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Comment by pstrateman | Hacker News Reader

It's simple theft.

It's the same problem for society as any other kind of theft.

Maybe some of it is theft, but some of it is clearly not. From the article:

> If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up.

That's not theft in any moral sense, though I can't speak to British law. The owner wanted it gone. It wasn't owed to anyone else (or they wouldn't have to pay someone to take it away). A firm is upset they didn't get a contract, that's all.

It could potentially be theft in a legal sense, under s.1(1) of the Theft Act 1968,[1] depending on whether the jury finds that the conduct of the "thieves" was dishonest from the perspective of a reasonable person.[2] Although I do not think a jury would make such a finding in most cases, nor would the owners support a prosecution of those who provide what is essentially a free service.

1. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/60/section/1

2. s.74 https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKSC/2017/67.html

> It's simple theft.

I don't see taking something abandoned at the side of the road as "theft".

It was not abandoned at the side of the road. It was deliberately placed there to be picked up by a designated waste hauling service provider.

I did the same thing with a piece of cardboard in my city just yesterday, had someone came in order to pick it up before the hauling service provider's designated hours I wouldn't have regarded that as theft. And I say that as technically still the owner of said piece of cardboard (until who ever came first to pick it up took it from the side of the street).

Good for you. You don't get to make that decision for everyone else.

But... it doesn't sound like everyone else has a problem with this either.

> "And theft is hardly ever reported by companies, because why would they? If magic pixies have nicked their waste cardboard then it means they don't have to pay a firm like mine to come and pick it up. So they are going to keep schtum [quiet]."

> This is very much the opinion of the shopkeeper we spoke to in Madrid.

One could flip this around. Good for you if you want to waste police resources guarding your trash bins, but why should you get to make that decision for the other shop keepers in Madrid?

It's one thing for a city to go after criminals. It's another thing for the city to complain that its citizens aren't doing a good enough job helping enforce the laws that they don't care about.

For sure, if someone wants to set up security cameras by their trash bin and report thefts, go wild. But I'm just having a hard time getting worked up about something where the citizens themselves don't seem to be upset.

If I intentionally put it in a non-official purple bin, to be picked up by the Cardboard Racket, who are throwing me a couple of bucks a month to do it, are the Cardboard Racket stealing anymore?

No - but you are fly tipping. You could arrange for them to come to your property and go through all your bins if you wanted to...

I think you're being downvoted since you didn't explain your position, but I don't think it's wrong, just that it's probably not quite so simple.

Property rights can be defined in a lot of different, somewhat arbitrary ways, so I think a deeper explanation for why something is bad is sometimes needed than just "it's theft".

If the exclusive right to the cardboard was taken away from the people who currently claim it, then it wouldn't be theft. Would that make it ok?

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