“It’s a question of how immoral”? So, now there’s some valid method of ranking immoralities? Well, gee, that’s a tough one. Most people would put murder at the top, but then perhaps arson shuld be higher - because not only do you destroy property but risk life as well. Then again, with rape you frequently destroy the psyche and leave the victim with a lifetime of invisible misery that no one can qualm, while a murder victim’s suffering is typically short… hmmm, this is tough.
Sarcasm aside, one quick method of gauging this might be to look at the potential sentencing. For one count of felony theft by taking (the single sum of $100 million), the maximum penalty might be, what, a few decades in jail? While 100 million individual sentences of 30 days or so for petty theft (of $1) would very easily outstrip that. What say you to this?
If a dollar disappeared from my bank account, it would be disastrous. I live from paycheck to paycheck, and will continue to do so for some time until the financial damage to my life by my recent divorce is repaired.
If one dollar is missing, that could cause me to suffer a $22 “service charge” from my bank. Now I’m out 23 bucks. If the bank chooses not to hionor the check, then the person I gave it to is out by that amount and I’m screwed for 23 bucks. Now multiply that by whatever percentage of folks MUST have that one dollar or their bank will start charging them fees, all caused by that missing dollar in the account.
Nope.
The question (to me, anyhow) is pointless. You will be harming people even if you don’t think you are. Specifically, you will be harming those who are hurt most by the lack of such an otherwise insignificant sum. That would be quite evil, indeed.
A better way of asking the question in the OP is: How wrong is it to counterfeit 270 million one dollar bills? I’m assuming that the counterfeit bills are completely indistinguishable from the real thing. I mean, not even the US Treasury could tell the difference, so no one will ever be caught trading bogus bills. The effect of such counterfeiting is to steal $270 million dollars from America which translates to about one dollar from every American (I’m guessing that our current population is around 270 million). I would say that this is very wrong and you deserve a very lengthy prison term. The fact that you have spread the crime around doesn’t make it any less of a crime. It’s like asking is it worse to dump a million gallons of toxic waste into one lake or one gallon into every lake on earth, both crimes are equally bad IMHO. Another way of looking at it is this: what if everyone did this, it would spell the collapse of world society for everyone to behave so selfishly.
This is an interesting point: dump a million gallons of toxic waste into a lake all at once, and environmental activists will be dropping from the sky; pump a million gallons of toxic waste into a water system over the course of twenty years, and you’re meeting EPA standards.
I don’t believe the government would consider it 1 million separate crimes. It would consider it one scheme to defraud and one theft from from 1 million people. So, bank fraud and grand larceny, and the government would naturally want to dicourage others from trying it, would net you aroun 10 years.
When I spoke of harm done and sentencing requirements I was speaking to practical matters of societal interest and penology. That has no effect on the ethics of the situation. It is exactly s wrong to steal $1 as it is to steal $1 million. If the theft, in either case, also does harm to another person then that is an additional wrong.
Hansel, do you mind if I steal a dollar from you taday? If it is, indeed, a harm so small as to be no harm at all, then you won’t mind if I do it again tomorrow. In fact, if it is no harm at all you won’t mind if I do it every hour of every day for the rest of your life, right?
Yes, I am prepared to say that the immorality of theft is entirely a matter of principal. Yes, I am also prepared to say that causing harm to another is also immoral.
A pickpocket steals your wallet. A mugger knocks you out and steals your wallet. Are you prepared to say the pickpocket is more moral? What if his technique allows him to rob hundreds of people to the mugger’s one?
This is actually kind of interesting. Can there be an immoral act without a victim? Like many folks I suspect, I have a little container of spare change in my car. There could be anywhere from a buck to 5 bucks at any given time in the dish. If some kid reached in and grabbed $.50 for a soda while it was sitting parked, it could be reasonably certain that I would never know, and never be put out in even the smallest way by the lack of those 2 quarters.
Better yet, what if I have an interest in forensics, and as I pass you on the street I pluck a hair from the back of your jacket to take home and peer at under my 'scope. I have stolen something, right? Yet you not only would never know it, but would in all likelihood never value it.
So, does the ‘damage’ need to be perceptible for it to be an immoral act? How can something deemed by all parties as completely harmless to all involved be considered immoral simply by definition? And if not, then what definition serves?
Another variation:
Someone anonymously sends you a sum of money; you don’t know it’s coming. Someone intercepts the money without the knowledge of either the sender or you. So the sender thinks you got the money and has no further interest in the matter, and you don’t even know anything about it. The person who intercepted the money is the only one who even knows that the crime occurred. Is there a victim?
Ptahlis:
Have all parties actually agreed that the act is harmless, either in the OP or your example? I was assuming as to the OP, the people who lose the dollar don’t know about it. If they don’t mind, they aren’t victims. If they do mind, they are. If they don’t know, what should we assume?
Seriously, when someone intentionally does something wrong, they harm themselves as well as their victim. Even if the victim(s) remains completely unaware of the act, the perpetrator reinforces the notion that it’s okay to do whatever he’s done, since the victim never knew he was victimized.
If the perpetrator is unaware that what he’s doing is wrong, he still harms himself, be reinforcing the notion that what he’s doing is not wrong. He will be doubly perplexed if he is ever confronted with his crime, for he will (incorrectly) believe he had done nothing wrong. He will then consider himself the victim. He will have set himself up to take the fall, and have to deal with his “victimhood” in a setting where very few would give him sympathy.
