I work at a Starbucks that voted to unionize months ago (still no contract and no negotiation in good faith) and the amount of food that is simply wasted because corpos gotta have all da money and we’re pretty sure anything “donated” never gets to anyone who needs it is sickening to me. And they threaten to fire us if we take EXPIRED food home.
Once while I was doing some writing late at night at a Starbucks, one of the employees gave me three free sandwiches that were going to be thrown out otherwise.
I remember working at a food retail produce department where we were literally expected to "cull" (throw away) 20% of our produce so shelves looked good and they explicitly told you taking any of this produce home was a zero tolerance firing offence and they implied they may even prosecute you for doing it. They also kept padlocks on their dumpster so people couldn't "steal" the literal tons of food they threw out.
the question then becomes how closely do they actually watch it and would anyone on your team actually report it or not, but if you don't have an especially chill group (plus a lot of the report hotlines tempt you with money to rat out your coworkers) then it's probably too risky to push it.
Yeah, the sheer volume, the literal _MOUNTAINS_ of food that is wasted by restaurants, grocery-stores, and coffee-shops is a whole video in and of itself. Likewise with supposed charities and goodwill places (especially literal Goodwill which has dropped the charade and went full-on evil).
@@capitalistraven It's not even just food-places, lots of stores do this sort of thing. Electronics stores will throw away merchandise that's not worth sending back, and book-stores will tear off the covers to return to the publisher and throw the books away; and of course, employees are forbidden from trying to salvage anything, it MUST all go into the landfill to create even more waste. 🤦
I don't know about other places, but Walmart strictly forbids employees from interfering with shoplifting because the loss of product is by far the cheapest outcome compared to the employee or even the shoplifter getting injured and suing.
This is standard corporate policy everywhere but many individual stores will have managers that ignore this and managers are the one who like actually create the condition of work. Also to be clear I'm very pro-shoplifting
@@willowjavery4652 and those managers are probably held accountable in some way for loss prevention, which is in direct conflict with the policy of non-intervention. I’ve personally never had a manager do that but I know it happens. If they did the math on the effort vs outcome, they probably wouldn’t bother.
At Walgreens the managers yearly bonus was pegged directly to shrink, so managers did try to reduce it regardless of the rules. That was fifteen years ago though.
This video gives me so many questions. Should Shoplifting? Do shops even lift? If a shop falls in the forest and no one is around to lift it, does it have weight? What is the airspeed velocity of an unlifted shop?
So when I was growing up my parents had a restaurant I worked in. They were children of The Great Depression. They would often send left over meals home with employees. This has tax implications, it's considered "payment in kind", so we kept quiet on it. One other thing we did was allow employees to order wholesale through us at wholesale prices, about a 50% retail discount. We had employees banding together and getting 40lbs of meat split 4 way, flats of tomatoes or berries, etc. Since they were paying for them this had no tax implications. Since many women in the US who work in restaurants are single female head of household I like to think they helped people through a tough time.
As a former retail worker, I used to buy the argument that shoplifting was bad because it harmed the employees. Our raises were based, in part, on the store's annual shrink (aka loss)--but despite our shrink going down each year, we never got raises because they would find other justifications to avoid giving them to us. They cut our hours so low that we wouldn't even be able to have 2 people working at all times, so the district manager told us to just add more hours, then told us we didn't get raises that year because we exceeded our hours. Another store I worked at had a terrible shoplifting problem, but the upper management still decided to blame us rather than giving us more hours or paying to install a security gate and tags. If the shoplifting was really losing the company that much profit, they would have done something about it!
You can have the position that shoplifting is bad and the retail store is shitty. That's not a mutually exclusive position. Shoplifting harm employee not because it affect the employee wage but rather the store margin. I am sure you don't care about that and neither i am. The one who do care are the management/owner and they would pull out the store if the margin isn't good enough. The store pulled out and you lose your job. Now the counterargument is that those store should be closed down if their margin is built by stealing from their employee, and you'd be right. But shoplifter doesn't discrimate between store with good manager and a corrupt one. It'll cause all of them to shut down, given enough frequency. You can wish the store you work in should be closed because they're shitty, and you can still say that shoplifting is bad.
@@nurrohmatadiputra5378 I get your point, but I disagree that shoplifting is such a problem that it's going to cause stores to shut down en masse. I gave examples from my personal experience where the store easily could have reduced the amount of theft by giving us more hours so that we could have more employees on the floor. They constantly reminded us that the best defense against theft is good customer service (which is absolutely true), but then cut our hours and blamed us for the high loss. I'll also mention that despite the shoplifting problem, our location was the highest volume in the city. We were definitely making enough money to justify hiring more workers. If the theft was such a big problem that it was seriously harming the store's margins, they would have given us more hours (or paid to install security gates). Apparently, paying for 1 or 2 more minimum wage employees to be working during busy hours wasn't worth the expense--so I came to the conclusion that the loss must not be that bad. If the stores don't care that much about shoplifting, why should I?
@@nurrohmatadiputra5378Hey buddy, maybe read the OP’s comment because they never say CANT is the issue. They just DONT think shoplifting is bad. Because its not.
I used to work at a grocery store in the deli as the "chef". At the end of the night people would pull up looking for a good deal on food and I'd just give it to them. We threw away more food than anyone could ever steal. During orientation they told every employee about how they fired a lady who took a bite of a chicken strip before throwing it away as if they were proud of it. I stole every bite of food I ate while working there for almost 5 years.
@@xandercruz900 Can't argue with you there, if anything it is yet another indication of the ineptitude and cruelty of my previous employers. Much better employees than me had been fired for speaking up against discrimination in the workplace, but apparently as long as you don't rock the boat they couldn't be bothered to even check that the books weren't adding up. In the end I just quit to work at a nicer place lol.
@@AvalonisHere LOL! "Cope"? The people that these stores serve are the ones that will have to "cope" when these places shutter because of rampant shoplifting, or people having to literally shop for stuff behind locked cabinets because these places are sick of having product stolen. We know not one of yall will open up a store to replace what is lost. Obviously, most of you aren't able to run a freaking lemonade stand because people would just steal the juice! You act like you are really talking from some high-ground position, and think some 4th level cliched snark really showed me? You need to step that back, Jr.. LOL!
IKR‽ That's always my go-to for this topic. There's a big difference between Winona Ryder stealing a Gucci bag for the exhilaration and Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread _from a bakery,_ not a homeless person to feed his sick kid who was starving. The "law" ABSOLUTELY WILL expect you to just sit there and watch your child starve to death instead of stealing something out of desperation and necessity. What a world. Capitalism truly is evil. 🤦
In my experience, bonuses go to management and not workers. They're willing to give a bit more money to managers to keep workers in line than to properly motivate the workers with better wages.
Comments like this make me so happy I work at a company that guarantees things like this and actually takes care of all levels.. Just about to hit my first 6 months, first corporate job, and I'm just now realizing how rare it is to find ANY job respecting the workers this thoroughly. :(
And then the manager, motivated by money, continues to claim that money doesn't motivate people and throws a pizza party, and then bitches about any worker who wants money.
@@TyphinHoofbun An extra layer of filth at the Walmart I work at is that all pizza is purchased from the AGMs husband so money allocated to reward employee efforts gets funneled back into her accounts anyway.
@@TyphinHoofbun I often make the joke whenever they suggest pizza or whenever I'm praised at all really that I would like to receive the equivalent monetary compensation instead. Only with middle management though because I don't want lose my job over a joke.
That's how it always goes. I've only ever gotten *one* bonus in the last decade of being a worker. I got $75 for being forced to work 10 hours overtime each week for 6 months during the height of the covid pandemic. The 4 managers got $5000 each. To put that into perspective, the company spent a little bit over $2000 in bonuses for the people who actually do real work, and they then spent $20,000 on the managers who spend their entire day sending emails and attending bullshit meetings. I also got fired from that job 2 months later because I caught covid. The system is broken.
I mean if we're going to talk religion, Jesus once braided a horsehair whip and started attacking a bunch of extremely rich bankers and merchants, directly calling the rich people the _true_ "robbers" of his society. So even from a Christian (literally, Latin for "like Jesus") perspective, the question of "Why does Jeff Bezos get to have all the money?" is a pretty valid one to ask
It's always struck me as bizarre how much corporations care about theft when they actively dispose of or destroy far more than an individual could steal. About 5 years ago I worked at a PC and console repair center, and the number of devices or parts that get thrown away despite still being somewhat usable is insane. And yet, I eventually got fired from that job because I pocketed a small plastic switch that was supposed to go in the trash anyway. The thing that really highlights the skewed ethics of corporate hoarding is that in many cases, even their trash is off-limits, even if it would be actively beneficial for someone else to have the things that the corporation doesn't want. It really highlights how selfishly they operate because most normal people would rather pass on unwanted things if possible than throw them away. When I moved into my apartment last year, so much of my furniture was gifted to me for free by friends and complete strangers because they were getting rid of it anyway, and me being able to use it was better than it being destroyed.
My husband worked at Walmart for three years when he was in college and believe me, you are hurting employees more when you put things in the wrong place than when you shoplift. They throw out millions of dollars worth of merchandise every day. They sell back to school supplies at a loss so they can make all their money on black Friday and Christmas. They don't really notice shoplifting (despite all their huffing and puffing), they claim anything as a loss from returned items to inventory missing because they didn't have enough trained employees to properly sort it. You can't steal more than they lose through mislabeling shit.
Facts!! But oh will they ever hold and prosecute if you get caught... Happened to my partner, had to go to court and everything and caught a 6 month ban. Now refuses to even shop there, just because they were so incredibly rude about it too... And yes, we were that low on income (it was some cough medicine, back before the plague, when I was hacking up a lung from non 'rona illness). *_They wasted way more than 14$ on all that nonsense! Lmao_*
That first sentence as some one who has worked for walmart for not even a year total in high school and college: UNGH THIS IS TRUE THOUGH. If someone steals something, employees just let them go (by company policy), but all the shit scattered in random places throughout the store has to all be gathered up, sorted through, relocated and reshelved then both spots (where it was left and where it has to go) have to be painstakingly "zoned." Like I'd mostly talk someone out of stealing to keep them from getting into trouble, but I'll actually gripe at people when we're at the grocery store and they decide they don't want something and just set it down on a random shelf. At the end of the day a tired, minimum wage worker with sore feet has to pick that up and through a series of other tired minimum wage workers that have been yelled at by unreasonable people all day, they have to sort it out, figure out where it's supposed to be and put it back and straighten everything up again in both spots. And they have to do that for literally hundreds of things every day. You're literally just making some (literally) poor overworked person's day a little bit worse
Holy shit, I never even thought of that. And that's why I totally put stuff back in the right spot when I see something on the floor. It's absolutely not because I just want things to be tidy.
@@KamiYugure Why do employees have to "figure out" where stuff is supposed to go? 🤨 Don't employees know where everything is supposed to go? Or… maybe stores shouldn't be rearranging everything every week to force customers into wasting their time by having to wander around looking for stuff because nothing is ever in the same place for more than a week **cough*Costco*cough**. The corporation's greed hurts customers and employees. 😒
I used to be a Loss Prevention Manager for a National supermarket in Australia. Every statistic we ever ran told us the same thing ....... cases of shoplifting vastly outnumbered cases of internal theft by staff ..... but the value of identified internal theft always, ALWAYS, greatly exceeded the value lost from identified shoplifting. But the greatest losses came through sheer dishonesty by executive management. Since they get paid their bonuses based on half yearly results, one year they simply decided to stop recording some shrinkage expense in November so the company could hit their target, and they could receive their bonus checks and share allocations. It cost the company an absolute boatload in unrecorded expenses, which carried over to the next year's balance sheets (and undoubtedly also carried over to the prices paid by customers). As far as I know, they are still doing it when the need arises. It's one reason their shrinkage losses have increased tenfold over the past ten years.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France
We all know that's not true. The rich would have no real reason to do any of that stuff, but they could get away with it because they're wealthy and the only consequences they would have is pay a fine that would be pocket change to them. Rich people pay less taxes than the working class and if Donald Trump is any proof, you can get away with not paying your fines because you _can_ pay lawyers who can help you get away with all of it.
The difference is that only one group NEEDS to do those pointlessly-forbidden things. Funny how the law always seems to forbid things for one group more than the other. Sure, it's illegal for rich people to evade taxes, but you don't see laws against owning multiple mansions or eating caviar and such, only laws against sleeping on park-benches and not having a phone-number and such. 😒 Hmm, maybe poor people should try making laws. 🤔
@@I.____.....__...__ >but you don't see laws against owning multiple mansions or eating caviar and such, Because that isn't anything unethical to anyone other than jealous rubes or clueless equivocators. Is it illegal for you to own multiple expensive shoes or video game systems? How about when you by expensive liquor or take a trip overseas? Those mansions are built and maintained by workers and tradespeople. Same thing with Yachts. Caviar is harvested by fishermen, and prepared by cooks. IOW lots of people get paid to make those things you think need to be "illegal" to own more than one of or eat. But to assuage your envy, let's put all of those people out of work. >Hmm, maybe poor people should try making laws. Yeah, I'm sure being poor totally makes you qualified for that.
Things that radicalized me: economic conversations sound like hostage situations, and Walmart is consistently the party holding the gun and making demands, or they'll make the lives of their workers EVEN WORSE I fucking dare them.
Framing all actions by corporations as inevitable consequences not only removes all moral culpability for corporations' actions, but denies the possibility of anything different. The field of economics does this constantly.
Or *gasp* they'll shut down their store in your town! Oh the humanity, please Walmart stay!!! What will we do without you. The actual sad part is no matter how much you steal from Walmart they won't shut down for that reason, they'll just use it as an excuse for downsizing and try to leverage it for lobbying power.
@@loorthedarkelf8353 The fact that these places will put padlocks on their dumpsters that they fill with hundreds of pounds of still-perfectly-good food every day is just fucking infuriating.
I've said it before...I'm a terrible self-cashier. I miss things all the time. I keep expecting them to fire me, but they don't, so I just keep missing things. Like, a LOT of things.
It's the employer's job to look after and manage their employees. You're not a bad employee. You have bad employers. It's their fault that things keep getting missed - not your fault that you're not being paid enough to care.
I'm an excellent self-cashier because I'm the fecal-matter of galliformes and feel like it's still 1984. But that's the point, isn't it, keep people working efficiently through fear. 😒
And when the store closes, you will act all put out, when you helped contribute to it by "missing" stuff deliberately because you think you are a hero.
I worked at CVS and really the only way shoplifting harmed me was that it encouraged the company to treat us the employees like criminals because they thought we were the ones stealing. We weren't allowed to leave the store without getting our bags checked in front of a camera, that was how thoroughly they distrusted us because I guess being a low wage worker=criminal. But like, my hours never got cut because of shrinkage because they still needed my labor. And when I worked at Wal-Mart and we did inventory, even when shrink was low we the employees who did the most work prepping the store to be audited, never saw a dime in the bonuses the store got.
I worked at Home Depot. They threw whole, functioning toilets in the trash compactor, because they weren't selling fast enough. Local managers didn't even get a say in the process. The price goes down to a penny, and into the bin it goes, crunch crunch crunch. More than just toilets, though. Anything on clearance long enough goes in the bin. These giant corporations destroy far more than you could ever shoplift. And this is all happening NEXT DOOR to a charity thrift shop that takes donations of all sorts, and a few blocks away from a charity org that builds homes for the needy out of donated materials. We're not allowed to donate perfectly functional toilets that we don't even want. We'd lose our jobs if we tried. They'd rather purposefully destroy the things they don't want just so other people can't use them.
Yes! I worked at PetSmart and had to destroy then throw away so much merchandise because it was on clearance for too long or just to make room for new stuff. Of course there were cameras in receiving & by the dumpsters. Most of the employees had pets and were barely making it paycheck-to-paycheck but would be fired for taking home a can of cat food that was going into a dumpster. It still makes my stomach turn thinking about all the animals that would’ve enjoyed the perfectly good food, treats, toys, beds, etc that are now sitting in a landfill
I actually worked in a thrift store and any items they couldn't find a buyer for (that couldn't currently fit in the back) were tossed out regardless of the condition.
I'm so glad you aren't advocating shoplifting, Mildred. I also don't advocate it. As a matter of fact, I'm so focused on not advocating it that I can't even speak up when I see it.
"Shoplifters are job creators" is such a good take. In fact, it's so good that I might just wander it over to hot take self checkout and pay for my hot take bubblegum while forgetting to pay for this much hotter take. Interestingly, this act will in fact not limit the degree to which other people can use this hot take.
Just becareful how you do that. They are well aware of the self checkout trick. Half the time they harass people who just go through self checkout and have shown no signs of being shady, by checking their receipts and rummaging through bags. If you want to create/save jobs, use the normal checkout where a human is the cashier. If you want to save a few bucks, then self checkout and fuck the man. Those are really your only two ethical options, depending on what ethics you adhere to.
Just be aware of the cameras at the self-checkout. Usually one near the barcode scanner and faces the same way, to watch your hands as you run items through (to have proof of you pulling a trick on the system), then there's another in front or above (per station and 1+ for the whole area), plus the wide ones at the entrance/exit. P.S. For those who still love the taste of boots: it's illegal to put hands on a shoplifter, even if you're the store owner - it's battery. Unless you are specifically a security guard hired for that purpose and on the clock - and do watch out for those. (They're not cops. Please be nice to them. I have a friend who's a security guard. She protects people, not stuff, not shops.) Even if they physically attacked you and you're just defending yourself, they can push for charges like assault, disorderly conduct, "menacing", etc. Especially if you confronted them with pointed questions or body blocking, which dissolves the "but they started it" excuse (cos such threats can warrant legally admissible physical defence in response). And there is legal precedent of this in the US, in favour of the person shoplifting. My point with that part is that if you're an employee, stopping petty theft isn't worth putting yourself in physical danger and risking getting entangled in the "justice" system for months or more. And for the literally nothing you gain.
I used to work self check out and saw people doing this all the time; paying for a few items and not for the rest. I never gave a fuck if they did, the markup on items is ridiculously high and there’s no amount of money that will make me want to act like a cop and intervene.
Since the relatives I have who have shoplifted were doing it purely for the kick and didn’t need it… not shocked. The relatives I have who have been poor enough that it would have benefited them to take something don’t even think of anything besides the shock of the other relatives admitting to that.
