don't know. because working on this project was the life of the scientist.

now if it is his lifework , he´ll understand ;)
if he spent all his money on a drug , he did it probably with the intention to help other people !

I never steal or rob, I am however a notorious lieer, but even that might not be true

i never have even thought of stealing of robbing a place until high school, when i would hang out with my friends (witch i did not have b4 high school) they seam to demorialzie my values im not blameing them im jsut sayen. now i still dont really steal but i justfy when i do"i download off kazza because of thoes rich basterds alerdy have money" or "i stoel the cookie from school because thoes basterds charge to much because they are the student school, and have been rippem me off enufgh" i do this i think in im mind to self justfy what i know is wrong but i want to do it so i make up soem lame excuese :bugeye:

I used to steal and rob. Everyday I would observe people and rob their minds of the motivations they held secret. I would peer through their souls as if they were no more than clear, hard plastic. I would know their internal organs, pulsating and bloody beneath their mottled porous skin. Now, when I get out of bed, I don my armour. It is metal and shiny. Now the only things I steal are the horrified expressions of those that glimpse, for a fleeting moment, the reflection of what I WOULD have seen......

HI: :)
Years ago I left a two-volume novel on my desk where I work. It was stolen and I still do not know who did it.
Years passed. the door of the library in my office was ajar. Nobody was there. Nobody was watching, I think so. I entered the library. I took a dictionary out. I never returned it. I am still using this dictionary. Tit for tat.
quack -quack, thanks

I use to steal books from Barnes and Nobles, untill i was caught and then banned...but there are other barnes and nobles :bugeye:

Assuming he can get away with it, a plethora of options open up. Personally, I'd forget about the old hag and skip town with the 500. I suppose if he really wants to save her he has to balance risk vs gain. If he gets caught its either a hanging or life imprisonment. The justice system was rather swift and brutal prior to television. Back then 2000 buckeroonies could still buy a house. Hell, if the elixir is that valuable and the risk so high, why stop at one dose. Why not swipe the aholes entire stash and catch the next boat to Hawaii?

When considering whether or not to steal I always consider the danger and potential gain. I find it easiest just to swap bar code labels on expensive items. For instance, yesterday I went to the hardware barn and took the barcode label off a milk crate (hobby box) valued at $4 Australian. I stuck it on a really nice Tool Box valued at around $60. Then I went in search of the youngest and dumbest looking cashier chick at the registers. "Wow, that's cheap" she says. "Yep" say I. "That's why I'm buying it."

I've never stolen anything other than software:D

I have never stolen anything apart for dling a bit here and there

if u call Kazaa stealing i'm a super stealer seeing as i hve kazza light which is a ripoff of kazaa.

kazaa gives you loads of viruses, i dont use it.

limewire all the way :D , we have caught ourselves up in an endless cycle: we dont pay high prices, so corporations make less money, then they have to raise their prices to cover their costs, so we buy less, the go higher, we buy less. and in a few years there will be one hopeless sack of shit paying $9999999999 for one CD in order to cover the costs of the entire development

as for stealing: i steal a bit every now and then, only from big corps like dick smith tho, those bastards want me to pay $3 for a stupid LED

edonkey i use to dl

I guess I used to buy these CDs with pirated software (before I had internet).