I remember a Jackie Mason routine that sort of sums up my question. He describes someone after the LA riots, saying something like “The cops were acquitted? Lets take that TV”.
That logic is what bothers me. I would figure that with everything we learn at home from our parents, in school, certainly in church/synagogue/mosque etc, even from our own basic morality/common sense, that before someone gets to that point where they say “Lets take that TV”, something inside would push them to say, “Well, I’d like to, but it’s WRONG”.
Now obviously, there are certain people who don’t have that push. Those people often include worse criminals, who don’t even have that push that tells them not to kill someone. And maybe most people don’t have that push when it comes to something seeming smaller, like speeding or cheating on their taxes (even though they know it’s wrong). But I would figure that stealing would be higher up on the curve.
And I think it is for most groups. So again, my question is, in groups where stealing is more common, is it not really educated/inoculated against, or are the thieves working against their culture, religion, etc.?
I think that some people steal because they feel/perceive wronged or frustrated. For example, I read in the paper the other day that with rising electricity prices, a lot more people are “juice-jacking.” What’s interesting about the crime of juice-jacking is that it can be very dangerous, and not save you a heck of a lot of money – maybe a few hundred bucks a year.
Rationally, if you are a juice-jacker, it would arguably make a lot more sense to steal a few hundred bucks somewhere else, and use that money to pay your (higher) electricity bills. This makes me suspect that many such crimes aren’t purely rational, and the criminal has other motivations. For example, he might feel that the power company is wronging him somehow by charging so much, and this is his revenge; he might also get a sense of satisfaction from “beating the system.”
Anyway, I agree with the person who suggested that people steal for a lot of different reasons.
1 poverty. There are more instances of crime in poor neighborhoods.
2 income inequality. There is more crime when poor people live next to rich people. (I’m using poor and rich in the broadest terms)
3 age. Young men comit most crimes, and they usually stop as they get older.
4 injustice. People often steal when they feel it is their only recourse to right a percieved wrong. (see the examples about people stealing electricity or stealing from their employers)
All of these would probably apply to Palestinians living in Isreal, but not to muslims living in other countries. These would also apply to blacks living in America, but not in Kenya for example.
So if you want to solve the crime problem in Isreal, stop treating the Palestinians like crap.
And, of course, noone is discussing corporate crime. Like Firestone CEOs killing 88 people because of greed. How much jail time are they going to get.
Poverty is NOT a factor in theft. Morals are. As someone stated before, the Great Depression did not have a huge crime increase. Why? People back then thought stealing was BAD. Its not so bad now. Hell, I am as guilty as others.
Cable theft - no big deal as another poster said.
Software - How many of you purchased EVERY bit of software on your machines? Paid for all that shareware?
Time - How many of us are online from work? This counts too.
Money - You go through a fast food place and they give you the wrong change back. How many would return it?
As it becomes more and more acceptable the reasoning for doing it becomes easier and easier to argue.
Personally, I think its lame. “I had to steal for my drug addiction” You shouldn’t have been adicted in the first place. “I stole his watch because I was drunk.” I don’t care. You stole. “I took that laptop from work because they OWED me that raise I didn’t get.” Too bad, two wrongs don’t make a right, learned that in first grade. “I stole his wallet because his people have beaten my people down.” Get over it, what did HE do to YOU?
Being poor has no effect on what you see as right or wrong.
Labdude, I will reiterate my disagreement. Poverty does not make you a thief. If this were true it would make the converse also true: “Being rich makes you honest”.
Correlation does not prove causality. There are some very poor people who do not steal. As has been said, if your parents are scum it i likely that you will have no ethics or morals or eduication and you will be a thief and remain poor. But it is not caused directly by poverty.
There is more crime when poor people live close to rich people? I do not know if that is true but, if it is, it would justify the position of those who are opposed to those programs that give housing to poor people in more affluent neighborhoods. There was a TV newsmagazine segment on this. They followed some cases but the people pretty much did not change. They were scum when they were in the ghetto and they remained scum when they were given a home in a better neighborhood.
Age. Yes, hormones have a lot to do with crime. Being a young male makes you more likely to committ a violent crime. past the age of 50 or so this diminishes.
Injustice. Well, as has been pointed out. People justify what they do. They will always perceive the injustice that would justify their crimes. I do not think this explains anything.
You are of the liberal thinking that thiefs are not responsible for their crimes but are pushed to do it by an eveil society. I do not agree with you on this. We are responsible for our acts and there are many poor people who do not steal but who are honest and hard working. As I have pointed out, these people fare much better than those who steal.
Your comment about israelis being treated like crap would merit another thread but I disagree with it wholeheartedly. I am very much under the impression it is the Palestinians who cannot respect the laws and treaties they themselves have made. The state of Israel, with all it’s problems is a better organization than the palestinians have or will have in a while. They do not have statehood yet and they are already runing a corrupt fascist state and engaging in their favorite passtime of blowing up israelis. I don’t blame the Israelis for keeping them in check. A palestinian in Israel is way better off than an Israely in the palestinian controlled territory. But, as I say, If you want to discuss this we should open another thread and not hijack this one.
Yarster, you are very right that peer pressure is a powerful motive when you are young. I did some pretty stupid things myself for that reason. So add to the list of things parents must do one more which is to supervise who their kids associate with and keep an eye on what they are doing.
the question was “why do people steal” which I translated to: what are the justifications and reasons people say are their motivations? so, poverty is indeed one of those.
I never meant to imply that poverty or any of the other reasons I’ve noted folks use were the moral equivalent of an excuse to steal.
I see that I didn’t specify peer pressure as a reason, however, when I’ve talked to young people who went along with peer pressure to steal, there was one of the other things underlying it (most often need for excitement, as a joke and “I’m too poor -relatively- to afford all I want to own”)
To the extent that this is true, it’s trivially true. You could just as correctly blame lack of entrophy, lack of entropy, lack of entropy. Both explanations are true, but meaningless.
In any case, empathy admits to qualification, unless we suppose that we should feel the same for a poorly child who drops a dime into a sewer grating as we feel for a rich adult who drops a diamond. We may even be tempted not to feel sorry for the adult at all, in this case, though this too is a lack of empathy. I would argue that absolute empathy is neither called for nor desirable. Nor is a sufficient level of empathy on the part of each and every member of a society to prevent theft altogether likely to be desirable. Since there are not enough resources for everyone to have everything they want, or even everything they need, somebody has to be willing to screw somebody else out of what resources there are, or else everybody will simply starve.