The "blood from Dracula" analogy is so perfect. Being like "Get I got this blood from Dracula" and half the people being like "No he needs that blood to be a strong powerful Dracula" and then me being like "That's great but I need that blood TO LIVE!" and then them being upset with me while the Dracula just gets spare blood from his Renfields. In this analogy Renfield is the business insurer.
The problem with this Dracula analogy is that the cost of shoplifting (yes, there is a cost it doesn't "create jobs" see broken windows fallacy) is passed on to the consumer. Ultimately low income families who play by the rules pay for shoplifting.
@@jenispizz2556 Big brand stores already are and will always be charging as much as they think they can get away with, shoplifting does not change this.
@@elowin1691 Of course they do, but they're forced to COMPETE, which keeps prices low. If you start pulling merchandise off the shelves without paying they'll need to balance their books somehow. LISTEN, let's just keep it real here friend, it's stealing. When we advocate for stealing, we look insane. Breadtube has completely collapsed in influence because of videos like this. Let's focus on things like giving better health care access to out of the way impoverished areas, decreasing meat subsidies to curb climate change, and criminal justice reform implementing police body cameras and having "force continuum" policies instead of escalation models. We can actually get all of that stuff done, and people will actually care what we think instead of debating the most useless and stupid topic of whether stealing is actually okay because we're enslaved by Target.
I worked at a university dining hall. I supervised the dish room. I had to go to the warmers every night and pull out extra food to toss out to go ahead and wash the pans. There were some nights I had to throw out +30 pans(about the size of an oven pan you cook casserole in). It pissed me off. They were cooking way too much food in the kitchen. The buffet business model is so wasteful, it's very immoral and should be illegal to waste that much food. Looks like capitalism isn't allocating our resources efficiently... People are starving while we waste literal tons of food everyday.
WHO, WHO is starving in the US??? We have a fantastic foodstamps program and some insanely awesome social welfare programs for food. Our god damn homeless people don't even starve. Don't get me wrong, we have BIG problems (people being homeless, for example), but we almost have food sorted. Funny enough, our poor people are super obese, and our problems relating to food are educational and cultural. Almost every single poor person in the US should be able to eat healthy high quality food that they cook at home. Rice, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, pasta, broccoli, onions... depending on where you are, these foods should be borderline free and you can cook them in so many amazing ways.
@@jenispizz2556 We definitely have thousands of people in the US starving to death. Not including those who are food insecure and have malnutrition related deaths and illness but actually no food for long enough that dead..... Just because you do not want to take the time to research this doesn't mean it is not true. The food stamp programs in the US are fn terrible and the GOP fight constantly to make them even worse. "Poor people are super obese" because CHEAP and fast/easy to make food is terrible for you. There are a large number of people who are working 16+ hours a day in shit wage jobs.... No our problems relating to food is we let big corporations literally research how to get you ADDICTED to their shitty unhealthy foods.... While you are going to look up the starvation deaths in the US also look up something called "the bliss point" in relation to food....
All that was playing in my head was : Now prisoner 24601 Your time is up And your parole's begun You know what that means. Yes, it means I'm free. No! Follow to the letter your itinerary This badge of shame you'll show until you die It warns you're a dangerous man I stole a loaf of bread. My sister's child was close to death And we were starving. You will starve again Unless you learn the meaning of the law. I know the meaning of those 19 years A slave of the law Five years for what you did The rest because you tried to run Yes, 24601. My name is Jean Valjean And I am Javert Do not forget my name! Do not forget me, 24601. Look down, look down You'll always be a slave Look down, look down You're standing in your grave.
Mildred: "If you're starving, nobody expects you to just die about it." Javert: "And I'm Javert! You think it is appropriate to shoplift while grocery shopping, just because you think food prices are too high? You are a dangerous man!"
It's honestly really impressive how efficiently your structure your essays to get to interesting ideas so quickly. I am tiny essayist and it feels like i only get half the distance in twice the time. You're a really good study in this stuff.
As a writer myself, I am here to validate your assertion, Zag. Mildred does a good job, and deserves accolades for that effort. With effort, we can all be just as good, and we could promote each other to be better by doing better ourselves, like a friendly competition. Except instead of being envious, we can be happy for their success.
yeah, it's one of the reasons I like Thought Slime, pacing is really important to me. Ironically I wouldn't even say this is a great example of it compared to his other work. "Oops I was wrong about landlords" was great in that regards and also the one about crypto island, despite being off the top of their head, seemed to hit the beats they needed to hit, no more, no less.
My shoplifting story: one day I was at work (Superstore) and my manager paged for me to come upstairs. The loss prevention guys had caught someone attempting to shoplift and they needed me to keep an eye on them because I look non-threatening (that's the reason they gave me anyway.) The criminal? An actual little old lady.
This is basically what happened to me at Goodwill. You know, the chain store that sells other people's used stuff that they donate, because they think this is a charity somehow? Anyway, we had a couple who came in almost daily to steal. Everyone knew that's what they do. One day, management said "okay, Allison, you just follow the lady one around when she shows up, and look busy, but don't let her out of your sight." And like... I was a teen. I was somehow personally offended that they would steal from me, specifically. So I did it. And that lady just kept stealing the whole time, and taunting me about it. And you know what? She was right. They stopped coming to the store after that, but who fucking cares? All they ever stole was $5 shirts that someone would've donated to a real charity or thrown away, if Goodwill didn't exist to bottom feed on the scraps and prevent people from actually giving things they no longer needed to people who presently needed them. I did not, in fact, see my wages rise as a result of them not stealing from the store. The price of used shirts didn't go down, and the overhead on them remained stable. So why should I have been angry at the shoplifters?
@@AllisonIsLivid Goodwill needs its own video. I've seen a lot of videos about people "thrifting" at Goodwill to get old stuff like retro video-games, but those videos must be obsolete because Goodwill doesn't put donated video-games or computer equipment or anything in their stores, they put them on eBay to sell for maximum profit to resellers who resell them at insane markups. And the stuff they do sell in stores is often missing critical components that make them unusable and useless. They'll also often sell literally broken garbage. They even sell stuff that's DANGEROUS! They need to be shut tf down since they're not helping anyone but their own profits. And they also like to guilt people into "rounding up" their bills to "donate to charity" which begs the question, wtf was all the money going to before‽ 🤨
@@AllisonIsLivid >This is basically what happened to me at Goodwill. You know, the chain store that sells other people's used stuff that they donate, because they think this is a charity somehow? It isnt free to process that stuff, and run the building it is in + Goodwill has to pay to dispose of the junk that is donated. Just because you think it's all "free", doesn't mean you can steal from them.
The thought experiment of "is it okay for a person to steal a loaf of bread to save their family" was always interesting to me because it frames the issue of crimes of desperation in an immediate life or death context when in reality, stealing one loaf of bread wont significantly change anything. Their family probably won't die today if they get away with it, and their family might not survive tomorrow even if they do. Framing it like this shortcuts peoples brains because "of course you should steal a loaf of bread to save your family" but in actuality stealing a loaf of bread will only feed your family for a meal, stealing a catalytic converter might feed them for a week, stealing a wallet could feed them for a month. to be clear: i agree that this hypothetical person should steal bread. In fact, I would argue that they are morally justified to steal every meal if theres no other way to feed their family. The moral onus falls on the social safety net or lack thereof. without a way out of poverty, or at the very least a system which provides the essentials of life to the poor, simple crimes like stealing bread from a grocery store chain are absolutely justified. I'm just saying the example dodges the real question.
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I'd say they're two different questions. The original question only asks if stealing a loaf of bread is the correct thing to do morally, but it says nothing about if that is the correct thing to do in practice. It is an abstraction meant to highlight the difference between morality and legality. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't delve deeper into the question though. Discussing it further, the way you do, will deepen our understanding about where the lines are, or should be, drawn.
Yup. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family is unsustainable and impractical and, y'know, the thief also usually knows that. Part of the problem of the question of "is it okay" is that it reduces the entire answer down to a binary "yes/no" instead of an actual exploration of policy and social context and nuance. You don't have to think about the answer; you just have to have feelings. The real question is "should I let someone who steals *my* loaf of bread to feed their family get away with it?" The two real versions of that question are that one and "my *only* loaf of bread, which I also need to feed *my* family". That's the actual dilemma. Because one is about property and the other is about survival.
I would tell this hypothetical person to suck it up and go to a soup kitchen or some other charity shit if they're really starving that bad. Maybe they can sell their nintendo since you can't eat a nintendo. and their copy of monster party.
yeah the real problem is a society allowing people to starve or else have to steal something from someone else thereby hurting someone in that situation in any case
I worked at a Spirit Halloween years ago for a season. It really put a bad taste in my mouth one day when I went in for my shift and my manager instructed me to go in the back and destroy discontinued costumes. I asked why we were doing this. Why can't we just donate them? Well, because they didn't want anyone to profit from the costumes. They didn't want any possiblity of them being resold. They couldn't be donated and they had to be destroyed before throwing them away so no one could steal them from the trash and sell them. What's worse, most of the product Spirit sells every year is literally the same item that's been there for years. At the end of the season, any items that weren't sold were packaged in boxes, shipped back to HQ and stored until next season. Don't get me started on the quality of items and how it continues to get worse over the years. I helped set up all the animatronics and there was an ungodly amount that didn't work straight out of the box.
@@johnathanwalker8395 Wrong. A wage by definition is selling ones time. Under capitalism, you're selling your time to a capitalist who makes a profit by stealing "excess value" from the labor of the workers. Therefore, even when an employee is setting their own wage, their labor is being stolen by merit of the profit of the business owner(s). Workers co-ops are a little different of course: the subjugation of workers operates at another level, with members being able to make democratic decisions about the subjugation of their organization under the larger system of the capitalist state. Obviously coops are better in that sense, but overall profit is theft and property is theft, so somebody's always stealing from the worker.
@@johnathanwalker8395 if you were receiving the full value of your labour, there would be nothing left over for the bosses, so no, not even when you set your own wage. If you set your own wage and they accept it you set it too low.
@@hairymcnipples Found the communist comrade thread. Here's an idea- Go on youtube and cry about wages to take simp and paypiggy money. Under no circumstances...get a real job. Under no circumstances, create your own job. Under no circumstances, find the job niche that local society needs. Instead...paypigs. Take the money of the little man to propaganda to them. AKA- Cult/MLM ponzi.
Work keeps sending us too many things. "Where am I to put all these things?" I ask myself. It is as if they do not know how much space we have for the things. We tell them not to send the things, but then they send them anyway. They make us count the things constantly. We tell them "We have (x) number of this thing." They then say "No, actually. You have 0.4x of those things, or sometimes 3x of those things because computers." I'm like "Why did you make me count the things if you were just going to pull a number out of your ass anyway." and they're like "Hey, here's 3 more cases of the thing you already have way too many of. Good luck with that." Long story short, the number of things is not real and imaginary so If I powerslam a few chocoproteins in the backroom, the new number is just as good as the old number. Theoretically.
The way I just had to stop and read this three times to understand it, rofl.. OOf ADHD is bad today. :'D Facts though, the numbers are (theoretically) nonsense really. :)
I was an inventory coordinator for years and the numbers are absolutely made up and imaginary. the number of times my trucks would be missing multiple entire fucking cartons!!
I used to work at a supermarket. I handled “wasting” food items. So anything that was out of date - would be my job to log and put in the garbage. There was literally hundreds of dollars worth of food that was perfectly safe to eat which I would have to throw away everyday and I got sick of it incredibly quickly. So why not instead - just log it as waste and take some of the safe to eat stuff for myself. Turns out they OPEN THE FUCKING GARBAGE BAGS and force a worker to rummage through it to make sure everything is actually there. So I got suspended but eventually convinced them it must have been an honest mistake. I learned my lesson pretty quick - steal the stuff before I log it as waste. And oh my did I ever steal a fuck load of shit from that supermarket in the 7 years I worked there. And not just that - I allowed thousands of customers to steal untold amounts of food everyday. I can safely say I have never lost any sleep over the moral implications of my actions
How dare you don't you realize that like $7000 dollars of merchandise over 7 years would have paid like 0.01% of the CEO's quarterly bonus? That CEO now won't be able to buy that diamond encrusted yacht this week. They will have to wait until next week.
This would, I think, get a pass under the necessity clause of the argument. But either way, food waste is dumb, and in my opinion, once it is marked for disposal, it is no longer the store's property, so you do you.
I once worked at a console repair center, and we would throw away so many parts on a daily basis, many of which were perfectly usable. We had logs of the parts that were taken out to be used in a repair, but not necessarily logs of the stuff that got thrown out, because it's usually a replacement for a damaged or faulty part in the unit, so the numbers of used and trashed parts would be roughly the same. Anyway, I had a bit of a hobby of building or modding my own consoles, so one day I pocketed a small switch from the trash and got fired because someone saw me do it. I genuinely don't understand why they cared so much about me taking trash.
@西野莉奈・Rinabow best guess is the possibility for abuse, take a functional console, claim X Y and Z are faulty,, reciece parts, either replace existing parts to reaffirm the scam or just pocket parts.
It's a bit up-in-the-air about how such a world could play out. On the one hand, if automation could create a utopia where people never have to work, people could have lots of free time to just enjoy life. On the other hand, they might end up like the whales in Wall-E. On the third nuclear-apocalypse hand, humans are pretty garbage creatures and idle hands are the devil's playthings, and most people would probably just end up doing bad stuff if they had nothing else to do. This just came up in Some More News' video about whether the rich are okay; rich people do a lot of crime and drugs and stuff because they have so much more free time.
Here’s a personal detail, though: I stopped stealing (which I justified at the time because I did it from big wasteful and exploitative institutions) because I found that stealing was doing harm to me. I didn’t like who I was becoming. Maybe this was (and is) a consequence of my shitty moralistic upbringing, but I found I could not steal with a clean conscience or feel good about myself. Even so, I am not against shoplifting from big box stores in principle, and for the reasons cited here. I just can’t do it myself. I agree whole-heartedly: “if you see someone shoplifting, no you did not.”
I was once a Walmart employee and it's amazing how some the largest collective human suffering is just written off. Like I understand that there are worse human sufferings like murder but I feel like because employee suffering is considered banal it's largely ignored by most people. Imagine all the suffering every proletariat suffers in a slow burn of misery every single day of their lives. The little indignities and small pains such as crying in a walk in freezer because your boss decided you were his punching bag for the day or a customer who nearly got you fired because you wouldn't sacrifice your dignity and self respect at the alter of their hubris or how about the exhaustion of having to work multiple jobs because you simply can't make enough to survive with one. These are inflicted on the proletariat daily and en mass which adds up to the largest pile of human suffering I can possibly imagine by a wide margin. And that's not including all the large scale sufferings the proletariat suffers such as insufficient access to food, healthcare, and just not being able to lead a rich and fulfilling life. So forgive me if I don't give a single fucking shit about someone stealing a fucking shirt from these greedy corporate POS's. Good. I'm fucking happy about it. If it can inflict even 1 billionth the suffering the proletariat has endured at the hands of the bourgeois every single day of our miserable lives than fucking take everything that isn't nailed down comrades! Workers of The World Unite!
15.10 I'm embroidering something while watching, sitting in the middle of my sizeable needlework stash and think for a second: "Is that a reasonable amount of fancy thread for one person to use?" It is. I will use it to make nice things for myself and for friends and family. And if I or any other crafty person ever comes to the conclusion that they'll not use up their stash anymore, it is normal to give it away to someone who will for free or basically free. That's how I got quite some of my stuff myself. It's probably a tradition as old as civilisation.
Love fiberwork! I crochet hats, gloves, sweaters, and socks. Then I give away the ones that came out the best to the county's org for supporting the food insecure and homeless. They also run a community garden that grows fresh crops and gives them away to people! Neatest freakin shit, wanna volunteer more time with them in the future
Whatever "civilization" is, generosity is certainly older than that. Animals show more empathy for each other than large corporations do for poor people.
some businesses explicitly tell their employees NOT to confront shoplifters precisely because of the potential threat to the employee's safety; can't come back to work the next day if someone trying to steal a 12-pack of budweiser stabs you.
Much more likely that someone would get injured in an accident than stabbed, tbh. I used to know someone who worked retail security and in the many, many awful stories he had about how much he loved to tackle shoplifters he never once mentioned anyone having a weapon
I got my ass beat severely in a similar incident when I worked retail. The companies actually can't legally tell you to confront shoplifters because it would put you at risk, and a robbery with assault is something they need to report to the police, which means them putting you at risk ends up in a police report, which is very bad optics. But many of them also yell at you if you don't do anything and make you feel like someone stealing is somehow your fault. In some cases they'll reprimand employees or dock their pay, while knowing full well that if the employee had done some Spider-man shit to stop the shoplifter they'd still be yelling at them. Basically they want it both ways.
That's the corporation's way of protecting itself in the case of litigation. They still want you to stop the shoplifting, they just don't want to be held responsible for the possible consequences. There is still likely some amount of indirect pressure for employees to intervene. Something like "Oh look - Losses are up this quarter. Since our profitability is lower, nobody gets raises this time. Oh well - The most important thing is that we're all safe. Good job, everyone!"
I was really mean to my friends who did the kind of shoplifting argued for in this video. I found it immoral like you said and had the same idea of how it could harm workers more than it would harm large companies. This video is really cool to me and it shows how empathy and further understanding on an issue like this can affect someone's view on this kind of stuff. Thank you this is awesome
Not many people are willing to admit when they're wrong, and I sincerely respect anyone who does. I don't know what prompted your growth, but I am glad it happened and hope you maintain your openness to information that contradicts your beliefs.
ThoughtSlime cutely saying “Nintendos” as if objects, or “video games” in general, is a snarky jab at Nintendo themselves. I love it 😋 (Nintendo has made pointed efforts to make sure people know that “There is no such thing as A Nintendo.” The concern being that their company name could become adapted by the masses as just a new word. Like “photoshop” or “velcro” where they struggle to maintain their trademark in the face of cultural prominence.)
