A moral question for you all

[WhaleSharkBootySweat]

Imagine you go into a really nice small business selling either homewares or food. You pick something up that you really like, but it's the end of the month and you can't really afford it. What is the main reason that stops you from stealing it?

A.) Fear of getting caught, punished, criminal record, shame, losing your job
B.) Sympathy for the small business owner, not wanting them to lose money

Or something else.
For me it's massively more B but then I don't steal from chain stores, so I guess A must come into it then?
I just wonder where these moral decisions we make daily come from. Is it fear of repercussions or genuine moral compass? Why do a third of shoppers steal from self checkouts but wouldn't steal from a cashier at the till?
I think about the idea that if there wasn't law and order, then we would all steal and murder, but I genuinely believe that most of us wouldn't? I mean I've never felt compelled to, but why is that? Empathy?

Yes this confuses me too. I don’t base my actions on some random internal feeling that I “just know”, nor (entirely) on what the law or society tells me - the important thing to me is potential or actual harm or benefit to others. So is that internal or external?

In an extreme example of utilitarianism I’ve just remembered that old thought experiment: there’s a burning building, your own child(ren) (real or imagined) is/are through one door, there are x number through the other door. You get to go through one door and save whoever’s on the other side but you can only choose one. How many children would x have to be before you would choose that door?

I remember asking it on a forum once before and the vast majority of people said “no number is big enough, I’d always save my own child” (which is totally understandable) but couldn’t see that that may be what they would do, but it wasn’t morally right - no one said “I’d choose my own child but I’d feel terrible about it”, it was just a total no-brainer, like there was nothing even to debate and nothing to think about. To me it’s interesting how our loyalty to our families actually makes us technically immoral - sacrificing thousands of children to save one can’t possibly ever be “right”, can it…?

One example that always baffles me is all the stories I see about kids being sent home from school or put in isolation because they have bows on their socks or hair 1mm too short and all the comments go “quite right, rules are rules!”. If you question someone about how the bows on the socks actually impact anyone’s learning or behaviour or experience of school, they just say “it doesn’t matter, rules are rules”. I just can’t get my head around this (but apparently I am in a tiny minority!).

I'm not sure the socks example has anything much to do with right and wrong tbh. Obviously it's not morally wrong to have bows on your socks. Organisations have some rules which have nothing to do with moral rectitude and more to do with image and marketing. By all means send your child to school in socks with bows and feel righteous in encouraging them to flout a (silly and unnecessary) rule, but if your child doesn't obey the rules of the school to which you chose to send them, the school is within its rights to issue sanctions.

Rules are indeed rules, and rules should be followed. The important thing is to only make good, relevant rules in the first place. Fwiw I'm a teacher and I am not in favour of school uniform at all, never mind daft sock rules.

I think we would all like to think we are B. But a lot of people are A. I would not like to be around a lot of As.

This.

I’m not a thief full stop.

That's evolution for you! Evolution rewards the lifeforms that do best at preserving their own genes in the next generation.

Similarly, evolution doesn't give a shit about the suffering of the runt of the litter, or the gazelle that can't run as fast as its mates.

Evolution (as a system) isn't immoral, but I'd say its amoral? Right or wrong, or quantities of suffering simply aren't relevant.

Rules areindeed rules, and rules should be followed.

Said every Nazi concentration camp guard.

The important thing is to only make good, relevant rules in the first place.

But this is impossible to ensure.

No, it’s not a moral issue, I agree - I drew the analogy because lots of people here seem to be saying that they would never steal simply because they’ve always been told not to steal, as if the impact on others wasn’t even a factor. To me this is the same sort of thinking that leads people to say “yes children absolutely should be punished for wearing the wrong socks, how dare they” rather than “wow, what a stupid rule”.

(FWIW I am also a teacher and I get round this as a teacher by not bothering to tell kids off if they flout minor uniform rules (this is 99% because I don’t actually notice) and as a parent by saying “yes that is a really stupid rule; let’s go with it because we want you in the classroom but we know it’s ridiculous”. Like you, though, I don’t like uniforms in general.)

I hear what you are saying but I think you are being simplistic assuming people are unthinkingly doing one thing or another. It isn’t as simple as that. By learning one thing either by example, we are also learning what is and what is not acceptable behaviour. We are influenced by our communities and the people we are surrounded by, by the examples they set and their expectations. We often hear about ‘the wrong crowd’ and ‘bad influences’.

Covid is a poor example to bring up because it was primarily driven by fear and lack of knowledge of losing elderly people. My thoughts are that the same elderly would population would not have shown the same restriction towards eg children if they had been the people at risk. At the same time I could not get my head around people openly saying they were catching flights knowingly having covid symptoms and positive tests. That sort of thing makes me think there are two different species of human beings.

I'm not sure the socks example has anything much to do with right and wrong tbh. Obviously it's not morally wrong to have bows on your socks. Organisations have some rules which have nothing to do with moral rectitude and more to do with image and marketing. By all means send your child to school in socks with bows and feel righteous in encouraging them to flout a (silly and unnecessary) rule, but if your child doesn't obey the rules of the school to which you chose to send them, the school is within its rights to issue sanctions.

