The reason is because these questions are often aimed at dirt poor people, not at the rich. The rich are, despite being rich, often the single most stingy, thieving bunch in existence. If you leave a bowl of candy for everyone to take from, a few might take more than their share… but the rich will want to grab massive handfuls.
The rich will take the bowl, candy and all.
Then complain about the quality of the candy. And the bowl.
And the candy will rot in their mansion as they peddle far-right conspiracy theories on Twitter.
I saw some Scrooge McDuck cartoons from the 60s that had him talk about money in a realistic way. Saying that a billion dollars is an unfathomable number, and how money must be constantly circulating otherwise problems will happen.
Even a duck tales cartoon had Scrooge lose his entire fortune so he decided to start from scratch again… And then realized that the world he was able to start his fortune in is no longer there and he cannot succeed again even if he did exactly what he did prior.
On top of that, the existence of his Lucky Dime and how his luck changes dramatically if he loses it is also an acknowledgement of the importance of luck.
Because in our (western) society, boldness and greed are universally honored to the point that corporations are generally seen as a means to enrich their owner rather than society as a whole. If you can afford it, and it’s not explicitly outlawed, it’s ethically right.
This actually highlights an important distinction in meta ethics (ethics about how to determine ethics). There is a divide amongst philosophers of what makes sense in pure analytical logic, and what makes sense in contextual reasoning. This divide is also shown to come up in “continental” vs “English speaking” philosophies. The two approach how to examine not just ethics, but truth overall in very different ways. I personally am of the belief that there needs to be an integration of these two in order for ethics to properly work, but to summarize this already too long Lemmy comment into one idea: fuck hoarding value of any kind.
Is it ethical to hoard land when families would willingly farm that land to grow food for themselves? Same question with housing - I am capable of building a small structure to live in perfectly happily but its illegal. Not a builder so the best I could do would likely just be a bit better than van living, but I could do it if it wasn’t illegal.
Systematically answering “Is hoarding bread unethical” with “No” should result in the other questions being irrelevant.
Bread should be free. We already have enough for everyone. No one has to starve anymore, scarcity is a LIE.
Both of these questions sound like a learning aide. You ask these types of questions because they have obvious answers, and you then have students explain their rationale, right?
Because ethics questions love focusing on individual choices, not the systems causing the problem in the first place.
As if 80% of western philosophy was written by well off people who sometimes owned slaves.
80% of western education is administered by partisan apparatchiks fulfilling an ideological mandate for their paymasters.
Western philosophy is absolutely dripping with revolutionary, abolitionist, and outright communist/anarchist sentiments. You simply aren’t allowed to distribute it anywhere on a high school campus.
Where did you study philosophy?
It is never unethical to steal food. It is unethical to stop someone from stealing food, or report someone for stealing food, or to arrest someone for stealing food.
Edit: ITT, sociopaths thinking their rationalizations for denying food to people are moral. It is NEVER unethical to steal food, got it? If someone is stealing food, it’s because they’re hungry, and they can’t afford it. If you question that, you’re just an asshole.
It is never unethical to steal food.
Stealing food from someone else that doesn’t have enough food.
People stealing from food banks and then throwing it away are pretty unethical in my book.
You are being too categorical. The capitalists are stealing food to hoard it, which is unethical.
“Never” and “always” are very difficult to use in a philosophical argument.
I can cone up with a single ridiculous example that refutes a statement that uses such absolutes, once done the argument falls apart.
“I’m going to the supermarket to steal food so I can save up for a new iphone. I could just steal the iPhone, but that could be unethical, so I’ll steal the food instead cause that is ALWAYS ethical.”
This is such a silly discussion…
Do my neighbors pets count as food?
What if you have enough food and are stealing it from some who doesnt have enough?
Then you’re running a business
Or what if it’s those crazy luxury foods, something like waguy beef or stuff, and you’re stealing it to sell it forward? And you’re going to buy a new television with the money
Being pedantic it’d be more correct as something like “it’s never unethical to steal food to feed someone, from someone that has more than enough”. But that doesn’t have such a nice ring to it
An unethical case of stealing food: There was, for a time, a black market for geoducks.
A geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck because that’s how it’s said in the local native language, I don’t know why it’s spelled wrong in English) is a burrowing clam native to the North American West coast. They’re incredibly long lived, the oldest recorded specimen was 179 years old. And their siphons look like giant cocks, which will never stop being funny.
They are edible. North Americans don’t have much of a taste for them, they’d get used as a cheap meat for chowder. But they’re very popular in Asia. The clams are harvested largely for export, and because of the black market, they were over-harvested, threatening the geoduck population and the overall ecosystem of the Puget Sound.