Generally a good video that had me consider the side I disagree with, but I think the section at ~16:00-18:00 about "people would make things even without financial incentives" is weak. Yeah, there would be some hobbyists making Nintendos, but then you would see like 100 Nintendos being made per year and access would then be extremely restricted ONLY to the wealthy/well-connected/lucky. If you want millions of people to play Nintendo games, because they're really great and fun and make your life better, a large corporation is a NECESSITY to manage large-scale production, distribution, sales, etc. It is literally impossible for the few people who have the passion+skills to produce enough to meet the demand. So tons of people just can't play Nintendo in your concept. Same with the life sim games- sure, some people enjoy trucking/farming/etc sims, but do you really think just those few niche hobbyists can hold up the entire trucking industry? Google says there are 3.5 million truckers in the US, and the TruckSim subreddit has 90.7K members. Most people who are truckers do not love it. Without the financial incentives, you'd see 90%+ of the workforce quit, and then you won't get access to all those things you want to steal. The sense I got overall is that you want all the benefits of capitalism and communism at the same time. You want everyone to have all the things they want, but you also want all those things to magically exist without money. I'm not super pro-capitalism or communism, both have their positives and negatives, but the world just can't function that way.
I see online people giving advice re shoplifting like "Walmart doesn't care" or "target doesn't care if it's under $500" and I worry about people taking that at face value. How much the store cares really depends quite a lot on the management of the specific location, and it's not consistent even within an individual chain. Some Walmarts don't care, some will pursue you to the ends of the earth over $10
Exactly, it varies significantly by management. I had to provide "testimony" for a case when I worked at Walmart, cause they were trying to claim a family I'd assisted was skip scanning :/ it'd been 3 years since I'd worked at that location. The only reason I remembered was cause my bosses were being extremely weird about them... and frankly, i told the prosectutor, "hey, all the shoplifters I've seen never ask for my help, and here they are, asking for help, from me, twice. Do YOU really think they are stealing?" It was entirely bizarre honestly
Some places even have those small items locked up because it got bad enough, but (respectfully) I doubt someone like TS has even been in a neighborhood like that in the first place.
Someone who worked in the same health food store as I did in the early 90’s, on exactly the same shifts making $4.35 an hour, but somehow alone, hmmm, noticed that many of the $6 fresh wrap sandwiches we got in went unsold and expired, though they never got moldy or anything in the week that took. That person had access to the manual, paper write-off list and decided that their hungry body was ethically better than a trash can, and even occasionally equated an unexpired sandwich on Tuesday with an expired one Wednesday. That person was smart enough to not do this regularly or to always take take same thing or even to always give the same reason for the write off. She was OK.
Mm-hmm. Working there justifies the caloric intake, especially when the stuff didn't sell (and most assuredly when it can no longer be sold). Get the A'Ok from someone above you and it's no longer even a question, fellow Freegan.
haha i would love to one day do an eric andre esc joke, where if someone asked where the trashcan was at some like, food consumption place, they would redirect you to a person dressed as a trash can who would eat anything, like ANYTHING anyone put there, seems like a great prank
@@dddaaa6965 i mean, not necesarally asking, like, they just go to put some trash down and get greeter by a guy dressed as a trash can, but why am i trying to correct myself to a guy who just asked me if i even go outside? Ohh right, because i actually have the decency to be okay when someone commits a mistake and let them correct themselves without insulting them, or mocking them unlike you my friend, so yeah, it seems i do actually go outside, not sure about you though...
Just don't shop lift at Wal-Mart. I went to a court summons with a friend and 90% of the ppl there that day got busted at Wal-Mart stealing things like diapers and formula (those security guards don't have the same code cashiers have - which is to pretend ya didn't see it). I never left court more depressed... And I've left court with my own fines.
I worked at a security camera company and once one of the mid-management guys had a presentation about how we helped our customers. One story was about some American big chain that was happy that our cameras had helped them stop all the theft of baby formula. I felt sick. I quit not long after that.
That's why they steal shit like cheese, batteries, and razors/makeup. Easier to conceal than baby supplies, and can be sold for money to buy those baby supplies and not get tackled by an agent of the machine.
I worked at a certain 3 letter pharma store as a shift lead for 8 years and never stopped a single person who I noticed stealing. There was even one guy I kept an eye on because I was curious as to how he was stealing the wine. Pant leg. One thing I did not appreciate was people stealing things in the bathroom and trying to flush the packaging or people dumpster diving and just leaving (a literal) dumpsters worth of trash on the ground for me to clean up.
Meanwhile in my community several stores have closed due to shoplifting. Corporations don't care about employees, they care about profits. If a store is losing more money than it is making it will close. Even if the corporation can afford the loss, they aren't going to keep a failing store open. Shoplifting is one of those crimes where it isn't a big deal until everyone is doing it, then you have to drive to the next town to get groceries.
@@kevinwillems8720😂😂 getting your goods stolen is specifically why they are leaving, you understand the people that run these businesses don’t think the way you do, if they see there product is getting stolen and nobody is been held accountable for it then they will leave, how is this not obvious to you?
@joshuawinstead7621 they save on their taxes. So they pay less money. It's called "tax deductible". They get to keep the money they would otherwise pay in taxes; your money. If you want to donate to a charity, do it directly and maybe even deduct it from your own taxes if it applies!
So when I worked at Toys R Us when we had a shoplifting problem corp cut hours to retaliate / send a message / get the employees on board with stopping shoplifting. But then it got worse ( because there were no employees watching the shoplifters) and the hours came back after a few months.
This just shows how we can use our labour to negotiate. If an employer does shit like that, don't work harder to prove their point for them that it was a good idea to punish people. Show them that the decision to take those actions is unprofitable, by retaliating yourselves. Half assing things is a revolutionary act.
@@catsnorkel It's also not hard to get a retail gig somewhere else immediately after. I always have one foot out the door by default, big or small business.
"It's like complaining about stealing blood from Dracula" is a phrase I need printed on the inside of my brain, that is so good and I'll use it wherever I can.
Real white suburban lefty take… the vast majority of us POC don’t agree with y’all. Niggas really out here trynna justify stealing when alll y’all have the means to pay for shit. Even Ben Shapiro would argue stealing food to eat is moral but looting a cvs to flip deodorants on the street ain’t fucking helping our poor communities whatsoever it actually does the opposite stores close and if they don’t they lock up literally everything making it a hassle for us regular non thieven folk.
15:37 - right but also Monster Party was never actually released in Japan (though the unreleased Japanese prototype has been unearthed) so even if the online capabilities of the famicom allowed much more than betting on horse races, there was no Monster Party to be had in that region at the time. Also, I think it's weird that baby food and diapers are locked up in security cases in certain stores. One last thing, play Monster Party.
@@ThoughtSlime I covered this all in a video several years ago, I would've happily let you steal that info. Though I respect your decision not to, all that same.
Thank you for showing me that shoplifting is completely fine under any circumstance. I will now do it everyday forever. Because of what you said in this video, you know
If you see someone stealing anything from a store, also no you didn’t. We do not bring down the force of the carceral state on nonsense property crimes in this house
@@MySerpentine To avoid having to use sarcasm quotes, I prefer to use the term "legal system" over "justice system." It's much more accurate terminology.
What I have observed from shoplifting (or piracy. Mostly piracy. But its relevant here too) debates online is that, a lot of people dont think the problem with theft is someone unjustly loosing something, but rather someone unjustly gaining something. Which is... such a fucking disgusting way of viewing the world IMO but it does put everything that follows from that into context
THAT IS SO TRUE of so many things in this country! like the number one reason i see for not offering free college and healthcare is that people who don't 'deserve' it will get medicine and education????? its absolutely draconian the way we americans are trained to see other humans
@@abronanimation8671 But its "you americans" who have been indoctrinated into being socialists thanks to higher education teaching people to be revolutionary activists rather than functional members of society. Ask anyone escaping a socialist/communist country how much they like the idea of wealth being taken from people who deserve to have it and given to people who don't. Your fantasy is untenable, a society that rewards laziness and encourages preying on anyone who has built anything in order to sustain that laziness will never work. Sustaining your life requires effort and you have no right to demand someone else put in the effort to sustain your life while you do nothing.
I’m not against breaking the law. I am against hurting people. Some forms of “theft” are in reality efficient use of resources that would otherwise be wasted.
piracy is a made-up word used to describe a non-existent thing aka "free copying" of digital bits stored on a hard drive that by definition are infinitely copiable and reproducible. It makes no sense at the level of technology itself. At least with shoplifting it can be said that you have some tangible things and some sort of damage that's possible to quantify, not bitstreams that are copies of copies of copies of .. ad infinitum, outside of any economic calculation because acts of copying and sharing digital files involve no cost. The argument against "piracy" is an angry old man yelling at cloud and telling you to assign economic value to entirely virtual entities. Like all such arguments since medieval times, it's destined to die out.
I think that's because people take it personally. They imagine it like someone breaking into your own hose, apartment, or car and stealing something you had to get with your own resources, time, or effort. At that point, the action being unjust isn't necessarily wrong. More people would be willing to give you or help you get something if you *asked* for it, but just stealing it is often seen as a violation of personal autonomy and space. If it's morally wrong to steal from a mom and pop, but not a chain business, then does that mean the mom and pop lose their empathy if they were successful enough to open a few more stores in their name? They kinda have to if we're aligning with TS's line of thinking. It just seems like too nuanced of an issue to speak on with such absolute confidence on IMO.
I was raised in a non-political pseudo intellectual upper middle class home (= I always knew being gay is fine, but never considered if I might be because we never talked about it). In my household, theft was the worst crime someone could commit. Obviously it wasn‘t _literally_, but stuff like murder or domestic abuse were so far removed from our sheltered community that they were closer to abstract concepts than behaviour of an ~actual person~. The principle behind this was that theft, and shoplifting would be the most explicit manifestation of this, elevated your social status beyond what you „earned“ - deserve. In a nonpolitical well-earning family of academics and small business owners, the status of living we had was assumed and treated as 100% the result of labour (of course also as the result of our perceived human worth, but no one was aware of that), and that meant the result of contribution to society. If I shoplift, I elevate my status of living above what I was able to afford. Money is the representation of my labour = contribution to society = social status that I „deserve“, so that makes shoplifting a betrayal of the entire structure of society, and since society is good and works correctly, that is a terrible, despicable crime.
Well why stop there? If a guy is feeling a bit randy, why not commit some crimes and not respect some laws and get a little arse from the nearest available chick, amirite?
Just to add to the point about doing stuff. I love being a cashier. I love doing front end retail work. I am like stupid fucking good at it. Not joking, i had fellow teammembers who worked for walmart for 20-30 years who were heartbroken when i had to leave, cause I was the only manager who 1) could pull my weight 2) actually made sure everyone got a break 3) said fucking thank you. And I was devastated to leave them. If walmart didnt exist and we got to organize like collectivist grocery stores, i would be so goddamn happy to bag groceries all day
Now Imagine the doctors who would have loved to do that but didn't want to live in poverty (Not even mentioning the cashiers living poverty who would have loved to be doctors)
Every time I go to the supermarket I’m astonished by how much *stuff* there is and how much will go to waste, because god forbid we can’t just organise community kitchens and have less need for everything all of the time
A retired couple I know have made it their full time occupation to drive around to several supermarkets with accessible dumpsters several times a week and recover as much food as possible to be donated to soup kitchens and other places that cook for the unhoused. In an ideal world, the food could skip the 'being put in the dumpster' part of this process, but grocery chains would rather trash all that food and let people go hungry than risk being sued because someone eating something expired made them sick
@@octochan Fun fact about the claim they'd risk being sued by donating expired food: No they f*cking wouldn't. It's literally enshrined in law in most US states as well as countries like Canada and the UK that companies aren't liable if they donate food that happens to go bad, it's the responsibility of whatever group serves the food to ensure it's safe to eat. Unless you live in the most "Yeehaw" of states, every single boss who's ever said that to you is a f*cking liar. Either they didn't want to do the work of setting up a pick-up, they genuinely believe poor people should just starve, or because they assumed they were right and never bothered to check. Possibly all three. I spent a year of my life throwing out huge garbage bags full of food every single night and I nearly got fired when I set some aside for an elderly homeless woman. When I found out that not only was that food I tossed perfectly fine to donate but that my boss _knew that_ and _lied to my f*cking face_ while _threatening me_ because he was a _lazy piece of sh*t_ who wasn't willing to make _one f*cking phone call_ I was radicalized on the spot.
I remember seeing video of police posted around Walmart garbage dumpsters to protect them from theft of stuff that is going to rot in a landfill. Some even put goddamned locks on them to keep someone from walking away with something they're literally throwing away. If I throw something away and I see someone pick it up and walk off with it, I'm not going to chase them down and demand they put it back in the trash. I might think, "well that's odd," or even, "maybe they can use it."
@@Craxin01 reminds me of when a cashier at a store told me they were shutting down their recycling center because corporate was "concerned homeless people were _stealing_ cans from their customer's trash." Like fuck off Karen no your corporate overlords are not.
Well, here in America stores don’t stock the amount of food we actually need. They overstock severely because studies show that people are less likely to buy things if there aren’t very many of that thing on the shelf. They want to make sure that no shelf is ever empty, which means stocking way more than they expect people to buy. So it’s not about us needing less stuff, it’s about stores being desperate to manipulate us into buying stuff we don’t need.
Your idea that people would still make Nintendos is absurd on its face. Let's say, yes, someone would still design a Nintendo. Who is going to mine the metals? The peeps who just really really love mining? Who is going to put them together? The people who just can't get enough repetitive factory work? The plastic shell is made in plants satffed by people whose greatest ambition is wearing a respirator for 9 hours at the chemical plant? And the oil pumped by people who are born to do it? It's patently ridiculous. People have organized systems of exchange for tens of thousands of years. This extremely hazy vision falls apart in three seconds.
The fact that all of those things are deeply undesirable to do suggests that maybe our system of resource procurement and distribution should minimize the extent to which it’s required that people do it, and also that their doing it should be decided by some kind of sortition, rather than because they have no better options to get food. Also, I agree that this framing of TS’s is bad, but pretending that Bronze Age exchange is remotely comparable to what we do now is not much better.
It's true there would likely have to be some additional perks for some types of jobs, but wouldn't it be better if people couldn't be coerced into doing this type of work, if they would only do it voluntarily? Wouldn't that make the work conditions so, so much better? Why should anyone work for 9 hours wearing a respirator -- that seems a little excessive. Maybe more people would be willing to do this type of work if their contribution only needed to be one or two hours. Maybe the danger and unpleasantness of many of these types of jobs stem from the workers lacking bargaining power, more than any inherent cruelty of these lines of work.
18:46 "There is no method of resistance to capital that capital won't find a way to defer the cost of onto workers" I cannot express how revelatory a statement this is for me. Thanks for the revelations, pal.
I got fired due to shoplifting at a job. I was often the only person working and the rules they had for stopping shoplifting made it impossible to actually do something about it, so F that company.
And that would have simply been a waste of labor. Sometimes corporations have to make "sacrifices" to keep the assets/human-resources functioning. They have to spend money to keep the mechanical equipment running, and it's no different for the flesh equipment, but the meatquipment can be kept running with much less cost.
Your pizza hut anecdote reminds me of the time my uncle was fired from a job basically because he refused to get shot during a violent robbery at gun point. I think he was working on a cybercafé, to give you an idea of the scale of what was taken from the register and what he was required to put his life at risk for. The owner of the place asked him why didn't he stop the thieves 🙄🙄🙄
I had a co-worker come up to me at one of my jobs to discuss a plan to hit the panic button discreetly if we were ever robbed. I looked her right in the eye and said "Neither of our lives are worth $100 (what we were supposed to have in our tills) so I'm not reaching for sh*t. I will give them whatever they want, I will even bag it for them if they ask." She looked at me like I grew three heads lol. It's genuinely heartbreaking how many people have been convinced they should risk their well-being so their boss can have a couple more dollars they don't need.
when I was in high school I participated in a restorative justice program where people would get sent instead of going to jail or whatever. 99% of the time it was for shoplifting from macy’s. part of the process is discussing the “harm” that was caused by their actions. I realized I don’t think I can go back to the program now that I’m not a high schooler because I don’t think I could say with a straight face that these people actually caused any real harm.
Except Macy's will raise prices to recover their losses from shoplifters so law abiding citizens will pay more. Worse, these retailers will even shutter due to too much shoplifting. So yeah, there is harm. Don't be so open minded that your brain falls out
@@paxgamer3003 they don't HAVE TO raise prices to recover their losses though. the fact that THAT isn't your main target is the point that Mild's making. there are guys at the top of the chain who are taking huge quantities of money off the top. that's profit. you can reduce that for a handful of guys and recover all of those losses while making no harm to their standard of living. the fact that THIS isn't the issue you're taking, but the end-user committing truly around 100-500 dollars of total theft from a corporation with several of those guys at the top, is wild to me, and I cannot make an argument for why you should think like that.
@@candyh4284 if I ever meet you in real life, I am going to steal your wallet and your phone. It won't affect your quality of life, since you probably have the skills to go steal a new wallet and phone for yourself. I agree executive compensation is outrageous these days, but I don't want to live in a society that thinks stealing is okay. You go ahead and tell your children (if you have any) to go steal at WalMart. You will really be setting them up for success in life.
People from family incomes over $70,000 are 30% more likely to shoplift than people who make $20,000. Source American Journal of Psychology, Prevalence and Correlates of Shoplifting in the United States: Results From the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions Based on study conducted in 2001/2002
As someone who has worked mostly retail in my adult life, shoplifting HAS directly impacted my job and made my job harder, but it was marginal compared to the complications that came directly from corporate. It just made us have to jump through even more hoops and spend more time tagging shit when we were already being timed for truck. I know the corp can afford the shrink though.
I will say this. If you do it: STOP POSTING ABOUT IT ONLINE. Not only will you get caught, but you are telling corps how you do it and what to look out for. Especially goes for dumpster diving. They cracked down harder at my job when online dumpster diver hauls were being posted from our store chain.
"It's like complaining that people are stealing blood from Dracula." This is the best analogy I've ever heard for this issue. The only flaw I see is that Dracula doesn't hold a candle to the blood-drunk gluttony of suffering that corporations cause in the 3rd world and pretty much everywhere else.
You know,I remember that me and a friend asked this exact question to several members of our debate team,and I remember that only two people seemed to think that it was wrong in all circumstances,and of the rest,less than half said that it depends. Really people seemed to have less of a problem with shoplifting itself,and instead had a problem with big versus small business, to the point of even believing that stealing from Walmart wasn’t really morally wrong because it didn’t hurt the company.
