Comment by edanm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edanm | Hacker News Reader

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> Theft isn't inherently tied to violence. It's easy to think of someone breaking into your home with a ski mask on, instead of embezzlement or pirating software.

Well, I think you're just defining theft differently than the parent. In most people's minds (I think), when you talk about theft, you're talking about something with at least implied violence. This is exactly why non-violent (and semi-victimless) crimes like white collar crimes, pirating software, etc, tend to have lighter sentences and generally be looked at differently. This forum in particular is a place where people often make the case that software piracy shouldn't even be called piracy/theft, partially for this reason!

> I would argue that wage theft is a bigger problem in the sense that the scope is so much larger.

Valid, but I think you're just defining "bigger" here differently than parent. It seems like you're talking pure scope of people affected, whereas parent is including how severely the people are affected. I don't think that's a very interesting discussion to be honest - it's just defining words. I imagine both of you will agree with the statement "one impacts more people, but the other impacts people more severely, ideally we should try to combat both", no?

> Would I rather a corporation steal $12,000 from me every year, or a burglar break into my home and steal my shit? I know I wouldn't pay $12,000 for a security system for my house.

Yes, but, with every time someone breaks into your house there's a chance you might be hurt or killed... doesn't that change your calculus here? (Of course the actual numbers matter though!)

What says that there isn't an equal chance of dying from complicated health issues that can't get attended to or mechanical repairs that can't be done because one JUST CAN'T AFFORD it right now?

Don't try to hide behind "it isn't violence". Everything is violence if you think hard enough. We just prune down the scope to what happens to be convenient at the time.

The real qualifier for what makes this "theft" is the asymmetry of value generated for the payer vs. the reward returned to the payee.

Think about if that janitor WEREN'T there. She just stayed home and hardened somehow. No more floor\workspace cleaning, no more trash being emptied, no more bathrooms being restocked, no more Windows being cleaned.

I'd like to see 90% of businesses that hire janitors workplace productivity after not having them around.

Now look at programmers. System's I develop transact billions of times a quarter, generating millions in revenue.

Suppose all of the people capable of developing those services refused to work as well? Things would go along fine for the most part. Millions would still roll in.

So, yeah. It's theft. In BOTH cases. We just like to draw lines between skilled and unskilled labor and say "this person is more valuable than that person".

It's why the phrase "Human Resources" became a thing. It isn't about doing business in good faith with someone else. It's about stroking egos and making the financials look good.

I don't know the solution, but when most normal people I know make 4 times less than the average programmer for an equal investment of their lives to someone else's ends, there is some stinking problem going on, and it isn't just "the market at work". That's a part undoubtedly, but there seems to be something structural underlying it all as well. There is no reason why wage growth should not have scaled with capacity to generate revenue.

> Everything is violence if you think hard enough.

Yes, very much this. "Violent" crimes clearly have a more evident immediate danger, but all theft is violence (though the scope might not be immediately evident).

This applies especially so toward individuals who are already low-income. Steal a low-income person's wages, and they fall deeper into the pit of poverty. They can't make their rent payment, their electric bill, they overdraw their account maybe. They haven't just had an hour or two stolen from them.

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