Or what if you’re a lazy asshole that decided it’s easier to just steal food than do anything for society in exchange for food?
In a democracy, political authority flows from the body of the people to the government. All power wielded by the government is borrowed from the people. We The People invest our political authority in government, which uses it to provide services and justify the collection of taxes.
We are each owed a return on that investment: A “citizenship dividend”. That “lazy asshole” who chooses not to do anything else is already owed a basic subsistence for the use of his political authority. He shouldn’t need to steal food or do anything more for society to merely maintain his existence.
You have the most important part flipped.
The authority we give the government is not to provide services. The authority is to collect taxes, which are used to provide services.
Anyone can provide services, but not anyone can collect taxes. The government can only collect taxes because we gave them the power to do so.
Without taxes, the government cannot provide the services. A lazy asshole that avoids paying taxes is preventing the government from providing more services, even if he “gave them power”.
The case of the “lazy asshole” is not one in which he needs to steal food to survive. The case is of a perfectly capable person that could be doing literally anything to earn an income, but chooses not to, since stealing is easier. Even if he has an income, he may prefer spending his money on more expensive luxury goods, since he can save a lot of money by just stealing the food.
By doing so, he’s being incredibly antisocial in multiple ways:
- Stealing is done without the knowledge of the shop. Which means that it is harder for them to keep track of inventory. Requiring more effort means that the price will go up (for the people that don’t steal).
- Shops don’t just suffer the loss. If an item is often stolen, they’ll just increase the price to make up for it. For everyone that doesn’t steal.
- If a shop chooses to suffer the loss instead, the thief is directly stealing from the shop (as opposed to everyone else). How is that fair in any way? The shop might even go out of business.
- It hurts the actual people that need the food: some people will be angry (for the reasons above) and will probably blame the people that need it. Might even jump to the conclusion of “why do we have social programs for them if they’re gonna steal anyway?”.
- It erodes trust in general. Everyone benefits if everyone behaves correctly. I don’t think I need to argue why. In this case specifically, shops wouldn’t need to implement anti-theft measures if nobody stole. It would be a waste of resources.
- It’s even worse if you steal from another person directly or a small shop instead of a big shop. For multiple reasons.
- It does psychological harm. Maybe the food owner had plans for that food, so now he has to make new plans, or even worse, go make another trip to the store to buy more food.
- It lowers the stock. Which combined with the difficulty to keep track of inventory, might result in an item going out of stock. Preventing everyone else from buying it.
- If it was home cooked, it might’ve been cooked as a gift for someone else. Increasing the psychological harm.
I could go on. But I believe this is more than enough to get the point across.
When something is stolen, society doesn’t just lose the value of the item. A 1€ item being stolen might be a loss of 10€ for society.
There’s 2 choices:
- Literally everyone gets provided with the basic needs by the government.
- Only the people that are unable (not unwilling, important) to pay for basic needs gets them provided by the government.
Both cases should remove hunger as a problem. Only in case 2 would the lazy assholes be hungry. But being hungry should be motivation enough to work at least the bare minimum. Which means nobody would be.
What both cases have in common is: nobody has the need to steal food. Therefore, it should not be allowed, neither legally nor morally, due to it being incredibly antisocial and expensive.
The solution to hunger is not “let them steal”. It is “give them food”.
There’s 2 choices: Literally everyone gets provided with the basic needs by the government.
Exactly. That’s where we should be right now. It’s commonly known as a “Universal Basic Income”, but it should be thought of as a “Citizenship Dividend”. The government should be compensating each of us for the use of our individual political power, much like Alaska compensates its citizens out of its Permanent Fund from oil revenue.
But being hungry should be motivation enough to work at least the bare minimum.
That’s actually a big part of the problem. People motivated by the desperation of “hunger” are willing to accept bare minimum wages without complaint. They allow themselves to be extorted, and in doing so, they drag down the wage expectations of everyone around them. Why should I pay you a living wage when I can just hire that lazy asshole at a poverty wage? You want actual money; he’d work for literal peanuts if he’s hungry enough.
I don’t want that lazy asshole stealing from me. I don’t want desperate people in the labor market, dragging down wages. I want them at home, eating Doritos, drinking Mountain Dew, and playing CoD in their parents’ basement. If the government is going to give us each a Citizenship Dividend, he can afford to buy his Doritos and Dew: I’ll go ahead and sell them to him.