In my experience, people on stuff like debate team or model UN tend to be left-leaning, largely just because people that age and in those kind of environments tend to be left-leaning, same with this comment section, so it's people that are more likely to share the viewpoint from the video. I wouldn't take those experiences to reflect people in general, just the environment you were from.
I was never trained in how to be a cashier at a grocery store, and the wages they pay me for doing so are absolutely abysmal, so like, if some things don't get scanned 🤷♀️
@@ripyungbruh8157 I assume a low-level job because I can't imagine a decent wage and benefits being worth risking for some r/antiworld clout. How does sabotaging your employer and risking your job/benefits/career help you?
@Vesta_the_Lesseromfg you have 100 comments on this channel lmaooo 💀☠️💀☠️💀☠️💀☠️☠️💀☠️💀☠️ buddy u need to go outside and get some vitamin d maybe kick a ball ⚽️
literal conversation i had in a literal walmart (woman behind me making noise, who I'm not paying attention to) woman: "I swear I'm not stealing, I'm exchanging it!" me: "Minding my own business is free. Walmart isn't paying me to care what you're doing"
@Mercury And then everyone clapped. You later quit your job and now you're rich and famous, but donate the extra money to cancer research. (joking around lmayo)
I personally hate how shops' fear of shoplifting have kind of made shopping a nightmare for regular costumers. Like, I've seen multiple stores now implementing having to scan a bar code on your receipt to leave the store at the self check out registers. And, if you want to leave without buying something, you have to ask an employee to let you out. Clearly they're hoping costumers will just buy a small item to leave, instead. I also see so many stores banning bringing bags in to the store. Which is just annoying if you're on foot, and want to bring a back pack for your groceries. The fear of shoplifting has basically let them to design stores like prisons, making it annoying and inconvenient for people to go shopping. And, they wonder why people use shopping online more, and more. Yeah, I wonder why...?
Really, it is not the fear of shoplifting that incites these measures. We are living in a technocracy, so whatever surveillance is possible, is being done. That is what technocracy stands for.
Except of course if you wanted to play a wizard game.... apperantly you can't just pirate that and give pirated copies out to everyone else that wants to play the wizard game so then people get their wizard game and the transphobic cunt that owns the IP gets fucked
The idea that we would make Nintendos just because they are cool is so incredibly naive, Even a first gen 8bit Nintendo is incredibly complex to build and design. Even if you and 10000 of your mates think that Nintendos are cool you can't make any. It takes the organisation structure larger than a single company to create a product like that. Nintendo did not build them alone there were numerous subcontractors and machine manufacturers needed. How are you going to convince all these people to help without an insetive? The Soviet block was particularly bad at creating consumer products exactly because if your way if thinking.
"People need money to do anything complicated!" Looking over at Dwarf Fortress and most modding communities, coordinated rewilding projects, the Red Cross, the contribution of volunteer women in WW1... What about literally any complex job critical to our modern infrastructure where the pay is terrible, like doctoring or social care?
Inflation up, shoplifting up... seems if one gets poorer they get less interested in following the law, maybe stop making people poor, capitalism, and crime gets better. Its not about passing on the cost to the customer, its about whether or not the product will bring profit and high theft items will not get carried by the store or more likely scenario locked up..
I get paid 2,000$ on my paycheck per month. I make the store about 40k per month. I know this because I have access to the store KPI. After 1 year of retail and knowing that I could get fired for losing 100$ somehow by accident despite making them so much money, just so the auditor can justify their job, I really cannot find myself caring about someone trying to steal stuff.
@@MrThaylin You're right. But I'm not going to calculate gross profit to know to the truest extent how much my company is profiting off of me. I just know they're not destitute.
You do not make the store 40k in a month. With just Walmart as an example their net income in 2022 was approx 13 billion dollars. Worldwide they had about 10.5k stores. Which is approx 1.25 million per store or a little over 100k per month per store. If one person accounted for nearly half the stores profit per month, that person would be the most valuable retail employee of all time
I was surprised that Mildread didn't say, "Stealing blood from a Dracula..." until I remembered this is Thought Slime and not Scardy Cats. That also explains the lack of Bobby Dook in the end credits, too. 🙂
I am neither for nor against shoplifting, just wanted to share this bit of info I have as a former Bread Vendor of about 15 years. I can tell you that companies are finding better ways to ensure that shoplifting doesn't harm them. Over my years of work, more and more stores were becoming SBT (Scan-Based Trading) Stores, meaning the stores are only paying for the bread that gets scanned. Anything over the shrink % comes out of the vendor's pocket. The way the industry works is that the Vendor "Buys" the product from the Bakery, and then "Sells" it to the Grocery Store. Vendor's are mostly IBPs (Independent Business Partners) to the Bakeries, which just means you are considered a contractor while they treat you like an employee.
9:02 I only worked one retail job and I actually appreciated the way we handled shoplifting: We didn’t. I ~heard~ it was because the company weighed the possibility of a lawsuit if we got fucked up by a thief against how much shit got stolen and opted for us to not get hurt and sue and let the people steal paintbrushes.
I am pro shoplifting mostly but I was talking to someone about it and they said that companies take profit lost from shoplifting into account when determining prices so shoplifting comes back around to hurt the consumer. While I believe that if this is true it is still the company doing the immoral thing by raising prices to protect their bottom line and make the most money possible this would mean that shoplifting hurts people who can barely afford necessities. I genuinely don't know if this is true or if there are factors to it I have not considered so I would appreciate anyone who has any insights to add.
So, this is partially true. Companies do factor what they call "shrinkage" into the price of goods, and shrinkage includes things like shoplifting. The bit that conveniently gets left out is all the other sh*t it includes, like what gets lost in transit or the stuff they throw out because it goes bad, gets damaged, is returned, or just to make space for more sh*t. That stuff absolutely dwarfs the amount contributed by shoplifting. Like, shoplifting is a single digit percentage of a stores shrinkage if not fractions of a percent. With that context, it's safe to say that shoplifting does not meaningfully increase the cost of goods, as they will deliberately throw out and spoil infinitely more than we could ever steal. Factor in things like wage theft and, honestly, they should be glad we're only shoplifting.
When I was living in South Africa, the grocery store I used to frequent had these big security tags around the Nido baby formulas, the types of tags that you usually only see on the electronics. Apparently mothers used to shoplift those often and they felt the need to put them on. That was so heartbreaking to me. These poor women who just want to feed their kids. I just found it so evil that in a whole huge grocery store, the baby formulas were the only items they decided to put the tags on.
the walmart near me has, over the course of the pandemic, added those tags to a bunch of baby products, and the formula is locked in a steel case that has to be unlocked every time someone wants to buy it. I'm not even joking, im not advocating for anything illegal, but if that store gets looted, good riddance
@@abronanimation8671 If the store gets looted they will put in more security measures. Or they will decide operating there is not worth the cost and will shut down that location further reducing access to baby formulas for the children that need it.
What low IQ logic. Were you not aware of the formula shortage? What are all the poor moms going to do when some fat probably black welfare hog shoplifts all the formula. Think for more than a minute before posting.
@@FrancisR420 A place that would give away free baby food is a charitable establishment not a store. I agree it would be great if there was a place that gave away free baby formula to mothers who needed it. But to build such a place requires wealth and work. No one wants to work or put their wealth into a community that is full of thieves. Thievery makes life harder for everyone, it is the opposite of building. If you can afford not to, you should not be stealing.
I used to work at a Walmart, and they just kinda mostly don't care about shoplifting. Like they have a "Loss Prevention" department (at my store it was one guy) but otherwise employees are told to basically let it happen, even if they catch a customer in the act. One of my friends was actually fired for following a shoplifter into the parking lot and verbally confronting him. But our wages/hours were never affected by shoplifting. Like Mildred said, stores like that already operate using a skeleton crew. Every department is understaffed and every employee is underpaid so the company can keep as much of their money as possible.
if it's anything like us here in Australia, the 'don't do anything about it' is because it's not worth getting stabbed over. We used to have checkout operators do a security call over the PA and the nightfill boys would all swarm the front of the store hoping for it to turn into a fight. One guy got carried back into the store because when the checkout manager had tried to chase, the shoplifter decked her and the nightfill boys didn't take kindly to it. Basically it's not worth the assault charges against staff or the potential lawsuit if the staff member gets injured or killed.
The reason a store doesn't want you to confront shoplifters because it's dangerous. You get sliced up or shot for trying to stop someone who's already committed to doing something shady. And if you get sliced up on their clock, they're liable and on the hook for you. It's actually smart to just no intervene
@@ashleyduffy2088 that sucks so bad for him. Wish the Draculas who own the store/ corporation he works at didn't use any excuse they could to fuck over your husband
I don't see forgetting to scan items at self check-outs as theft, I see it as getting compensated for my unpaid labor as a Salesclerk. Hypothetically in minecraft I mean, totally not in real life.
@@randominspector7366I agree, it's messed up they are exploiting all this free labor and doing nothing but keeping the profits and firing employees in the process.
Yeah I've noticed how many people they have at Walmart standing around watching the self check outs. Far more than they employed, before self check outs, to work registers. I'd say it's been a collosal failure.
If i saw someone do what the first comic said when i worked at one of those places, i would have just said have a great day. My paycheck would not have increased calling out the obvious thefts i saw.
If people steal, the store Will threaten to shut down and you won't be able to pay for your food and housing. And if the workers demand enough pay to cover their food and housing they again will threaten to shut down and put you out of work. It's a real catch-22 (Or win-win If you don't want to work at Walmart)
I haven't shoplifted since I was caught as a kid, but my friend does it regularly. Before I realized I was actually completely brainwashed, I did feel weird about her doing that. Now I sincerely don't care. It's not praxis for sure. But every little bit counts.
“People like playing farming simulator so people would spend their entire lives doing backbreaking work if they didn’t have to.” Think before you say things.
also: "the incredibly complex network of resources and logistics needed to make consoles is irrelevent because some hobbyist in his garage will pick it up" he sound slike an 8 year old
@@xRickAstleyx Yeah this dude really pisses me off sometimes. He’s brilliant when it comes to certain things, but for the past year or so he’s just been really arrogant with nothing to show for it. I can’t stand this sort of dismissive “I know everything; if I don’t understand something I’m allowed to say whatever I want about it” attitude.
In principle, I have no problem with people stealing from billion-dollar mega corporations. I just personally don't like to do it because of the small risk of getting caught, embarrassed, and possibly prosecuted. But that's just me.
6:55 this reminds me of a scene in Only Fools and Horses where Del Boy convinces Rodney that stealing (glow in the dark) paint from British Rail is good for Britain
This, unfortunately, reminded me of a time I was going through checkout, and the lady in front of me didn't declare the diapers on the bottom rack of her cart. I said nothing. She bought her food, with baby right there. Some perfumed boomer behind me snitched as she rolled out of the checkout, and made such a racket multiple people went and looked, and someone went and stopped the woman. While this happened, the boomer was giving herself a pat on the back. I gave her the stink eye as she looked around for approval. Like, damn, man. The mother was in tears, "I forgot, I'm sorry." That sort of stuff. The older generations can't give up the ghost quick enough.
@@instantsus_ It totally is bro, I got shot like 5,000 times in Iraq, but as long as stayed in cover for a few seconds I would be totally fine. Still got scars though.... my body looks really weird now.
You're missing the point tho. The games he talked about are the ones that simulate real jobs people have and it is within the completion of a task and the satisfaction you get that is the comparison.
@@MiotaLee no dummy, the game comes with the zero downsizes of the job. that is the reason people will play it. trucking is really tiring, it’s insane to compare it to gaming
I used to think the argument that people will work with no incentive was stupid, because I would sleep all day if I could and do nothing. Then I was unemployed for a bit and realized I'd do all kinds of far more productive shit with my time if I wasn't forced to repeatedly clean fryers for six hours a day
@@randomhuman2595 I'd garden, learn a martial art, write more, read more, do community projects like picking up litter, I'd learn to cook better. Generally I'd improve myself as a human being and try to do more for the people around me.
I had the opposite experience when I was unemployed, I was literally wasting away or spending 8 hours a day arguing in comment sections or discord servers. I think different people are motivated differently. One thing to consider though, is that if you want favors from people, (like if you want someone to fix your car, or cook you food, or make artwork for you, you have to do something back in kind for them. Money is a sort of means of exchange we have invented, and it works well in a lot of ways. But as society has gotten bigger people are so disconnected that for many meaning and motivation have gotten corrupted.
@EsotericDichotomy yep I totally feel ya on the "wasting away" thing when I am under-employed or temporarily unemployed waiting for a new construction project to start... if I had the societal structural and material resources and support, I would go into low-income neighborhoods and fix hazardous electrical installations and replace faulty and worn outlets and light fixtures. I'd also do pre-closing electrical code compliance inspections for low-income home-buyers and also write up inspections and issue code citations against neglectful landlords.
I work at a Starbucks that voted to unionize months ago (still no contract and no negotiation in good faith) and the amount of food that is simply wasted because corpos gotta have all da money and we’re pretty sure anything “donated” never gets to anyone who needs it is sickening to me. And they threaten to fire us if we take EXPIRED food home.
Once while I was doing some writing late at night at a Starbucks, one of the employees gave me three free sandwiches that were going to be thrown out otherwise.
I remember working at a food retail produce department where we were literally expected to "cull" (throw away) 20% of our produce so shelves looked good and they explicitly told you taking any of this produce home was a zero tolerance firing offence and they implied they may even prosecute you for doing it. They also kept padlocks on their dumpster so people couldn't "steal" the literal tons of food they threw out.
the question then becomes how closely do they actually watch it and would anyone on your team actually report it or not, but if you don't have an especially chill group (plus a lot of the report hotlines tempt you with money to rat out your coworkers) then it's probably too risky to push it.
Yeah, the sheer volume, the literal _MOUNTAINS_ of food that is wasted by restaurants, grocery-stores, and coffee-shops is a whole video in and of itself. Likewise with supposed charities and goodwill places (especially literal Goodwill which has dropped the charade and went full-on evil).
@@capitalistraven It's not even just food-places, lots of stores do this sort of thing. Electronics stores will throw away merchandise that's not worth sending back, and book-stores will tear off the covers to return to the publisher and throw the books away; and of course, employees are forbidden from trying to salvage anything, it MUST all go into the landfill to create even more waste. 🤦
I don't know about other places, but Walmart strictly forbids employees from interfering with shoplifting because the loss of product is by far the cheapest outcome compared to the employee or even the shoplifter getting injured and suing.
This is standard corporate policy everywhere but many individual stores will have managers that ignore this and managers are the one who like actually create the condition of work. Also to be clear I'm very pro-shoplifting
@@willowjavery4652 and those managers are probably held accountable in some way for loss prevention, which is in direct conflict with the policy of non-intervention. I’ve personally never had a manager do that but I know it happens. If they did the math on the effort vs outcome, they probably wouldn’t bother.
Managers thinking ahead is a pretty big ask, in my experience.
Insurance companies started this over a decade ago.
At Walgreens the managers yearly bonus was pegged directly to shrink, so managers did try to reduce it regardless of the rules. That was fifteen years ago though.
This video gives me so many questions. Should Shoplifting? Do shops even lift? If a shop falls in the forest and no one is around to lift it, does it have weight? What is the airspeed velocity of an unlifted shop?
An african or a european shop?
@@Laezar1 I don’t know that! Ahhhhhhhh
[Gets crushed under the weight of the shop of eternal peril]
All very good questions, to be sure.
I lift shops to get them gainz 💪
So when I was growing up my parents had a restaurant I worked in. They were children of The Great Depression. They would often send left over meals home with employees. This has tax implications, it's considered "payment in kind", so we kept quiet on it.
One other thing we did was allow employees to order wholesale through us at wholesale prices, about a 50% retail discount. We had employees banding together and getting 40lbs of meat split 4 way, flats of tomatoes or berries, etc. Since they were paying for them this had no tax implications.
Since many women in the US who work in restaurants are single female head of household I like to think they helped people through a tough time.
As a former retail worker, I used to buy the argument that shoplifting was bad because it harmed the employees. Our raises were based, in part, on the store's annual shrink (aka loss)--but despite our shrink going down each year, we never got raises because they would find other justifications to avoid giving them to us. They cut our hours so low that we wouldn't even be able to have 2 people working at all times, so the district manager told us to just add more hours, then told us we didn't get raises that year because we exceeded our hours.
Another store I worked at had a terrible shoplifting problem, but the upper management still decided to blame us rather than giving us more hours or paying to install a security gate and tags. If the shoplifting was really losing the company that much profit, they would have done something about it!
You can have the position that shoplifting is bad and the retail store is shitty. That's not a mutually exclusive position.
Shoplifting harm employee not because it affect the employee wage but rather the store margin. I am sure you don't care about that and neither i am. The one who do care are the management/owner and they would pull out the store if the margin isn't good enough. The store pulled out and you lose your job.
Now the counterargument is that those store should be closed down if their margin is built by stealing from their employee, and you'd be right. But shoplifter doesn't discrimate between store with good manager and a corrupt one. It'll cause all of them to shut down, given enough frequency.
You can wish the store you work in should be closed because they're shitty, and you can still say that shoplifting is bad.
@@nurrohmatadiputra5378 I get your point, but I disagree that shoplifting is such a problem that it's going to cause stores to shut down en masse. I gave examples from my personal experience where the store easily could have reduced the amount of theft by giving us more hours so that we could have more employees on the floor. They constantly reminded us that the best defense against theft is good customer service (which is absolutely true), but then cut our hours and blamed us for the high loss. I'll also mention that despite the shoplifting problem, our location was the highest volume in the city. We were definitely making enough money to justify hiring more workers.
If the theft was such a big problem that it was seriously harming the store's margins, they would have given us more hours (or paid to install security gates). Apparently, paying for 1 or 2 more minimum wage employees to be working during busy hours wasn't worth the expense--so I came to the conclusion that the loss must not be that bad. If the stores don't care that much about shoplifting, why should I?
@@nurrohmatadiputra5378Hey buddy, maybe read the OP’s comment because they never say CANT is the issue. They just DONT think shoplifting is bad. Because its not.
