Bitcoin Forum

I have been all over the world and have found that there are some cultures that feel that stealing is perfectly fine.

The solution to theft in most of the world is to discourage it through shame and punishment. But some parts of the world do not really see it as wrong. There is no point in shaming and while it may be technically against the law, it is not really enforced because it's "not that bad".

The thing I notice in these cultures is that every individual takes measures into their own hands to protect their goods and property. They have bars on the windows, razor wire fences, etc. (even the poorest homes are barred up). There is usually someone in the more populated areas when you park your car who watches your car for you (upon receiving payment), etc.

Most people in the west do not need to deal with this and are perhaps lucky in living in a place where theft is not as common.

But the countries where theft is common, people are better at preventing theft. I can see why someone from one of these countries going to the US would think "they just let you walk into the grocery store and take food off of the shelves by yourself...no guards at the door or anything", "people leave their homes unprotected with just windows that can be broken", "look, a perfectly good car with so many parts for the taking unprotected".

I see a few solutions...everyone evolves protection of their own property (either paying for a service or taking measures into your own hands every day of your life). Or it becomes exclusionary based where thieves are not allowed in a certain area and that area restricts newcomers allowing those in the protected area to live without too much worry about their property.

I'm not sure which is the better solution. The first solution sucks needing to worry about thieves every day, the second solution makes people soft and sort of prisoners of their location.

Glad to see you are back and active here again. Regarding your topic, the Western world is a high trust level society. What you are describing is a low trust level society. This is largely a cultural issue, so the solutions are more systemic and institutional than individual fixes. In my opinion a lot of it has to do with corruption in government and law enforcement. If the law doesn't apply to those in power, people have no respect for the rule of law any longer because it is only imposed on them and not used to protect them. It is like playing a game where everyone is cheating. The honest player always loses and that mentality is difficult to reverse. Of course there are ways such as personally imposing harsh penalties to send a message, but most people don't have the stomach for that.

This conundrum is one of the main reasons I am very much in support of gun ownership in the US, because even in low trust areas such as cities, crooks know they are rolling the dice and it is only a matter of time before they catch a bullet. This is a very effective deterrent that people often completely ignore when advocating for gun bans/restrictions. People don't appreciate how nice it is to live in a high trust society and how easily that can break down when it is not maintained. Even harder is rebuilding a high trust society from a low trust one once it is lost.

At first most people with common sense (probably educated too) would say this is nonsense because stealing is impossible to be okay. But few years ago when I was in Qatar, I met a Tamil guy from Sri Lanka. I can say this guy got good manners and hospitable. He is careful not to offend you and is respectful. He graduated college too with a degree in finance. He is also very religious (prays every 3 hours).

One time we had a conversation about economy and business in our own country. He told me that in their rural place, no business owned by outsiders last long. Either their locals will do something like stealing, burning, sabotage and other unlawful activities. I was shocked he told me that stealing on rich people is okay. He said that if rich people won't help the poor then stealing to them is okay. He feels that rich people have mandatory responsibilities to poor people and communities. And that if a rich man is not allowing to lend money or food to a poor man then the latter should just steal it or even kill him for being selfish.

Different places and cultures with different beliefs and teachings. The wrong teachings and beliefs molded from these kind of people needs to be changed but it won't be easy.       

I'd have to agree with all of this, mostly the first portion at least.

In America we do live in a VERY high trust society. People are more or less trusted to be doing the right things at most times. Now if that is due to people just being trusting in the states, or if they're just scared of the embarassement and consequences, that's another thing.

But yeah -- other cultures accept this a little differently. Maybe this could be a society/country/culture that feels as if they're owed what they're stealing, or that they deserve it or something along those lines.

Well first they have a reason why they steal if its for good use well it can be okay but if its for bad intention like greed in money but if you do it for your family or any valid reasons then it is okay.

There are many beliefs that every country and people have if they believe that it's okay well I respect it but they need to face and know that every country have a Law in stealing and they have to face the consequence if they got caught.

You were warned about your low quality posting. I would take it seriously because you are not only at risk of losing your signature pay but being banned entirely. Put in a little more effort than these empty self evident one liners. You seem capable, just put in the effort and stop treating this forum like your personal tool for profit while contributing absolutely nothing to it and filling it with this nonsense.

No. This is exactly what we're talking about here.

There is never a good reason to steal from another person -- it doesn't matter if the rich or the poor or doing it it doesn't make it okay or better in anyway. If we are to say that  some people get a [pass for stealing while others do not, we've allowed for this sort of idea to spread.

@Elwar

In the countries and cultures that are nonchalant about theft, are the penalties the same? For example in the US retail theft is pretty much a guaranteed misdemeanor charge and if the item stolen is over $200 (I think) in value the crime actually becomes larceny.

I'd be interested to know if in the areas of the world where theft is more commonplace are the penalties less harsh.

I'm against theft in any form regardless of the circumstances. A lot of the time, but not always, if the situation is life or death i.e. needing food to survive there are people that are willing to help that don't need to be stolen from. There are a lot of examples of that in the news here in the US or situations where someone did steal food to survive and the shop owner or grocery store or even the arresting officer ends up purchasing the food or giving it to the needy person for free.

I'm also against government intervention in just about anything but a basic security structure for citizens certainly makes maintaining a peaceful civilization easier. I'd imagine everyone having barbed wire fencing and private security guards for all of their belongings is not an ideal society.

In Ukraine many people think that stealing from rich is normal. To steal something from rich guy or store is normal. It follows from  marxist theory (communists, socialists) in which "capitalists" already stole from you (without it they wouldn't be rich) so it normal to take from them what "really" deserves to you.

In some point this is true in reality of all post USSR region, where oligarchs in most really have stolen from other people.  



This is normal. I ll tell you more: This is how it should be in healty and really free society. Great example - USA and Switzerland.



Most people in the West can be shooted by police without much reason. Or they can be taken to police station without any reasons just for "cheking of identity". I saw with my own eyes a man in Paris who have been taken by police just for using foul language.


In my view this is only right solution.


Thieves never allowed anywhere. Just in some places due to economics factors (mostly) or culture (more rare) there many thieves.


Here is quote from Benjamin Franklin - "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

You can delegate your liberty to protect yourself to police or goverment or Jesus Christ, it soesn't matter to whom. As a result you will lost not only freedom of protection but all others. And in that case you will be done, because you can kill thief or a bandit. But you would never be allowed to protect yourself from policeman or special services

The thing that makes them think like that is culture or arguably the social life of the environment allows or allows such things to happen, more when people commit theft for humanitarian reasons for example food for their children or parents.

Of course I cannot tolarate anything like this for any reason, but when it comes to dealing with the social environment it is difficult to say that stealing is wrong.

Not only in the real world but in the online world many do not consider it important to be honest, it ss caused by greed because they want to get alot in quick time.

The mindest really determines the way we judge this, and ofthe that mindset is formed because the social environment allows things like theft.

This immediately made me think of South Africa. You can get robbed on your own front lawn there in the middle of the day. You can get shot in the street. You can get your car stolen GTA style (where they drag you out into the street, jump in and drive away). A saw a video where a guy shoots a robber in the middle of a busy street and the police comes, they see a robber crying for help with a bullet hole and they ignore him and start taking the shooter's statement.

I know what stealing you're referring to but when you're the government you are not stealing. You are lawfully commandeering :D

In Ukraine you can be robbed by police (it's very often happens) and you car can be stolen (not like in GTA, but not less effectively) by former cops who then will give you a chance to buy it back from them just for 50-60 % of initial price.


Lol, in Ukraine it's often to see a grenade in bar conflict. It was close to me to be blown up one time.

I asked about the theft culture in one country I was in. They said that because there was such plentiful food growing on trees ("if you are hungry you can pick a breadfruit and feed your family") that people have grown to be scavengers. You go fishing, you pick fruit, you walk along the road and if you see something, you take it. If someone's house is unprotected, you stop by and grab what you want. No big deal.

As far as the punishment for theft, there was one factory that decided to have the police set up a check point as the workers were leaving one day and check everyone's car for stolen items from the factory. Every single car had something they had stolen. The police ended up just letting them all go because they could not round them all up.

I agree with the high trust and low trust thing. Perhaps this is why many Americans are against open borders, the cultures clash quite a bit in those regards. I believe Stephan Moleneux touches on this as part of the reason for the fall of the Roman empire.

I do not believe that the solution is to teach another culture not to steal. I do not believe Communism will work because they require that everyone stops being greedy...I do not think that any system that requires everyone to think the same way is a good system.

It does come down to each person to protect their own property. Perhaps automation can clear up much of this. Maybe a combination of a blockchain based reputation system and ways to capture evidence against thieves would allow for exclusion or some sort of automated warning when a known thief is nearby.

Someone who has been proven to steal may suddenly have mini drones hovering around him when he enters a store, watching his every move until he leaves. A micro location device embedded in everything. etc.

I do not think that having someone protect you from theft is that bad. Most places I have lived in in these places were a place where I had to pass by a security guard to get to my residence. I felt better that they were there.

Having bars on your windows is not liberty...that's more like living in your own prison.

In some religions, there is the religious concept of dharma and (correct me if I'm wrong) in some Indian creeds you have gods are both benevolent and those that succumb to temptation... that is, disorder, evil.

The justification, then, for one's immoral actions comes from an ideological standpoint where even the gods fall to temptation and hence humans, who must evidently have a weaker will, should not have qualms with sinful acts - or rather, should not have significant regret thereof.

---

There is also a heavy scam culture in China, wherein the thought process drifts towards, "if you get scammed, you deserve it," creating a market surrounding swindles and cons. The skepticism even goes back several generations, where you have the government requesting family members to snitch on one another if they were showing signs of dissent.

Stealing is an admission of self-failure. If you are incapable of earning money by your own efforts, or because of your addiction to drugs, alcohol, vaping, or some other damaging obsession, then it is easy to steal the results of others hard work. Of course, this is at a personal level, we have a different situation with international politics. For example, the attempts by the US to steal the natural resources of other countries like Venezuela, seems to be accepted by many people. If you adopt a lifestyle that includes systematic theft, then eventually some of your victims will turn against you, and you will find that your choice of friends is restricted.

The Philippines where I am now is funny about these things.  I'm property searching at the moment.  I don't think that anyone has yet told me the truth about property lines for instance.  Just today someone tried to tell me that capital gains tax was 10% higher than it actually is.

What is funny to me is that people are so stupid about lying and cheating.  Most populations are bright enough (or something) not to lie about things which are almost certain to be discovered.  Not Filipinos.  Half the time I already knew the answer before asking the question, and the other half I planned to (and did) find out the facts before laying any money down.  I just validate things a lot more and make sure that everything is done in such a way that the seller could not make money by cheating me.  Most Filipinos don't have money for attorneys, or at least don't choose to allocate money in that way, so I guess they don't imagine that the other party would have one.  Of course attorneys themselves are not above cheating and are hardly the most reliable people either so they must be watched and double-checked as well.

All this stuff is just part of learning a new country and culture from the inside.  It's kind of fun actually.  At least the challenges are entertaining.  Like I say, the people are so inept at being dishonest that it's relatively easy to avoid being cheated.  The real danger is that the criminals are every bit as stupid.  You cannot count on one of them recognizing that doing a real crime against you will result in their own certain death or imprisonment.  They simply do not or can not think that far ahead.  To protect yourself you need to think differently than in a place like the U.S..

Filipinos are amazingly suspicious of their own countrymen, and especially if the person is from a different part of the country.  I can now see why.  Many/most Filipinos live relatively safely because they really don't have much to lose to someone else.  Most people who do choose (wisely) to lives in a gated and guarded community.

Stealing became perfectly okay when people started labelling Robin Hood as a hero, there is absolutely no right to steal even if you claim to be stealling from the rich to give to the poor. I believe that those who actually think that it is okay to steal should have their valuables stolen so that we will be able to know if they are going to stick to that same notion.

If someone steals from you, is it ethical to steal the money back?

Of course one 'should' go to the cops or court system, but what if the rich people who stole from you own the cops and the court system and it would be pointless (and possibly dangerous) to seek relief from them?

I suppose that one could argue that the peeps should 'vote harder' if they live in a democracy, but what if the rich people own the political system and will not allow any changes?  Revolution?  That would be absolutely dangerous, and likely to result in an even worse situation vis-a-vis theft.

These are not actually theoretical problems that people face.  In fact they are probably more common than not.  The most practical thing to do is to sit there and suck it, and that's exactly what most people do.  Those who do 'steal it back' seem to tend to get side-tracked and steal from those who didn't steal from them in the first place because they are more practical targets.

