Stealing from corporations!

Timsup2nothin said:
As a former bank robber I am disqualified from making this sort of moral judgement, however I will quote a song lyric that may apply.

I have just the book for you!

As for the OP I don't advocate stealing, that the private property system is often unjust doesn't make it okay to steal.
 
As for the OP I don't advocate stealing, that the private property system is often unjust doesn't make it okay to steal.

What exactly is unjust about the private property system? I often see or hear this statement made, but rarely ever supported with specifics.
 
Commodore said:
What exactly is unjust about the private property system? I often see or hear this statement made, but rarely ever supported with specifics.

Well, the specific form in use in Western countries descends directly from the body of Roman law concerning slavery, and almost certainly it originally descends from the legal power of a master over a slave which was then transferred to objects, land, and so forth. So it is unjust or one might say cursed from its beginnings, in an abstract sense. And practically it is unjust because it is (still!) often employed as a means of exercising domination over others, which I am sure you would agree is unjust. Indeed, (just as an example) most of the legal forms surrounding the employment relationship would be directly familiar to the ancients as their precedents are almost all from the relations between master and slave. One example is 'respondeat superior,' "let the master answer" which is the name given to the responsibility of the employer for torts committed by the employee.

This domination over others and the surplus that results is what led to private property. It doesn't result from the need to differentiate between individual contributions in a peaceful, 'primitive' community: it arises specifically from the need for masters to have some way of legally controlling the output of their slaves.

I am not as absolutist about the question as, say, west india man, but I have great reservations about private property. At the very least it needs to be limited in scope to avoid its causing more problems than it solved. An example of such a limitation would be the abolition of slavery, which was a way of saying that human beings were to be excluded from its extent altogether.
 
Well, the specific form in use in Western countries descends directly from the body of Roman law concerning slavery, and almost certainly it originally descends from the legal power of a master over a slave which was then transferred to objects, land, and so forth. So it is unjust or one might say cursed from its beginnings, in an abstract sense. And practically it is unjust because it is (still!) often employed as a means of exercising domination over others, which I am sure you would agree is unjust. Indeed, (just as an example) most of the legal forms surrounding the employment relationship would be directly familiar to the ancients as their precedents are almost all from the relations between master and slave. One example is 'respondeat superior,' "let the master answer" which is the name given to the responsibility of the employer for torts committed by the employee.

This domination over others and the surplus that results is what led to private property. It doesn't result from the need to differentiate between individual contributions in a peaceful, 'primitive' community: it arises specifically from the need for masters to have some way of legally controlling the output of their slaves.

I am not as absolutist about the question as, say, west india man, but I have great reservations about private property. At the very least it needs to be limited in scope to avoid its causing more problems than it solved. An example of such a limitation would be the abolition of slavery, which was a way of saying that human beings were to be excluded from its extent altogether.

So it's origins were unjust, but what about property laws now? To me, a system is only unjust when all under said system are not able to do the same things or achieve the same status under the law. As it exists nowadays, every citizen is able to own property as long as they have the financial means to purchase it. The courts will also protect your right to your private property just as much as they would a large corporation's. In the past this was not true.
 
I don't really agree with the people in the OP. I recognize their thought process, but they go all about it wrong. Punishing corporations for their oppressive and/or unjust actions is the right idea. However, I fail to see how shoplifting punishes corporations.

Due to the extensive connections within the system, chances are shoplifting is less damaging to the corporation, and more damaging to the component businesses or people who put that product on the shelves (including the minimum wage workers). If these people want to act out anarchism and punish corporations, why not go to the source and just rob the CEO's homes? Or something along those lines.
 
Commodore said:
So it's origins were unjust, but what about property laws now? To me, a system is only unjust when all under said system are not able to do the same things or achieve the same status under the law. As it exists nowadays, every citizen is able to own property as long as they have the financial means to purchase it. The courts will also protect your right to your private property just as much as they would a large corporation's. In the past this was not true.

I regard a system as unjust in varying degrees according to how often its outcomes and processes are unjust.
What you are talking about is really stuff that is peripheral to the private property system (the racial caste system preventing black people from owning property is not what I'm talking about when I say that the private property system is unjust; by that I mean the workings of the private property system itself are unjust regardless of who's allowed to participate).
An example of an unjust result of the property system would be a child starving outside a fully-stocked supermarket because she has no money to buy food.
Unjust results of past systems (there are many different private property systems) included workers toiling for sixteen hours a day for the money to buy food and slaves toiling for their whole lives for nothing.