@@DeathnoteBB generally speaking, shoplifting is bad. Because it is
@@fyoutube2294 According to who? Companies? Yeah they think slavery is okay so maybe think about who you’re defending
I used to work at a grocery store in the deli as the "chef". At the end of the night people would pull up looking for a good deal on food and I'd just give it to them. We threw away more food than anyone could ever steal. During orientation they told every employee about how they fired a lady who took a bite of a chicken strip before throwing it away as if they were proud of it. I stole every bite of food I ate while working there for almost 5 years.
@@xandercruz900 Can't argue with you there, if anything it is yet another indication of the ineptitude and cruelty of my previous employers. Much better employees than me had been fired for speaking up against discrimination in the workplace, but apparently as long as you don't rock the boat they couldn't be bothered to even check that the books weren't adding up. In the end I just quit to work at a nicer place lol.
Luckily my work allows people to take things home before we throw them, it's great.
Based
@@xandercruz900 Cope harder.
@@AvalonisHere LOL! "Cope"?
The people that these stores serve are the ones that will have to "cope" when these places shutter because of rampant shoplifting, or people having to literally shop for stuff behind locked cabinets because these places are sick of having product stolen. We know not one of yall will open up a store to replace what is lost. Obviously, most of you aren't able to run a freaking lemonade stand because people would just steal the juice!
You act like you are really talking from some high-ground position, and think some 4th level cliched snark really showed me? You need to step that back, Jr.. LOL!
"No one's going to judge you for stealing a loaf of bread to feed your hungry family."
**INSPECTOR JAVERT HAS ENTERED THE CHAT**
IKR‽ That's always my go-to for this topic. There's a big difference between Winona Ryder stealing a Gucci bag for the exhilaration and Jean Valjean stealing a loaf of bread _from a bakery,_ not a homeless person to feed his sick kid who was starving. The "law" ABSOLUTELY WILL expect you to just sit there and watch your child starve to death instead of stealing something out of desperation and necessity. What a world. Capitalism truly is evil. 🤦
LOL
*_begins looking for 24601_*
I was thinking the same thing, when Mildred said "...everyone except the food professor, of course" I said out loud "or Javert"
I kept expecting there to be a meme or joke about it, and honestly was kinda disappointed there wasn't one.
In my experience, bonuses go to management and not workers. They're willing to give a bit more money to managers to keep workers in line than to properly motivate the workers with better wages.
Comments like this make me so happy I work at a company that guarantees things like this and actually takes care of all levels.. Just about to hit my first 6 months, first corporate job, and I'm just now realizing how rare it is to find ANY job respecting the workers this thoroughly. :(
And then the manager, motivated by money, continues to claim that money doesn't motivate people and throws a pizza party, and then bitches about any worker who wants money.
@@TyphinHoofbun An extra layer of filth at the Walmart I work at is that all pizza is purchased from the AGMs husband so money allocated to reward employee efforts gets funneled back into her accounts anyway.
@@TyphinHoofbun I often make the joke whenever they suggest pizza or whenever I'm praised at all really that I would like to receive the equivalent monetary compensation instead. Only with middle management though because I don't want lose my job over a joke.
That's how it always goes. I've only ever gotten *one* bonus in the last decade of being a worker. I got $75 for being forced to work 10 hours overtime each week for 6 months during the height of the covid pandemic. The 4 managers got $5000 each.
To put that into perspective, the company spent a little bit over $2000 in bonuses for the people who actually do real work, and they then spent $20,000 on the managers who spend their entire day sending emails and attending bullshit meetings. I also got fired from that job 2 months later because I caught covid. The system is broken.
I mean if we're going to talk religion, Jesus once braided a horsehair whip and started attacking a bunch of extremely rich bankers and merchants, directly calling the rich people the _true_ "robbers" of his society. So even from a Christian (literally, Latin for "like Jesus") perspective, the question of "Why does Jeff Bezos get to have all the money?" is a pretty valid one to ask
It's always struck me as bizarre how much corporations care about theft when they actively dispose of or destroy far more than an individual could steal.
About 5 years ago I worked at a PC and console repair center, and the number of devices or parts that get thrown away despite still being somewhat usable is insane. And yet, I eventually got fired from that job because I pocketed a small plastic switch that was supposed to go in the trash anyway.
The thing that really highlights the skewed ethics of corporate hoarding is that in many cases, even their trash is off-limits, even if it would be actively beneficial for someone else to have the things that the corporation doesn't want. It really highlights how selfishly they operate because most normal people would rather pass on unwanted things if possible than throw them away.
When I moved into my apartment last year, so much of my furniture was gifted to me for free by friends and complete strangers because they were getting rid of it anyway, and me being able to use it was better than it being destroyed.
You can tell somebody is "the excessively wealthy" when they genuinely argue that people would line up to eat out of grocery store dumpsters ☠️
I'll be honest. If you're strong enough to lift a whole shop, or any building for that matter, more power to you.
Luisa Madrigal 100% advocates lifting of shops 💪🏼✨
Sudden flashback to Chadlo from Bugsnax
IMMA LIFT YER CRIB, DAWG!!
Hear, hear. I suspect even law enforcement would be loathe to confront someone of such means. Kneel before Zod.
Look if you can lift a whole shop maybe you don't need more power, it sounds like you have enough
@@roguepsykerhaaker4813 hydraulics are the great equalizer.
My husband worked at Walmart for three years when he was in college and believe me, you are hurting employees more when you put things in the wrong place than when you shoplift. They throw out millions of dollars worth of merchandise every day. They sell back to school supplies at a loss so they can make all their money on black Friday and Christmas. They don't really notice shoplifting (despite all their huffing and puffing), they claim anything as a loss from returned items to inventory missing because they didn't have enough trained employees to properly sort it. You can't steal more than they lose through mislabeling shit.
Yessss!!!! This exactly!!
Facts!!
But oh will they ever hold and prosecute if you get caught... Happened to my partner, had to go to court and everything and caught a 6 month ban. Now refuses to even shop there, just because they were so incredibly rude about it too... And yes, we were that low on income (it was some cough medicine, back before the plague, when I was hacking up a lung from non 'rona illness). *_They wasted way more than 14$ on all that nonsense! Lmao_*
That first sentence as some one who has worked for walmart for not even a year total in high school and college: UNGH THIS IS TRUE THOUGH. If someone steals something, employees just let them go (by company policy), but all the shit scattered in random places throughout the store has to all be gathered up, sorted through, relocated and reshelved then both spots (where it was left and where it has to go) have to be painstakingly "zoned." Like I'd mostly talk someone out of stealing to keep them from getting into trouble, but I'll actually gripe at people when we're at the grocery store and they decide they don't want something and just set it down on a random shelf.
At the end of the day a tired, minimum wage worker with sore feet has to pick that up and through a series of other tired minimum wage workers that have been yelled at by unreasonable people all day, they have to sort it out, figure out where it's supposed to be and put it back and straighten everything up again in both spots. And they have to do that for literally hundreds of things every day. You're literally just making some (literally) poor overworked person's day a little bit worse
Holy shit, I never even thought of that. And that's why I totally put stuff back in the right spot when I see something on the floor. It's absolutely not because I just want things to be tidy.
@@KamiYugure Why do employees have to "figure out" where stuff is supposed to go? 🤨 Don't employees know where everything is supposed to go? Or… maybe stores shouldn't be rearranging everything every week to force customers into wasting their time by having to wander around looking for stuff because nothing is ever in the same place for more than a week **cough*Costco*cough**. The corporation's greed hurts customers and employees. 😒
Watching 17:20 after seeing John Oliver's new episode on farmworker conditions.
I used to be a Loss Prevention Manager for a National supermarket in Australia. Every statistic we ever ran told us the same thing ....... cases of shoplifting vastly outnumbered cases of internal theft by staff ..... but the value of identified internal theft always, ALWAYS, greatly exceeded the value lost from identified shoplifting. But the greatest losses came through sheer dishonesty by executive management. Since they get paid their bonuses based on half yearly results, one year they simply decided to stop recording some shrinkage expense in November so the company could hit their target, and they could receive their bonus checks and share allocations. It cost the company an absolute boatload in unrecorded expenses, which carried over to the next year's balance sheets (and undoubtedly also carried over to the prices paid by customers). As far as I know, they are still doing it when the need arises. It's one reason their shrinkage losses have increased tenfold over the past ten years.
I gotta start ste@ling shit from woolies
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
- Anatole France
damn
We all know that's not true. The rich would have no real reason to do any of that stuff, but they could get away with it because they're wealthy and the only consequences they would have is pay a fine that would be pocket change to them. Rich people pay less taxes than the working class and if Donald Trump is any proof, you can get away with not paying your fines because you _can_ pay lawyers who can help you get away with all of it.
TIL That stealing expensive shoes and clothes is the same as bread.
The difference is that only one group NEEDS to do those pointlessly-forbidden things. Funny how the law always seems to forbid things for one group more than the other. Sure, it's illegal for rich people to evade taxes, but you don't see laws against owning multiple mansions or eating caviar and such, only laws against sleeping on park-benches and not having a phone-number and such. 😒 Hmm, maybe poor people should try making laws. 🤔
@@I.____.....__...__ >but you don't see laws against owning multiple mansions or eating caviar and such,
Because that isn't anything unethical to anyone other than jealous rubes or clueless equivocators.
Is it illegal for you to own multiple expensive shoes or video game systems? How about when you by expensive liquor or take a trip overseas?
Those mansions are built and maintained by workers and tradespeople. Same thing with Yachts. Caviar is harvested by fishermen, and prepared by cooks.
IOW lots of people get paid to make those things you think need to be "illegal" to own more than one of or eat.
But to assuage your envy, let's put all of those people out of work.
>Hmm, maybe poor people should try making laws.
Yeah, I'm sure being poor totally makes you qualified for that.
Things that radicalized me: economic conversations sound like hostage situations, and Walmart is consistently the party holding the gun and making demands, or they'll make the lives of their workers EVEN WORSE
I fucking dare them.
Employees can't take home any of the pounds of the bruised Bananas that they throw out:(
Framing all actions by corporations as inevitable consequences not only removes all moral culpability for corporations' actions, but denies the possibility of anything different. The field of economics does this constantly.
@@1Hawkears1 and that's freakin sickening and immoral. I worked grocery, too. I know how much perfectly good food goes to waste.
Or *gasp* they'll shut down their store in your town!
Oh the humanity, please Walmart stay!!!
What will we do without you.
The actual sad part is no matter how much you steal from Walmart they won't shut down for that reason, they'll just use it as an excuse for downsizing and try to leverage it for lobbying power.
@@loorthedarkelf8353 The fact that these places will put padlocks on their dumpsters that they fill with hundreds of pounds of still-perfectly-good food every day is just fucking infuriating.
I've said it before...I'm a terrible self-cashier. I miss things all the time. I keep expecting them to fire me, but they don't, so I just keep missing things. Like, a LOT of things.
Don't be too hard on yourself - You probably weren't trained well enough.
accident happen. You'll just have to keep on keeping on!
It's the employer's job to look after and manage their employees. You're not a bad employee. You have bad employers. It's their fault that things keep getting missed - not your fault that you're not being paid enough to care.
I'm an excellent self-cashier because I'm the fecal-matter of galliformes and feel like it's still 1984. But that's the point, isn't it, keep people working efficiently through fear. 😒
And when the store closes, you will act all put out, when you helped contribute to it by "missing" stuff deliberately because you think you are a hero.
I worked at CVS and really the only way shoplifting harmed me was that it encouraged the company to treat us the employees like criminals because they thought we were the ones stealing. We weren't allowed to leave the store without getting our bags checked in front of a camera, that was how thoroughly they distrusted us because I guess being a low wage worker=criminal. But like, my hours never got cut because of shrinkage because they still needed my labor. And when I worked at Wal-Mart and we did inventory, even when shrink was low we the employees who did the most work prepping the store to be audited, never saw a dime in the bonuses the store got.
I worked at Home Depot. They threw whole, functioning toilets in the trash compactor, because they weren't selling fast enough. Local managers didn't even get a say in the process. The price goes down to a penny, and into the bin it goes, crunch crunch crunch. More than just toilets, though. Anything on clearance long enough goes in the bin.
These giant corporations destroy far more than you could ever shoplift.
And this is all happening NEXT DOOR to a charity thrift shop that takes donations of all sorts, and a few blocks away from a charity org that builds homes for the needy out of donated materials. We're not allowed to donate perfectly functional toilets that we don't even want. We'd lose our jobs if we tried. They'd rather purposefully destroy the things they don't want just so other people can't use them.
Yes! I worked at PetSmart and had to destroy then throw away so much merchandise because it was on clearance for too long or just to make room for new stuff. Of course there were cameras in receiving & by the dumpsters.
Most of the employees had pets and were barely making it paycheck-to-paycheck but would be fired for taking home a can of cat food that was going into a dumpster.
It still makes my stomach turn thinking about all the animals that would’ve enjoyed the perfectly good food, treats, toys, beds, etc that are now sitting in a landfill
Utter fucking madness 😠
can't have shit at home depot. as in, you can't have something to shit in, because they compacted all the toilets into a nice, white cube.
I actually worked in a thrift store and any items they couldn't find a buyer for (that couldn't currently fit in the back) were tossed out regardless of the condition.
please direct me there so i can take all their unused toilets i want them all.
I'm so glad you aren't advocating shoplifting, Mildred. I also don't advocate it. As a matter of fact, I'm so focused on not advocating it that I can't even speak up when I see it.
yeah, I mean, that could give it exposure, right? Better pretend it doesn't happen lest people start having ideas
I can't advocate for shop lifting mostly because i dont have the time. Not to mention it would draw too much attention. I'm always busy shoplifting /s
@@jasonpreston2703 I think it's good to have focus and know what you do well.
agreed, let's not draw attention to it, then all the cool kids will start doing it
@istanb lol, didn't watch the video did you?
"Shoplifters are job creators" is such a good take. In fact, it's so good that I might just wander it over to hot take self checkout and pay for my hot take bubblegum while forgetting to pay for this much hotter take. Interestingly, this act will in fact not limit the degree to which other people can use this hot take.
Baste
Basté
Just becareful how you do that. They are well aware of the self checkout trick. Half the time they harass people who just go through self checkout and have shown no signs of being shady, by checking their receipts and rummaging through bags.
If you want to create/save jobs, use the normal checkout where a human is the cashier.
If you want to save a few bucks, then self checkout and fuck the man.
Those are really your only two ethical options, depending on what ethics you adhere to.
Just be aware of the cameras at the self-checkout. Usually one near the barcode scanner and faces the same way, to watch your hands as you run items through (to have proof of you pulling a trick on the system), then there's another in front or above (per station and 1+ for the whole area), plus the wide ones at the entrance/exit.
P.S. For those who still love the taste of boots: it's illegal to put hands on a shoplifter, even if you're the store owner - it's battery. Unless you are specifically a security guard hired for that purpose and on the clock - and do watch out for those. (They're not cops. Please be nice to them. I have a friend who's a security guard. She protects people, not stuff, not shops.) Even if they physically attacked you and you're just defending yourself, they can push for charges like assault, disorderly conduct, "menacing", etc. Especially if you confronted them with pointed questions or body blocking, which dissolves the "but they started it" excuse (cos such threats can warrant legally admissible physical defence in response). And there is legal precedent of this in the US, in favour of the person shoplifting. My point with that part is that if you're an employee, stopping petty theft isn't worth putting yourself in physical danger and risking getting entangled in the "justice" system for months or more. And for the literally nothing you gain.
I used to work self check out and saw people doing this all the time; paying for a few items and not for the rest. I never gave a fuck if they did, the markup on items is ridiculously high and there’s no amount of money that will make me want to act like a cop and intervene.
Fun fact learned from some more news earlier today: rich people are more likely to shop lift than poor people.
Omg same
Same
Cody Showdy busting out the fun statistics.
Act broke to stay rich. You wouldn't understand.
Since the relatives I have who have shoplifted were doing it purely for the kick and didn’t need it… not shocked. The relatives I have who have been poor enough that it would have benefited them to take something don’t even think of anything besides the shock of the other relatives admitting to that.
The "blood from Dracula" analogy is so perfect. Being like "Get I got this blood from Dracula" and half the people being like "No he needs that blood to be a strong powerful Dracula" and then me being like "That's great but I need that blood TO LIVE!" and then them being upset with me while the Dracula just gets spare blood from his Renfields.
In this analogy Renfield is the business insurer.
The problem with this Dracula analogy is that the cost of shoplifting (yes, there is a cost it doesn't "create jobs" see broken windows fallacy) is passed on to the consumer. Ultimately low income families who play by the rules pay for shoplifting.
those people are actually just secret vampire cultists, just throw garlics at them. i find throwing garlics at most people makes them leave me alone.
@@jenispizz2556 Big brand stores already are and will always be charging as much as they think they can get away with, shoplifting does not change this.
@@elowin1691 Of course they do, but they're forced to COMPETE, which keeps prices low. If you start pulling merchandise off the shelves without paying they'll need to balance their books somehow.
LISTEN, let's just keep it real here friend, it's stealing. When we advocate for stealing, we look insane. Breadtube has completely collapsed in influence because of videos like this.
Let's focus on things like giving better health care access to out of the way impoverished areas, decreasing meat subsidies to curb climate change, and criminal justice reform implementing police body cameras and having "force continuum" policies instead of escalation models.
We can actually get all of that stuff done, and people will actually care what we think instead of debating the most useless and stupid topic of whether stealing is actually okay because we're enslaved by Target.
kinda feeling like drac rn
I worked at a university dining hall. I supervised the dish room. I had to go to the warmers every night and pull out extra food to toss out to go ahead and wash the pans. There were some nights I had to throw out +30 pans(about the size of an oven pan you cook casserole in). It pissed me off. They were cooking way too much food in the kitchen. The buffet business model is so wasteful, it's very immoral and should be illegal to waste that much food. Looks like capitalism isn't allocating our resources efficiently... People are starving while we waste literal tons of food everyday.
WHO, WHO is starving in the US??? We have a fantastic foodstamps program and some insanely awesome social welfare programs for food.
Our god damn homeless people don't even starve.
Don't get me wrong, we have BIG problems (people being homeless, for example), but we almost have food sorted. Funny enough, our poor people are super obese, and our problems relating to food are educational and cultural.