You guys are talking about various cases and examples from around the world, yet nobody is proposing any real solution.
I'm not saying that barb wire around your place or small arsenal in the basement, are not the way to go, cause there's sometimes no actual choice. However those are just deterrents, those are not the solution to the problem in the long term.
Separating yourself from others, with a giant fence will only fuel up the hatred and envy, not to mention unhealthy arouse of interest in your possessions.
You nailed it. I say it's about education. Folks need to be raised with the awareness of consequences. I'm not about personal after effects of stealing. They need to be though about general picture. No chance for them to ever develop in to stable and wealthy society if they continue to support parasitic lifestyle. No convoluted economy lessons are necessary, no big words or even religious mysticism. All what's needed, in my opinion is the exposure to to the ethics of the ancient world. The Greeks, like Aisōpos (Aesop) and his wonderfully simple fairy tales or rather fables, Aristotle and his Nicomachean Ethics and all the other Natural philosophers.

And what about usury?

I'm unconvinced that there is a problem here.  Perhaps Gunnery Sargent Hartmann has a perfectly good solution supposed problem: https://youtu.be/5NP8y63Ms4o?t=40 (https://youtu.be/5NP8y63Ms4o?t=40)

  Hartmann: Private Pyle, if there is one thing in this world that I hate it is an unlocked footlocker.  You know that don't you?

  Pyle:  Sir, yes sir!

  Hartmann:  If it wasn't for dickheads like you there wouldn't be any thievery in this world would there?

Could it be that all we are doing in striving for a utopia where everyone is honest and no-one takes advantage of another is creating simpleton sheep who are easier for the powers that be to shear?

Would we have a 'stronger' society if we accepted as normal that people are by nature somewhat exploitative and almost always seeking advantage?  Such behavior is probably hard-wired in as a survival mechanism and trying to 'solve' it is a Sisyphean task which carries a very real risk of horrific unintended blow-back.

Could some of the problems that my country (the United States) faces right now are in part somewhat illustrative of such blow-back?

That would be close to the truth, unfortunately. There is no practical chance for complete eradication of evil, trying will most likely result in some form of humanitarian catastrophe. However I do not believe, that accepting inherent evil inside people as a norm, evolutionary mechanism, is the correct way to go. Stealing is easy, it always will be easier than honest work and as such should be ostracized.
Not because it is harmful to others but solely cuz it makes us weak, makes us lesser beings, subjects of flawed nature, that only follow the simplest life paths. We know that this isn't the truth. Humans should and are aspiring to live for a better cause, for a higher purpose, evolutionary path that we unconsciously took, proves this. Exact reason for us to fight with our own nature is the fact, that this nature is flawed. Most of people accept that god became human, in order to save us. Why to reject the concept that human became a God and saveth himself?
 Could you define what you mean by blow-back? Is it the culture of outrage? Division? Identity politics?

I mean that Americans cannot fathom that people could be so bad as to deliberately sicken other people.  Even tough examples like the Sackler family with their valium->oxyconten->fentanyl franchise are outed in reasonably clear (if still redacted) form, they still hold to the basic assumption that demons don't exist.  Those few who do live in trailer parks, and certainly are not the people who rule over them.

Perhaps if they got kicked in the balls more by their own class they would not have such a hard time accepting that people can be ball kickers.  And thus, of course, would be better prepared to recognize and confront their assailants.

This failure to recognize evil is what I consider 'blowback' from an educational and societal framework with rejects evil in the same way the proverbial ostrich rejects danger.

What to do about people who believe that stealing is ok?

Give them everything. That way there will be nothing left for them to steal. I mean, that's what we are doing for the Elite of the earth, right now... who love money but never have money enough. And when we think about it, we know that we are doing this for them.

8)

Another jackpot, conclusion or rather solution (uuu dangerous word) appears to manifest itself. If you know what I mean  ;D
However note that my postulate is based on completely different grounds. If their proposition is transhumanism, inducted on the rapid scale, presumably best by merging with the AI or similar abominations like that, my idea oscillates around the notion of gradual, steady evolution of mind, inducted only by the notion of classical understanding of natural philosophy, mathematics, law and culture.
That would be a return to the classical idea of academia, schooling of a man to be a better man rather than better worker.
Simply put, we need continue to develop ourself in general direction of humanism, because as long as we exist, it will never be (post) over. Like I said, problem is our broken and subverted schooling system.
Who broke it? And what about usury?  ::) but I'm repeating myself...
    

Great to see you again here Elwar. I feel this is a low-key diss on the Thai government. Well they deserve it.

I was surprised with this post, I've always thought "do not steal" is something that parents everywhere instill in their kids like "do not kill". What you mentioned about these people coming to America and taking advantage of the more open culture likely would have stolen stuff in their native country as well if given the chance. I still believe that if you are a "decent" person, you'd be "decent" wherever you go, most especially you are moving in to a more peaceful place. Dregs would be dregs.

With the MASSIVE amount of people coming into America undocumented, they should wisen up and just accept that not everyone can be "good".

From what I was told of Singapore, part of their success is due to the stiff punishments they had to put into place on thieves. They essentially accepted a lot of citizens who were thieves and had to completely change the culture to get to the point where they are now. Perhaps it is about severe punishments but they also restrict access very well.

I do lean toward personal responsibility, but the very simple act of running into the store to buy groceries while you have anything in the bed of your truck means you have to either bring it with you, have someone guard it or put it inside the truck. Little simple things like needing to chain down your lawn furniture and stuff like that. I was recently the guy guarding the truck while my friends were buying groceries and was approached by 3 different people gauging my level of protection vs what may have been in the truck bed. One guy implying that he would bring some guys with guns if I didn't give him a bit of cash (acting like he was joking the whole time).

That's when you say "Cool, how many? We got several armed men inside the store right now. I just wanna know how many more we need to call. Lets have a shootout."

One thing I learned working security for several years is crazy respects crazy as long as it is not a dismissive challenging their manhood type challenge. If you are just crazy enough for them to not be sure how things will end up they just walk away 95% of the time. I have stood down up to 3 men just as large or larger than me at once using this technique on my own. The trick is to make sure you project full confidence, because if you flinch, stutter, fumble, or show any sign of fear at all it could backfire badly. Predators seek out weakness, just don't show them any.

I've been through enough to not let some dude intimidate me.

Where's your battleship dude?

Oh I am sure, I wasn't so much addressing you personally as giving a general reply. Based on recent events it seems you are savvy enough know when it is the time to fight and when it is time for flight. When they actually bring the battleship is usually a good time for flight...

The highlighted part is the most applicable answer on how things goes this wrong for all the concerned countries,imagine people are struggling to have food in their table and almost died of starvation while the people in power are just feeding the spoilage to the dogs
It’s really heartache that the abusive are the government while people are always the victim so what they do is commit same as what others do and in long run it will become legal to them because there’s no truthful agency that impose the rules.

Lucky that this was not in my country and I’m proud that stealing is still against the law here

Back in the old days it was acceptable. Remember when spartans use to encourage kids to steal food as a means of survival. That was back then though. Times change, laws are implemented and we don't live in a society like that anymore. Moral standards have bet set. A good hearted person will give you something if you just ask. Or you have to lesrn how to work for what you need. Before you consider stealing, think about those people that work their asses off, some with disability, just to get what they need.

The issue is much more complicated than op suggests because of the fact t that everyone has different definitions of stealing.  In my time spent around the world, western, and mainly American cultures are the only ones who widely think stealing is ok as long as it is done through the law.  We don't really believe in morals just that might is right, legal is ok, illegal is not ok.  

Even if we settled on a uniform definition of stealing, we'd still have differences in our definitions of property.  

Taking a fair/survival portion of something that is not rightfully owned is not stealing.  Maybe if you took it all for yourself, it would stealing but if a hungry person takes food out of the grocery store and eats it, that is not stealing, because how could a person's food for survival belong to someone else?

If a person comes into your home and steals the food out of your refrigerator, that is probably stealing unless you were hoarding food.  


Another tough one is buying stolen goods.  

If you buy something that was stolen, did you steal?  
If you steal stolen goods, did you steal?
If you steal stolen goods and return them to their rightful owner, did you steal?
What if something stolen is given to you, you find out it is stolen and don't give it back?  Did you steal it?


If you steal from a rich person it may or may not be stealing.  For example, if a hungry person steals a sandwich from walmart, it is not stealing but if someone steals all of the tvs out of walmart, then they are just as bad as walmart for stealing stolen tvs.  A true robinhood would take all of the tvs from walmart and distribute them to families who could not afford tvs or sell the tvs and divide the money amongst the people who made the tvs.  That would be justice not stealing.  

Are you a member of the "Crime Apologetics Club"?  You have some twisted logic to justify stealing.

The size of the victim's net worth should not be used to justify a crime.  Stealing is a crime, it does not matter who does it or to whom.

"If you buy something that was stolen, did you steal?" - No.
"If you steal stolen goods, did you steal?" - Yes
"If you steal stolen goods and return them to their rightful owner, did you steal?" - Yes
"What if something stolen is given to you, you find out it is stolen and don't give it back? Did you steal it?" - No

When you absolve the people who create demand for stolen goods,  You are basically saying paying someone to steal something is not stealing.   This blurs the lines and if the stolen goods you are buying or receiving as gifts came from people who cannot afford to hire people to steal them back, then they will want to steal as well. They will have to steal. 

I'm saying "stealing" is not always a crime because I don't define stealing the same way you do.  Repeating "stealing is a crime" does not refute that. 

At the same time, having vague definitions of stealing, like "taking a fair/survival portion of something that is not rightfully owned is not stealing" also blurs the lines between what is stealing and what is not.

By defining it in such a manner, you create a top-down definition to which you have to now define what a "fair/survival portion" of something is.

Is taking a piece of bread when you're starving stealing?
How about taking some gourmet dishes from a restaurant?
What if that was the closest thing around?
What if there was nothing else around?
What if you had to choose between taking the gourmet dish, and putting your hand on the stove for 10 seconds?

If taking one piece of bread is not stealing, is taking two pieces of bread stealing?
How about three?
Four?
Onwards?

---

See how your answers change as these questions develop and try to develop some other scenarios. This tests the rigor of your definition and in turn tests the rationale thereof.

Thats the point though.  I just wanted to point out that it isn't always so simple. All definitions of stealing fail in their own way.  

With personal property its simple but beyond needs, everything is difficult to determine.  The person taking it is in the best position to know if they are stealing but no one truly knows because no one knows who these things belong to.  This is why its best to have restaurants setup like a local trend in my area.  There are no prices and they simply ask "what would you like to pay for that today" and you make a donation.  Most people pay normal prices but some pay much less, some pay much more, and no one steals. 

Imagine the following for simplicity
1.there are 10 people in the world
2.only enough resources for 10 loaves of bread or less per week.
3. everyone needs a loaf per week to survive

Here is how it would work by my moral code.

-anyone who takes 2 or more loaves in one week is stealing no matter how they acquired the bread.  
-taking 4 or less loaves of bread from someone who has made 5 loaves is not stealing unless you keep 2 or more for yourself.  
-if someone gives you 2 loaves of bread and you keep both, you also stole one loaf of bread.  

Of course its never that simple because our world has so many more variables and contexts at play.  Its hard to determine what is stealing and what even is property.  

Let's restructure this to just one week/round? It seems like you could simplify it much more.

Definition: the act of stealing is dictated thusly:

Let a set S contain n components p₁, p₂, ..., p_n and a limited amount of resource x∈ℝ.
y_i∈ℝ := the amount of resource x that p_i requires for the round.
q_i∈ℝ := the amount of resource x that p_i takes for the round.

q₁ + q₂ + ... + q_n ≤ x

If q_i > y_i then p_i is stealing

---

Consider this case, then.

S = {p₁, p₂, p₃}
x = 6
y₁ = 1
y₂ = 2
y₃ = 4

---

It really is a convoluted issue.

Stealing is always a crime.  No matter the circumstances.  I don't care what relativist linguistic gymnastics you apply.  Crime is always a crime.

As for knowingly buying stolen goods, well, it is not ethical but I am not sure it is technically a crime.  You will be charged for stealing anywhere on the planet, not so much for buying stolen goods.  So it depends on the jurisdiction.  In any case, buying stolen goods is not a good idea but buying is never stealing.

I don't really care about your relativist, justice warrior bullshit.  It is just that, bullshit.  Stick with the law.

I think I know what you mean.  For some reason people have a visceral fear of saying anything which is even possibly at all negative about anyone who might be in any way associated with 'Jews'.  Most people who live in any large city in the U.S., or who watch a lot of television, get a jolt of terror when such a thing happens.

It's an interesting phenomenon.  People have the same reaction that slugs have to salt when certain topics are broached.  I used to get have myself but it wore off after a few years of living in an electromagnetically quite area researching reality.

