> I’ve also noticed a weird tendency to downplay theft lately, either through projecting a theoretical moral justification on to the shoplifter or by insinuating that retail stores are evil corporations and therefore deserve no sympathy.
Let me try to convince you without defending the morality of the shoplifter or declaring corporations evil.
1. On the totem pole of crimes, petty shoplifting (without violence) is pretty close to the bottom when it comes to harm done the public. Jaywalking and smoking weed are lower.
2. These corporations that are being robbed already build shrinkage into their budgets. $300k of baby food is nothing to Walmart, a rounding error, and I doubt you can even see it in their bottom line. Even a smaller shop is not going to go out of business if someone walks out with all their toothpaste. It’s not analogous to stealing from an individual.
3. There are a limited number of police and I’d rather them be out there deterring violent and serious crime than protecting the inventory of companies. When every rapist, murderer, white collar fraudster, and drunk driver is behind bars, and the police have nothing left to do, then sure, go bust those dastardly deodorant thieves.
"Rite Aid, a pharmacy, closed a branch in Hell’s Kitchen in February after losing $200,000 worth of stuff last winter. And last week Target, a big retailer, reported that a rise in “shrink” (to use the industry jargon) had reduced its gross profit margin by $400m so far this year. The National Retail Federation says inventory loss, largely driven by theft, cost retailers a record $95bn last year."
It seems that $300k is several orders of magnitude off.
The harm to the public is when the stores find it unprofitable to exist in certain neighborhoods, which makes the neighborhoods even worse off. If the stores don't close, then prices have to rise to pay for the shrinkage, which the public has to pay for.
Would you invest in something that returns 1% when there are 2% returns elsewhere? That is called the "opportunity cost", and a business is misallocating capital if the expected return is less than the opportunity cost.
> The cause in the increase is possibly an increase in poverty, or increase in wealth disparity?
I don't understand your question. Businesses have to have a return on their investment, or they go out of business. Shrinkage is a cost, so the price on the goods has to be raised to compensate.
The price will be increased until people stop buying (either because they do without, go elsewhere, or shoplift)
The cost of shrinkage doesn’t factor into the price a business can charge. You don’t decide “I will buy X for $1 and sell it for $3”, you go “I can sell X for $3, where’s the cheapest I can buy it and does it make sense”
Now if you have a competitor next door selling X for $2.50 you will struggle to sell for $3, even if your rent or your supplier is higher
If you can't raise prices, you go out of business.
> if you have a competitor next door selling X for $2.50 you will struggle to sell for $3
Right, but your competitor next door is also suffering from shrinkage.
There's no way that shrinkage does not impact prices. Having the government run it won't help, either, as even if the government doesn't raise prices, the money will come out of your pocket anyway as taxes or inflation.
Just as an addition, it’s worth noting most store theft comes from employees not the public.
It’s expensive to minimize opportunities for the public to steal. Basic speed bumps preventing employees (who can steal more extensively) are less expensive and tend to be the focus.
> it’s worth noting most store theft comes from employees not the public
Employee theft is always a problem, too, but whether it is worse than shrinkage or not is kind of irrelevant - it's still going to cost the business money which will mean that they'll raise prices or go under.
Employee theft can and does cause businesses to fail.
Shoplifting results in shops closing down in poorer areas or raising prices. This is quite bad for the poor.
People getting away with shoplifting and seeing others get away with it makes them feel they are not in a law abiding environment and makes them far more willing to break other laws and do things like deal drugs, beat up/kill their enemies and take the law into their own hands. A look at the murder rate in poor areas is suggestive.
It’s morally wrong to steal, and has been since the beginning of civilization.
“Though shalt not steal” - Ten Commandments
“If a man has stolen goods from a temple, or house, he shall be put to death; and he that has received the stolen property from him shall be put to death.” - Code of Hammurabi
Private property is the foundation of civilization and pretending theft doesn’t matter undermines the basis of our world. All theft is wrong.
And yet, even the Bible has provisions for poor people [1]:
> “If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. 25 If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain.
While I agree that it's morally wrong to steal, you lost me at "All theft is wrong". I think there's a deep reason why stories about moral (or at least mostly ambiguous) thieves are so prevalent. Two major examples are Robin Hood and more recently Andor, both about stealing as a way to rebel against an overwhelmingly powerful and negative authority.
People love retribution, especially when group of people they identify with benefit. It does not matter whether the cause for said retribution is real or not.
You sleep easier when you don't know what happens to the people who won't receive the shipment a robbed grain merchant cannot pay for.
Bible laws are imposed rules of violent hostile overlords, not the foundation of civilization. Although you could argue that the way civilization has evolved, those kinds of rules _are_ its foundation :-(
I might agree that all theft is wrong, but - as Proudhon aptly put it: La propriété, c'est le vol !
