Morals on buying stolen goods

It is a question of morality, at least as I see it.

"In its third usage 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.[2] Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), which morals people actually hold to (descriptive ethics), what is the fundamental nature of ethics or morality itself, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and its nature (moral psychology)."

Whether you want to label me as a moral relativist, skepticist, utilitarian applied ethicist or what not, It doesn't change that my argument has everything to do with morals and morality. I don't understand how you can say that simply because I don't share a moral viewpoint or way of thinking with you, you can deny my understanding of morality.

 
Ok, take a step back man and re-read my posts. I did not in a single

post advocate stealing from walmart. I only maintained that it's not as

simple as saying stealing is immoral.

I think there is a decent

argument for stealing against walmart. One could disagree with the

effect it has had on small communities throughout America, it's labor

or environmental practices overseas, any number of things. If said

person disagreed strongly enough, they could view shoplifting from

walmart as a way to have a negative effect on the company. Often those

who oppose an entity are weaker than it, and thus have to wage a war of

attrition. This could be carried out against walmart in any number of

ways, shoplifting only one of them. These acts of attrition could be

made in an attempt to slow the growth of walmart, or even ultimately

defeat it. There, shoplifting now represents more than a simple immoral

act of greed, but a means to an end.

Theres also plenty of

decent arguments against stealing from walmart, many already posted in

this thread, that I won't bother elaborating on.

It's all

subjective in the end. I'm not even picking a side on this one, just

saying that morality is objective and will never be universally agreed

upon.

You say that I can't define morality in the simple way I did earlier.

That's the whole point. What gives any more legitimacy to Quinny's

statement that stealing is immoral than to mine? Nothing, that's why we

can only share our ideas and hope to find common ground and

understanding.

For what its worth, FUCK WALMART
 
Quinny your argument in this thread isn't just stupid, it's absolutely batshit insane. It's hurting me to read because I do have a moral philosophy background and this amateurish bullshit misrepresented as authoritative definition is a crime against the discipline.

The most obvious problem: denying that there is a uniform, intuitive moral code (what seems wrong on the surface, as you put it, or intuitively as we put it in phil) that all of us adhere to does not amount to moral skepticism. For example, one could be a strict moral absolutist and simply believe that elements of society's intuitive moral code are wrong. One could be a relativist without being a skeptic (I think relativism is absurd but it isn't indefensible). A utilitarian is in fact REQUIRED to embrace the idea that stealing is moral if it can be shown that it will produce greater happiness than not stealing. One can disagree with intuitive moral claims and still accept ANY moral theory out there. So you're absolutely wrong there. Saying, "I think there are circumstances where stealing is morally permissible" is COMPLETELY different from saying "I don't believe morality exists beyond our superficial use of it in society".

Secondly, there are hundreds of examples where, to take even a stronger than intuitive position, something is prima facie wrong, and circumstances permit its rightness. Self-defense killing is a good example. It's certainly debatable whether it would be right to go back in a time machine and murder Adolf Hitler or Osama Bin Laden if one had the chance, but to argue that murder might be permissible in that case is not even extremist, it's a perfectly defensible position. It sure doesn't denote a claim that no morality exists at all!

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, there IS no definition of morality. I subscribe to an objectivist perspective, but it doesn't provide any particularly useful set of guidelines (I'm confident there exists a set of objective moral guidelines but couldn't tell you what they all are or how many there are), so my morality isn't defined and I've studied ethics for four years. I seriously, seriously doubt you could define morality satisfactorily so you're in no position to go criticizing others' definitions. But feel free to prove me wrong, man: give me a fundamental principle that answers the question, "How ought we to act?"
 
If it feels right to you, buy it. If it doesn't don't.

Stealing is generally wrong in the community, yet it is done everyday. Just go by what your concience tells you, nothing more, nothing less. In the end other peoples answers to your questioning will not sway the judgment that you have already made in your mind.

Simple Answer to a Simple Question.
 
