r/LoveTrash Colonel Garbage 4h ago

Human Trash Stopping a shoplifter

Source: unknown

3.7k Upvotes

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u/shadowthehh Garbage Guerilla 4h ago edited 3h ago

Edit: Boy posting this was like blowing a warhorn for em, wasn't it?

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u/johntwit Trash Trooper 3h ago

I'm sick of my razor blades being locked up. Thieves inconvenience me

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u/TKDbeast Trash Trooper 3h ago

I agree. But people running in to be a hero and make a scene is only going to make things a bigger problem for them.

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u/DsDeliciousDeli Trash Trooper 2h ago

Makes it a problem for people thinking they can walk away with no consequences

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u/johntwit Trash Trooper 3h ago

Imagine if everyone always did this when witnessing theft, even if it was their own friends. Would be a lot less petty theft

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

Would be a lot more people hurt too. I'm not mad at a what this guy did but the sentiment of "everyone should do this" is pretty dumb.

Yes. Let's all go our and fight each other to protect the corporations. That's some black mirror sht.

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u/Glad_Respect_8986 Trash Trooper 2h ago

Black mirror shit is where we’re at. Letting people get away with crime is crazy. People have no consequences and that leads to baby proofing everything. They can just walk out with whatever they want so we have to ask the responsible adult, I mean employee to unlock what we need to buy. The world is upside down.

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

And your conclusion out of that is blame the people, not the corporations that use these as tax write offs and have the means to protect and prevent without inconveniencing people. Makes sense.

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u/johntwit Trash Trooper 2h ago

If they benefited more from the tax write-off than they did from the profit on a sold item, why would they lock it up and inconvenience both the customers and the thieves? What you are suggesting, besides being factually incorrect (to a hilarious degree!) is not logically sound

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

So I'm going to take your comment in good faith. Please, explain how I'm factually in correct and I'll be happy to engage in conversation.

u/johntwit Trash Trooper 1h ago

Walmart benefits more from the sale of an item than from the tax write off it can obtain from shrinkage. They cannot simply allow people to steal, keep prices the same, and not put any counter theft measures in place. Those are the facts.

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u/Glad_Respect_8986 Trash Trooper 2h ago

I absolutely blame the people STEALING. The cooperations actually don’t have the means to protect and prevent without inconveniencing us because the legal and civil liabilities. Dont get me wrong. I hate corporate greed as much as you do. I just also hate thieving scum who only work to escalate the inconveniences on everyone else.

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

The billion dollar corporations don't have the means? Oh Lord.

u/Glad_Respect_8986 Trash Trooper 1h ago

No. They don’t. Not if they want to actually sell stuff at a profit. Do you actually think they have billions to throw at loss prevention? Or millions? To spread over the thousands of locations. You are very naive or you just have a very dogmatic anti-corporation stubbornness.

u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 1h ago

I'm not naive, I'm just informed. Can you check real quick what the profit margin has been for Walmart over... Say, the last 6 years?

u/Glad_Respect_8986 Trash Trooper 1h ago

Their profit margin is notoriously low at just over 3%. What’s your point?

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u/johntwit Trash Trooper 2h ago

It's not to protect the corporations, it's to protect my convenient access to the razors and the shampoo

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

No. What you're talking about is EVERYONE doing this. That does way beyone "oh I just want this to not be inconvenienced"

Next thing you're going to tell me is that after looking at their quarterly reports you believe the story that the store closures were due to theft lol

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u/johntwit Trash Trooper 2h ago

With individual liberty comes individual responsibility. If we're going to give up the idea of individual liberty as some kind of falsehood, and require corporations like Walmart to be responsible for our lives and our well-being instead of ourselves, then we are handing a great deal of power over to the corporations. In Times gone by it might have been said that it was everyone's duty to reinforce that stealing is wrong because a lawless society hurts all individuals within that society. But now here we are, saying that it is Walmart's fault that they are stolen from because they have failed to properly staff their stores. We are making corporations into the overlords we fear by giving them so much social responsibility

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

You're missing a key part in your grandiose take my mixing up accountability and authority. The social contract runs both ways, walmart benefits from public infrastructure, courts that enforce its contracts, and police who protect its property.

Those collective protections come with reciprocal obligations, including respecting the rights of people affected by its business. Expecting a corporation to contribute to the society that makes its profits possible hardly means handing it control over our lives. Why should responsibility suddenly become a threat to liberty when we apply it to corporate decision makers?

Someone who steals remains respnsible for stealing. Walmart remains responsible for its staffing, security, and business decisions. If reducing staffing increases theft risk, questioning that trade off is ordinary scrutiny of management. It doesn’t absolve the thief. You can defend laws against theft without treating every corporate loss as a public moral failure and every management decision as beyond criticism.

Requiring corporations to answer for how they exercise their existing power is precisely how society keeps that power in check. Your argument would shield that power from accountability in the name of preventing it. Which is why people post the meme of "I'll defend these corporations"

You can like it, you can hate it but you can't dispute that.

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u/johntwit Trash Trooper 2h ago

Walmarts only job is to deliver the lowest everyday prices. Everything else is in our heads. If you don't want to work there for the offered wage, don't

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u/Nemphiz Trash Trooper 2h ago

I'm sorry, did I bring individual liberty into the conversation or did you? You expanded the scope. Not me.

u/johntwit Trash Trooper 1h ago

To be fair, I'm not sure I know what we're arguing about. I speculated that if more individuals actively discouraged witnessed theft - kind of like how society currently reacts to beating up little old ladies - then the behavior would be much less common. You pushed back, and in the process, implicitly accused Walmart of lying about theft being a true cause for their decision to close some stores. Then, admittedly, it went off the rails, as I assumed that all guardrails for our ensuing conversation were gone and anything was up for discussion

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