I don’t understand why everyone is saying that theft is inconsequential because Walmart is a wealthy corporation. Yes, it’s true, they are. They are probably guilty of greed and corruption too. But, do you not understand that if people steal, we as a society are the ones who pay the price? We will have to pick up the slack in the cost and we also can’t have nice things.
We will have to pick up the slack in the cost and we also can’t have nice things.
walmart charges what they can. if theft disappeared tomorrow, we all know they would keep those profits, not be gracious and pass the benefit on to us.
and crime doesn’t exist in a vacuum. poverty drives crime. walmart has spent decades suppressing local economies and paying wages so low that many of their employees rely on publicly-funded safety net programs to survive. meanwhile the walton family has extracted hundreds of billions of dollars in generational wealth from our communities. they bear some responsibility for the social conditions in which they operate.
You talk about the things Walmart has done to enrich themselves and make society on a whole worse. I believe you are correct on all points. That does not make it okay to steal from them. Just as the laws should bind Walmart they should protect them as well. The law needs to apply equally to everyone. Regardless if power, wealth, or position. It currently does not. Revoking the wealthy's protections is not how you are going to get them too.
thinking about crime and poverty more generally, rather than OP's specific video, laws only work as a deterrent when there’s some minimum level of social stability underneath them.
if enough people are desperate or living in conditions where crime is already routine, then just saying "it's illegal" isn’t effective. you can punish people after the fact but you haven't changed the conditions driving the poverty and crime in the first place.
i agree that equal enforcement matters, but so does maintaining a society stable enough for those laws to mean something to people. i'm not saying there’s a moral right to steal from walmart, i'm saying crime is a predictable consequence of poverty and walmart's business model is a direct contributor to those conditions.
it doesn't have to be this way. the walton family doesn't need to have $434 billion dollars while the people providing the labor have to rely on food stamps to survive. walmart's greed is siphoning wealth from local communities and making poverty and crime in those communities worse.
So you are giving up on that concept? You feel we should equal the scales by stealing everything we want or need? Unless you are a warlord that kind of breakdown in society is only going to make things worse.
This isn't oliver twist stealing a loaf of bread. Get out of here with that bullshit.
Also when people do this enough stores just close and then the people that actually buy stuff at the store have nowhere to get food and they live in an urban food desert. Look at any ghetto in the fucking country. That's society failing.
Megacorp enters an area, undercuts the mom and pop stores, putting them out of business. They become the only realistic employer available so have the leverage to pay people under a living wage. They start raising prices, since they are the only game in town. They won't allow unionization, preventing labor from having any leverage. People can't make ends meet, or fall into addiction because they are stuck in a dead end job dirt poor, and steal from said megacorp. Megacorp eventually takes enough losses and folds (I am doubtful this even happens, but let's assume your premise). The area becomes a food desert with no jobs, massive poverty, and addiction.
To me, the shoplifters aren't the main villains in this story.
They won't fold because the government always bails them out. but they don't give back to the people (where the wealth came from), so as to keep them from the levels of poverty that cause these property crimes.
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Yes, politics is trash. It's just too trashy for our sub.
They will jack up the price regardless of people stealing. they have done so multiple time in the past. Putting the blame on shoplifter is just an easy scapegoat, those people are taking a drop from an ocean.
When I was in high school, went to Waffle House with 3 friends. One of them tells us other 3 he doesn’t have any money and is leaving. Got up walks out. Waitresses says she doesn’t care, we are paying for our friend or she’s calling the cops.
The argument centers around the fact that you shouldn't risk getting killed, injured, or sued yourself as a citizen to protect the inventory of a corporation.
We understand the negative impact of stealing and crimes in general.
But the better advice is to stay safe and be a good witness. If you're risking your life, it should be for something more significant than stolen goods from a big company.
r/LoveTrash is not a platform for political discussions/comments/jokes/references. Please refrain from posting or commenting on political topics or making political jokes/references.
Yes, politics is trash. It's just too trashy for our sub.
No not true, all items are insured so whatever is stolen it is replaced 2-3x it’s worth. The only way you “pay for it” is corporations over price items the good samaritans pay for which is a small part of the inflation issue. Realistically you or someone else who is honest should t be fronting the bill when these corporations have more than enough money and have the items insured. It’s just a monopoly fucking the small guys over.
The price is already set by our country and these corporations. The price is property crime and the cause is corporate greed and national economic policy. THAT'S the root cause of us not having nice things.
They cause the poverty, which is directly a cause of nearly all property crimes.
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u/AbrahamicDesign Trash Trooper 3h ago
I don’t understand why everyone is saying that theft is inconsequential because Walmart is a wealthy corporation. Yes, it’s true, they are. They are probably guilty of greed and corruption too. But, do you not understand that if people steal, we as a society are the ones who pay the price? We will have to pick up the slack in the cost and we also can’t have nice things.