Companies don't just "write it off" and everything is alright. They make estimates on what will be stolen, but they don't get that money back. You're still stealing from a company regardless of their approach to shoplifting. Companies are owned by individuals. Their profits are due to these owners. When you steal from a company, you are stealing from individuals. It makes no difference if you're stealing from an individual, a company owned by an individual, a company owned by two inviduals or a large corporation owned by hundreds of individuals. You are still stealing from people. There's no autonomous corporate machine out there dolling out products and reaping profits. This is coming from an "economist".

 
you guys dont realize you cant rationalize stealing cuz you think its bad. wat determines that walmarts bad? you are being the jurer here it doesnt work. this isnt a rationalized argument that its moral to steal form walmart cuz you dont like the place. thats all im saying here.
 
i think you have to put yourself into the shoes of the person who has had something stolen...i know i have had stuff stolen...and it sucked...then think about someone else using your stolen shit...or better yet them selling your shit that they stole and making money off of something you had paid for....if you have purchased something without knowing it was stolen...thats a different story....yup yup
 
stealing from a store no matter which one is very good either...the money has to come from somewhere...higher prices, lower wages,....ps i hate walmart as well
 
Maximumsushi is right on the money. When you take away form profits, you take away from money the owners could have potentially had. You don't think a stock's value magically comes from thin air do you?
 
I can tell you exactly "how ought we to act." Morals are derived from principles in a society that are regarded as commonly acceptable behavior. Thus you "ought" to act in a manner that is most beneficial to society. Stealing in the context that we have been discussing is counter productive and as a result is detrimental to society. That is why it is immoral and wrong.

Yes, there are varying degrees of morality, but that doesn't mean that something that is less immoral compared to something else somehow makes it moral.

Killing in self defense is also an asinine comparison to shoplifting form Wal-Mart. You are defending yourself because the alternative is severe bodily harm. No one is forcing you to gank a DVD at Wal-Mart simply because you don't like them. The better comparison would be the "steal for survival" that was mentioned on the last page. Shoplifting in the thread's case is not anywhere close to the high ground. That is why it is wrong to rationalize it to make yourself feel like it’s the "right" thing.

That is a response to both twintipteles and JD.
 
Congratulations, you just made a moral claim: "we ought not to do what is detrimental to society". Now let's examine that claim. Why ought we not do this? Is societal unity an intrinsic good to be sought? Arguably... but probably not. Don't we value societal unity for other underlying reasons? Promoting the happiness and wellbeing of the poeple, for example? For the sake of argument, let's say "No, societal unity is a good in and of itself, not a means to some other end." Now, let's take the idea of societal unity to its logical extreme and see if we can come up with a reductio. Imagine a thoroughly unified society, say, the society in Huxley's Brave New World. Imagine that this society had no dissidents. Would that really be preferable to a somewhat disjointed society (say, the one we have now, with its occasional shoplifting and theft), would you really want to live there? Probably not... that's why we call it a dystopia. It's also patently undemocratic, since dissent is hugely important to democratic government. Take another example: is support of a thoroughly unified Nazi German state preferable to supporting a state that allows for some disunity? These are intended to be extreme counterexamples that your basic principle will allow. I don't think societal unity is the primary good we should be after in establishing morality. Fortunately, every relevant philosopher I've ever heard of agrees with me.

You might say, "hey, I never said UNITY was important. I had in mind another conception of the words, "good for society". Well, what conception? The prospering of society? Surely economic gain can't be an operating fundamental principle; economic gain is prima facie an instrumental good, not an inherent one; we want economic gain to improve the quality of our lives, to increase our collective happiness. Well, what about the happiness of people in society? Now you're into utilitarianism, which has its own problems... do we tally the happiness of everyone up somehow (in which case it seems that making babies is moral in so far as it contributes a new source of happiness, which is a very odd statement)? Or do we rather take the average happiness of everyone, in which case, wouldn't it help to just euthanize all the unhappy people, starting with, say, the homeless?

If you're arguing that morality is derived from "principles in a society that are regarded as commonly acceptable behaviour", to use your exact words, you're a relativist. You're effectively saying that "whatever a society agrees should be moral, is moral for that society". This exposes you to another nazi counterexample: their society determined that the execution of Jews was moral. Should that imply that this practice was, for them, a morally justifiable one? Most would say no. Your statements do not allow for ANY moral criticism of other societies, and as a result may be inherently self-defeating because as I've already said, it's extremely difficult to define a society; the boundaries are obviously vague. What's to stop me from going into the bush with five hundred followers to form a society where human sacrifice is moral? How about fifty followers? How about three? Relativism of the kind you imply reduces to individualism (whatever I think is moral for me, is moral for me), which is, by the way, the closest theory to skepticism. I believe the word that best applies to this development of your argument, therefore, is "oops".

(PS relativism also completely negates the possibility of moral progress since we can't judge other societies in different time periods any more than in different geographical regions, so thanks for relegating us to the dark ages there Quinny.)

PS: The comparison was not asinine because it's not a comparison. It's a thought experiment. A implies B which implies C, so what do we think about C? That's how philosophy works.
 
I know that was a long post so I'll draw out of it the important items for response.

