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Comment by reustle | Hacker News Reader

> customers being forced to be unpaid employees

Do you consider yourself a forced unpaid employee when you go through the checkout screen on Amazon?

Same energy as “I pirate stuff because it’s not provided to me exactly when, how and at the exact price I want”. “Information wants to be free!”

This entire thread is depressing.

Yes, I am an unabashed 'pierat'. I've talked about that elsewhere in comments. And it's because I've been screwed time and again is why I'm solidly in the pro-piracy camp. I've paid enough. And buying legitimately means you're now subjected to buying rentals classified as 'purchase'.

Go read: https://xkcd.com/488/

Now as for shoplifting, I did not advocate it. I said I found it funny that shoplifting is being multiplied in direct proportion to the greed of the companies (getting rid of cashiers and putting in you-scan devices). Corporate greed is *enabling* customer greed.

When I worked "shit jobs" (read: box stores at 9$/hr), I didn't give one shit if I saw someone steal. My job was to stock shit. I wasn't in LP nor did I want to be. And if someone was stealing, not my goods, not my problem. And not worth bodily injury.

I didn't encourage it, but nor did I attempt to stop it. And then there's classes of shoplifting that I would completely look the other way (baby formula, diapers, baby food, etc). If you're that bad off attempting to steal that, I never saw even if I'm right there.

And yeah, it IS depressing when we talk about humans doing stuff to survive. And this is predominantly about petty theft for food. But talking about how big business intentionally rose all prices for the pandemic: well, business is just business. And the poor pay even more.

https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/pandemic-profits-com...

Ethics (and laws) for thee, but for me.

Most shoplifting - in fact, almost all of it - in places like SF is not done by people starving and having to steal to survive. If is done by organized crime sending people to steal and then reselling the goods. It is about greed, but of course the actual criminals get ignored and the imaginary criminals are blamed because the ideology demands so.

That poster should look up what groceries stores used to look like...

The old ones where everything is behind the counter, fetched for you by the checkout clerk, to prevent shoplifting? I've seen the pictures, and I never want to go back to that kind of low-trust society. Please, I'm begging everyone who will listen: do not erode the social norms that let us have nice supermarkets. Or most other nice things.

I am more in the "do everything you can to let the big corporations die" camp... but to each their own

Decent people are in the "stealing is wrong" camp

Decent people are also in the "if you want people to do work for you, you need to pay them" camp.

Why does a “corporation” face your ire? Are unincorporated groups of people somehow superior in your perspective?

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