Cool, you’ve added a little out for misanthropes to claim that anyone who can’t feed themselves is lazy and doesn’t deserve food.
Sure let’s not state the obvious because underisk can’t see nuance it will think it justifies letting people starve.
I don’t think anything justifies letting people starve. If that’s what you took from that, I think you’re the one who’s struggling with nuance.
Then I’d rather feed them and help them become a functioning member om society, than imprison them and feed them in prison.
There you go, the MAGA rationalization: I’d rather have 1000 children starve, than have a system where one person I dislike might gain something that I’ve determined they don’t deserve.
Or maybe we could have a system where the people that actually need it are given food, in order for there to be no excuse for stealing food.
Stealing food is still stealing, when you do it you indirectly increase the price of it for everyone else.
If everyone else just puts aside a bit of money to pay for food for those that actually need it, we can have both no starving and no excuse for stealing. Which would result in food being cheaper for everyone.
“It’s never unethical to steal food to feed someone, from someone that has more than enough, if you don’t have any other more ethical options to get it soon enough” sounds even less catchy
Because it’s easier to question the desperate than the powerful… flips the whole perspective when you think about it.
Typically, when you are “stealing bread”, the implication is that you’re taking it from someone equally needy. Capitalist propaganda loves to frame the theft of bread as an attack on low-wage grocery store workers, middle-income truckers and assistant managers, and impoverished agricultural workers.
You never see “stealing bread” framed against the backdrop of a garbage dumpster with a lock on it, to prevent people from taking food that’s been thrown in the trash.
Because one of these has a clear answer
this is just the commies having “being an individual” problems again
always need a strong man to take over
I they both have clear answers, but they’re obscured by which class you’re in. Rich? Obviously it’s not wrong to hoard. Poor? Obviously you need to eat to survive. Because of this bias, the argument for poor’s needing to steal will always be the debate, always leaving room for the rich to argue against it and justify punishment for people who find ways to make ends meet.
When you phrase it like that, it’s lik stealing is the only way to feed your family. If that is the case, sure stealing is obviously justified. If there are other options to feed you family, it becomes a more complicated dilemma.
It probably depends on what these other options are, who you’re stealing from, etc.
But whom are you stealing it from? If its another poor starving family suddenly its not so clear anymore. If its the hoarding rich guy go the fuck ahead, steal it even if you aren’t starving
Exactly. This man is a role model and did what I hope I would be able to do, but I wouldn’t expect that to be standard behavior, nor would I find it unforgivable if someone wasn’t able to literally starve to death while surrounded by food. Like, it is morally wrong imo, but that’s an incredible amount of self control that I would not have expected to be possible before learning about him.
He could have helped more people had he lived, no?
Unclear, but his community decided together that they would divvy food up as they did, then he followed that. If I were dividing food in that sort of scenario, I’d probably give more to soldiers, doctors, and young people over bakers, because they represent very difficult to transfer skills (at least during a siege) and your city’s future.
Anyone who decided on their own that they need nourishment more than the community would not be someone I want as a baker going forward though, so he wouldn’t have been able to help people with it anyway.
This is it.
I don’t mind stealing bread from the mouths of decadents.
I don’t know why but TIL Vedder was the singer for Temple. Can’t believe it took me that long to realize.
my first read I thought you meant STP and I was like ??? how do u make that mistake??
actually it’s a really cool story, Chris Cornell is the vocalist in Temple but he was struggling to hit the low notes on that song and Eddie was in the studio waiting to practice with Pearl jam and just stepped up and started singing that part, next time he was around Chris asked him to record it.
was Eddie’s first time on any record apparently! i didn’t know that part until today
I’ve always loved the way Chris explains it, “When we started rehearsing the songs, I had pulled out “Hunger Strike” and I had this feeling it was just kind of gonna be filler, it didn’t feel like a real song. Eddie was sitting there kind of waiting for a (Mookie Blaylock) rehearsal and I was singing parts, and he kind of humbly—but with some balls—walked up to the mic and started singing the low parts for me because he saw it was kind of hard. We got through a couple choruses of him doing that and suddenly the light bulb came on in my head, this guy’s voice is amazing for these low parts. History wrote itself after that, that became the single.”
Now you’re confusing me? STP’s singer was Weiland, Cornell was Soundgarden… Temple of the Dog was full of future Pearl Jam members.
I always wonder how true some of these stories are from the entertainment industry. They sound good.
But I can’t feed on the powerless when my cups already overfilled.
Read a recent poll that said 63% of U.S. adults believe that extreme wealth is not a moral issue. Only 18% think it’s morally wrong. Sad. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/19/appendix-detailed-tables-us-morality/
holy shit. how much soft power do billionaires have??