It's actually fairly absurd to be terrified to even repeat things that a certain group teaches quite openly for fear of ???.  But the U.S. is on the cusp of making it arbitrarily and nebulously illegal in a formal manner under 'antisemitism' laws promoted heavily by Espstein's special friends.  That means that real living breathing thought police (or automated robots) could come to your real door, break it down, and haul you away for 'badthink' and not giving certain chosen people an appropriate level of respect and support.

Chilling isn't it? Whoever finds this acceptable, deserves the fate that "nowheretohide laws" have in mind for him.
What is this if not another grand theft? Theft of fundamental right to free speech. My country was robbed of it long time ago.
Claims similar to those from previous post but about general denialism, written with a bit more plain language, have the possibility of driving me straight in front of a judge. Privilege groups are in fact real but for whatever reason, obscured from the public view whatsoever.
It's beyond me, that this theft was allowed to happen. Usury plus all described above and you can basically get away with everything. Still the world? Well go ahead, nothing can stop you now... That's a thought-crime already  :-X

This from Woodrow Wilson under who's watch we got the so-called 'Federal' reserve, and who also got us into 'The Great War.'  You know; the one which resulted implementation of the Balfore Declaration and the 'return' of the so-called 'Jews' to the so-called 'promised land.'


Logic kind of implies that Wilson's friends were referring to the international banking cartel and the relatively few people who operate them.  It's getting illegal here in the U.S. to imply that, say, the Rothschild dynasty might have anything to do with international banking so I guess we'll never know.  Oh well <shrug>.

Until there is one Dyson Sphere and a full galaxy for each human in the universe, I don't believe we need to worry about resources per person. And if you still cannot produce a loaf of bread with nearly limitless energy and a full galaxy at your disposal then it is likely best that you not eat anything at all and do a solid for humans as a species.

I think you have it backwards.  I believe in specialization.   Not everyone should be a breadmaker.  That would be a boring society.   We need artists and historians and everything else. 

For this reason, you and I have completely different ideas about what is stealing and what is not. This means end up I wondering why you think stealing is ok and you end up wondering why I think stealing is ok when no one actually think taking something that rightfully belongs to someone else is ok.   I'm just trying to address the topic.

Stealing, in general is bad. Especially if it is done in a way that hurts another person. I don't participate in any scams and I value my integrity but I also don't judge anyone that has found a way to pilfer some money from large corporations or banks. I wish I had the balls to and skill to grab a few million from Chase banks or the like but I would never be able to do it. I'm too paranoid.

You are a Communist. Communism inherently supports government sponsored theft. They not only steal your property, but your mind, your spirit, and your pride. I don't really care what twisted Postmodernist relativist logic you use to justify it, Communism is theft.

Interesting opinion.  To me it sounds a lot like you are describing the US government.
By your logic, having slaves was not stealing as long as you bought the slaves and slavery was not yet outlawed.  Your moral compass is broken. 

As long as the fruits of peoples labor is taken by the state for "redistribution" though, that is not slavery right? After all the only way to create the Communist utopia of equality is to make everyone equally enslaved and impoverished. You aren't one to talk about a broken moral compass Captain Postmodern.

Nice strawman.  As a communist, i don't believe in having a state at all. 

Cool story bro. Unfortunately an oppressive centralized totalitarian state is required to roll out Communism. There is no way around it, otherwise it would just be called charity. This is where you try to tell me Communism has never existed, and I tell you how it just so happens to kill millions every time it is tried.

My moral compass is fine.  You conveniently removed my reply about buying stolen goods.  I said it was not a good idea.

You, on the other hand, think that stealing from a citizen who committed a crime (of stealing) is not stealing.

So when one gang takes stuff from the other, it is not stealing, so I guess no need to involve the police, lol.

BTW, by your logic, stealing slaves from another slave owner is not stealing.  So stealing African Blacks from Arab slave owners was not stealing. Do you see the logical mistake you are making?  I guess if you trade slaves you would not see the difference.

If you take stuff from someone else, you steal.  It does matter what the "stuff" is, what matters is YOUR ACTIONS.

You think like a criminal and you just want to justify your criminal acts.

It is like saying, "I murdered this old lady, but it is not a murder, because she was old and I just did her a favor.". LOL.

Just because someone stole something, it does not mean you can be justified to steal.  People commit all kinds of crimes, it does not mean we should be following and doing the same.

My position has been misrepresented.
Stealing stolen items is a crime unless you are stealing them to return to their rightful owner.  The moment you keep more than your fair share, you are just as bad as the first thief.  I said the same thing in the bread example too so I find it odd that you could get it wrong twice.



Do you think bank robbers should be able to keep the money if they are caught?

By my logic, stealing slaves from slave owners and setting them free (return to their rightful owner) is not a crime.   Harrriet Tubman did not steal slaves but I'm sure the slave owners felt that way. 

I'm fine with euthanasia in cases where people are suffering, have to be actively kept alive, and consent to being left to die (unplugged).
You are off-topic.  This isn't about what you think communism means or if it was responsible for those deaths.  Its about stealing and we can agree that all those totalitarian states stole from the people because by my logic, they kept more than their fair share. 

Yes, yes, real Communism hasn't been tried before, some how you are going to take people's property by force to redistribute without the state, and all the horrible things that result anytime any one tries to implement Communism isn't a result of Communist ideology. This is very much on topic. As I said in my first reply to the OP, government corruption is one of the primary drivers behind creating a low trust society where people  justify stealing as a result of the government never being held responsible under the law.

Communism creates more government corruption arguably than any other form of government, even open dictatorships, because it occupies the ideology of revolution and fighting for the people while actually being a totalitarian dictatorship. At least with open dictators everyone knows what they are getting.

That's an incredibly complex subject for a "civilized westerner" like me. You're describing something I can barely imagine xD

But I'd like to add that it's not just for theft.
In fact you can easily see that our low crime rate isn't thanks to the police, it's thanks to the fact that nearly everyone respects the law by default.

I'm not sure I'm being clear, but I already got the feeling that in other cultures, if you have a problem in front of you you deal with it and end of the story. Someone is bothering you in the street? You kick the shit out of him. Someone disturbs you because he's talking loud, you intimidate him and maybe kick him few times.

Most nations have a very... Primitive and savage culture.
This can be seen easily in immigrant population in Western countries. I've been attacked a few times in my life and that always has been by black/arab foreigners.
And the worse is that they didn't seem crazy or anything. It was normal for them to escalate to the physical conflict quickly. While we are used to respect each others so much than them.

Anyone saying it's easy to live with other cultures has never tried it...
So yeah I agree with you Elwar, either you enforce your laws quite strongly, maybe giving to your population the means to do it, either you separate cultures.

What you mean is that corruption in government results into people stealing each other because government is showing the bad example?
Do you have any fact on this or is it just your impression?
Which would be fine btw, just interested if you have figures on this :)

Well, you (communists/people who do not respect private property/etc.) fall into the reason for the original question. What do we (as individuals) do about preventing those who do not believe in private property taking our property.

I respect that communists think differently and I do not believe that any social structure can exist by requiring everyone to adhere to a specific ideology. Thus the reason why someone who respects private property must be personally responsible for protecting those rights.

This, I believe, may come down to upgrading our ways of protecting property via technology (autonomous drones, blockchain reputation system, tracking devices, etc.).

No, I do not believe every person should be a bread maker but if you have the unlimited power of a Dyson Sphere you should not be worrying about 10 people remaining and only 10 loaves of bread. Through technology all of the needs (and wants) of individuals can be obtained in this vast universe if only those who value equality over progress would get out of our way and let humanity move forward (each according to his own desires).

Once we can individually protect our own private property through more advanced technology (such as being able to hold your private Bitcoin keys in your head), then the state will no longer be able to steal as easily as it currently does.

No.
You are off-topic.  Freeing slaves was not the topic of this discussion.  Replace slaves with necklaces.

Anyway, I am going to try one last time to give you an example to illustrate your logical fallacies.

Imagine you own a car. (Since you are a Communist so it is probably hard to imagine, but try.)

Your car is stolen.  You locate the thief and go to take your car back.  Did you steal your car?  No, you just took possession of your own property.

Now, if another guy goes and steals your car (from the thief), he would be stealing, because he is taking what is not his.

You think that taking illegal possession of the stolen property is not stealing.  

You have some serious issues understanding the English language and the Western legal system in general.

Stealing is not a boolean variable.  Stealing what is already stolen does not make it not stolen.

A=true (not stolen)
Not A = false (stolen)
Not Not A = true (not stolen)

That is your logical fallacy.  I think you do that on purpose because you want to justify stealing and redistribution of wealth.

You and people like you are the scum of this Earth.  

You brought up laws and legal definitions of crime which is why I brought up slavery.  I'm talking about stealing while you are talking about laws and crime.  Slavery was a form of legal theft and slaves were private property within the law.  I used that to point out your appeal to authority fallacy which assumes all theft is illegal and anything legal cannot be theft.   It seems like you are saying slavery is not theft as long as it is legal.

We agree that retrieving stolen property from a thief is fine but what if the thief had already sold your property and you're taking it back from someone who purchased it? This is a realistic scenario because thieves usually look to move stolen goods as quickly as possible.  Is that stealing?

As for the bold part, I have made clear that taking stolen items is not necessarily stealing but can be.  We are in agreement that taking your car back from someone who stole it is not stealing but what if it was illegal? What if they had it registered in their name already?  You are confusing yourself by letting the law be your moral compass and not separating the law from what you actually believe stealing is.  

Laws vary over time and place but your own morals should not.

You have several options

a.  Push for a society where everyone has equal opportunity to obtain private property
b. Push for an adequate amount of public property that serves as an alternative to private property and can still meet the needs of those who do not believe in private property
c. Brainwash the masses into thinking you have a or b.

but there is no scenario where you can just take everything, leave the masses with nothing, and not expect them to come for your head.

Corruption exists in every form of government regardless of economic system.  We agree that power leads to more corruption and that all forms of totalitarian governments generate theft which is bad so there is no debate on this here.  

If you want to debate about the various ways communism could be implemented, make another topic and I'd be glad to discuss it with you but this is not the place for that and I won't let you drag me off-topic.

For anybody who thinks stealing is okay...

We need to make a strict law that if anyone steals something and gets away with it, that if he trades it for something else... MANDATORY EXECUTION.

This means that if a person embezzels some money, he can't use it to pay for something that he wants to buy. He can't use it to pay his servants if he is rich. He has to keep it. Mandatory execution if he is caught transferring it to someone else in any way.

8)

a. is irrelevant. Nothing in this whole universe can be equal to another thing nor should it be desirable.
b. public property should not exist. You would think that with the tragedy of the commons playing itself out over and over and over people would realize that shared resources are just about the worst way to deal with resources.

The brainwashing by the public schools can likely be held accountable for the continuance of such a failed system. But of course, you can't blame them for trying to perpetuate their own inadequacy.

In a universe full of planets and energy, I think you are wasting time believing that someone can "take everything".

If you just take your car, the guy will call the police, you will be arrested then if you will be able to prove that it was your car, you will not be charged.  The guy who bought the car was defrauded, police will investigate and eventually will get to the thief.  It is not a good idea to take law into your own hands and go out and take your stolen stuff.  Just call the police, tell them that you located your stolen car and let them handle it.  That is why we pay taxes.  Let the police do their job.

Then you would be breaking the law.  The guy who bought your stolen car can shoot you in the head and he probably would not be charged, depending on the jurisdiction. Go through the proper legal channels.  That is why we have laws.  It is not a Wild West anymore.

If you just go out and take your stuff, you know that you will be arrested and if you resist, police can shoot you, either way, you end up either dead or in jail.  There is where all criminals belong, IMHO.

BTW, redistribution of wealth accomplishes nothing, it creates a short-term relief for the unfortunate and/or lazy and poor, then the class structure forms again, and the wealth pyramid is rebuilt again.  Capital is wasted.  Time is lost.  Millions die in the process. What forms during such revolutionary periods is much worse than what was there before.  Study French and Bolshevik revolutions.  Be careful what you wish for.

I have lived under the Communist regime.  I know better than you what that system does to your psyche, your motivation, your ambitions.  That system kills all innovation, desire to improve your life, it is the most destructive system human mind ever invented.

I do understand why you are fooled by the slogans.  You want equality, fairness, equal chances for everyone.  Those are great goals.  But you are forgetting about one thing.  Humans are not all the same.  We are not ants.  We all have different skills, abilities, ambitions, and aspirations.

Some of us worked hard to learn to speak 8+ languages fluently, have multiple graduate degrees, achieved great success in business and accumulated some wealth as a result.  While others can barely speak and write in their own native language, have no post-secondary education, skill or trade, and on top of that are lazy and want to take stuff from the "rich" people.  How is it fair for the "rich" people to be robbed by the imbeciles? Just think about what you are proposing.  Think about the long-term consequences.  Study history.  Don't ignore it.