In order to continue this argument on your side, the ball is now in your court to a) answer the question I just quoted above, and b) answer charges of relativism inherent to your original statements.
 
Well, what is "good" for a society that I am referring to is more of a large encompassing concept. The long term goal of any healthy society should be to promote all of the things you mentioned, and then some. That includes things like unity, prosperity, fairness, happiness, and freedom. Moral relativism does not completely negate the possibility of moral progress. If it did, it would also suffice to say that everything works in a vacuum and that different cultures of people do not borrow elements from each other. That is unless the degree of relativism is absolute, which culture and history seem to demonstrate the contrary. Though it seems a bit vague, the idea of what exactly constitutes the "society" should be a standard held to the collective human race.

For the Nazi example, Hiter had is own little authoritarian dream world devoid of any humans that were too different from the "ideal" group. In his mind, that ideal group would be so perfect that there would not be as many of the problems the humans normally face. Thats about the nicest way you can dress up what he thought. However, that Nazi utopia is atrociously unbalanced. The theory that you can rationalize the massacre of a large group of people "for the greater good" does not work, because it is inherently unfair and puts part of the group (society) at a disadvantage. It is also completely naive to think the reaching a perfect society can accomplished by massive exploitation, whether it be ethic cleansing or a forced diaspora. That idea can also be applied to the ideas of controlled birth or euthanasia. It causes inter-generational social and cultural trauma, which is not good for society (the human race).

Though the reality of the world is that there must be compromises, it just simply isn't possible to "have your cake and eat to too", so to speak. There is no way to achieve perfect happiness, true freedom, or complete fairness. Thats how people can come to the rationalization of things like a holocaust as the "right" thing to do, because they see the potential result as a better outcome than the beginning situation, in which case the action would not matter. Morals should be in the interest of the collective whole whilst minimizing adverse conditions to achieve more unified, prosperous, happy (etc) society (human kind).

Admittedly, I haven't specifically studied morals and ethics in several years so it's a bit distant in my head. Lots of stuff I haven't thought about for a while.
 
id punch the kid in the face i went to boarding school last year and when peoples shit get stolen it is so fucking gay stealing from a store is one thing but stealing a kids camera is super beat
 
serisouly just go for it u have nothing to lose really, odds are if he gets caught he gets caught before he actually gives it to u, its not like a dood doesnt put food on the table that night if a camera gets stolen from his department that day
 
I agree.

So what about the disadvantaged third world peoples that produce walmart's goods at slave labor wages, while the factories spew toxins freely into the air that belongs to society as a whole? What about the millions of mom and pop small businesses that superstores like walmart have driven out of business?

Who's to say that walmart's existence is beneficial to society? It seems to me like it has some pretty major negative effects.

I doubt you disagreed with the story of robin hood on the premise that stealing is inherently wrong and immoral.

Nothing is concrete and there are unlimited forms of thievery, you can't simply condemn an obvious form of it without examining our economic system as a whole.
 
I never once said I liked Wal-Mart. In fact, I fucking hate them. I just hate them for different reasons. Did you know they encourage their low wage full timers to take out welfare checks? That company is fucking scum (and this is coming someone who specializes in business management). The only positive thing of value they have to offer is the superb way they manage their revolutionary supply chain. What I do not believe in is that stealing from them is a sound form of a moral protest. Simply ignoring and avoiding them suffices. I haven't set foot in one of those trashy dumps in over two years.
 
lets just say that you stole my ipod. and then i find out that you sold my ipod to somone,...call him john. now john knew very well that the ipod in question was stolen...and i find this out...that john knew all along that it was hot...

i would fucking kick the shit out of john...get my ipod back...listen to music on the way to yourhouse to then kick your ass.

 
The whole: I steal from a store, or from a person is just stupid. Its stealing, why would the action change from bad to good if the target changed. Thats what ppl get wrong now. You kill for revenge, its alright, but if you kill for fun, then you're goin' for death penalty, murder is murder, stealing is stealing.
 
haha. you just contradicted yourself. you just said that murder is good if its for revenge, so why would you say murder is murder and stealing is stealing. what you said is like saying stealing is fine if you hate the guy you stole from.
 
By buying stolen goods your support theft. But think about. The reason prices are so high for so many things is because they have to spend a shitlod of money replacing items that were shoplifted or entire truckloads of products that were stolen. They also have to spend a shitload of money to pay for security cameras, security guards, lawyers (to prosecute theives), those things at the door that beep, etc. If no one stole, everything would be sold at a lower price. So you have to ask yourself, do I want to make the world a better place to live, or do I wanna be a douchebag and fuck over myself and everyone else.

 
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