Almost every single poor person in the US should be able to eat healthy high quality food that they cook at home. Rice, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, pasta, broccoli, onions... depending on where you are, these foods should be borderline free and you can cook them in so many amazing ways.
@@jenispizz2556 We definitely have thousands of people in the US starving to death. Not including those who are food insecure and have malnutrition related deaths and illness but actually no food for long enough that dead..... Just because you do not want to take the time to research this doesn't mean it is not true. The food stamp programs in the US are fn terrible and the GOP fight constantly to make them even worse. "Poor people are super obese" because CHEAP and fast/easy to make food is terrible for you. There are a large number of people who are working 16+ hours a day in shit wage jobs.... No our problems relating to food is we let big corporations literally research how to get you ADDICTED to their shitty unhealthy foods.... While you are going to look up the starvation deaths in the US also look up something called "the bliss point" in relation to food....
All that was playing in my head was :
Now prisoner 24601
Your time is up
And your parole's begun
You know what that means.
Yes, it means I'm free.
No!
Follow to the letter your itinerary
This badge of shame you'll show until you die
It warns you're a dangerous man
I stole a loaf of bread.
My sister's child was close to death
And we were starving.
You will starve again
Unless you learn the meaning of the law.
I know the meaning of those 19 years
A slave of the law
Five years for what you did
The rest because you tried to run
Yes, 24601.
My name is Jean Valjean
And I am Javert
Do not forget my name!
Do not forget me,
24601.
Look down, look down
You'll always be a slave
Look down, look down
You're standing in your grave.
Mildred: "If you're starving, nobody expects you to just die about it."
Javert: "And I'm Javert! You think it is appropriate to shoplift while grocery shopping, just because you think food prices are too high? You are a dangerous man!"
It's honestly really impressive how efficiently your structure your essays to get to interesting ideas so quickly. I am tiny essayist and it feels like i only get half the distance in twice the time. You're a really good study in this stuff.
They make it seem so effortless. 😍
He's been doing this for years, though even her earliest work on this channel is similarly impressive
As a writer myself, I am here to validate your assertion, Zag. Mildred does a good job, and deserves accolades for that effort. With effort, we can all be just as good, and we could promote each other to be better by doing better ourselves, like a friendly competition. Except instead of being envious, we can be happy for their success.
yeah, it's one of the reasons I like Thought Slime, pacing is really important to me. Ironically I wouldn't even say this is a great example of it compared to his other work. "Oops I was wrong about landlords" was great in that regards and also the one about crypto island, despite being off the top of their head, seemed to hit the beats they needed to hit, no more, no less.
My shoplifting story: one day I was at work (Superstore) and my manager paged for me to come upstairs. The loss prevention guys had caught someone attempting to shoplift and they needed me to keep an eye on them because I look non-threatening (that's the reason they gave me anyway.) The criminal? An actual little old lady.
This is basically what happened to me at Goodwill. You know, the chain store that sells other people's used stuff that they donate, because they think this is a charity somehow?
Anyway, we had a couple who came in almost daily to steal. Everyone knew that's what they do. One day, management said "okay, Allison, you just follow the lady one around when she shows up, and look busy, but don't let her out of your sight." And like... I was a teen. I was somehow personally offended that they would steal from me, specifically. So I did it. And that lady just kept stealing the whole time, and taunting me about it. And you know what? She was right.
They stopped coming to the store after that, but who fucking cares? All they ever stole was $5 shirts that someone would've donated to a real charity or thrown away, if Goodwill didn't exist to bottom feed on the scraps and prevent people from actually giving things they no longer needed to people who presently needed them. I did not, in fact, see my wages rise as a result of them not stealing from the store. The price of used shirts didn't go down, and the overhead on them remained stable. So why should I have been angry at the shoplifters?
@@AllisonIsLivid Goodwill needs its own video. I've seen a lot of videos about people "thrifting" at Goodwill to get old stuff like retro video-games, but those videos must be obsolete because Goodwill doesn't put donated video-games or computer equipment or anything in their stores, they put them on eBay to sell for maximum profit to resellers who resell them at insane markups. And the stuff they do sell in stores is often missing critical components that make them unusable and useless. They'll also often sell literally broken garbage. They even sell stuff that's DANGEROUS! They need to be shut tf down since they're not helping anyone but their own profits. And they also like to guilt people into "rounding up" their bills to "donate to charity" which begs the question, wtf was all the money going to before‽ 🤨
So?
5 - 99, shoplifting is wrong no matter how you try to justify it.
@@AllisonIsLivid >This is basically what happened to me at Goodwill. You know, the chain store that sells other people's used stuff that they donate, because they think this is a charity somehow?
It isnt free to process that stuff, and run the building it is in + Goodwill has to pay to dispose of the junk that is donated.
Just because you think it's all "free", doesn't mean you can steal from them.
@@xandercruz900 usually quotation marks are for quotes.
The thought experiment of "is it okay for a person to steal a loaf of bread to save their family" was always interesting to me because it frames the issue of crimes of desperation in an immediate life or death context when in reality, stealing one loaf of bread wont significantly change anything. Their family probably won't die today if they get away with it, and their family might not survive tomorrow even if they do. Framing it like this shortcuts peoples brains because "of course you should steal a loaf of bread to save your family" but in actuality stealing a loaf of bread will only feed your family for a meal, stealing a catalytic converter might feed them for a week, stealing a wallet could feed them for a month.
to be clear: i agree that this hypothetical person should steal bread. In fact, I would argue that they are morally justified to steal every meal if theres no other way to feed their family. The moral onus falls on the social safety net or lack thereof. without a way out of poverty, or at the very least a system which provides the essentials of life to the poor, simple crimes like stealing bread from a grocery store chain are absolutely justified. I'm just saying the example dodges the real question.
I'd say they're two different questions. The original question only asks if stealing a loaf of bread is the correct thing to do morally, but it says nothing about if that is the correct thing to do in practice. It is an abstraction meant to highlight the difference between morality and legality. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't delve deeper into the question though. Discussing it further, the way you do, will deepen our understanding about where the lines are, or should be, drawn.
Yup. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family is unsustainable and impractical and, y'know, the thief also usually knows that. Part of the problem of the question of "is it okay" is that it reduces the entire answer down to a binary "yes/no" instead of an actual exploration of policy and social context and nuance. You don't have to think about the answer; you just have to have feelings.
The real question is "should I let someone who steals *my* loaf of bread to feed their family get away with it?" The two real versions of that question are that one and "my *only* loaf of bread, which I also need to feed *my* family". That's the actual dilemma. Because one is about property and the other is about survival.
I would tell this hypothetical person to suck it up and go to a soup kitchen or some other charity shit if they're really starving that bad. Maybe they can sell their nintendo since you can't eat a nintendo. and their copy of monster party.
@ You don't see homeless people robbing someone out on the streets.
yeah the real problem is a society allowing people to starve or else have to steal something from someone else thereby hurting someone in that situation in any case
I worked at a Spirit Halloween years ago for a season. It really put a bad taste in my mouth one day when I went in for my shift and my manager instructed me to go in the back and destroy discontinued costumes. I asked why we were doing this. Why can't we just donate them? Well, because they didn't want anyone to profit from the costumes. They didn't want any possiblity of them being resold. They couldn't be donated and they had to be destroyed before throwing them away so no one could steal them from the trash and sell them. What's worse, most of the product Spirit sells every year is literally the same item that's been there for years. At the end of the season, any items that weren't sold were packaged in boxes, shipped back to HQ and stored until next season. Don't get me started on the quality of items and how it continues to get worse over the years. I helped set up all the animatronics and there was an ungodly amount that didn't work straight out of the box.
Not going to spirit Halloween anymore
>calls wage labour theft
>continues to spout good takes
Yeah, this vid has made my thoughts extra slimy
only way wage labor isn't theft is if the employee is setting the wage
@@johnathanwalker8395 Wrong. A wage by definition is selling ones time. Under capitalism, you're selling your time to a capitalist who makes a profit by stealing "excess value" from the labor of the workers. Therefore, even when an employee is setting their own wage, their labor is being stolen by merit of the profit of the business owner(s). Workers co-ops are a little different of course: the subjugation of workers operates at another level, with members being able to make democratic decisions about the subjugation of their organization under the larger system of the capitalist state. Obviously coops are better in that sense, but overall profit is theft and property is theft, so somebody's always stealing from the worker.
@@johnathanwalker8395 if you were receiving the full value of your labour, there would be nothing left over for the bosses, so no, not even when you set your own wage. If you set your own wage and they accept it you set it too low.
@@hairymcnipples Found the communist comrade thread. Here's an idea- Go on youtube and cry about wages to take simp and paypiggy money. Under no circumstances...get a real job. Under no circumstances, create your own job. Under no circumstances, find the job niche that local society needs. Instead...paypigs. Take the money of the little man to propaganda to them. AKA- Cult/MLM ponzi.
@@spencerharmon4669 if you set you wage low, that would be on you wouldn't it
Work keeps sending us too many things. "Where am I to put all these things?" I ask myself. It is as if they do not know how much space we have for the things. We tell them not to send the things, but then they send them anyway. They make us count the things constantly. We tell them "We have (x) number of this thing." They then say "No, actually. You have 0.4x of those things, or sometimes 3x of those things because computers." I'm like "Why did you make me count the things if you were just going to pull a number out of your ass anyway." and they're like "Hey, here's 3 more cases of the thing you already have way too many of. Good luck with that."
Long story short, the number of things is not real and imaginary so If I powerslam a few chocoproteins in the backroom, the new number is just as good as the old number. Theoretically.
its like taxes - some 16 year old that has never payed taxes
The way I just had to stop and read this three times to understand it, rofl.. OOf ADHD is bad today. :'D Facts though, the numbers are (theoretically) nonsense really. :)
I was an inventory coordinator for years and the numbers are absolutely made up and imaginary. the number of times my trucks would be missing multiple entire fucking cartons!!
I used to work at a supermarket. I handled “wasting” food items. So anything that was out of date - would be my job to log and put in the garbage.
There was literally hundreds of dollars worth of food that was perfectly safe to eat which I would have to throw away everyday and I got sick of it incredibly quickly.
So why not instead - just log it as waste and take some of the safe to eat stuff for myself.
Turns out they OPEN THE FUCKING GARBAGE BAGS and force a worker to rummage through it to make sure everything is actually there.
So I got suspended but eventually convinced them it must have been an honest mistake.
I learned my lesson pretty quick - steal the stuff before I log it as waste. And oh my did I ever steal a fuck load of shit from that supermarket in the 7 years I worked there.
And not just that - I allowed thousands of customers to steal untold amounts of food everyday.
I can safely say I have never lost any sleep over the moral implications of my actions
How dare you don't you realize that like $7000 dollars of merchandise over 7 years would have paid like 0.01% of the CEO's quarterly bonus? That CEO now won't be able to buy that diamond encrusted yacht this week. They will have to wait until next week.
This would, I think, get a pass under the necessity clause of the argument. But either way, food waste is dumb, and in my opinion, once it is marked for disposal, it is no longer the store's property, so you do you.
I once worked at a console repair center, and we would throw away so many parts on a daily basis, many of which were perfectly usable. We had logs of the parts that were taken out to be used in a repair, but not necessarily logs of the stuff that got thrown out, because it's usually a replacement for a damaged or faulty part in the unit, so the numbers of used and trashed parts would be roughly the same.
Anyway, I had a bit of a hobby of building or modding my own consoles, so one day I pocketed a small switch from the trash and got fired because someone saw me do it. I genuinely don't understand why they cared so much about me taking trash.
@西野莉奈・Rinabow best guess is the possibility for abuse, take a functional console, claim X Y and Z are faulty,, reciece parts, either replace existing parts to reaffirm the scam or just pocket parts.
Good on you 👍
I think that argument that people will make things and do jobs regardless of profits is one that needs to be repeated a lot more often.
how tf did you make a comment 8 days ago? 🤨
It's absolutely deranged too because we've LITERALLY SEEN IT HAPPEN FOR THE LAST 3 YEARS.
@@rubenotero7100 *300,000 years give or take
@@jeffersonclippership2588 "Why are they making cave art with no profit incentive!"
It's a bit up-in-the-air about how such a world could play out. On the one hand, if automation could create a utopia where people never have to work, people could have lots of free time to just enjoy life. On the other hand, they might end up like the whales in Wall-E. On the third nuclear-apocalypse hand, humans are pretty garbage creatures and idle hands are the devil's playthings, and most people would probably just end up doing bad stuff if they had nothing else to do. This just came up in Some More News' video about whether the rich are okay; rich people do a lot of crime and drugs and stuff because they have so much more free time.
Here’s a personal detail, though: I stopped stealing (which I justified at the time because I did it from big wasteful and exploitative institutions) because I found that stealing was doing harm to me. I didn’t like who I was becoming. Maybe this was (and is) a consequence of my shitty moralistic upbringing, but I found I could not steal with a clean conscience or feel good about myself.
Even so, I am not against shoplifting from big box stores in principle, and for the reasons cited here. I just can’t do it myself.
I agree whole-heartedly: “if you see someone shoplifting, no you did not.”
I was once a Walmart employee and it's amazing how some the largest collective human suffering is just written off.
Like I understand that there are worse human sufferings like murder but I feel like because employee suffering is considered banal it's largely ignored by most people.
Imagine all the suffering every proletariat suffers in a slow burn of misery every single day of their lives.
The little indignities and small pains such as crying in a walk in freezer because your boss decided you were his punching bag for the day or a customer who nearly got you fired because you wouldn't sacrifice your dignity and self respect at the alter of their hubris or how about the exhaustion of having to work multiple jobs because you simply can't make enough to survive with one.
These are inflicted on the proletariat daily and en mass which adds up to the largest pile of human suffering I can possibly imagine by a wide margin.
And that's not including all the large scale sufferings the proletariat suffers such as insufficient access to food, healthcare, and just not being able to lead a rich and fulfilling life.
So forgive me if I don't give a single fucking shit about someone stealing a fucking shirt from these greedy corporate POS's. Good. I'm fucking happy about it.
If it can inflict even 1 billionth the suffering the proletariat has endured at the hands of the bourgeois every single day of our miserable lives than fucking take everything that isn't nailed down comrades!
Workers of The World Unite!
15.10 I'm embroidering something while watching, sitting in the middle of my sizeable needlework stash and think for a second: "Is that a reasonable amount of fancy thread for one person to use?"
It is. I will use it to make nice things for myself and for friends and family. And if I or any other crafty person ever comes to the conclusion that they'll not use up their stash anymore, it is normal to give it away to someone who will for free or basically free. That's how I got quite some of my stuff myself. It's probably a tradition as old as civilisation.
Love fiberwork! I crochet hats, gloves, sweaters, and socks. Then I give away the ones that came out the best to the county's org for supporting the food insecure and homeless. They also run a community garden that grows fresh crops and gives them away to people! Neatest freakin shit, wanna volunteer more time with them in the future
Whatever "civilization" is, generosity is certainly older than that. Animals show more empathy for each other than large corporations do for poor people.
some businesses explicitly tell their employees NOT to confront shoplifters precisely because of the potential threat to the employee's safety; can't come back to work the next day if someone trying to steal a 12-pack of budweiser stabs you.
Much more likely that someone would get injured in an accident than stabbed, tbh. I used to know someone who worked retail security and in the many, many awful stories he had about how much he loved to tackle shoplifters he never once mentioned anyone having a weapon
I got my ass beat severely in a similar incident when I worked retail. The companies actually can't legally tell you to confront shoplifters because it would put you at risk, and a robbery with assault is something they need to report to the police, which means them putting you at risk ends up in a police report, which is very bad optics. But many of them also yell at you if you don't do anything and make you feel like someone stealing is somehow your fault. In some cases they'll reprimand employees or dock their pay, while knowing full well that if the employee had done some Spider-man shit to stop the shoplifter they'd still be yelling at them. Basically they want it both ways.
That's the corporation's way of protecting itself in the case of litigation. They still want you to stop the shoplifting, they just don't want to be held responsible for the possible consequences. There is still likely some amount of indirect pressure for employees to intervene. Something like "Oh look - Losses are up this quarter. Since our profitability is lower, nobody gets raises this time. Oh well - The most important thing is that we're all safe. Good job, everyone!"
@@AlanWiggs he got really really lucky then, tackle me and your getting some steel in you
Roberto is counting on that.
I was really mean to my friends who did the kind of shoplifting argued for in this video. I found it immoral like you said and had the same idea of how it could harm workers more than it would harm large companies. This video is really cool to me and it shows how empathy and further understanding on an issue like this can affect someone's view on this kind of stuff. Thank you this is awesome
Not many people are willing to admit when they're wrong, and I sincerely respect anyone who does. I don't know what prompted your growth, but I am glad it happened and hope you maintain your openness to information that contradicts your beliefs.
Growing and developing empathy is pretty cool and based, and is one of my favorite things to do and/or be a party to.
ThoughtSlime cutely saying “Nintendos” as if objects, or “video games” in general, is a snarky jab at Nintendo themselves. I love it 😋
(Nintendo has made pointed efforts to make sure people know that “There is no such thing as A Nintendo.” The concern being that their company name could become adapted by the masses as just a new word. Like “photoshop” or “velcro” where they struggle to maintain their trademark in the face of cultural prominence.)
"It's a Canon® brand xerox machine."
Generally a good video that had me consider the side I disagree with, but I think the section at ~16:00-18:00 about "people would make things even without financial incentives" is weak. Yeah, there would be some hobbyists making Nintendos, but then you would see like 100 Nintendos being made per year and access would then be extremely restricted ONLY to the wealthy/well-connected/lucky. If you want millions of people to play Nintendo games, because they're really great and fun and make your life better, a large corporation is a NECESSITY to manage large-scale production, distribution, sales, etc. It is literally impossible for the few people who have the passion+skills to produce enough to meet the demand. So tons of people just can't play Nintendo in your concept.
Same with the life sim games- sure, some people enjoy trucking/farming/etc sims, but do you really think just those few niche hobbyists can hold up the entire trucking industry? Google says there are 3.5 million truckers in the US, and the TruckSim subreddit has 90.7K members. Most people who are truckers do not love it. Without the financial incentives, you'd see 90%+ of the workforce quit, and then you won't get access to all those things you want to steal.