"In a universe full of planets and energy"

What are you on about?  We live on Earth and can't survive 1 second without it's resources.  The rest of the universe is completely irrelevant.
I'm not asking you what the law is or how it works.  No one asked about gun laws or self defense laws.  I think everyone here knows those things and its a distraction from the topic at hand.  I'm asking you to be an ethical thinker, not a lawyer. If there is no situation in which you would ever disagree with the law, then just say that.  

Conveniently, you chose to talk about the one piece of property police keep record of, but what about everything else?  What if you can't provide proof that it is your property to the police but you know that it is your property?  Do you still consider this stealing?  

I hope you also realize that redistribution of wealth is also often done through legal means.  By your logic, this is not stealing because if the government taxes me, I cannot call the government and tell them that the tax money belongs to me and have them return it.  If a government were to raise taxes to 100% or legalize slavery, it doesn't seem to me like you would consider it theft because it would be legal.  

I haven't said anything about the system you lived under.  I think everyone agrees that a system that does as you have described is an awful system.  

I've never read or met anyone who thinks all humans are the same, like ants, or should all have the same outcome from their lives.  Its a tired, lazy strawman. The kind I would expect from tecshare.  If being illiterate was someone's choice then fine, but have you ever stopped to wonder if a huge majority of the illiterate people have not simply chosen to be illiterate because they are lazy?  Has it ever crossed your mind that maybe (just maybe) many of these people are illiterate because they did not have proper access to education?  Most rich people were born rich and most poor people were born poor.  That has very little to do with the fact that people are different, have different potentials, and can be lazy.  

The lazy child of a billionaire is much more likely to succeed than a child born to poverty in a war-torn area during a famine.  Your life is set on a certain track before the age of 5.

There are many laws that I disagree with, but I would not dare to break them just because I don't like them.  
You don't need to break laws to be successful or get ahead in life.

All I said is that equality of outcome is wrong to those who can and will do better than those who don't.
You don't believe me that the US, any other Western, or Eastern European country does not have equality of opportunity?
Score perfect on SAT and you'll see how many doors will open for you.  Who is stopping you?
When I see Americans or Canadians waste their time at the university on partying and "college life", I see a lot of resources wasted, but
I know that most of these people will not succeed in life, will end up with $200K+ student debt, will continue churning their parent's inheritances if any, and will begin to complain about the capitalist system.  Eventually will radicalize themselves and become "communists".  They are (like you btw) smart enough to know what they want, however they fail to understand the consequences of forced capital redistribution.

Remember one thing, capital stays in the pockets of people who care about it, and flees the pockets of people who do not understand what the capital is for.  This is probably the most important thing that you should get from our exchanges, follow this rule, teach it to your children.  Take care of your capital, put it into good use.  Don't waste it.  It is a very valuable resource.  And forget the wrongs of the past.  Live for the future.  Do not seek some social revenge.

Do I think the capitalist system is fair?  Not really, it favors the rich because money greases the wheels of success.  However, there are many legal opportunities for ambitious, eager, smart and POOR people.  More than in any communist system ever created. Under the communist system the smart and ambitious are either killed first or become the oligarchs/politburo of the system (aka mafia bosses).  

As for the taxation system favoring the rich, well, you should be thankful that this is the case so that the capital keeps working in your country.  Without capital, the economy would collapse.  The more profit capitalists make the more money is put into good use, even if it is a fraction of their profits, still, it is better than the saving all the poor people can put to good use.  Most poor people do not have a clue what to do with their money, other than to spend it.


Maybe for some people, but not all. Luck plays a role, but it is your brains and guts that determine your destiny.  You determine it.
I know it is a hard road from being penniless to retiring early as a multi-millionaire.  But it can be done.

The harder and smarter you work the luckier you get.

BTW, that lazy child of a billionaire is going to "return" the capital to people who know what to do with it sooner rather than later.

Why do you think the majority of lottery winners go broke?

And that is why you adhere to a flawed system. You have no confidence in human ingenuity and progress.

Stop worrying about doling out a Model T to every citizen and start allowing progress to happen unequally.

The universe is full of resources, space travel is imminent. All the sooner if people like you get out of the way.

But such technological advances cannot happen without greed, and allowing people to keep the fruits of their labor and shoot for a better life than everyone else. That is the breeding ground for progress and will take us beyond the stars.

We aren't talking about the wisdom of breaking the law.  We are talking about if the law determines what is ethical or unethical and the wisdom of the law being the entirety of your moral compass.  You seem to think it is ok to do anything that the law permits you to do.  I find that problematic because there is an overlap between theft and legality.  You yourself has said that government-forced redistribution is theft so surely you can comprehend this notion.

No on has ever asked for equality of outcome so why would you make such a statement if you are not attempting a strawman?

First of all, these countries represent a very small percentage of the most privileged people on Earth so the notion that the richest people have equality of outcome amongst themselves, even if true, would be evidence of a global failure.  There should not be a border around opportunity.

Also, your statement may be generally true in these countries, but poor children in the west still do not have the same opportunity to score well on the SAT.  Children who are not properly nourished, deal with childhood trauma, and do not get proper sleep in early years of cognitive development do not develop the same abilities as those who have grown up with basic needs met.  This is not equality of opportunity.  SAT scores can be strongly predicted by things like zip code and parent education.  These are things no one has the opportunity to choose.  

You are talking about some of the most privileged people in the world.  Most people do not even have the opportunity to go to college and waste time or rack up 200k in debt. These are people who had maximum opportunity, did not make the most of it, and will still come out with a better life than 85% of the world despite making all of the wrong choices.  You are making my point.

Also, every economic system is forced capital redistribution and they all have consequences.  Choose a system is just a matter of choosing which consequences you prefer.  
Knowing how the capitalist system works and agreeing with it on an ethical basis are two different things.  You seem to have conflated the two.  I know exactly how the capitalist system works and think it is completely unethical but still participate in it because it is the reality of the world I live in.  I teach my children ethics and economics and let them decide if they want to abandon ethics for economics , abandon economics for ethics, or want to push for a world that abandons capitalism for ethical economics.  Most of the young generation prefer the latter and are ready to fight for it.  

You cannot continue to push the false dichotomy of capitalism or "communist" systems of the past.  There are countless other ways a society can function if you open your mind, think outside of the box and use some imagination or creativity.




Do you see the double standard in your post?  Why can't we treat the poor like the lazy child of .a billionaire and give them money.  That way, everyone will have the same opportunity to "return" the capital or put it into good use.  According to your same logic, the people with the most skills would end up with the capital anyway.  

I don't think you understand how big the universe is and how far we are from being able to access and live off of resources beyond earth.  The universe is not "full" because that fails to imply the vast amounts of empty space between matter.  Empty space that we cannot develop the technology to fully overcome because it is outside the boundaries of the laws of physics.  You don't seem to appreciate the difference between space travel and space colonization.   Its like being able to swim in the ocean for a few minutes vs being able to travel across the ocean.  It would take tens of thousands of years just to reach the nearest star if we left today. Even as a meteorologist and space enthusiast, I'm more interested in what we will do on Earth in the near term.  You can't simply respond to immediate problems with "well who cares because in hundreds of thousands of years we will probably solve this problem".  Its really just a fancy way of ignoring problems.

Also, you have it completely backwards.  Human ingenuity and progress like space travel was only tapped into by the Soviet union and NASA which required national pooling of public resources.  Private firms today are still piggy backing off of technology that first was developed by these governments in the 50s.

Give them money from where?  Who is going to pay for it?  You seem to think that money grows on trees. How do you know the poor kids deserve the money?  If they score perfectly on the SAT, I say they deserve it.  I would personally invest in their education for a cut of their future earnings.

BTW, capital gravitates to those who have most skills.  That is a fact.

Also, saying that the poor do not have the same opportunities is a cop-out.  You are painting all the poor with the same brush.
In America, all kids can prepare for and write SAT exams.

Family issues are affecting both poor and rich so please don't bring it up as a reason poor kids perform poorly; it is a non sequitur.
Do you think rich kids don't have problems?  They have problems, just different ones.

You have no idea how fortunate kids in North America are.  I cannot listen to your excuses.

Go live in Vietnam, Cambodia, Central Africa or the Middle East.  You live in your "American social injustice" bubble.

No wonder the rest of the world thinks Americans are morons.  The US is the land of opportunity, every hard-working immigrant will tell you that.  It is the best country in the world to study, work, start a business, become rich, etc.  No matter the race, religion or ethnic background.

Sour grapes with the rich is not an argument. 

Wow! Space is big!?! I never knew that...thanks for the insight (is it big enough to dispose of nuclear waste after we have used the nuclear energy to power cities for decades?).



Great for NASA. We also got Tang out of it. Now it's time for the big boys to actually do something with it.

I believe completely in incrementalism so I, of course, understand that we are not building space colonies tomorrow. I do believe we will be building ocean colonies tomorrow (starting next week actually). From ocean colonies we can build a launch loop to start sending infrastructure into space. From there we can start colonizing our solar system. From there we can build technology to move further and further. When we go further and further we will be able to send humans all over the galaxy where there are also resources like there are on Earth. We may run into the problem of not having enough humans to live both on Earth and those that want to be transported to other worlds but hopefully the population grows at a faster rate.

Human ingenuity and progress in that whole thing depends wholly on the government getting out of our way. My dealings with the Thai government demonstrate this very thing. They tried to interfere with that roadmap to space colonization before it could even have more than one house floating in the water. Not through NASA nor any public resources. Just private individuals trying to bring progress to the world.

But do not worry. Where one government failed, others see opportunity and have expressed the desire to stay out of the way as they see the benefits of being the world's space port.

But back to the OP. You are certainly one of those that we need to protect ourselves from. I am ok with your ideology existing as long as I can protect myself and my belongings from people like you. For every thief coming in the night to steal our belongings we can use technology to stop them. For every Navy that comes to take away our property, there are technological advances that can be developed to thwart them. It will just be a technological race and the "public" will be funding your side of the battle until they grow weary of working most of their lives just to fund theft.

Money doesn't grow on trees.  You don't need trees or growth to create money.  Money grows on computer screens out of key strokes.  The central bank literally creates money out of nothing.  Money isn't finite because its not a tangible resource.  Its an arbitrary thing we've created to get people to do stuff.  Just like points in a game, or merit on a messageboard, a money system can be tweaked or reassigned like an airdrop or fork to meet current needs.  Just like laws do not always correspond to what is right or wrong, money does not always correspond to what has value.  

Your willingness to take a skilled person's capital in return for allowing them education (which should be a right the brightest of the bright in the first place) is more evidence that you subscribe to stealing and that capital gravitates to those who have the most capital and skills together.   Skills without capital are even more useless than capital without skills.  How much skill does it really take to bet on a person with a perfect SAT score?

All of the research shows that poor kids are at an extreme disadvantage; even in the US.  
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5460626/
By the age of 4, poor kids already have decreased executive functioning ability.  This means they are not as able to get the same out of an equal education going forward even if they weren't already going to receive an inferior education.  This is permanent damage and we can point out clear mechanisms linking back to family income.  

I know exactly how fortunate most kids in the USA are.  That is the crux of the issue.  Being born in the US is not a skill.  Being born in any rich nation is not a skill but at the same time is usually an automatic ticket to limitless opportunity.  This excess of opportunity exists largely because it was stolen from the global south.  Living in a country that had its schools bombed and future damaged so that we could buy more stuff we don't need has only fed this perspective.

There is no doubt that the US is the best country to be rich in.  No argument there.  In no other country is it so legal for the rich to systematically steal from the rest of the world.  All we had to do was simply be born and our ticket to an easy life was already punched.  A lot of us had it so good that we could party and play for most of our lives, make terrible, irresponsible mistakes, squander more money than most people will ever see, and STILL come out in the top 1 percent without ever having to sweat.  

All of this on the backs of the global poor.

Money is potentialy infinite. Resources are not infinite. There is no way to just print more resources no matter how much money you hand out. Education is not a right. No one has aright to the time and resources of another required for education. That is called theft and or slavery. Additionally not every poor person is poor because a rich person made them poor. That is insane Marxist victim-hood rhetoric.

If money is infinite, why won't they let me print any of it? Of course, I could start my own ICO, right?

8)

Ok, I think you are wandering all over the place with your 'demands'.  

First, understand one thing: capital is not infinite.  If you start printing money you are diluting the value (ability to produce work) of all other capital in existence.  If you needed a capital of 500K USD (in 1980s dollars) to start a large chicken farm 40 years ago, today you might need the same capital, except it will be expressed in USD as 5 million.  The capital required to start the chicken farm is the same.

I don't get it how you can see me investing in some smart kid's education as theft.  I just don't get it how you can be so ignorant of the value of capital. You know what the opportunity cost is, don't you?

