“But until the sage is dead, great thieves will never cease to appear, and if you pile on more sages in hopes of bringing the world to order, you will only be piling up more profit for Robber Chih. Fashion pecks and bushels for people to measure by and they will steal by peck and bushel.5 Fashion scales and balances for people to weigh by and they will steal by scale and balance. Fashion tallies and seals to insure trustworthiness and people will steal with tallies and seals. Fashion benevolence and righteousness to reform people and they will steal with benevolence and righteousness. How do I know this is so? He who steals a belt buckle pays with his life; he who steals a state gets to be a feudal lord-and we all know that benevolence and righteousness are to be found at the gates of the feudal lords. Is this not a case of stealing benevolence and righteousness and the wisdom of the sages?” Chapter 10 of Zhuangzi (Stolen Chests), Burton Watson translation.
Is it ethical to make enough food to feed everyone but then throw it away just because of capitalism?
we should be making sure no one goes hungry. but the answer to op’s question is that the second hypothetical isn’t interesting (obviously it’s not ethical to hoard bread) and ethical questions are made to spark debate
Because ethics don’t exist as far as the ones hoarding bread in this scenario are concerned.
And because you following ethics is directly beneficial for them. As long as you act ‘ethically’, they remain at the top and nothing can be done about it.
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I get what you’re saying, but America has real problems with cheap, highly processed foods which are addictive in nature. If you’re low income you’re likely to be eating low nutrition foods packed with sugar.
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.
That is because Scrooge wasn’t written bij actual rich people. So of course he knows nuance.
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.
Because ethics questions love focusing on individual choices, not the systems causing the problem in the first place.
Because one of these has a clear answer
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
This is the argument I have issue with. The truth is that the hypothetical isn’t grounded in reality.
Hypothetically, if one stole from another within the same class out of necessity, it’s impossible for any person to assign or deny the morality of the act.
The reality is there exists such an abundance of material needs, so much so that we have landfills for when we overproduce material needs that are not profitable. The hypothetical serves to divide the poor.
That is reality when you look at the entire earth, but seen from an individuals point that hardly matters. You may also just replace bread with a resource that is actually scarce.
On the other hand, us debating this topic at all proves my original point, nobody felt like debating the other question at all.
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.
this is just the commies having “being an individual” problems again
always need a strong man to take over
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 come 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…
I’ll going to steal food from a homeless person, they are too weak to fight back, ethically I’m fine, it is NEVER unethical to steal food.
There is vast difference between stealing something and robbing somebody.
Indeed, but the absolute statement can be so easily twisted to meet the ends of moment, it really matters little.
Who says that the homeless person isn’t off taking a shit, their food unattended, thus back to stealing rather than robbing!
What a shitty way to think.
Maybe.
But using nuance and constructive statements is more difficult than hard line rhetoric. People gravitate to stupid slogans and simple absolute language; it is though killing and destructive to actual conversation.
In the example “it is NEVER unethical to steal food”; this isn’t a real position to take; it is grandstanding and shallow; this argument falls at the first hurdle.
Saying something like:
“Theft of food; whilst not necessarily unethical; could be at best morally neutral. The specifics of each situation need be weighed on their merits. Where a person is taking food to feed their family, and the theft doesn’t materially affect the owner of the food, such as a large supermarket chain; this act is not unethical.”
Is not a pithy and hard hitting as the stupid statement “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.”
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?
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.
If it doesn’t justify that, than it’s not an “out for misanthropes”.
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.
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
Do my neighbors pets count as food?
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?
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.
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.
