most of us would steal a million from a big multinational if we knew we'd get away with it

[allmyown]

I would. I would also steal from some individuals, like Sunak, or other multimillionaires.

No. Thou shalt not steal.

I wouldn't. If I did, I'd end up not being able to spend it on myself or my family as it would be 'tainted'
If you mean "stealing" in a more wink wink nudge nudge way like some insider trading tips then yeah, I'd do that.

I wouldn't steal it.

If it got paid into my bank account by mistake (for instance) and I knew nobody would ever find out, then it would be tempting!!!

And the rest.

I absolutely would given the criteria in the OP. And I wouldn’t feel guilty at all.

I would

Love this.

Really puts it into perspective.

Robin Hood 2024 Reboot.

Yes! I love this.

There are 2 problems with this
a) Slippery slope - as PP said completely justifies poorer country people stealing from those in richer countries
b) 'Giving to charity' bwahaha a lie people tell to absolve themselves of guilt. Not only will you get the charity into trouble for potentially money laundering... But if you want to have a nice life, never work etc there won't be much change out of a million needing investment.

If none of the employees would suffer for it, then probably. It would see me out for the rest of my life.

If we talked about pinching it from billionaires who'd never know it was gone, it'd depend who. Trump, Zuckerberg, Musk et al - hell yeah. Jo Rowling, absolutely not.

Also the premise of the OP is 'most' of us would.
I don't think that's true.
If I wanted to be pedantic the definition of 'steal' involves 'taking' without permission.
I don't think being given it, and keeping quiet properly meets this definition.

As someone who spent over 20 years working for two FTSE Top 30 multinational companies in their risk management departments, their financial controls are very tight and you’d be amazed at some of the tactics they use to identify fraud and other inappropriate activities. Even if you were able to appropriate the money, an incident like that would definitely be investigated.

There is no such thing as a victimless crime either, which means the company could look to recoup the loss by raising prices or, more likely, determine that the process control failure that allowed you to steal the money could be prevented through increased automation and adoption of digital technology and AI at a more rapid pace, likely resulting in a load of obsolete roles and people being made redundant.

I wouldn’t but that is because I’m an honest person.

Having worked for what I have (which is not 10s of thousands, let alone millions) there is no way I'd steal money from anyone. Money is too hard to come by.

With the level of sophisticated supply chain and logistics such companies would have in place, they’d know how many rings went on to the truck and would spot the discrepancy.

So whilst you’re enjoying your ill gotten gains, the poor driver of that transport vehicle probably ends up getting sacked and prosecuted for theft.

Oh I would if I knew they had got their money from being bastards or were using their wealth to make the world a worse place.
For example Michelle Mone, Boris Johnson, Putin, Farage, etc

I'd probably steal a lesser amount but a million seems a bit risqué. I'd always be paranoid that I'd get found out

Not me, I feel guilty just calling in sick for work

Absolutely I would.

You are right but I love the level of thought and planning that went into this answer. Cycling alongside a diamond ring lorry with trousers hopefully turned up 😁 also lest we forget the original question was would you steal from a zillionaire if you could guarantee you would never get caught!! So blowing your cover is not part of the question.

Edit: we could also all do an orchestrated mumsnet "I'm Sparticus" to save the hypothetical lorry driver.

considering risk management etc how in gods name did some banks etc over leverage themselves and cause the 2008 financial crisis ?

i guess pay the drive on the side or someone "drops" a bag near him then it could be said he finds a bag of money etc

as much as id want the money for bills, i guess id rather be poor and honest

Because they allowed their strategy to be driven too heavily from risk models that had been designed based on the performance data for the financial markets that had been “a bull market” since the mid/late 90s. These models had a huge blind spot as they neglected to consider the black swan events - those “highly unlikely” but catastrophic scenarios, such as the US housing and mortgage market stopping growing and mortgage defaults going through the roof.

Then you’ve got the crazy financial instruments they came up with to make more money (CDOs, CDOs squared etc) that made the global market so complicated and interconnected.

I’d recommend watching The Big Short- a great film based on a Michael Lewis book of the same name that explains it really well.

already been there with big short the film not the book and the film margin call too,
very much appricated for your analysis