I think you are fuzzy on basic economics concepts.  Your entitlement demands are unrealistic.

We live in the real world.  There are wars, corrupt politicians, lack of education, lack of resources, exponential population growth, pollution, etc.,

You think you can solve all that by dropping buckets of USD on poor people and all will be holy again?  Think again.  Most of it will be blown on crack or hashish.

You are very naive.  Before you start changing the world by robbing the rich, start at home, increase your capital, teach your children to be good global citizens, teach them foreign languages, math, science, send them to good schools, etc.  Before you know it, they will be rich and hopefully become better versions of the 'degenerate' rich you so much despise.

Investing in the smart kid's education is not theft, its the profit you make off of it that is the theft.  You said you would expect a percentage of that kids lifetime earnings.  That could end up being a loan with 10,000% interest or more.  Of course it would be theft.  The opportunity cost is that you could have used your money to steal someone else's labor.  Of course I know that and in a world with so many deprived, there will always be someone to steal from.  This is why a capitalist system requires poverty in order to get rich.  If everyone had education, this student loan business would fail.  This provides incentive for people like you to make sure adequate access to education is never a reality. 

You keep misinterpreting my ethical disagreement with the system on moral grounds as a lack of understanding the system.  I'm against the system BECAUSE i understand it. 

Why is it that poor people buying drugs is so bad but rich people buying drugs is "capital finding its way into the hands of people who appreciate it" .   You continue to show a double standard
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/16/middle-class-consume-more-drugs-and-alcohol-than-poorer-people

Money is literally just a right to the time and resources of other people.  By saying billionaires should exist, you are declaring that they have a right to unlimited time and resources of the poor.  Money is always being printed and spent.  Its really just a matter of what we should spend it on and who that should benefit.

This is funny because my country is technically in the "west" (south of USA), and yet its just like what you describe for "others". And the funny thing is, i traveled once to the east, the far east, and the description fits perfectly what you said about "the west". No bars? No guard checking your bags at the door of the shop? you can actually grab the things yourself? Yup.

My country used to be "nice", so its not like the concept was unknown to me. But in the last two decades or so, it has degraded so much its now the other, more dangerous and miserable type. Yes i remember those nice days, but the young people here never lived those.

What to do with thieves? Well the good old book says... bring the hand guillotine?

In my country theft most almost always involves firearms, because a thief without one has a very high chance of being killed on the spot (or left disabled for the rest of his life). And in many attempts, the victims die. Either because of resisting, or the thieve going nervous, or the police coming and shooting (here the heroic Hollywood cop does not exist, here is "shoot first, ask later" (infamous words or a former President of this very nation). And wait until you learn about the prisons, you don't want to learn about the prisons, trust me. "University of crime" they are infamously named, for the ones that survive it...

Maybe we can consider every side of the story but there must be no person can be above the law. Whatever the reason if someone breaks the law, they must be jailed. Probably, stealing was a crime in every country so it should be address based on the countrie's constitution.
In some countries this crime was common but in every country this kind of behaviour do exist. I believe that the best choice is for them to be jailed if they commit such crime.

So making a huge profit on your invested capital is theft?  How about a 10% or %20 profit?  Is it still theft?  You determine what is theft and what is not?  So trading securities/currencies/commodities and making a profit is also theft?  How about capital gains?  Theft?  Passive income?  Theft?  How do you propose we should treat losses?  'Untheft'?  It seems like you need a completely new vocabulary to describe your system.  Does risk exist in your utopian world?

You are very, and I stress, very uneducated.  You think you understand the system, but you really don't.  I am really surprised you even function in the capitalist system.  Let me guess, you managed to have some shitty job, answering emails and having useless meetings, or worse, you work in retail.

Your objections to the current system are based on wishful thinking and are going against our human nature.  That is why the communist-inspired social structures never worked.  You are talking about utopia.

Let me guess, you were born after 1984, and as you were growing up your parents kept telling you that you can be whoever you want to be, that you are very smart, and that you are special, the sky is the limit, that you will be able to make a 'difference', that you can change the world and find your purpose in it; you received participation medals for the last place in any competition you have ever participated in.  Then you entered the workforce and your bosses told you that you are not that special, they offered you a mediocre salary with no room for advancement, and now you are very disappointed.  

I wish the Soviet Union was still around so that you can immigrate and experience a society where most of the productive capital belonged to the 'people'.

Like I said before, you have no idea what communism is.  Go visit North Korea.

The capitalist system is less evil than the communist system.  Ask any person who lived under both systems.  Don't be ignorant.

Unfortunately he claims to be some sort of professional educator. He doesn't have any business training dogs let alone humans. The idea that he is in a position to educate (indoctrinate) anyone is a terrifying concept. These types of people serve only one purpose, to spread Marxism like a virus. After all, if your values are wrong and warped and you are unwilling to accept that, the only option is to normalize it by warping as many others as possible much like a drug addict enables other drug addicts in order to feel more normal and ignore their destructive behavior. Marxism is just collectivized mental illness.

These types of people are just noisemakers.  They will never be successful in any system, capitalist (because they do not understand what to do with the little capital they have and they do not understand what inherent risks are) or communist (because they will object to taking bribes or advancing through the communist ranks by killing or imprisoning their fellow comrades).

I did not know these communist lunatics exist outside of former communist countries, but this guy proved me wrong.  It is insane what this guy is saying: profit is theft.  What is next: "war is peace", "poor is rich" and vice versa. 

They live in Western capitalist societies and complain about the privileges they have been born with.   What a bunch of ungrateful losers!!!
FBI should keep tabs on these people, IMHO.  They are radicals, ready to go off on any new "occupy movement" and such.

Give them guns and they will go door to door and rob people who have more than they have.  No moral compass whatsoever.

Its telling how quickly such a discussion turns into ad hominem attacks.  Anyone who holds a different world view must be uneducated, ignorant, unsuccessful, or all of the above. Well these type of attacks are actually a concession that you have no ability to refute my points with reasonable argument.  
Yeah making money off of money instead of actual work is usually theft.  Of course risk exists.  Usually the people with the most risk make the least money.  There are dozens of workers dangling high above ground risking their lives to complete construction on an tower and all the investors are risking is the potential of maybe having to go back to doing actual work to earn a living.  

If you were interested in a real discussion, you'd ask about my life instead of making assumptions but then it wouldn't be as easy to create strawman arguments.
 I've been privileged enough to never have to work a miserable job but I realize most people aren't afforded such a luxury.  People working these types of jobs you assume I'm in are usually supporters of capitalism as they don't have time to think about philosophy of life, what could be, and reflect on the characteristics of economic systems.  They don't have that freedom because they have to live in reality and focus on day to day survival.   If the people you describe me as were anticapitalist, the system wouldn't survive very long. The current state of affairs relies on the people you have described having faith in the doctrine that if they keep working hard in their retail job, they too will one day be rich.

Its also a non argument to assume I don't understand the system or participate in it just because I think its evil.    It would be more reasonable to call me a hypocrite.  I grew up in capitalism and its all I've lived under.  I've benefited from it.  I've accumulated more wealth than most humans will ever see simply because I was born into a good situation.  I know how easy passive income is and that helps me categorize it as theft.  I worked in mortgage to pay my way through undergrad.  I've inherited rental property and mined cryptocurrency.  Of course I know what passive income is and understand how capital works.  Thats all a huge part of why I'm so against it.  Most of my jobs have paid me more than what others make for the same work simply because of where my degree came from which all goes back the private school education I was born into.  I'll never forget how much work it took to spend 30 minutes at a closing signing a dozen papers for a rental property that gives me the right to half of someone's paycheck every month just because of this imaginary ownership.  

 I grew up and was fine with the system until I traveled outside of my bubble and realized life wasn't so easy for everyone else and that all of this came at the expense of others.  Most capitalists are completely separated from the people they affect so they don't understand the relationship between profit, labor, and capital. As a teacher who has spent time in poor schools, I'm able to see the world from just about every perspective.  

The funny thing about your post is even if the ad hominem attacks you made up were true, they would still be terrible points.  Theres even an accurate saying on the right that academia is full of leftists and here you are assuming that a someone is uneducated because they believe profit is theft.   Its one thing to disagree and think someone is wrong but to say the other side is stupid just because you are afraid of their ideas is not even an argument at all.

Lastly, this "capitalism vs soviet union/north korea" point is a false dichotomy.  Totalitarianism is not the opposite of capitalism.  I don't want a utopia either.  I just want an end to obvious theft and inequality.  BTW, the rich in North Korea still live pretty well. 

Same thing as the last guy pretty much.  You assume that just because I reject capitalism, that I adopt some other form of theft.  Its a complete strawman.  Feeling guilty about a life of luxury based on stolen wealth is not "ungrateful".  Its called humility.

Not only do people like me exist, but in my community, we leftists vastly outnumber capitalists.  I've spent the last 10 years living in neighborhoods where nearly everyone is successful by the capitalist definition(these are highly sought after neighborhoods), rejects capitalism, and believes in pacifism.  The faculty at the colleges and high schools I've worked at have also fallen into this group.  My echo chamber reality got so bad that in 2015, I thought it was just how the entire country had morphed.   I'm actually quite often finding myself to the right of my peers.  The other day, I was even scolded by guests I invited over because they found whole foods bags in my kitchen. How could I be so selfish to shop anywhere other than the local food coop?

Its only when I go home, or on the internet that I am exposed to people who are both educated and still believe in capitalism.  Finding that balance is part of why I'm here.

What a bunch of nonsense. I read the first sentence and it already made me cringe.
Who is to decide what is work and what is not? What amount of time do I have to spend on a task for it to no longer be theft? You maybe?

I'm curious, what according to you is this "actual work"? Do I have to produce a physical object, like a brick, or maybe sweat all day in a labor camp? Those were the days of real men doing real work, right?

Oh, ok.  I think I understand your views.  

You think the current system is unfair to non-capitalists.  "It creates inequalities as people with the means of production control how much workers make.  When workers and owners do not make the same, owners steal from workers.  The owners steal the fruits of worker's labor.
You think capital is the source of all evil as it facilitates this theft."

Did I get it right?

Let me just say you have a very narrow, somewhat tunneled vision on the issue.  When you have a good idea for a product, you go out and raise capital, organize the business, hire skilled people to achieve your vision, you are taking huge risks that the whole venture might fail, many times you work for months 24/7 to get your business off the ground before any workers show up at your shop.  Workers you hire demand certain salary and you seek workers to maximize return on your capital, i.e. the best skills for the least money. At no point, you steal their salary or their opportunities.  They are at all times in full control of their careers.  Well, maybe 2-4 weeks notice, as stipulated by the employment contract, that is about it.

You think that workers hired by a well-running business deserve the share of the business profits.  On what grounds?  That would be the real theft.  If I have a software company and I am doing 10M revenue and 1M profit and I need to expand and I hire 10 new developers (10x100K) to implement the new version of my product, and I am successful and the revenues go to 200M and 20M profit, I need to share the 20M with my 10 new developers? On what grounds?  They were nowhere my business when I was working on it in my basement, eating noodles for 5 years.  How in the world would this be fair?  What about if instead of 20M profit, I incur 5M losses, would the 10 new developers share the losses with me?

Do I agree that the system seems unfair on the surface?  Of course.  You see some people flushing their wealth while others starve or go homeless.  You have to ask yourself the why question?  Not jump to the conclusion that the system is automatically fundamentally wrong.

Is it wrong for some people?  Of course.  People who just want the 9-5 job, with a steady paycheck, no need to worry about job security or business stability.  People without any skills or desires to own the "means of production", people who do not want to own real property, people who do not want to run any sort of business, or assume any risk in life in general.  To those people, it is definitely the wrong system.  They will suffer financially under it.  They will be scraping by their whole lives and die with mortgages on their homes.

When I first came to North America, I worked in aluminum extruder factories, farms, bakeries and the people I met made me think.  I knew right then I do not want to work for 3 years to be able to afford to buy a used car.  I remember one toothless guy, he was maybe 30 years old, we were eating our miserable sandwiches, he finished his, took his cigarettes and proudly announced that if I work for 3 years in this factory I might be able to buy a used Buick to drive to work.  He worked there for 5 years, still was riding the bus. I looked at him with great sadness because I felt sorry for him.  I knew he will die in that factory and never be able to buy that car.  The same year I enrolled in the community college.

The same thing happened when I first started working after I graduated from university.  I was hired as a "full-time" employee, I quickly realized that what they were paying me would not get me anywhere.  I needed more.  I befriended some contractors who enlightened me on the benefits of contracting.  

I switched within months to triple my "salary".  This was still not enough to feel secure.  I watched how other contractors had supply contracts to provide contractors and get $10-20/hr for every hour of work.  I needed that, and that is what I did for a while.

I never stole any money from anyone.  People willingly hired me, I willingly paid people who I hired in return.