I think the common mistake is projecting our own thoughts onto a hypothetical. They try to put themselves in that situation, “if I had this much money I would do all these things” but the truth is that to be in that position there is a fundamental lack of humanity required and it’s not easy to just disregard that.
It’s a mental health issue. They have OCD that manifests itself as financial hoarding.
If they had a million cats, we wouldn’t keep calling them great cat owners, and give them more cats until they had a billion cats. We would recognize that that many cats is bad for the community, remove the cats from their care, and get them help for their mental illness.
So let’s take away the money that is the focus of their OCD, and put them into mental hospitals until their brains are wired properly.
When it’s phrased as wealth inequality, things are usually a little different but yeah, a ton of that survey is depressing. I mean, gambling is lower than shit like pornography… (Although again, context could change that, too, I suppose.)
The actual answer is that in western culture, it’s generally taken as a given that stealing is wrong. It’s in the 10 commandments.
“Hoarding” doesn’t hold the same position in western mythos.
Applying pressure to an assumed moral certainty (thou shalt not steal) is fundamentally interesting. Applying pressure to a position where people don’t hold culturally ethical baggage (hoarding) is much less so.
Bible does state quite clearly that rich people don’t go to heaven. Mark 10:25 which is cleverly ignored by most people.
Also greed is one of seven deadly sins, althougj deadly sins are not a biblical thing but invented few hundred years after by early christians.
The actual answer is that in western culture, it’s generally taken as a given that stealing is wrong. It’s in the 10 commandments.
So is “coveting”.
Hoarding is applied coveting, in the same way that engineering is applied physics.
And for a long time, we did indeed, understand that coveting was wrong. We implemented actual, progressive taxation to prevent it. We used to have a 91% top-tier income tax rate. We had that rate in the most prosperous decades of US history.
I always thought of hoarding as a way of stealing from everyone
For a serious answer, because ethics is concerned with self. You already know the answer to the second question and will very likely never be in that situation. You do not know the answer to the first and have a much higher likelihood of being in that situation.
both questions are concerned with self and society in general.
the first question puts survival up for debate, and the second question puts capitalism up for debate.
i’d say that most of us know the answers to both questions, but only ever asking the first question & never the second, helps people to form the idea that capitalism is just how things always have to be, and that it could/should never be changed.
I think you have a lot of beliefs about the first that are not stated. There are many many ways to frame the first in which you would not so easily answer yes. There are very few ways to frame the second in which it’s ethical.
There are very few ways to frame the second in which it’s ethical.
yeah, that’s the point of the post. it’s clearly unethical, and yet, capitalism continues.
The second has nothing to do with capitalism. They are ethical questions that have nothing to do with political systems or governments. They’re meant to have you think about things in a deeper manner. There’s a lot less to think about with the second than the first and thus doesn’t really matter in an educational setting.
I know the answer to the first
I’m sure your thought process involves a lot more than what is mentioned in the prompt. So you most likely do not know the answer to the first, even though you think you do.
Property is theft. Food shouldn’t be witheld from those in need. Stealing bread is an artificial problem that shouldn’t exist. Ezpz
Like I said, you’re making a lot of assumptions about the first that aren’t stated. Here’s a few to get you started, though there’s many many many others.
- You are stealing from a starving family
- You are about to die from old age and are stealing from a very young person
- You just got out of jail for murdering an immigrant and are only starving due to your own life decisions
- You are starving because you wasted all your money gambling
- You are stealing from a baby
Etc etc etc
But what if you’re stealing from someone who needs it as much as you do? That’s part of why the question is difficult. We’re not always assuming you’re stealing from someone who is hoarding.
This website is primarily populated by westerners, myself included. This ethical dilemma is commonly depicted within the confines of stealing bread from a business in some form or fashion. In the common depiction its pretty black and white to me. And even if we were to entertain the idea of stealing a loaf of bread from an individual with equal need, we only have to stop and think about it for a second to realize that capitalism and hoarding still created the conditions for this to happen, in which case this continues to be an artificial problem that shouldn’t exist.
We only need to look to history to see how people actually deal with conditions that lead to food scarcity (disasters, economic collapse, war, etc). People tend to share what they have with their neighbors in times of scarcity, often times people go without to their own detriment to make sure their neighbor has what they need to survive. Oftentimes the resources they need are “looted” from businesses, but they get spread around the community nonetheless. The answer to your scenario is to ask your neighbor for some of their bread, or offer your own if you see somebody in need.