Oh also, you are actually wrong about the past here - corporations' property rights were, once upon a time, considered to be much less sacrosanct than real persons' were. Corporations didn't exist in perpetuity for most of US history, they were chartered for a specific purpose and then abolished when that purpose was fulfilled.
Anyway I'm talking about how the private property system itself is unjust, not peripheral injustice that lets some people participate fully and excludes others.
 
I regard a system as unjust in varying degrees according to how often its outcomes and processes are unjust.
What you are talking about is really stuff that is peripheral to the private property system (the racial caste system preventing black people from owning property is not what I'm talking about when I say that the private property system is unjust; by that I mean the workings of the private property system itself are unjust regardless of who's allowed to participate).
An example of an unjust result of the property system would be a child starving outside a fully-stocked supermarket because she has no money to buy food.
Unjust results of past systems (there are many different private property systems) included workers toiling for sixteen hours a day for the money to buy food and slaves toiling for their whole lives for nothing.

Oh also, you are actually wrong about the past here - corporations' property rights were, once upon a time, considered to be much less sacrosanct than real persons' were. Corporations didn't exist in perpetuity for most of US history, they were chartered for a specific purpose and then abolished when that purpose was fulfilled.
Anyway I'm talking about how the private property system itself is unjust, not peripheral injustice that lets some people participate fully and excludes others.

But why is it unjust? Who exactly is getting screwed? What is a corporation or wealthy elite able to get away with that the average citizen can't in regards to owning and transferring private property? What rights are being denied by allowing people to own private property and the government enforcing those claims?

I just don't see what is so horrible about letting people (or private organizations) claim ownership of stuff and the government giving legal recognition to those claims (as long as there is some legitimate basis to them).
 
Thievery is immoral. Don't do it.
 
Commodore said:
But why is it unjust? Who exactly is getting screwed?

Well, lots of people are screwed in various ways. People are screwed directly by things like eviction and :) :) :) :):) :) :) :):) :) :) :):) :) :) :):) :) :) :):) :) :) :) working conditions/low pay, and indirectly by the lack of say in the decisions about investment that literally shape the community.
The phrase "private property is theft" refers to theft from the commons, and relies on the idea that before private property everything was held in common and disposed of by the community according to custom and need. The early proponents of this notion like Rousseau idealized this state of affairs, but the reality is that this kind of system has its advantages and disadvantages.
For me the "screwing" boils down to the fact that private property inevitably divides society into a class of masters who own the property, and the underclasses who are ultimately dependent on the masters for their existence due to the masters' control over the productive assets of society - control which, needless to say, and as you have admitted, is ultimately backed only by force. I think it's your task as a proponent of private property to justify why any person should be able to restrict access to, say, a stream, or a fruit tree, through organized force.

Commodore said:
What is a corporation or wealthy elite able to get away with that the average citizen can't in regards to owning and transferring private property?

I thought you supported Bernie Sanders? You should listen to a speech or two of his sometime. The Wall St clique has gotten away with enormous crimes that would certainly land you or me in jail. Indeed, Timsup2nothin, apparently an actual former bank robber, doubtless managed to steal far less than any of these guys did, and he actually went to jail.
More generally I regard it as common knowledge that the US legal system works very differently if you're rich.

Commodore said:
I just don't see what is so horrible about letting people (or private organizations) claim ownership of stuff and the government giving legal recognition to those claims (as long as there is some legitimate basis to them).

It's probably because you have an idealized notion of the origins and actual consequences of private property.
This is perhaps misdirected though, because as I've said I don't want to abolish private property, just to limit its scope (like I said the abolition of slavery was historically part of this process; Citizens United was a step in the other direction).
 
I advise people to take bonus of bank account opening, and closing them after minimal opening time is met, rinse and repeat till you exhaust all possible banks in your area.

Also apply credit cards and take out their bonus for sign-ups.

Also use credit card bonus categories, and abuse them following all kinds of gift card buying and other manufactured spending methods.

It is better to take their greed to their harm, not your greed to their harm as seen in shoplifting in Walmart.
 
They will shut you off real quick, plus... doesn't that hurt your credit?
 
I think it's your task as a proponent of private property to justify why any person should be able to restrict access to, say, a stream, or a fruit tree, through organized force.