You think people who do dangerous jobs are taking all the risks.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  

You fail to understand what risk is.   You only think of the risk of personal injury but forgetting all the business risks, legal liabilities, insurance costs.  Who do you think is bearing those risks and costs?

I worked with many brilliant developers who told me they just want a full-time job, I tried to help them to show them the way to a brighter future, they did not feel comfortable taking all the risks.  So they are still working in their 50s and 60s.  They are the same as the toothless guy I met at the aluminum extruder factory, 30 years ago.  Same mentality, same result.

If you have a worker's mentality, you will be a worker all your life, with terrible results.  You will die poor.  That is just the way it is.

You need to hustle a bit, no matter the system you live under.

The risk is always positively correlated to the reward. At least it should be under the efficient, free-market model.

The higher the risk you take the higher the potential reward.  When workers are taking no risk by doing their 9-5 job, they deserve the minimum wage, i.e. little reward.

The trick is to find yourself in a situation where you control the risk.  Read all books by Robert Kiyosaki
https://www.amazon.com/Robert-T-Kiyosaki/e/B001H6GV90?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1570552754&sr=8-1

PS. I feel I need to write a book for people like you to re-educate them on capitalism.  There seem to be a large, growing dissatisfaction with the capitalist system and I feel that if people are not educated on how to effectively function in it, we'll have a bloody "occupy and kill movement".  The last one was just a prelude, I am afraid.  I think the education system in North America is failing students at that task.

"New Peer Reviewed Academic Study Finds Diversity is Not a Strength"

https://summit.news/2019/10/07/new-peer-reviewed-academic-study-finds-diversity-is-not-a-strength/

^You needed a whole study to find out people are racist and have less trust for people who don't look like themselves?


You're mostly right but wrong about me thinking everyone should be paid the same.  I think people should be compensated for their ideas, initial investments, risk, and all the work they put into creating something but that does have a limit.  There is an actual value into the amount of work that went into that.  I'm not pretending to know what that value is in each case but I know that its a lot more than the typical worker, and a lot less than the unlimited percentage it has become through capitalism.  

Bezos, for example, definitely deserved to compensation for creating the company, but at some point, he had been fully compensated and everything beyond that is actually theft from the people who are keeping the company going and the people who are paying the true costs.  Profit gets magnified by passing costs onto other people and externalizing those costs from the company budget.  The best companies are experts at doing this.  Making someone else pay your costs is a form of theft.  Even if you don't know who that person is, you're still stealing from them.  

Its a two way street.  Wouldn't you think its weird if you had to pay every employee who ever worked at your company for the rest of their life?  It makes sense that we pay workers for the work they did and thats it so why not do the same for the owners?

Society cannot function without labor.  A worker's mentality is necessary to maintain labor.  This is why capitalism is unsustainable.  You cannot endlessly redistribute wealth away from labor and towards the top.   Our current system depends on people believing in the scam that their work will pay off.   Eventually, the myth that hard work pays off will die.   There needs to be a more diverse market for capital.  If you put capital in the hands of many people, you would get a more ethical relationship between capital and labor because labor would have more opportunities to shop around for capital and negotiate "prices".   The current state of affairs means that the masses compete for who can offer the lowest priced labor to the very few people who have capital and those with capital rarely have to compete in a market for labor because they have millions of choices.  Its not a balanced market.


"Reeducation" is an interesting word choice for someone who fears the Soviet system.   The book idea is completely illogical.  Not only because  you're not going to teach morals out of someone, but because knowing how to function is not the problem.  The problem I have with capitalism is the people my success is stealing from.  Ignorance is on your side.  The most educated nations have all evolved into social democracies.   If everyone knew how the system worked, the American system would collapse in a day.   This is inevitably how capitalism will end.  The working class will eventually realize the game is rigged against them and quit or change the rules.  

There is no way to both effectively and ethically function in capitalism.  You have to pick one of the two. You can either be the rich thief or the poor working fool.  There is only some in-between because of government intervention that exists in spite of capitalism.  

I think you are just envious of rich people.  Why would you think Bezos or Gates do not deserve their billions?  They played by the rules laid out for them by the system. What I am more interested in is how they think, not their billions.

You seem to understand how the system works and why, but I think your problem is you think workers deserve more because you think if capital was given to them, all of them will turn around and become entrepreneurs.  

Guess what, most workers are happy to be workers, nothing more nothing less.  Sure there might be some ambitious ones who feel they are stuck because the system is preventing them from becoming successful.

They of course just shift the blame to protect their fragile egos.  It is hard to admit that it is you who needs to change, it is very easy to say it is the system that needs to change.

To be successful in any game, you need to know the rules.  Hint: taxation rules should be at the top of your 'to do' list.

Criticizing the capitalist system is pointless as it will not help you financially.  Stop being envious, if you failed at making your fortune in teaching, try something else.  Sell real estate, cars, start an online 'academy', etc.

If you are incapable of change, you can only blame yourself. Not the system.

BTW, the advise I am giving you works in any system, socialism, communism or capitalism.  How do you think people become top members of the politburo?  They hustle.

This is in fact how they see it, it is pointless to try to discuss this with communists. Any profit you make, is the result of "exploitation of the masses", therefore, you are a thief, and its only "natural" for the "proletariat" to seize it back, by force. Yes, its an ideology of violence, its called "class struggle" by them, something about Marx citing Hegels, blah, blah.

The Soviet Union is no more, but you can still try live in my country. See if 2 USD a month for a full time job is good to live, the "Socialist dream" here, where everything is free, but nothing works (healthcare, education, police, services, etc).

Funny thing is they seized "the means of production" from the "corrupt capitalists", and were "assigned" to the even more corrupt bureaucrats, who made all those companies go bankrupt. And now that the exploiter is the State, you cannot say a word or else you are an imperialist lackey and thrown to prison.

Now we have the highest inflation, and the highest emigration or the world...

I'm not sure if its intentional or not but you continue to shift the discussion away from the system and onto me personally.  My goal is not to help myself financially.  I don't understand why you keep talking about that and its only making your posts a caricature of someone with no argument.  Its basically the  "leftists are failures in their parents basement" trope.

I already have too much.  My goal is to have a system where everyone has opportunity to develop regardless of the situation they are born into.  Making a bigger fortune would in no way change the system.  Even if I sold real estate at a livible price, I'd just be a charity representing a drop in the bucket of a failed system.  Not even Bezos could use his fortune to end this system.

Stop inserting my views into your thought process and try to understand my thought process.  Not everyone bases their world view on what will make them the most money.  Thats a scarcity mindset which is characteristic of the right.  I think about what would be best for all people in the present and future.  My goal being fulfilled would actually hurt me financially because I would no longer have the competitive advantage of having all of these things from birth.   Things that most people in the world have to work really hard just to have a chance at obtaining.

Its not even a good straw man to say I am envious of rich people.  Envious means you want what someone has for yourself.  Wanting what someone has to be spread amongst the less fortunate is far from envy.  At worst, I'm a hypocrite for continuing to participate in a system I've realized as evil.  That'd at least be an argument that makes sense.

No I don't think workers would all become entrepreneurs but they would all have a chance and more importantly they would all have a chance to give their kids food, shelter, medicine, and education.  I don't think thats too much to ask.  At that point, then I wouldn't care how much wealth was accumulated at the top because everyone would already have a chance.   Its only the idea that we can't afford basic services for all children that makes billionaires evil.  

I don't teach for the money.  That would be a sad way to live and luckily I'm privileged enough to have the security that allows me thrive doing something I love in this bullshit system.  The only thing hindering my happiness is living with the guilt of all I've stolen through passive income and externalized costs.  I teach to help fulfill my goal of changing the world.  The privileged kids I teach will grow up to have all of the power in the world and their education will influence them to make ethical decisions.  I'm sure things will change because the young generation is growing up aware of the externalized costs of capitalism.  Prices aren't low and profits aren't being made.  They are simply being stolen from people in other places and times.  The kids are onto it and the upcoming disasters will expose the scam of capitalism.

Stop advocating forced redistribution of wealth. Taking the property of others to redistribute is not charity, it is theft. Its really easy to be generous with other people's resources. Maybe you should put your money where your mouth is and take a vow of poverty and give all your shit away, then maybe I will bother to take you seriously. Until then go fuck yourself Comtard.

All economic systems are forced redistribution of wealth.  When you shop at whole foods,  wealth is being redistributed to bezos, the purchase is taxed and that money is redistributed to build the road for bezos' trucks to drive on.  The labor value that went into the entire process has now been redistributed towards you in the form of prices lower than costs and again to bezos in the form of profit.  

The only way to avoid redistribution of wealth would be to live off the grid and not participate in any economy.

But shouldn't robbery even be ok in the Cossack tradition?

I personally have never shopped at Amazon.  This is specifically because I don't like Bezos and don't wish to support him.  In the free market system I don't have to support people who I don't like and to a lesser degree, policies which I don't agree with.

The draw of socialism/communism with it's centrally planned economic activity model seems to be that people with unpopular ideas which don't work for shit can still maintain control through what is effectively extortion and racketeering of the populous.

That is the root cause of your 'problem'.  You have not experienced what you preach. I did.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

What I was trying to tell you is that capitalism is better than communism or socialism.  But you keep saying "la-la-la, I don't care".

So stay ignorant.  Preach your nonsense.

PS. You are basically saying people who don't want to become financially independent are poor.  And it is the fault of the system that a large number of people stay poor.  You absolve people of any personal responsibility for their financial situation.  That is why communism is an insane system.

Nice analogy.... But in some countries where people survive below a 1$ a day as a result of the greed of the government stealing it's deemed the order of the day for survival.

All well and good. The question is not about stopping stealing, stopping communists from stealing, stopping governments from stealing...

it is about how to prevent it from happening to you, as an individual.

This is bitcointalk afterall...could we not have a blockchain based reputation system to help with this?

A thief database like the child predator map? Know the level of thievery in your neighborhood/city/country in order to know how much money you need to spend on securing your property.

Those in the lower class do not have to stay in the lower class. People can shift between various statuses of wealth.

Cast a stone towards the redistribution of wealth only if you expect to be constantly poor... otherwise, it wouldn't benefit you at all.

We need a system where all workers are financially independent. There are two parts to my argument.  
1. Workers should not be poor. This is not saying that workers should be rich but just that they should have an acceptable bare minimum.  

2. People should not be born into poverty.  Of course I am absolving a child who is not properly fed of any personal responsibility for their financial situation.  What kind of monster would blame children for being born poor.  Of course there is a certain age, where children are no longer children and should have developed their own sense of responsibility but that is all depending on proper conditions for their cognitive development.

A child who experiences severe trauma throughout childhood will have their executive functioning abilities hindered.  It shouldn't be hard to understand that irresponsible behavior is more a symptom of poverty than a cause of it.  

Being born with access to basic necessities like food, shelter, health, and education is not "the other side".  I've only ever lived with these things because I was born into it.   The grass is greener on my side and I want to include everyone else.

No one has preached to live in the Soviet system.  Just because I am condemning capitalism does not mean I am endorsing the Soviet system.  Both are bad enough that its not even worth arguing which is better.   No one has lived in communism nor is that being suggested here.  Yet another soft strawman.  Social democracy like that in Northern Europe is a much better first step than totalitarian government though. I've preached everyone having opportunity and fairness in the work place.  Thats not communism.  The social democracies of Northern Europe still have a long way to go but at least they have achieved a level of dignity I consider acceptable.

UBI would also be a great first step.  Welfare and UBI don't solve all problems of capitalism but are essentially bandaids that provide dignity to the poor living in a system that is designed to crush them.  The rare exception of special people who can overcome poverty is anecdotal and in no way represents the general nature of the system. 

The problem with your logic (or rather lack of) is that you suffer under the delusion that everyone can be saved. You are seeking a fantasy that is impossible to implement, and every time it is tried it results in a living nightmare. Humans can potentially reproduce infinitely. Resources are not infinite no matter how much money you hand out. If you break the incentive for the producers to provide for all of us, everyone loses. In the real world bad things happen. People suffer. This is a fact of life. Your inability to come to terms with this is a result of your own infantilization living such a privileged life. Some of us made it to the life boat, some didn't. You just continually trying to jam more and more people onto the life boat means it sinks and we all drown.

You aren't a man who has suffered, you are a child misleading other children into a delusional and fatal fantasy where the police are always your friend, the doctor always wants to heal you, and the government always has your best interest at heart. You are doing nothing but preparing the next generation to fail because you can't cope with the fact that some times people end up in horrible situations, and it isn't necessarily anyone's fault. You aren't Jesus Christ and you aren't going to save the world, and you will burn it down trying.

re: 1
It is a noble goal. How on Earth do you want to accomplish that?    Please do not say by redistribution of wealth, from the most capable hands to everyone else regardless of skills and abilities?  This can only be accomplished by forceful confiscation from those who have more than the average.  BTW, in all capitalist societies workers already earn more than the bare minimum.  Acceptable by whom?  We all want the proverbial pony for Christmas.