The sense I got overall is that you want all the benefits of capitalism and communism at the same time. You want everyone to have all the things they want, but you also want all those things to magically exist without money. I'm not super pro-capitalism or communism, both have their positives and negatives, but the world just can't function that way.
I see online people giving advice re shoplifting like "Walmart doesn't care" or "target doesn't care if it's under $500" and I worry about people taking that at face value. How much the store cares really depends quite a lot on the management of the specific location, and it's not consistent even within an individual chain. Some Walmarts don't care, some will pursue you to the ends of the earth over $10
Exactly, it varies significantly by management. I had to provide "testimony" for a case when I worked at Walmart, cause they were trying to claim a family I'd assisted was skip scanning :/ it'd been 3 years since I'd worked at that location. The only reason I remembered was cause my bosses were being extremely weird about them... and frankly, i told the prosectutor, "hey, all the shoplifters I've seen never ask for my help, and here they are, asking for help, from me, twice. Do YOU really think they are stealing?"
It was entirely bizarre honestly
Honestly I would be delighted to see someone go to jail because some RUclips comment told them how to commit a crime.
@DeathandGrim2 Poor billionaire CEO can’t get more money. 🥺
@@radicalmarxist9909 who said anything about a CEO? I mean beside you.
Some places even have those small items locked up because it got bad enough, but (respectfully) I doubt someone like TS has even been in a neighborhood like that in the first place.
Someone who worked in the same health food store as I did in the early 90’s, on exactly the same shifts making $4.35 an hour, but somehow alone, hmmm, noticed that many of the $6 fresh wrap sandwiches we got in went unsold and expired, though they never got moldy or anything in the week that took. That person had access to the manual, paper write-off list and decided that their hungry body was ethically better than a trash can, and even occasionally equated an unexpired sandwich on Tuesday with an expired one Wednesday. That person was smart enough to not do this regularly or to always take take same thing or even to always give the same reason for the write off. She was OK.
Mm-hmm. Working there justifies the caloric intake, especially when the stuff didn't sell (and most assuredly when it can no longer be sold).
Get the A'Ok from someone above you and it's no longer even a question, fellow Freegan.
haha i would love to one day do an eric andre esc joke, where if someone asked where the trashcan was at some like, food consumption place, they would redirect you to a person dressed as a trash can who would eat anything, like ANYTHING anyone put there, seems like a great prank
@@marmolejomartinezjoseemili9043 not really, and nobody asks where the trash is...do you even go outside ?
@@dddaaa6965 i mean, not necesarally asking, like, they just go to put some trash down and get greeter by a guy dressed as a trash can, but why am i trying to correct myself to a guy who just asked me if i even go outside? Ohh right, because i actually have the decency to be okay when someone commits a mistake and let them correct themselves without insulting them, or mocking them unlike you my friend, so yeah, it seems i do actually go outside, not sure about you though...
Just don't shop lift at Wal-Mart. I went to a court summons with a friend and 90% of the ppl there that day got busted at Wal-Mart stealing things like diapers and formula (those security guards don't have the same code cashiers have - which is to pretend ya didn't see it). I never left court more depressed... And I've left court with my own fines.
I worked at a security camera company and once one of the mid-management guys had a presentation about how we helped our customers. One story was about some American big chain that was happy that our cameras had helped them stop all the theft of baby formula. I felt sick. I quit not long after that.
That's why they steal shit like cheese, batteries, and razors/makeup. Easier to conceal than baby supplies, and can be sold for money to buy those baby supplies and not get tackled by an agent of the machine.
I worked at a certain 3 letter pharma store as a shift lead for 8 years and never stopped a single person who I noticed stealing. There was even one guy I kept an eye on because I was curious as to how he was stealing the wine. Pant leg.
One thing I did not appreciate was people stealing things in the bathroom and trying to flush the packaging or people dumpster diving and just leaving (a literal) dumpsters worth of trash on the ground for me to clean up.
Meanwhile in my community several stores have closed due to shoplifting. Corporations don't care about employees, they care about profits. If a store is losing more money than it is making it will close. Even if the corporation can afford the loss, they aren't going to keep a failing store open. Shoplifting is one of those crimes where it isn't a big deal until everyone is doing it, then you have to drive to the next town to get groceries.
That's not why they're moving.
@@kevinwillems8720😂😂 getting your goods stolen is specifically why they are leaving, you understand the people that run these businesses don’t think the way you do, if they see there product is getting stolen and nobody is been held accountable for it then they will leave, how is this not obvious to you?
I remember seeing Walmart trying to get customers to donate money because their own workers aren't paid enough to be able to afford Thanksgiving.
What gets me is supermarket chains that have a food bank donation box for paying customers to put donations into.
The magical realm of Externality. 😒
They also get to claim your donations on their taxes as their donations. It's about the tax breaks.
@@s.a.w5493 Do you think they make money off that tax break?
@joshuawinstead7621 they save on their taxes. So they pay less money. It's called "tax deductible". They get to keep the money they would otherwise pay in taxes; your money. If you want to donate to a charity, do it directly and maybe even deduct it from your own taxes if it applies!
“From each according to their 133T G4M1NG 5K1LL5, to each according to their need to play Monster Party” has always been my philosophy
So when I worked at Toys R Us when we had a shoplifting problem corp cut hours to retaliate / send a message / get the employees on board with stopping shoplifting. But then it got worse ( because there were no employees watching the shoplifters) and the hours came back after a few months.
Classic brilliant business decision. Punishing the laborers is always the best answer, because it's always the cheapest and easiest!
So you wanted more money to be a fucking narc.
This just shows how we can use our labour to negotiate. If an employer does shit like that, don't work harder to prove their point for them that it was a good idea to punish people. Show them that the decision to take those actions is unprofitable, by retaliating yourselves. Half assing things is a revolutionary act.
@@catsnorkel It's also not hard to get a retail gig somewhere else immediately after. I always have one foot out the door by default, big or small business.
"It's like complaining about stealing blood from Dracula" is a phrase I need printed on the inside of my brain, that is so good and I'll use it wherever I can.
Real white suburban lefty take… the vast majority of us POC don’t agree with y’all. Niggas really out here trynna justify stealing when alll y’all have the means to pay for shit. Even Ben Shapiro would argue stealing food to eat is moral but looting a cvs to flip deodorants on the street ain’t fucking helping our poor communities whatsoever it actually does the opposite stores close and if they don’t they lock up literally everything making it a hassle for us regular non thieven folk.
then you'd be dumb
15:37 - right but also Monster Party was never actually released in Japan (though the unreleased Japanese prototype has been unearthed) so even if the online capabilities of the famicom allowed much more than betting on horse races, there was no Monster Party to be had in that region at the time.
Also, I think it's weird that baby food and diapers are locked up in security cases in certain stores.
One last thing, play Monster Party.
Normally I'd be annoyed to be corrected, but you earned it.
@@ThoughtSlime I covered this all in a video several years ago, I would've happily let you steal that info. Though I respect your decision not to, all that same.
Thank you for showing me that shoplifting is completely fine under any circumstance. I will now do it everyday forever. Because of what you said in this video, you know
If you see someone stealing necessary items, no you didn't.
If you see someone stealing anything from a store, also no you didn’t. We do not bring down the force of the carceral state on nonsense property crimes in this house
@@scarborough5612 Point. Our 'justice' system is far too insane for that.
My general rule is "if you see someone, no you didn't unless they went out of their way to make sure you did"
@@scarborough5612 possible autism speaking but breaking rules is bad so I'm not going to pretend
@@MySerpentine To avoid having to use sarcasm quotes, I prefer to use the term "legal system" over "justice system." It's much more accurate terminology.
What I have observed from shoplifting (or piracy. Mostly piracy. But its relevant here too) debates online is that, a lot of people dont think the problem with theft is someone unjustly loosing something, but rather someone unjustly gaining something. Which is... such a fucking disgusting way of viewing the world IMO but it does put everything that follows from that into context
THAT IS SO TRUE of so many things in this country! like the number one reason i see for not offering free college and healthcare is that people who don't 'deserve' it will get medicine and education????? its absolutely draconian the way we americans are trained to see other humans
@@abronanimation8671 But its "you americans" who have been indoctrinated into being socialists thanks to higher education teaching people to be revolutionary activists rather than functional members of society. Ask anyone escaping a socialist/communist country how much they like the idea of wealth being taken from people who deserve to have it and given to people who don't. Your fantasy is untenable, a society that rewards laziness and encourages preying on anyone who has built anything in order to sustain that laziness will never work. Sustaining your life requires effort and you have no right to demand someone else put in the effort to sustain your life while you do nothing.
I’m not against breaking the law. I am against hurting people. Some forms of “theft” are in reality efficient use of resources that would otherwise be wasted.
piracy is a made-up word used to describe a non-existent thing aka "free copying" of digital bits stored on a hard drive that by definition are infinitely copiable and reproducible. It makes no sense at the level of technology itself. At least with shoplifting it can be said that you have some tangible things and some sort of damage that's possible to quantify, not bitstreams that are copies of copies of copies of .. ad infinitum, outside of any economic calculation because acts of copying and sharing digital files involve no cost. The argument against "piracy" is an angry old man yelling at cloud and telling you to assign economic value to entirely virtual entities. Like all such arguments since medieval times, it's destined to die out.
I think that's because people take it personally. They imagine it like someone breaking into your own hose, apartment, or car and stealing something you had to get with your own resources, time, or effort. At that point, the action being unjust isn't necessarily wrong. More people would be willing to give you or help you get something if you *asked* for it, but just stealing it is often seen as a violation of personal autonomy and space.
If it's morally wrong to steal from a mom and pop, but not a chain business, then does that mean the mom and pop lose their empathy if they were successful enough to open a few more stores in their name? They kinda have to if we're aligning with TS's line of thinking.
It just seems like too nuanced of an issue to speak on with such absolute confidence on IMO.
Mildo: “Most people would not judge you for stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family”
Javert: “And I took that personally”
Vast majority of shoplifting does not involve stealing food…
@@MrUrbanApollo Read a book
Javert is a cop and is not to be taken seriously
i do enjoy a good les mis reference
@@Matrim42 read a boat
I was raised in a non-political pseudo intellectual upper middle class home (= I always knew being gay is fine, but never considered if I might be because we never talked about it). In my household, theft was the worst crime someone could commit. Obviously it wasn‘t _literally_, but stuff like murder or domestic abuse were so far removed from our sheltered community that they were closer to abstract concepts than behaviour of an ~actual person~.
The principle behind this was that theft, and shoplifting would be the most explicit manifestation of this, elevated your social status beyond what you „earned“ - deserve. In a nonpolitical well-earning family of academics and small business owners, the status of living we had was assumed and treated as 100% the result of labour (of course also as the result of our perceived human worth, but no one was aware of that), and that meant the result of contribution to society. If I shoplift, I elevate my status of living above what I was able to afford. Money is the representation of my labour = contribution to society = social status that I „deserve“, so that makes shoplifting a betrayal of the entire structure of society, and since society is good and works correctly, that is a terrible, despicable crime.
this is weird as hell
The french people watching you say "yeah, sometimes committing crimes and not respecting some laws, is the right thing to do".
🔥
Well why stop there? If a guy is feeling a bit randy, why not commit some crimes and not respect some laws and get a little arse from the nearest available chick, amirite?
GUIL-LO-TINE! GUIL-LO-TINE! GUIL-LO-TINE!
Just to add to the point about doing stuff. I love being a cashier. I love doing front end retail work. I am like stupid fucking good at it. Not joking, i had fellow teammembers who worked for walmart for 20-30 years who were heartbroken when i had to leave, cause I was the only manager who 1) could pull my weight 2) actually made sure everyone got a break 3) said fucking thank you. And I was devastated to leave them. If walmart didnt exist and we got to organize like collectivist grocery stores, i would be so goddamn happy to bag groceries all day
Now Imagine the doctors who would have loved to do that but didn't want to live in poverty
(Not even mentioning the cashiers living poverty who would have loved to be doctors)
what is stopping you?
@@MrThaylin working at walmart is objectively a fucking nightmare even if you like the job conceptually because of the ghouls running it
@@MrThaylin I'm in the same situation. It's cause i can't afford housing with the shit wages they give me
@@eignnx_1738 No what is stopping you from creating a collectivist grocery store?
Every time I go to the supermarket I’m astonished by how much *stuff* there is and how much will go to waste, because god forbid we can’t just organise community kitchens and have less need for everything all of the time
A retired couple I know have made it their full time occupation to drive around to several supermarkets with accessible dumpsters several times a week and recover as much food as possible to be donated to soup kitchens and other places that cook for the unhoused. In an ideal world, the food could skip the 'being put in the dumpster' part of this process, but grocery chains would rather trash all that food and let people go hungry than risk being sued because someone eating something expired made them sick
@@octochan Fun fact about the claim they'd risk being sued by donating expired food: No they f*cking wouldn't. It's literally enshrined in law in most US states as well as countries like Canada and the UK that companies aren't liable if they donate food that happens to go bad, it's the responsibility of whatever group serves the food to ensure it's safe to eat.
Unless you live in the most "Yeehaw" of states, every single boss who's ever said that to you is a f*cking liar. Either they didn't want to do the work of setting up a pick-up, they genuinely believe poor people should just starve, or because they assumed they were right and never bothered to check. Possibly all three.
I spent a year of my life throwing out huge garbage bags full of food every single night and I nearly got fired when I set some aside for an elderly homeless woman. When I found out that not only was that food I tossed perfectly fine to donate but that my boss _knew that_ and _lied to my f*cking face_ while _threatening me_ because he was a _lazy piece of sh*t_ who wasn't willing to make _one f*cking phone call_ I was radicalized on the spot.
I remember seeing video of police posted around Walmart garbage dumpsters to protect them from theft of stuff that is going to rot in a landfill. Some even put goddamned locks on them to keep someone from walking away with something they're literally throwing away. If I throw something away and I see someone pick it up and walk off with it, I'm not going to chase them down and demand they put it back in the trash. I might think, "well that's odd," or even, "maybe they can use it."
@@Craxin01 reminds me of when a cashier at a store told me they were shutting down their recycling center because corporate was "concerned homeless people were _stealing_ cans from their customer's trash." Like fuck off Karen no your corporate overlords are not.
Well, here in America stores don’t stock the amount of food we actually need. They overstock severely because studies show that people are less likely to buy things if there aren’t very many of that thing on the shelf. They want to make sure that no shelf is ever empty, which means stocking way more than they expect people to buy. So it’s not about us needing less stuff, it’s about stores being desperate to manipulate us into buying stuff we don’t need.
Your idea that people would still make Nintendos is absurd on its face. Let's say, yes, someone would still design a Nintendo. Who is going to mine the metals? The peeps who just really really love mining? Who is going to put them together? The people who just can't get enough repetitive factory work? The plastic shell is made in plants satffed by people whose greatest ambition is wearing a respirator for 9 hours at the chemical plant? And the oil pumped by people who are born to do it?
It's patently ridiculous. People have organized systems of exchange for tens of thousands of years.
This extremely hazy vision falls apart in three seconds.
The fact that all of those things are deeply undesirable to do suggests that maybe our system of resource procurement and distribution should minimize the extent to which it’s required that people do it, and also that their doing it should be decided by some kind of sortition, rather than because they have no better options to get food. Also, I agree that this framing of TS’s is bad, but pretending that Bronze Age exchange is remotely comparable to what we do now is not much better.
They're leftists. Hazy vision is par for the course.
It's true there would likely have to be some additional perks for some types of jobs, but wouldn't it be better if people couldn't be coerced into doing this type of work, if they would only do it voluntarily? Wouldn't that make the work conditions so, so much better? Why should anyone work for 9 hours wearing a respirator -- that seems a little excessive. Maybe more people would be willing to do this type of work if their contribution only needed to be one or two hours. Maybe the danger and unpleasantness of many of these types of jobs stem from the workers lacking bargaining power, more than any inherent cruelty of these lines of work.
18:46 "There is no method of resistance to capital that capital won't find a way to defer the cost of onto workers"
I cannot express how revelatory a statement this is for me. Thanks for the revelations, pal.
I got fired due to shoplifting at a job. I was often the only person working and the rules they had for stopping shoplifting made it impossible to actually do something about it, so F that company.
In the words of Jim Stephany Sterling:
“You can’t steal from a corporation. It’s called reclamation”
+
They're right you know
Years back, I was working full-time in retail and not making enough to cover rent and food. If I hadn't shoplifted I would've starved.
And that would have simply been a waste of labor. Sometimes corporations have to make "sacrifices" to keep the assets/human-resources functioning. They have to spend money to keep the mechanical equipment running, and it's no different for the flesh equipment, but the meatquipment can be kept running with much less cost.
Glad to see everyone in the comments being normal
Your pizza hut anecdote reminds me of the time my uncle was fired from a job basically because he refused to get shot during a violent robbery at gun point. I think he was working on a cybercafé, to give you an idea of the scale of what was taken from the register and what he was required to put his life at risk for. The owner of the place asked him why didn't he stop the thieves 🙄🙄🙄
I had a co-worker come up to me at one of my jobs to discuss a plan to hit the panic button discreetly if we were ever robbed. I looked her right in the eye and said "Neither of our lives are worth $100 (what we were supposed to have in our tills) so I'm not reaching for sh*t. I will give them whatever they want, I will even bag it for them if they ask." She looked at me like I grew three heads lol.
It's genuinely heartbreaking how many people have been convinced they should risk their well-being so their boss can have a couple more dollars they don't need.
@@Eon2641 I'd also to sh*t all in that situation.
when I was in high school I participated in a restorative justice program where people would get sent instead of going to jail or whatever. 99% of the time it was for shoplifting from macy’s. part of the process is discussing the “harm” that was caused by their actions. I realized I don’t think I can go back to the program now that I’m not a high schooler because I don’t think I could say with a straight face that these people actually caused any real harm.
Except Macy's will raise prices to recover their losses from shoplifters so law abiding citizens will pay more. Worse, these retailers will even shutter due to too much shoplifting. So yeah, there is harm. Don't be so open minded that your brain falls out
@@paxgamer3003 they don't HAVE TO raise prices to recover their losses though. the fact that THAT isn't your main target is the point that Mild's making. there are guys at the top of the chain who are taking huge quantities of money off the top. that's profit. you can reduce that for a handful of guys and recover all of those losses while making no harm to their standard of living. the fact that THIS isn't the issue you're taking, but the end-user committing truly around 100-500 dollars of total theft from a corporation with several of those guys at the top, is wild to me, and I cannot make an argument for why you should think like that.