Well that's an easy one. You shouldn't be allowed to profit from something I took the time to claim and develop. For example: If I find a piece of unsettled land and establish am orchard on it, I should be the only one allowed to reap the benefits of that orchard, or make any decisions about who else gets to reap the benefits. That should be my right since I'm the one who put the time, effort, and money into developing the orchard. Even if I use other workers to build the orchard, ownership still lies with me since without my capital and management, that orchard and their employment wouldn't exist. Now let's say you come along and decide you should be allowed to pick fruit from the trees in my orchard and sell them: How is that right? Why should you be allowed to reap any kind of benefit from land you had no hand in developing without my express permission or without compensating me?

That's what the personal property system does. It prevents people from just ripping each other off constantly and gives everyone legal recourse to address property disputes. Unless, of course, you'd prefer a return to the days where your claim on anything is determined by whether or not you are able to kill anyone who tries to challenge your claim or take what you perceive to be yours?

I thought you supported Bernie Sanders? You should listen to a speech or two of his sometime. The Wall St clique has gotten away with enormous crimes that would certainly land you or me in jail. Indeed, Timsup2nothin, apparently an actual former bank robber, doubtless managed to steal far less than any of these guys did, and he actually went to jail.
More generally I regard it as common knowledge that the US legal system works very differently if you're rich.

Is that a result of the actual law, or is it more a result of corrupt people exploiting loopholes in the law? I'm still waiting for specific property laws to be cited that you (or anyone else who thinks along the same lines as you) feel are unjust. So far, your responses have still been more on the philosophical side (not saying there's anything wrong with that though), which doesn't really help me understand what it is about the current laws that are so unjust. Now that's not to say I see no downside at all to the way we do things, I just feel the positives of property laws far outweigh the negatives.

As to my support of Bernie Sanders: It's because he is the candidate that I am in agreement with on issues that have a direct impact on my daily life. The other ones are either too focused on things that don't concern me directly, or take stances that are opposed to my personal interests. I'm kinda selfish like that.

It's probably because you have an idealized notion of the origins and actual consequences of private property.
This is perhaps misdirected though, because as I've said I don't want to abolish private property, just to limit its scope (like I said the abolition of slavery was historically part of this process; Citizens United was a step in the other direction).

What do you mean by "limit it's scope"? I think that would go a long way to helping me understand exactly what it is you are advocating, since I get a feeling we are probably more in agreement on this issue than either of us realize.
 
I think his point is about the same difference in property rights than we instinctively make with the subject of this thread : there is the, well, "direct property", which we consider personal and usually find you have to be a dirtbag to steal (basically what you actually use on a daily life), and the "far property", which is more capital-like and not really personal (like corporations).

Also, philosophically, I tend to not really agree with your idea about the orchard. I see the point that the person organizing it all is the one investing and making things happen in the first place, but I don't see why it would basically make all other contributions irrelevant.
Note that it's pretty vague and philosophical yet - but, especially in creative professions, I have a hard time considering the employees are completely shut down from the end product. And the more removed from the end product an owner is (especially egregious in cases where the owner simply bought the whole organization from the founder), the less legitimacy I feel he has.
 
I think it's your task as a proponent of private property to justify why any person should be able to restrict access to, say, a stream, or a fruit tree, through organized force.

Private property doesn't necessarily entail the restriction of access to streams or fruit trees. That's a question of the extent of private property. The concept of private property doesn't stipulate a particular extent. In that sense, a more proper question to ask is whether it is appropriate to have personal property rights over, say, a toothbrush.
 
That's not what the thread is about. Indeed, it seems logical that the average shoplifter would prefer to steal from mom-and-pop-stores given there are less security measures. However, we are discussing shoplifting from artificial (e.g. legal) persons here.

The main flaw in the concept is that when one shop-lift (lets call it steal, shall we?) from a shop, he is stealing from the shop not necessary from the corporation.

The cost of the stolen items is taken away from the balance sheet of the shop itself not from the corporation that owns the shop or even just franchise its brand to the shop.
Who suffer will be the employees of the shop and not the corporation.

Just for the sake of argument, if one wants to steal from a corporation would do better with some cyber-heist directly on the bank accounts of the corporation.
In this way one will only hit the corporation itself and none of the ground-floor workers.


... if you really want to punish evil corporation, write to your MP to close all those juicy taxes loopholes.
 
I mean, you can justify all sorts of things. None of these arguments wash with me.
 
Due to the extensive connections within the system, chances are shoplifting is less damaging to the corporation, and more damaging to the component businesses or people who put that product on the shelves (including the minimum wage workers). If these people want to act out anarchism and punish corporations, why not go to the source and just rob the CEO's homes? Or something along those lines.