You want to help the hungry, teach them how to fish. The only way out of poverty is education and hard work, IMHO.  If you steal the capital from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, it is equivalent to stealing the fish from the fishermen and giving it to the poor.  After they go through it, they will go hungry again.

re: 2
You should blame the parents for children being born poor.  You absolve the parents of that responsibility.  Sex education, pregnancy prevention, and abortion can reduce the number of children born into poverty.

Your solution is reactionary.  Dig deeper for the root causes.

I'm only saying we should already be giving everyone education.  Once everyone has been educated, what they do with that education is on them but you can't blame people who never had education for not making smart, educated decisions.

Give everyone good sex education and access to sexual healthcare and you reduce the birthrate.  That much is proven to work.    

I want to give everyone fishing lessons.  I want to give children fish until they are old enough to fish for themselves.

Blaming parents for children being poor is fine but doesn't solve the problem.  Punishing kids for having bad parents is awful.  Kids don't choose their parents.  
Humans won't reproduce infinitely if they are educated.  Educating everyone isn't just going to benefit the poor.  Its going to benefit the entire society without breaking an incentive.  Survival is not the only incentive.  Theres still a huge gap between having the bare essentials and being rich.  No one wants to get rid of that gap.

Its not just "some" people or "some" times.  You need to realize that most people are poor.  Two thirds of the world's population don't even have access to clean freshwater throughout the year.    Half of the world live on less than 6 dollars a day.  The poor of the future will be even worse off.   A system that fails most people is a failed system.  We just happen to be in the exception of people who have benefited by fluke.  

Reality is already a nightmare by your own account so theres no point in staying idle and letting all of humanity's solutions to these problems go to waste.

What idiot would think its ok to take something that does not belong to them.
These kinds of people needs to be locked in prison

You sure are making lots of assumptions about things that will have tremendously horrible results when you are proven wrong. Saying people will not reproduce infinitely if educated is like saying no one will starve if they have food. It is a nonsense premise that seems self evident while simultaneously having zero assurance of being achieved, and furthermore if it is not achieved the result is there aren't enough resources for anyone and mass death and suffering increases, possibly to terminal levels for humanity and other species.

You need to realize you aren't enlightened for imagining a better world. You aren't saying anything new, profound, or even useful. What you are advocating for is 100% based in ethos, and has no basis in reality. You can imagine a world where everyone gets a pony, but that makes no difference in bringing that to reality. It simply is not possible, that its without horrible freedom crushing technocratic totalitarianism where humans are managed like cattle and make none of their own choices.

More and more people are being brought out of poverty than ever before in human history in spite of your winging and despair. You don't have any  solutions, you have fantasies with no functional plan to get there. You fail to realize you are only taking those that don't live in a nightmare and sending them and everyone else to an even worse hell.


Coins4Commies Global Development Strategy:

https://i.imgur.com/JGXwiHp.png

That diagram shows part of one cycle.

Any Communist from Marx on down will tell you that Capitalism is a necessary stage in political development.  It's the stage where shit that is worth stealing is created.  Then Communism steals it.  Then Communism collapses and you get an Oligarchy.  The former Soviet Union is the best example of of what is nearly a full cycle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoQhXh_Q0AU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoQhXh_Q0AU)

You are forgetting that many educated people do not want to be rich (yourself included), they want to be workers (and stay poor) all their lives.

How are you going to pull them out of poverty?

BTW, you cannot educate people who do not want to be educated.  The desire to change their lives has to come from within.

The best you can do is create conditions where poor people who want to succeed can become successful.

I hope you realize that the solution to this inequality problem is multifaceted, not as simple as the (superficial) solution proposed by Marx and Engels.

The system that best fits our human nature is capitalism.  Whether you like it or not.

PS. One area where I think capitalism has to be curbed is the environmental protection as the damage in many cases is irreversible and no money in the world can fix that damage.  For example, the packaging of consumer products has to be changed to eliminate plastic waste, water, air pollution needs to be reduced, emission standards have to improve.  This is going to be a big issue going forward in the coming decades as populations of cities swell, and natural habitats are destroyed. I don't think the free market will regulate itself in that area.  It will need a little help, IMHO.

It is completely based on reality.   You are only using basic intuition and preconceived ideas about how things worked and ignoring data and research that sometimes provides counterintuitive results.  

I understand how one can start off thinking that people will reproduce infinitely but there is a mountain of research and real-world evidence that shows the more education women have, the less they reproduce.  Nations with higher human devleopment have lower birth rates and many of the highest, most socialized nations with large safety nets and welfare actually have birth rates below replacement.  This is because women who have more education end up with physical autonomy and the ability to afford contraception, birth control and pursuit of professional careers.  They end up delaying motherhood and end up with only a few years of fertility by the time they are settled.  

https://www.economist.com/international/2019/02/02/thanks-to-education-global-fertility-could-fall-faster-than-expected

Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are all under 2 children per woman.  Certainly not infinite reproduction despite universal access to education, healthcare, shelter and food.  Not only do these countries still function, but they are all among the most well-off in the world.  This is not communism at all and its definitely not the crap you call communism. 

Meanwhile look at all the countries with the high rates of births and they are all countries with high levels of poverty, poor education, and poor healthcare.  The correlation and causation are undeniable.




 

I think the problem in bold is that you have a lack of knowledge of the poor.  You think they want to be poor which indicates you simply don't know any poor people.  You also seem to think the poor have a lot more than they do have.  You're out of touch with the poor and I'm out of touch with how you could think human nature is to want to stay poor.

Rich is a relative term.  Only evil people want to be billionaires and when I'm attacking billionaires, I'm not referring to rich people like everyone on this board.  I'd guess most of the posters on this board are in the top 1% and the ones who aren't are definitely in the top 5% so generally, every discussion here has a perspective that is blind to 95% of the people on the planet.   

Everyone wants security, clean water, shelter, and food.  Everyone wants leisure time.   Everyone wants freedom.   I define rich as people who never have to worry about any of these things which is what I mean by people like us on this board.  I'm pretty certain no one here is a billionaire but no one who is actually poor has time for this type of discussion either.   You're so rich and so surrounded by wealth that you think poor people are also rich.

This is all I'm about.  We agree on this and maybe just disagree on what the conditions are that allow people to become successful.  I think my background in education and academia gives me more of a clear picture of the road to success because I have seen it in many different areas and been able to compare and contrast how people from different situations have different experiences in terms of education and lack of education.

You didn't actually refute my arguments. You just essentially said no, you are wrong, and repeated your premise. Once again you are making assumptions and projections that are by far not assured. Also if you are wrong the results have been shown throughout history in the form of millions dead. History shows what you advocate for ends in horrible genocidal failure. Just because it works for some select small groups for short periods in no way means it will translate successfully scaled up, and the historical evidence shows it in fact will end in failure. Keep dreaming Captain Postmodern. Leave the policy decisions to people who make choices based on logos, not ethos.

Now you really pissed me off. You motherfucker, you know nothing about being poor and eating from the dumpsters.  I was fucking homeless, ate from the dumpsters, and slept in public parks.  You little twit.  That is who you are, you know shit and you think you can save the world with your bullshit propaganda which does nothing but instills hope in other lazy, criminal minds.

So shut the fuck up with your bullshit.

You know shit, are lazy as fuck and are looking for an easy way out, you will die poor, so will your children and grandchildren.

You just don't get it. He in his self proclaimed privileged life is educated and knows far more about poverty than any homeless person! You just need re-education until you see it his way. Trust him, he knows best from his position of privilege over and over telling people who have suffered under poverty, socialism, and communism personally. All these people who have lived his ideological reality know nothing and they simply need to imagine everyone getting a free pony harder and all the world's problems will be solved. He is enlightened and he will lead poor plebeians like you in the revolt against the evil wealth hoarding kulaks. Once the productive class is destroyed we will all live in equality!

I don't understand why some people are believe that stealing is ok. Those are not learn how to do a good manners. People is stealing because of life is so poor but not that the reason they can find a job so that they have money for there family.
Maybe try to put them on jail so that they learn that stealing is not good.

The key thing here is that we need to produce more humans.

Space is quite large and if we want to spread humanity throughout the cosmos we need more than what we have here on Earth right now. We need to come up with pro-population strategies. We need to encourage a lot more sex.

For every Ocean Builders home that we create, the coral garden that goes along with it will start soaking up CO2. Coral reefs make up 90% of the world's ecosystems.

There is over three times as much hurricane free ocean space than there is habitable land in the world. This means that if we fill the ocean with these coral building homes will be soaking up CO2 at such a high rate that we will need more humans to produce CO2 so that the plants will be able to survive.

If you want lower birth rates you want all the plants on the world to die. How dare you!

Such behavior is related to the character and morale of each person.
Due to different circumstances, problems in the family or in society, or bad influences from friends, many people never get a moral compass for life and they don't really learn to differentiate between good and evil.
Sometimes it is possible to make behavioral correction with children, but with adults only punitive measures can help.

Hey look Ma, we've got Mr. Earnshaw from Wuthering Heights here.

Beating anyone is not moral you little freak.

I don't see him advocating beating anywhere in his statement... I think you need to calm down just a bit.

Where did you see me write about the beating?
I confess that English is not my first language but I think i was very clear in my post.
I am not talking about beatings, but about the instruments of the rule of law and legal responses to breaches of the law.
Legal responses can be counseling, anger control courses, correctional homes and up to jail time.
BTW, behavioral correction with children refers to additional education and work with children, namely by professional persons, psychologists and educators.
I hope everything is clear now.

Sorry, I have mistaken you for a strict Bible follower. I read too much into our previous exchanges on religion.  I assumed you still follow your childhood indoctrination.  For that, I apologize.

Proverbs 13:24 - "Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them."

I'm really confused because you definition of poor seems to be changing within every post.  What is your definition of poor?  You said poor people want to stay poor then you said you know what poor people want because you were poor, then you said know nothing about being poor yet somehow will die poor and then you said my children and grandchildren (who don't exist) will die poor and all of this with no explanation.   

It seems like you are just ranting out of anger and throwing words at the keyboard.  Like, do you really think a lazy person would go through all this trouble to try and explain poverty to people who clearly don't give a damn about what happens to poor people in this current system?  I may be an ineffective teacher but definitely not a lazy one. TECSHARE has been in my class for a few years and still thinks its about the USSR. 

My assertion was not even baseless.  My assertion was based on your statement that poor people "want to stay poor".  What evidence do you have of that?  I've worked with thousands of adolescents and I've never met a single one who wanted to stay poor.  This is why I have the privilege of a more diverse perspective.   I've worked in poor schools and rich schools and had the opportunity to see the differences first hand and experience how poverty affects education.

As for tecshare...Just because I haven't personally been poor doesn't mean I haven't learned about the experience by accompanying poor children in their academic journey.  I've also done service and work in homeless shelters, soup kitchens and NGOs in Brazil, Peru, Kenya and Cambodia.

With all that said, research is more valuable than experience in the context of a generalized discussion.  Experiences can be anecdotal and due to chance.  I have both so I also have the ability to recognize when the mechanisms I've learned about through research are being experienced by people in front of me.   I've used my privilege to work to bring people up. 

So here I am talking about mechanisms backed by trends in data and research going against one person who thinks the fact that they ate out of a dumpster gives them the authority to refute entire bodies of research on poverty and psychology. 

and another person who thinks any criticism of capitalism is an endorsement of the soviet system because they think there are literally only two ways to setup a society

When you are homeless, anyone who eats every day is not poor.
When you are working for $20/hr, homeless people are poor.
When you are making $100/hr, people who make $20/hr are poor.
When you are financially independent, people who work are poor.

Today, I am financially independent, I have retired at 52 a few years back.  To me people who are not financially independent, have to work to make a living, are slaves to the system and are poor.   That was not the case 35 years ago when I was homeless.

My world view might be different from 90% of the population but it is based on many things, mostly on what I experienced in my life.

Most people keep working until they die, even when they become financially independent.  Many slaves did not leave their masters even after they were emancipated.  Many 'wage' workers will continue to be 'wage' workers all their lives, giving them money, or changing the system, or killing all the rich people will not change them, they will still want to work as 'wage' workers.  That is just how people are.

If this was not the case, you would never see older 'wage' workers.

You're coming to this conclusion based on solely on transitions from one degree of slavery to another.  Slaves did not have freedom after slavery.  Many had the opportunity to leave their plantation and become sharecroppers where they would have no rights and earn less than the sum of what they were provided as slaves.  Many would starve and suffer even more under those conditions.  The descendants of slaves just got freedom of movement in recent decades and are still struggling for equal rights today.    Capitalism is only marginally better.  Some of systems you call communism were also essentially slavery for the masses by the government.