I agree with this.
Challenging rules is important. However sending your child to a school means you are accepting their rules and behavioural code. If there are rules eg that your child shouldn’t have a phone in school, and you disagree with this rule, then it’s up to you to find a school that aligns with your way of thinking.

I wouldn't say it was morally wrong to steal from a huge business, especially if they dodge tax. A lot of people do, hence why they invest in security.

Neither A nor B, just a knowledge that it's morally wrong. If I did it once I could do it again and I don't want to get in to the habit of stealing! It's a line that shouldn't be crossed on my mind.

But if people steal from large companies, this will inevitably result in higher prices for honest customers etc.

Stealing has consequences.

Even though the cost of the security and cost of stolen products ends up simply eing passed on to other consumers? It's never the shareholders that take the hit.

I think it’s an interesting question, and of course people think things are right or wrong because of social conditioning, nothing just inherently IS right or wrong. Humans have invented and attached morals to behaviour. I saw a tweet once that said something like “personally I think cannibalism should be legal as long as everyone involved has signed the right paperwork” and it was a joke but I thought, yeah I can kind of see the sense in that.

Surprised at how many people seemingly never mull these things over. In answer to your question for me personally it’s more A, but with a large helping of B if it was a small indie business. There are actually some crimes I would have committed if I knew I wouldn’t get caught or face any consequences. Not major ones. But yes, it’s the consequences that deter me. Conversely though I think tax evasion and the general existence of billionaires is far more immoral than pinching something from a shop.

Phones in school actually impact learning and behaviour, though, so that’s quite different - a lot of uniform rules are truly arbitrary. My point was only that I am really surprised by how many people think a child missing days of school is an entirely fitting consequence for an action that affects literally no-one. Having a phone in school has the potential to harm that child’s learning; there is no potential for harm whatsoever in having bows on your socks, so you’d think more people - even if they eventually went along with the rule for a quiet life - would query the emphasis put on it.

The large businesses will charge as much as they can get away with, regardless of their outgoings. We have seen this in recent times where supermarkets are touting basic food at a rate far higher than inflation requires

It's never the shareholders that take the hit.

Even if it was, that'd still be wrong. Do you think it's ok to nick a bit of someone else's pension or raid their bank account?

Here’s a real example that happened to me about 2 months ago. I made a big order from our Target online. It didn’t come but I got a text from the shopper saying it had been delivered and a photo that showed bags outside someone else’s house. Naturally I tried texting the shopper back, no answer for an hour so I went online to do a refund due to delivery at wrong address.

Ok, another hour later, the shopper came with my stuff and explained she sent the wrong photo to me etc, why she didn’t text me I don’t know. She said she called the middleman delivery service but they apparently didn’t help her. So. I ended up getting my delivery. I called Target and said I did in fact finally get my delivery and explained I had done the refund online before I knew I’d be getting my stuff so I wanted to pay for my groceries (nonperishable), over the phone if need be.

She spoke to her manager and came back and said not to worry about it, and I said I insist, and she said they couldn’t do anything about it even if they wanted to which I didn’t understand, but oh well, I felt morally superior that day 😂 plus I had stuff that was a significant amount of money, for free.

So I basked in a self righteous feeling mainly stemming from a fully stocked pantry that required nothing from my bank account or moral sacrifice. So should I have even called and told them of the debacle or not? I think I should have. But some of you think if it’s a big company then no.

@WhaleSharkBootySweat are you for real? It's just wrong on every level and any decent person knows that... the fact that you have to make a decision on why not to steal from a small business implies you don't have a moral compass unfortunately... 'Not stealing' shouldn't be a decision / choice as even a small child knows the difference between right and wrong...

The large company is choosing to make honest customers take those consequences though. They could instead choose to stand the loss and make a little less profit.
Raising the price of items we can neither source for ourselves or do without, like food, for blameless people, in order that wealthy people don't lose out on even more wealth, is imo more morally dubious than stealing a jar of coffee or a bag of nappies. While both are wrong, the burden of morality seems only to lie with the shoplifter.

No I don't, but the PP I was responding to seems to think it would be okay if the company (I.e. the shareholders) were the ones feeling the loss.

C) it's just wrong, respect for other people and their property

This - and how odd that you didn't include this one, OP

As for "why" it's wrong, whatever-it-is belongs to someone else and the deal is that it can be mine but only if I pay for it ... so I'll either do exactly that or go without

Sigh. Is it just me or is it blindingly obvious that OP a) does not actually walk around thinking about stealing stuff and need us to talk her out of it and b) did not include option c (you just wouldn’t even think about stealing it, which is what 99.9% of us would say) because that isn’t conducive to the discussion?

Tax evasion is wrong to me too, but a lot of people are relaxed about it when it's done by a small business or a sole trader, compared to a larger company (who ironically are much less likely to evade taxes as they are more heavily audited / regulated etc).