@@candyh4284 if I ever meet you in real life, I am going to steal your wallet and your phone. It won't affect your quality of life, since you probably have the skills to go steal a new wallet and phone for yourself.
I agree executive compensation is outrageous these days, but I don't want to live in a society that thinks stealing is okay. You go ahead and tell your children (if you have any) to go steal at WalMart. You will really be setting them up for success in life.
People from family incomes over $70,000 are 30% more likely to shoplift than people who make $20,000.
Source American Journal of Psychology, Prevalence and Correlates of Shoplifting in the United States: Results From the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions
Based on study conducted in 2001/2002
As someone who has worked mostly retail in my adult life, shoplifting HAS directly impacted my job and made my job harder, but it was marginal compared to the complications that came directly from corporate.
It just made us have to jump through even more hoops and spend more time tagging shit when we were already being timed for truck.
I know the corp can afford the shrink though.
I will say this. If you do it: STOP POSTING ABOUT IT ONLINE. Not only will you get caught, but you are telling corps how you do it and what to look out for. Especially goes for dumpster diving. They cracked down harder at my job when online dumpster diver hauls were being posted from our store chain.
Good comment. Always good to get an actual experienced person comment!
"It's like complaining that people are stealing blood from Dracula." This is the best analogy I've ever heard for this issue. The only flaw I see is that Dracula doesn't hold a candle to the blood-drunk gluttony of suffering that corporations cause in the 3rd world and pretty much everywhere else.
Great video as always ; I've noticed your editing in recent vids has been a lot more dynamic and I like it a lot :-)
the hard zooms hide edits. the soft zooms provide plausible cover for the hard zooms :)
You know,I remember that me and a friend asked this exact question to several members of our debate team,and I remember that only two people seemed to think that it was wrong in all circumstances,and of the rest,less than half said that it depends. Really people seemed to have less of a problem with shoplifting itself,and instead had a problem with big versus small business, to the point of even believing that stealing from Walmart wasn’t really morally wrong because it didn’t hurt the company.
In my experience, people on stuff like debate team or model UN tend to be left-leaning, largely just because people that age and in those kind of environments tend to be left-leaning, same with this comment section, so it's people that are more likely to share the viewpoint from the video. I wouldn't take those experiences to reflect people in general, just the environment you were from.
I was never trained in how to be a cashier at a grocery store, and the wages they pay me for doing so are absolutely abysmal, so like, if some things don't get scanned 🤷♀️
And that's why you will never be paid much.
@@ViddyOJames does that boot taste good?
@@ripyungbruh8157 Not everyone enters the workforce from the gutter and under a retail boot.
@LevantineR1 what? You think that this only applies to the very poorest of American? Are you even old enough to work?
@@ripyungbruh8157 I assume a low-level job because I can't imagine a decent wage and benefits being worth risking for some r/antiworld clout. How does sabotaging your employer and risking your job/benefits/career help you?
I do love the fact that my mall is now officially closed in. Downtown San Francisco
@Vesta_the_Lesseromfg you have 100 comments on this channel lmaooo 💀☠️💀☠️💀☠️💀☠️☠️💀☠️💀☠️
buddy u need to go outside and get some vitamin d maybe kick a ball ⚽️
literal conversation i had in a literal walmart (woman behind me making noise, who I'm not paying attention to) woman: "I swear I'm not stealing, I'm exchanging it!" me: "Minding my own business is free. Walmart isn't paying me to care what you're doing"
Phenomenally based
That didn't happen
@Mercury And then everyone clapped. You later quit your job and now you're rich and famous, but donate the extra money to cancer research. (joking around lmayo)
I personally hate how shops' fear of shoplifting have kind of made shopping a nightmare for regular costumers.
Like, I've seen multiple stores now implementing having to scan a bar code on your receipt to leave the store at the self check out registers. And, if you want to leave without buying something, you have to ask an employee to let you out. Clearly they're hoping costumers will just buy a small item to leave, instead.
I also see so many stores banning bringing bags in to the store. Which is just annoying if you're on foot, and want to bring a back pack for your groceries.
The fear of shoplifting has basically let them to design stores like prisons, making it annoying and inconvenient for people to go shopping.
And, they wonder why people use shopping online more, and more. Yeah, I wonder why...?
Maybe shoplifting should stop then and you should stop encouraging it?
@@za-ir5ni Maybe we should live in a society where the means of production are collectively owned
@@thomasfisher4833 That would be a disaster.
Really, it is not the fear of shoplifting that incites these measures. We are living in a technocracy, so whatever surveillance is possible, is being done. That is what technocracy stands for.
@Thomas Fisher
How does that prevent shoplifting?
commenting here to shoplift engagement from other videos, like some kind of algorithmic robin hood
In the words of James Stephanie Sterling, "You can't steal from corporations. It's called reclamation."
It is morally corrrrrrrect to pirate Nintendo games
I am firmly in this camp and I quite enjoyed this video's nuanced take on the issue
@@Rob_Saccamano It doesn't have a nuanced take at all, it is firmly and verbally biased in the camp of shoplifting.
Except of course if you wanted to play a wizard game.... apperantly you can't just pirate that and give pirated copies out to everyone else that wants to play the wizard game so then people get their wizard game and the transphobic cunt that owns the IP gets fucked
@@joshuawinstead7621 Yes, a very nuanced take.
The idea that we would make Nintendos just because they are cool is so incredibly naive, Even a first gen 8bit Nintendo is incredibly complex to build and design. Even if you and 10000 of your mates think that Nintendos are cool you can't make any. It takes the organisation structure larger than a single company to create a product like that. Nintendo did not build them alone there were numerous subcontractors and machine manufacturers needed. How are you going to convince all these people to help without an insetive? The Soviet block was particularly bad at creating consumer products exactly because if your way if thinking.
I can't believe complex things were never invented before profit incentives. 😢
"People need money to do anything complicated!"
Looking over at Dwarf Fortress and most modding communities, coordinated rewilding projects, the Red Cross, the contribution of volunteer women in WW1... What about literally any complex job critical to our modern infrastructure where the pay is terrible, like doctoring or social care?
Inflation up, shoplifting up... seems if one gets poorer they get less interested in following the law, maybe stop making people poor, capitalism, and crime gets better. Its not about passing on the cost to the customer, its about whether or not the product will bring profit and high theft items will not get carried by the store or more likely scenario locked up..
I get paid 2,000$ on my paycheck per month. I make the store about 40k per month. I know this because I have access to the store KPI.
After 1 year of retail and knowing that I could get fired for losing 100$ somehow by accident despite making them so much money, just so the auditor can justify their job, I really cannot find myself caring about someone trying to steal stuff.
You personally do not make the store 40k a month, you contribute to that gain, but are not exclusively responsible for it.
@@MrThaylin You're right. But I'm not going to calculate gross profit to know to the truest extent how much my company is profiting off of me. I just know they're not destitute.
@@MrThaylin how do you know they don't pull up to the job with a pallettes wotth of salami in their car every day ?
You do not make the store 40k in a month. With just Walmart as an example their net income in 2022 was approx 13 billion dollars. Worldwide they had about 10.5k stores. Which is approx 1.25 million per store or a little over 100k per month per store. If one person accounted for nearly half the stores profit per month, that person would be the most valuable retail employee of all time
How do you make them 40k a month when basically anybody could do your job and your not producing the goods you sell? Odd logic 🤔
I love the analogy "like stealing blood from Dracula" so much.
I was surprised that Mildread didn't say, "Stealing blood from a Dracula..." until I remembered this is Thought Slime and not Scardy Cats. That also explains the lack of Bobby Dook in the end credits, too. 🙂
I am neither for nor against shoplifting, just wanted to share this bit of info I have as a former Bread Vendor of about 15 years. I can tell you that companies are finding better ways to ensure that shoplifting doesn't harm them. Over my years of work, more and more stores were becoming SBT (Scan-Based Trading) Stores, meaning the stores are only paying for the bread that gets scanned. Anything over the shrink % comes out of the vendor's pocket. The way the industry works is that the Vendor "Buys" the product from the Bakery, and then "Sells" it to the Grocery Store. Vendor's are mostly IBPs (Independent Business Partners) to the Bakeries, which just means you are considered a contractor while they treat you like an employee.
9:02 I only worked one retail job and I actually appreciated the way we handled shoplifting:
We didn’t.
I ~heard~ it was because the company weighed the possibility of a lawsuit if we got fucked up by a thief against how much shit got stolen and opted for us to not get hurt and sue and let the people steal paintbrushes.
This feels like a Thought Slime 2.0 episode with Thought Slime 3.0 production value.
So good! Such nostalgia!
I am pro shoplifting mostly but I was talking to someone about it and they said that companies take profit lost from shoplifting into account when determining prices so shoplifting comes back around to hurt the consumer. While I believe that if this is true it is still the company doing the immoral thing by raising prices to protect their bottom line and make the most money possible this would mean that shoplifting hurts people who can barely afford necessities. I genuinely don't know if this is true or if there are factors to it I have not considered so I would appreciate anyone who has any insights to add.
So, this is partially true. Companies do factor what they call "shrinkage" into the price of goods, and shrinkage includes things like shoplifting. The bit that conveniently gets left out is all the other sh*t it includes, like what gets lost in transit or the stuff they throw out because it goes bad, gets damaged, is returned, or just to make space for more sh*t. That stuff absolutely dwarfs the amount contributed by shoplifting. Like, shoplifting is a single digit percentage of a stores shrinkage if not fractions of a percent. With that context, it's safe to say that shoplifting does not meaningfully increase the cost of goods, as they will deliberately throw out and spoil infinitely more than we could ever steal. Factor in things like wage theft and, honestly, they should be glad we're only shoplifting.
When I was living in South Africa, the grocery store I used to frequent had these big security tags around the Nido baby formulas, the types of tags that you usually only see on the electronics. Apparently mothers used to shoplift those often and they felt the need to put them on. That was so heartbreaking to me. These poor women who just want to feed their kids. I just found it so evil that in a whole huge grocery store, the baby formulas were the only items they decided to put the tags on.
the walmart near me has, over the course of the pandemic, added those tags to a bunch of baby products, and the formula is locked in a steel case that has to be unlocked every time someone wants to buy it. I'm not even joking, im not advocating for anything illegal, but if that store gets looted, good riddance
@@abronanimation8671 If the store gets looted they will put in more security measures. Or they will decide operating there is not worth the cost and will shut down that location further reducing access to baby formulas for the children that need it.
What low IQ logic. Were you not aware of the formula shortage? What are all the poor moms going to do when some fat probably black welfare hog shoplifts all the formula. Think for more than a minute before posting.
@@rugvedkulkarni1593 or they'll be replaced by store that doesn't have a vendetta against poor mothers
@@FrancisR420 A place that would give away free baby food is a charitable establishment not a store. I agree it would be great if there was a place that gave away free baby formula to mothers who needed it. But to build such a place requires wealth and work. No one wants to work or put their wealth into a community that is full of thieves. Thievery makes life harder for everyone, it is the opposite of building. If you can afford not to, you should not be stealing.
I used to work at a Walmart, and they just kinda mostly don't care about shoplifting. Like they have a "Loss Prevention" department (at my store it was one guy) but otherwise employees are told to basically let it happen, even if they catch a customer in the act. One of my friends was actually fired for following a shoplifter into the parking lot and verbally confronting him.
But our wages/hours were never affected by shoplifting. Like Mildred said, stores like that already operate using a skeleton crew. Every department is understaffed and every employee is underpaid so the company can keep as much of their money as possible.
if it's anything like us here in Australia, the 'don't do anything about it' is because it's not worth getting stabbed over. We used to have checkout operators do a security call over the PA and the nightfill boys would all swarm the front of the store hoping for it to turn into a fight. One guy got carried back into the store because when the checkout manager had tried to chase, the shoplifter decked her and the nightfill boys didn't take kindly to it.
Basically it's not worth the assault charges against staff or the potential lawsuit if the staff member gets injured or killed.
The reason a store doesn't want you to confront shoplifters because it's dangerous. You get sliced up or shot for trying to stop someone who's already committed to doing something shady. And if you get sliced up on their clock, they're liable and on the hook for you. It's actually smart to just no intervene
Been working retail for nearly 4 years now. People shoplift all the time, not once have I ever heard it having any effect on the workers.
My husband was wrote up and nearly fired because someone stole two televisions
@@ashleyduffy2088 that sucks so bad for him. Wish the Draculas who own the store/ corporation he works at didn't use any excuse they could to fuck over your husband
Speak to those in San Francisco
I don't see forgetting to scan items at self check-outs as theft, I see it as getting compensated for my unpaid labor as a Salesclerk. Hypothetically in minecraft I mean, totally not in real life.
@@OlPrisky I hope your store closes 🙏
@@randominspector7366I agree, it's messed up they are exploiting all this free labor and doing nothing but keeping the profits and firing employees in the process.
Yeah I've noticed how many people they have at Walmart standing around watching the self check outs. Far more than they employed, before self check outs, to work registers. I'd say it's been a collosal failure.
If i saw someone do what the first comic said when i worked at one of those places, i would have just said have a great day. My paycheck would not have increased calling out the obvious thefts i saw.
If people steal, the store Will threaten to shut down and you won't be able to pay for your food and housing.
And if the workers demand enough pay to cover their food and housing they again will threaten to shut down and put you out of work.
It's a real catch-22
(Or win-win If you don't want to work at Walmart)
I haven't shoplifted since I was caught as a kid, but my friend does it regularly. Before I realized I was actually completely brainwashed, I did feel weird about her doing that. Now I sincerely don't care.
It's not praxis for sure. But every little bit counts.
“People like playing farming simulator so people would spend their entire lives doing backbreaking work if they didn’t have to.”
Think before you say things.
also: "the incredibly complex network of resources and logistics needed to make consoles is irrelevent because some hobbyist in his garage will pick it up"
he sound slike an 8 year old
@@xRickAstleyx Yeah this dude really pisses me off sometimes. He’s brilliant when it comes to certain things, but for the past year or so he’s just been really arrogant with nothing to show for it. I can’t stand this sort of dismissive “I know everything; if I don’t understand something I’m allowed to say whatever I want about it” attitude.
I‘m curious, what do you think he‘s brillint about, if you don‘t like what he‘s saying here?
Lmao the profit motive isn't needed because people play online simulators is something else, even by BreadTube's abysmal standards
Bro breadtube is right and you're wrong. You're not bread. You're a noodle
@@noahwright4599 you are very dumb
In principle, I have no problem with people stealing from billion-dollar mega corporations. I just personally don't like to do it because of the small risk of getting caught, embarrassed, and possibly prosecuted. But that's just me.
like, I don't think anyone personally enjoys having to do the actual shoplift
@@tr4nnyinadirtyroomnah, there are enough adrenaline junkies who love the thrill.
6:55 this reminds me of a scene in Only Fools and Horses where Del Boy convinces Rodney that stealing (glow in the dark) paint from British Rail is good for Britain
The stuff you "forget" to scan underneath your cart is known as the Angel's Share
I don't know if you made this up on the spot or not, but that's hilarious.
@@Bae_Cop2027 it's an established turn of phrase but it actually usually refers to the portion of whiskey that evaporates during aging.
@@Bae_Cop2027 I live in bourbon country :)
This, unfortunately, reminded me of a time I was going through checkout, and the lady in front of me didn't declare the diapers on the bottom rack of her cart. I said nothing. She bought her food, with baby right there. Some perfumed boomer behind me snitched as she rolled out of the checkout, and made such a racket multiple people went and looked, and someone went and stopped the woman. While this happened, the boomer was giving herself a pat on the back. I gave her the stink eye as she looked around for approval. Like, damn, man. The mother was in tears, "I forgot, I'm sorry." That sort of stuff.
The older generations can't give up the ghost quick enough.
That's called getting a citation in the mail. Not a very bright idea to steal when they have a close-up of your face and your debit/credit card info.
When he compared gaming simulators to real jobs lmao
totally the same bro. call of duty is literally like going to war
@@instantsus_ It totally is bro, I got shot like 5,000 times in Iraq, but as long as stayed in cover for a few seconds I would be totally fine. Still got scars though.... my body looks really weird now.
@@LuciusSicarius damn lucky you, i got ptsd from the multiple deployments in mw2🫡
no need to thank me for my service btw
You're missing the point tho. The games he talked about are the ones that simulate real jobs people have and it is within the completion of a task and the satisfaction you get that is the comparison.
@@MiotaLee no dummy, the game comes with the zero downsizes of the job. that is the reason people will play it. trucking is really tiring, it’s insane to compare it to gaming
I used to think the argument that people will work with no incentive was stupid, because I would sleep all day if I could and do nothing. Then I was unemployed for a bit and realized I'd do all kinds of far more productive shit with my time if I wasn't forced to repeatedly clean fryers for six hours a day
What things would you want to do then?
@@randomhuman2595 I'd garden, learn a martial art, write more, read more, do community projects like picking up litter, I'd learn to cook better. Generally I'd improve myself as a human being and try to do more for the people around me.
I had the opposite experience when I was unemployed, I was literally wasting away or spending 8 hours a day arguing in comment sections or discord servers. I think different people are motivated differently.
One thing to consider though, is that if you want favors from people, (like if you want someone to fix your car, or cook you food, or make artwork for you, you have to do something back in kind for them. Money is a sort of means of exchange we have invented, and it works well in a lot of ways. But as society has gotten bigger people are so disconnected that for many meaning and motivation have gotten corrupted.
@EsotericDichotomy yep I totally feel ya on the "wasting away" thing when I am under-employed or temporarily unemployed waiting for a new construction project to start... if I had the societal structural and material resources and support, I would go into low-income neighborhoods and fix hazardous electrical installations and replace faulty and worn outlets and light fixtures. I'd also do pre-closing electrical code compliance inspections for low-income home-buyers and also write up inspections and issue code citations against neglectful landlords.
Just the food professor and Javert over here, protecting us from those greedy starving poors 🙄
May the food professor do something useful, and fall into a food processor, in minecraft.