(Yeah, I know that’s hard to follow, but I have to go run errands, soon. Otherwise I’d spend 20-30 minutes polishing the above example. Sorry.)
The problem for me is a conflict of moral intuitions. On the one hand, it seems just as wrong to steal 100 million dollars in small amounts as it does in one lump sum. On the other hand, harm done is relevant in the moral calculus.
If I slap you in the face, I’ve done something wrong. If I beat you badly enough to hospitalize you for a week, I’ve done something much, much more wrong than slapping you in the face. That seems obvious to me. If I do violence to you causing your death, I’ve done the greatest wrong of all.
I don’t think anyone here is willing to give up a sliding scale of moral or immoral acts. To treat a slap in the face as seriously as aggravated assault should set off bells in most people’s minds. Thus, the dilemma of stealing a dollar at a time: it causes not nearly the same harm as stealing it in a lump sum, no matter how you look at it. Gilligan’s example is even better.
I still see a conflict here. Most folks would agree that theft is wrong. But isn’t the reason that it is wrong is because it harms someone else? It deprives another of their rightful property. How can an act be immoral if there is no harm done to anyone? (Not talking about the OP here, but my hair example.) I don’t buy the rationale that plucking of the hair harms the perpetrator by reinforcing a particular mindset either. If the perpetrator believes that the immorality of an act must stem from harm rather than definition, then he is certainly not harming himself within his own moral structure.
Theft is immoral in principal because it violates empathy with the victim. By stealing you reduce another human being to simply a tool for the gratification of your own needs. A theft which causes harm may also be immoral for thatreason. I say “may” only because I do not feel causing harm, in and of itself, is an immoral act.
As to gilligan’s example: in addition to the theft, you have caused harm to both the sender and teh intended recipient. That neither of them is aware (yet) of the harm, does not negate the act. The sender intended an act of generosity, which you have denied. He is also now suffering under an illusion, which you have perpetrated. The intended recipient has lost a benefit which should rightfully have been his. That he does not know of his loss in no way implies the loss does not exist.
If I sneak into your bedroom while you are asleep and expose you to a deadly gas, you will die never knowing that I have done you harm. Does that mean I have, in fact, done you no harm?
The point of Gilligan’s example is that you’re deprived of nothing (including the expectation of future gain), while in your example the victim is deprived of his life.
Are you willing to say that a slap in the face is as bad as being hospitalized for a week from a beating? The only difference I see is that harm done, and if that’s not a relevant part of the moral equation, then they are equally immoral. At the very least, that’s counterintuitive.
Well, in my “hair” example, neither party would consider it harm, so how is it a violation of empathy? I have no problem with someone who defines theft as immoral when it causes damage, whether emotional, or physical. I think it’s strange that by making theft absolutely immoral by fiat that an immoral act may involve no harm to anyone.
There is another way around the “hair” example. I had a roommate who used to use my stuff, drink my soda, grab spare change out of my dish. This was okay, even though I never explicitly gave him permission to do so. There was an implicit permission between us that we would share what we had. Perhaps a) not valuing the hair and b) not feeling any umbrage were it to be plucked off of his jacket is enough to qualify as “implicit permission.”
I disagree. In gilligan’s example you are deprived of money which had been given to you. The only way you can deny that loss is by declaring that the knowledge of loss is more important than the loss itself. My counterexample was intended to demonstrate that to say no loss happened because the victim had no knowledge of the loss leads quickly to absurdity.
If I steal the money from your bank account today, but you do not receive the statement until next month, when does the crime occur?
I have never said that infliction of harm was not also an immoral act. I deny that infliction of harm is the only immoral act.
Ptahlis
How can you know? Some people attach superstitious meaning to their hair. Some peole suffer from psychological disorders which would make them extremely unomfortable if they knew you were plucking hairs from their clothing. You fail to exercise empathy by treating your uderstanding of the victim’s well being above their own. It would e a simple matter for you to determine whether they object; you prefer to treat the victim as a source of material for your hobby than as a fellow human being with his individual needs and concerns. (A loose hair is, of course, unlikely to be of concern, but to deny that any person could value what you place little value upon is hubris. If I place little value in my car that does not mean you would not miss yours when I stole it.)
Your roommate example differs in that you state their was an implicit agreement to treat such property as communal.
I never claimed that damage done is the sole constituent of immorality; it’s part of what makes it immoral (the other part being the principle that establishes immorality in the first place). Thus, my example of stealing money a dollar at a time. If you stole a dollar from me, with my knowledge or without, it’s a very small crime; if the harm done is unnoticeable to me because of its scale, the crime is smaller still.
Thus the dilemma: how can it be as immoral to steal all that money a dollar at a time, when the aggregate harm is less than the harm done stealing it in a lump sum from the company pension fund?
And which, exactly, principal do you argue establishes that immorality? Do you think that principal is insufficient to establish the immorality of a petty theft?
Also, do oyu still argue that Gilligan’s example represents a situation in which no harm is done?
If you can develop a mathematics to compute the aggregate harm of 1 million small harms and compare it to a single large harm, please let me know. It might, perhaps, help to begin by demonstrating that immoralities are objectively measurable.
And, finally, please send me a dollar immediately. You will not even notice it is gone.