Now you are catching on. Capitalism provides you with an opportunity to become a free man. I am not saying it is easy.  I was probably an exception, skipped a generation or two, but what I am saying is that it is possible.

Workers' slave mentality persists no matter the system.  You can change the system but you cannot change that slave mentality.

Your conclusion implies that you believe stealing is ok because it always happens.  You excuse capitalist theft because the victims of said theft have a possibility of avoiding it someday.


and you have jumped to that conclusion after observing the behavior of humans in different types of slave systems.  You haven't observed the prevailing mentality in any system where freedom is the default for comparison, nor have you contemplated the possibilities of a such hypothetical system.  Everything seems impossible until it happens for the first time.  

I thought I got through to you.  I guess not.

I repeat.  There is no theft under the capitalist division of labor.  The free market is the most efficient system to self-correct any price dislocations (when workers are underpaid or overpaid).  Market participants are willingly participating to exchange goods and services.

If you happen to use the inefficiencies of the free market to your advantage, all the power to you.  
You just use the opportunity available to all.  You are not stealing from anyone.

When a lioness sees a gazelle she will not wait for other lionesses to come around, she will go for the kill.

Capitalism best resembles nature.  Are people being taken advantage of?  Of course.  No question about it.  
There are many overpriced products/services being bought/sold as we speak.  Calling it theft is disingenuous.

What class? You have no class. You are a fraud that is not fit to teach people how to use the fryer at McDonalds. What you advocate for IS about the USSR, because history shows that is inevitably what your ideology results in. You can pretend it is "different this time" over and over again at the cost of millions of lives, but that doesn't change the facts. You talk about how you don't deserve all the material wealth you have and don't deserve, but you don't give it away now do you? You talk about how you know more about poverty than the impoverished from the position of your pampered lifestyle, wagging your finger at people who have actually lived that experience. You preach to people who have suffered under Communism and Socialism that they "just don't get it" as you benefit from living in a Western capitalist society. You have no morals. You have no principles. You have no logos. You have no knowledge. All you have is bullshit, narcissism, and a savior complex.

I liked the way the Khmer Rouge did it:  make a 'year zero' by burning all the books and shooting anyone who wore glasses under the suspicion that they know how to read.  Communists seem to have a thing about children so they had the kids do the machete killings in order to help with their training.

Marx is suggested to have been a Satanist, and there seems to be perhaps some credible evidence in this regard.  One way or another, the expression of Communism in most instance of it's practice suggest that there were some real sickos at the helm.  Likewise, it seems to have a disproportionate appeal to sickos in the modern world as well for whatever reason.  In part because it has marketing value I would guess.  But in fairness I would say that that appeal is more the fault of negligence on the part of the Capitalists for not realizing the long term value of mildly fair transfers of wealth than it is the fault of the 'Communists' who can make hay of the disparities for their own nefarious goal.

Participating in the market is not a choice when the resources necessary for survival are all tied up in said market.  I'd be fine with captialism if we gave everyone rights to the things that are necessary and let the free markets decide who gets the luxuries. 

the problem is that theft, is diversly understood, take the conquest of byzanze, many european orthodox christians considered it an outright theft, why didnt osman used his army to build himself a castle instead of stealing the castle of the byzantinians and the constantinope dynasty.
same is with americans who use their advantage in technology to spam the entire world with how good they are and dominate it financiallay.
stealing sometimes if a form of liberation from a tyrant. thats why people do it. god takes and god gives.

regards

You are dead on that I am not fit to teach people how to use the fryer at mcdonalds but in your disrespect for service industry workers, you fail to see how that is not even an insult.  I have never used the fryer at mcdonalds and a lot of times, the corporate people dictating use methods don't even know how to best use the equipment.  

Its not even the same ideology.  You just happen to be using the same words to describe two completely different things and this makes it difficult for you to see the difference.  Present day China is the "different this time" version of the ideology you accuse me of actually working but its still not my ideology.

I do give wealth away when I find causes that deserve it.  I'm giving wealth away here by using my time to teach you about leftist ideology. How could you say I have no morals or principles when thats clearly what drives all of my post.  One time you told me I was too idealistic and that the world would never be perfect.  Well you can't be idealistic without principals and morals.  Savior complex could be an accurate criticism but it goes against your claims that I have no principles.

Just re-read your post again and let it sink in.

Capitalism does not take away your rights.  Quite the opposite.

What do you want the "resources necessary for survival" to be tied to?

I think you are just confused.  I suggest you take some Econ 101 class.

A McDonald's worker has never taught one of your classes indoctrination sessions, but I am confident they would do a much better job regardless. It has nothing to do with disrespect. Fast food workers are not skilled laborers, and neither are you, that is the point, though that was cute how you turned that into a further excuse to be indignant.

You just denying they are not the same is not an argument. Oh China is the "different this time" example is it? All you have to do is brush off the genocide, organ harvesting, and hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps. You don't have principles or morals, you have a fluid ethos based ideology that shifts depending on whatever you are arguing, because you believe that the ends justify the means. Morals and principles are not a requirement to be a narcissist jerking themselves off over delusions of being a savior. You might actually believe you have them, but you continually demonstrate you don't by constantly contradicting yourself.

I clearly said capitalism would work in a system where we gave people rights to necessities so they didn't have to depend on markets for those things.  Education, healthcare, food and shelter. 

Which school's econ 101 class are you referring to? This topic was not addressed in any  lower level econ classes at my schools.  I'm not confused, I'm just incorporating ideas and thought processes that are well beyond an introductory level course. 

If you look past the 100 level courses, you will find more advanced courses that actually address human development, well being, poverty, inequality and how all of those things fit in with economics.

So a person basing everything off of an econ 101 course is obviously not going to understand the perspective of someone who is incorporating courses and research from multiple fields. Heres some course suggestions

Principles of welfare economics
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/economics/14-01sc-principles-of-microeconomics-fall-2011/unit-4-welfare-economics/principles-of-welfare-economics/

Econ 345a. Welfare Economics and Equity
https://economics.yale.edu/courses/econ-345a-welfare-economics-and-equity

PS 20000: Introduction to Poverty Studies
https://sites.nd.edu/connie-snyder-mick/files/2015/07/PS20000SyllabusSP11official.pdf

Economics 390: Income, Wealth, and Health Inequality in the United States
https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/sites.brown.edu/dist/1/24/files/2018/10/Econ-390-Syllabus-2018-1-18mphp4.pdf

Simply reading the papers in the syllabi would go a long way. 

Oh boy, you are digging your hole even deeper.

Any entry-level econ course would do:
https://economics.yale.edu/courses/econ-110b-01-introduction-microeconomic-analysis-1
https://economics.yale.edu/courses/econ-111a-01-introduction-macroeconomic-analysis

To which of the four areas: education, healthcare, food, and shelter, we don't have rights?

Is someone denying you any of those things because of who you are?

The US has the best education and healthcare on this planet.  Food is cheap and abundant.  There are places in the US where living expenses are lower than in many places in Latin America or Asia, not to mention European countries or Canada.

US citizens have more RIGHTS than citizens of any other country on the planet.

PS. Just because you cannot buy your pony does not mean that you don't have the right to buy that pony.

PPS. On second thought, I think you should take an elementary English language class.  You are confusing (and redefining) the meaning of English words. 

You added a word to my statement that changes the whole thing and then claim I don't understand the word. 

I didn't say right to BUY things and I think you know and are being intentionally misleading.  If you have no money, its going to be difficult to get all four of those things.  45,000 people die each year because they cannot afford healthcare and don't have insurance.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2018/10/15/study-45000-deaths-per-year-due-to-lack-of-health-insurance/

  When people talk about healthcare as a right, or any of those things, we are talking about it being an entitlement that everyone has a legal right to regardless of what they have done previously.  Any honest person would have acknowledge someone saying "healthcare should be a right" as such because everyone has  already has the right to buy these things pretty much anywhere.   We have a right to a lawyer.  That doesn't mean we have to go and hire a lawyer because if we can't afford it, one will always be provided.



You also make the bolded statement with no supporting evidence (its false)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World#Country_rankings
We have a lot of rights  and freedoms but theres about 40 countries ahead of us in this metric.

I did no such thing.  I copied your post verbatim.  You said that we need to give people rights to all these necessities.

I think what you wanted to say is that we need to give those things to people for free or for the price they will be able to afford.

and this massive subsidy would come from where?  Who is going to pay for it?

Are you willing to ask the poor people to help me pay for my collection of Mercedeses and BMWs and my collection of Rolexes?
I feel it is my right to those things, and I feel that you personally should pay for some, or maybe even all of it.

Yet another person who will justify stealing as ok.

I am not looking for solutions to brainwash people. There are too many ignorant people in the world to educate.

The solution needs to be in protecting private property from those people. We need to stay one step ahead of them and this should not be a very difficult task because they tend to be unintelligent.

Guns, guard dogs, security systems are a start. Bitcoin is great. HOAs provide local security for neighborhoods.

But we need more. There should be segregation. Those that support theft should be kept far away from those that want to protect their property.

In a seastead community there should be checks on people entering the area to ensure that thieves are not approaching. If a community wants to be a den of thieves then go for it. All the better for identifying people as such.

Yes I'm suggesting these things be an entitlement.  That word also happens to be in the definition of right.

You're either being intentionally dishonest or willfully ignorant.  If you did any bit of research, you would know clearly how its going to be paid for and if you don't know, then it is you who needs to take classes or simply study almost any industrialized nation.  The readings are in the syllabi.  I cannot put the information in your head and don't even want you to just take my word for it because you don't know if I'm a credible source.  

Your bolded part is completely dishonest.  You do not feel that way and are just trying to derail the discussion with nonsense that you know is nonsense.  Hypothetically speaking, if a majority of people agreed that you have a right to rolexes and luxury vehicles, then it would be done but that is a preposterous, disingenuous notion.  

The problem being that there will be diminishing returns from increased effort (and wealth) under your support systems.

You can keep everyone near baseline but the higher up you want that baseline to go, the tighter the grip it has on its people.

Just because a herd of vengeful simpletons with pitchforks want something does not make it legal or moral to accommodate them.

Just because the majority (selfishly) thinks something is right, does not make it right.

My example with a collection of luxury items was to illustrate how ridiculous your demands are.

You fail miserably in identifying the root causes of the issues, despite that, you propose a kneejerk solution that is destined for a spectacular failure.  Both your analysis and solutions are superficial.

I have tried to explain to you that the motivation for change has to come from the poor people.  Education, desire to become capitalists has to come from them.  They and you need to change.  If you and your camerades will not change, you, your and their children and grandchildren will be poor and slaves to the system, it will not matter what the system it is, capitalist, socialist or communist.  All systems revert to their natural steady-state i.e. capitalism.

To be a free man, you have to become a free man.  Deal with it, or die a slave.

People seldom realize freedom and responsibility are the same thing.

In a life which is limited, my personal view on stealing is just a mere small deed rather a big sin. No one in the world is really entitled to anything unless because of pure "luck". Fundamentally, one is lucky to born in a rich family or situations where he can escape or prevent poverty and meet his needs. All because of pure luck, one is born in a healthy family with healthy bodies rather than being born in a very poor family with the bodily disorder. Did the former deserve to be born in such a good situation and the latter deserve to be born in such a bad situation? Obviously no. But due to mere luck, things are where they are. And then if a poor fella steals some pieces of bread from your table, you will condemn him to a filthy being without having to experience such a situation yourself by putting your legs in his shoes? Not a good idea!

Please Let me ask you something

Have you ever stolen anything?Most of us as small children or even as adults have done so.As adults ,we sometimes ,for example,cassually take the soap from a hotel room,and some might have stolen a towel or a bathrobe.There are cases in which the theft seem not that threatening or unpopular.
And of course lets not forget people faced by huge hardships are sometimes forced to steal when hungry..

STEALING is never ok ,but sometimes happens

We need to make them see the disadvantage of stealing and also make them understand that the people that are been robbed of their hard earned money and properties are deeply hurt, we need also make them see the purnishment for stealing in this country and encourage them to work hard if possible help with little things to start their life and to plan future cause he who failed to plan is definitely planning to fail.

Showing them the disadvantages of stealing is by performing a jungle justice but the is that the tradition permit stealing, stealing is not just am ordinary thing is some thing some one will go and survive, since is a culture of particular environment or country before they will be caught in stealing it will take period of times.but i don't believe their is culture or tradition that will encourage stealing, maybe the topic is to gather people opinion for university project research

In my opinion, stealing signifies a symbol of failure. If you are addicted to drugs, or any kind of alcohol, then it's easy to steal other's hard work. However, stealing something users work is a bad failure in your life.