So the corporations are holding the employees as hostages, sort of?
I donāt want to use hyperbole, but given the system of employer healthcare and debt (particularly student loans and revolving credit), Iād tend towards Yes.
Nobody is literally sticking a gun to heads, and I want to shake the hands of those debt free. But corporations have the low, middle, and upper middle class captured.
āeditā
So if a person feels like its okay to shoplift from a large store, it really is just passing the misery to someone just like you. Instead letās do the long term, unsexy things like tax reform, education, and social change to push back on economic libertarianism.
4 Likes
Iāve never shoplifted, but I know I get followed at times. Whenever I notice, I just leave, sale lost for the shop. Really pisses me off.
4 Likes
Just remembered a similar secondhand story:
An old buddy with a solid math degree got a good, but entry level, job in something financial (not stock brokering directly, but mutual or retirement funds maybe? Could never keep it straight).
My friend related how one of the big wigs there had apparently been stealing from the company cafeteria for years. The high level guy would get breakfast in the morning and due to the layout of the place was able to walk out without passing the cashier, hence never paying.
This went on daily for years. The cashiers were well aware and sufficiently annoyed. But he was a big boss, what could they say?
Eventually though someone with sufficient authority finally noticed what was going on and figured if someone making his paycheck couldnāt be bothered to pay for one cheap meal a day, he shouldnāt be trusted with other peopleās money either. The guy was fired the same day. Some measure of delayed justice, I guess?
7 Likes
Back when I was in first or second grade, circa 1977, I once accompanied my mother on an errand to a dimestore called Pic āNā Save.
Canāt remember what we were there for. Toilet paper, back-to-school pencils, what have you. Near the checkout aisle I found a display of toy cars, the cheap die-cast craptastic ones that some Googling reveals to me were called āTootsie Toyā cars. Not nearly as cool as Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars, these were made out of a single stamped piece of pot metal, painted a single color with no decals, windows, or interiors, and had stiff axles with thin plastic wheels that never did roll freely. I saw one had been removed from its packaging and was lying on the floor, all by itself. It looked a lot like this:
I stuck it in my pocket and took it home. Shortly after we got there, I showed it to my mom. She was not pleased and marched me right back to the store, asked to see the manager, and stood over me while I miserably explained what I had done. The manager was quite cool about it, even rewarded me with another car for going through the confession, but man did that experience stick with me. I canāt remember exactly what my mom said to me, but I never again felt the urge to take something for which I hadnāt paid in fullā¦ not out of fear of punishment, but because she somehow made me feel it was so profoundlyā¦ wrong to steal when I didnāt absolutely need to.
5 Likes
Iām reading the name of the store.
And I donāt want to invalidate your experience.
And I donāt want to engage in victim blaming.
But cāmonā¦ āPick and Saveā
What were they thinking?
How were you to know?
3 Likes
Nahā¦ I was precocious at seven, but even then I knew I couldnāt use the store name as an āattractive nuisanceā excuse. I was the sixth of seven kids, after all, and by the time I came along my mom had heard all the excuses! 
Anyway, back then my friends and I just made jokes about how āPic āNā Saveā might be something your gross little brother might do with his boogers.
3 Likes
I do not steal, not because it would hurt some poor corporation, but because it would make me smaller.
3 Likes
Itās quite liberating to live in a country were neither employer healthcare nor student loans exist ā¦ Freedom! 'Murrica (or not)!
1 Like
Thatās a non-sequitur. Shoplifting doesnāt impact employees in any way.
It certainly did to me, when I had to work on Sundays to account for stock. Or had to confront someone with guitar strings in their coat pocket.
But thatās just like my opinion man.
3 Likes
That would be your employer requiring those things, not the shoplifter.
Can I and my family come live in your magical utopia? Do they need American historians where you are?
1 Like
Interesting thought process, you have freed me from the shackles of my oppressors! I had no idea human condition was so cleanly divorced from economics. High five, man!
1 Like
So if you are affluent you can be a ālaw-abidingā thief, but if you steal out of necessity you are a criminal? Thank you BB for once again showcasing the wonderful world of white privilege.
That seems to be your assertion, not mine.
Itās called Europe, specifically Germany. As a historian myself who had difficulties finding a job in the past (thankfully not any more) I have to say No. But there are several job opportunities for people with university degrees outside their field of study.
1 Like
Oh, yeah, if itās in Europe, I know I can forget thatā¦ I have enough friends from Europe looking for jobs thereā¦ But I do know a kleine Deutscheā¦ Honestly, though I kind of want to live in Ireland or Scotland. I have foolish dreams of going to my ancestral homeland when everything here goes to shit!
Whatās your field, if you donāt mind me asking?
This is exactly the point. It was how I was raised, and how I raised my child. No fear of getting caught, or of any other consequences matter. It is only about you, and how you view yourself.
It would actually be very interesting to know how different ātypesā of theft are or arenāt correlated.
Your Hypothetical Rational Actor, Homo Economicus, wandering the frictionless planar surface of Econ101-land, where spherical merchants uniformly radiate goods and services and all supply and demand curves are well behaved, would presumably have a set āwillingness to stealā and would steal whenever the risk/payoff was at or above that set willingness.
In practice, of course, thatās total bullshit and Iām virtually certain that humans donāt work that way at all(most obviously, the occasional ultra-wealthy shoplifter who does it compulsively, the people who will do it from chains and not otherwise, etc, etc.)
What, if anything, do we know about the interactions? Does the guy who skims 10+ million from the pension fund also steal in smaller ways, because he can? Or would he never stoop to petty property crime, because thatās for filthy poor people and he actively enjoys flashing the platinum plastic, leaving the occasional several-hundred-dollar-tip, and other exhibitionistic purchasing behavior?
Would the guy who treated āfreeā breakfast like a job perk actually be more likely to be skimming from accounts that he considers his āreal jobā, or is he an entitled jerkwad to the help; but would be horrified by the suggestion that he might shirk his fiduciary duties?
(Iām curious in general, just because it seems interesting; also because it seems like a very useful dataset to have: itās not like finance shitweasels are terribly scarce, so the precautionary firing in your story seems very sensible; but what sort of rigorous information do we have about how āhonestyā is or isnāt a unified character stat? Thereās also some personal interest. My parentsā¦encountered togetherness deficienciesā¦ largely on my fatherās side, and Things Got Ugly. Dueling legal teams, forensic accountants, picking over a couple of decades of financial documentation, assorted misappropriation of funds into the 6 figures, fun times. However, to the best of my knowledge(and there was some digging done here, understandably from the perspective of the parties concerned), he didnāt touch a dime at work, not even to the point of failing to put a check by his name on the sheet they used to keep track of who owed what for sodas from the shared fridge. And he was high enough up in the food chain that he easily could have done some skimming, at least for a while. It was just kind of a surprise.)