Disagree a bit here. The Bible and other religious texts were not necessarily decrees by "hostile overlords", they were the back-then equivalent of what we would call a Constitution these days - the foundational rules of society. Particularly what Christians call the "Old Testament", the Jews the Torah and whatever Muslims call the foundations prior to Quran today... it's essentially the same text, the same rules.
It's micro-managing every aspect of their lives to the same degree modern laws do - everything from a basic criminal code (Ten Commandments) over food safety laws (e.g. the ban for Jews and Muslims to eat pork) and employment regulation (work-free Sabbath) to providing answers to specific legal questions (inheritance, paying damages for livestock or raped women) and prescribing religious rituals. Even how to properly wage war was written down there... all of that was stuff the old tribes learned the hard way or decided upon and documented. For the Quran, a good example for that is the love of Prophet Muhammad on cats - the tribes learned that cats keep grain storages free from pests!
The problem is that over the millennia, the original context of these rules being tribally discussed and agreed-upon laws or some of these being the documentation of dispute resolutions got lost, and dogmatic / religious interpretations took favor, leading to entrenchment of rules that no longer made any sense (e.g. the mentioned pork ban or ridiculous interpretations of the work-free Sabbath). Additionally, some of the contents got lost or modified in translation - the best example is the "72 virgins" that await a Muslim martyr in heaven, which may very well have rather meant "vine grapes" [1]. FWIW, the Christian "New Testament" can also be seen as a reform-oriented amendment of the Torah.
Religious texts make way more sense when viewing them as "this is the collection of hundreds or thousands of years of tribal knowledge, order and jurisprudence", which is (IMO as an atheist) the only way these texts should be interpreted as. And yet, it still makes sense to also see the part of the rules and regulations that haven't gotten outdated as a foundation of how even our modern societies should look like (e.g. parts of the Ten Commandments, Jesus' teachings on how to view and help the poor and discriminated).
> a Constitution these days - the foundational rules of society.
A constitution is what a ruling class formalizes as foundational rules of the state. Society is mostly made up of the subjects of states.
This is perhaps more of a gray area these days - as most states are official democracies and have elections and such - but I would argue it is still essentially the case. But regardless of the present - this was certainly the case in more ancient times, where some well-armed and well-connected person or family declared itself to be the rulers. The majority of the population were simply conquered, lorded over, by such kingdoms; and whatever codex of rules was put down in writing (if at all) was not even known to them, let alone constrained to agree with their mores and customs.
About the (Jewish) bible specifically - the legislative part of it is a collection of different, and partly contradictory texts from different periods in the history of ancient Judea and the holy land, that was put in writing only much later. Most subjects of the Judean kings were not even that committed to Yahweh as a god. Naturally, such decrees and commandments were not written to be entirely divorced and contradictory to surrounding society, but they were first and foremost impositions in the interest of the rulers, not representation of the views of the ruled.
PS - From my (admittedly partial) familiarity with devout muslims, I very much doubt people going on a martyrdom (istish'haad) missions here in Palestine expect to get virgins after they die, nothing of the sort. There isn't a "piety and modesty now, promiscuity and debauchery after death" kind of a perception. Again, AFAIK. I can't access the NYT link, there's a paywall.
This is a shortsighted take. This is as stupid as the corporations buying "cyber insurance" not realizing the cases are going up and that prevention and processes are needed. Then comes next year their premiums shoot up. Who would have thought it?!
Yes they "build shrinkage" for a forecasted number. If that number goes up and you get people swiping large amounts of products that number becomes meaningless. Then people wonder why did the store close or why a deodorant there costs $10 and is locked behind the counter
Im sure that Walmart is the gold standard of cost optimization, but it's not universal. Many stores operate on very low margins, so it's easy to imagine that just a few missing cans of baby formula actually brings down the profitability of the entire shelf down to zero.
Let me try to convince you without defending the morality of the shoplifter or declaring corporations evil.
1. On the totem pole of crimes, petty shoplifting (without violence) is pretty close to the bottom when it comes to harm done the public. Jaywalking and smoking weed are lower.
2. These corporations that are being robbed already build shrinkage into their budgets. $300k of baby food is nothing to Walmart, a rounding error, and I doubt you can even see it in their bottom line. Even a smaller shop is not going to go out of business if someone walks out with all their toothpaste. It’s not analogous to stealing from an individual.
3. There are a limited number of police and I’d rather them be out there deterring violent and serious crime than protecting the inventory of companies. When every rapist, murderer, white collar fraudster, and drunk driver is behind bars, and the police have nothing left to do, then sure, go bust those dastardly deodorant thieves.