Well, there have been currents in anarchism supporting targeting rich individuals (i.e. individual reclaimation). Stealing from corporations is essentially an updated form of individual reclaimation.

Of course, you might argue that it's still better to steal from corporations than from any individual (including the CEO). A corporation does not have a moral centre or any feelings. No one is directly hurt by theft from a corporate entity. Stealing from persons is. This includes CEOs. From my experience of meeting CEOs of corporate entities, they aren't exactly brutal psychopaths, rather, they are extremely clueless about what's going on.
 
If the feelings of victims is the determination of whether or not a theft is acceptable then I guess coma patients are fair game. And charities.
 
Commodore said:
Well that's an easy one. You shouldn't be allowed to profit from something I took the time to claim and develop. For example: If I find a piece of unsettled land and establish am orchard on it, I should be the only one allowed to reap the benefits of that orchard, or make any decisions about who else gets to reap the benefits. That should be my right since I'm the one who put the time, effort, and money into developing the orchard. Even if I use other workers to build the orchard, ownership still lies with me since without my capital and management, that orchard and their employment wouldn't exist. Now let's say you come along and decide you should be allowed to pick fruit from the trees in my orchard and sell them: How is that right? Why should you be allowed to reap any kind of benefit from land you had no hand in developing without my express permission or without compensating me?

See, like I said you have this idealized notion about how private property actually came about historically. It is almost never the owner doing the productive work, instead it's typically his (throughout history, almost always a he) slaves or other dependents.
Now I don't think you need to be John Rawls to realize that when private property allows one person to live off the fruits of the labor of others, that is unfair. The type of idyllic 'homesteading' to which you refer here is the historical exception rather than the rule.
And by the way, I do think my right to food supersedes your property rights in the orchard regardless of what you've done to improve or work the land, though as I said if we're being historically accurate it's near-certain that it's not you but your slaves who actually did the work.
Also, I completely disagree with the bit where you say that without the owner nothing would happen. The mere existence of alternative forms of enterprise (coops or ESOPs democratically run by the workers for example) disproves that, as does the existence of stateless societies in which there was no private property and yet productive work still got done.

Commodore said:
That's what the personal property system does. It prevents people from just ripping each other off constantly and gives everyone legal recourse to address property disputes. Unless, of course, you'd prefer a return to the days where your claim on anything is determined by whether or not you are able to kill anyone who tries to challenge your claim or take what you perceive to be yours?

Now, what this tells me is that you simply lack the imagination to imagine any alternatives other than a private property system or the law of the jungle. I think if you read some anthropological studies of stateless societies you will find there are many, many other options. Humans lived without private property, and yet also without this kind of violent anarchy you envision, for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions.
Also, while I find the distinction between private and personal property to be overblown, it's worth drawing since you said "personal property system" rather than "private property system."
I'll defer to Ben Franklin on this question, since his quote basically sums up my view of this whole thing:
All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it.

It's interesting here because Franklin is prefiguring the Marxian distinction between the part of society's output that goes into reproducing society and the extra part, the surplus. The surplus is socially created and society should get a say in deciding what's done with it; those decisions should not all be taken by unaccountable private bodies or individuals.

Commodore said:
Is that a result of the actual law, or is it more a result of corrupt people exploiting loopholes in the law? I'm still waiting for specific property laws to be cited that you (or anyone else who thinks along the same lines as you) feel are unjust. So far, your responses have still been more on the philosophical side (not saying there's anything wrong with that though), which doesn't really help me understand what it is about the current laws that are so unjust. Now that's not to say I see no downside at all to the way we do things, I just feel the positives of property laws far outweigh the negatives.

One example of unjustness in property laws is when Nestle gets the rights to a community's source of water through some kind of sweetheart deal with the government, and then steals the community's water and sells it back to them in plastic bottles for profit.
Another example is eternal intellectual property laws. There is no reason whatsoever that someone's descendants should be able to realize income from stuff a person did while they were alive, for example.

Commodore said:
What do you mean by "limit it's scope"? I think that would go a long way to helping me understand exactly what it is you are advocating, since I get a feeling we are probably more in agreement on this issue than either of us realize.

The most significant limitation on the scope of private property was the abolition of slavery. Other limitations include minimum wages and other laws which restrict the types of contracts people can enter into. It could be something as simple as a zoning ordinance which dictates what you can and can't use your property for, or a pollution law that does the same thing.
 
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