Just because Jesus Christ was crucified beside a pair of thieves does not mean the Romans prosecuted Him for being a shoplifter.
Yet, if you prefer to read the New York Times than the New Testament, you will perhaps be aware of the furore sparked off by a late April podcast from the highbrow Left-wing newspaper, in which three high-status, privileged, Left-wing ‘rebels’ sat around like classic Tom Wolfe characters, self-indulgently trying to reclaim acts of stealing items from shops as being precisely the kind of noble activity Jesus would once have performed, had the ancient Romans possessed branches of Asda and Morrisons in Judea and Samaria. If you think we have a problem with shoplifting over here in Britain (and we do, as I explain here) then so, it turns out, does America.
Thick as Thieves
The trio consisted of Nadja Spiegelman, the publication’s Culture Editor, Jia Tolentino, a New York-based writer of rubbish, and Hasan Piker, a radical far-Left polemicist and prominent campaigner for the Democrats, who is well-known across the Atlantic these days. Cutely relabelling shoplifting as “microlooting”, the podcasters justified “stealing from a big-box store” as being “neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor… significant in any way as protest or direct action”, as slipping a packet of cookies into your pocket before strolling out without paying is unlikely to bring down the entire edifice of Late Capitalism all by itself. Yet they still bragged about doing
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‘Jesus went through the grainfields on the sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.’ Matt 12v1
Fully according to the provisions of Mosaic law, of course.
Try linking shoplifting to Islam and see how that works out.
I think these are just terribly bored rich people who steal from chain-store supermarkets for the minor thrill of breaking law without taking much or any risk with that.
I think there is a lot of truth in that. Other bored rich people say they want to make the world a better place and they end up funding left wing causes. I think we’d be better off if they just enjoyed being rich and spending money on normal stuff.
Hasan Piker is in quite a bit of trouble. He’s openly admitted being in contact with the Cuban government in violation of sanctions and the FARA act. He’s a Turkish national who happened to be born in the US and he actively lobbies against the country he lives in. Maybe they should deport him for a laugh.
I’m not going to comment directly on shoplifting, but on the idea of trade. Communities have always, until relatively recently, been built around the concept of a fair trade – I give you something, you give me something of equal value (value not necessarily equating to direct worth). Our society is no longer built upon the concept of a fair trade. Council Tax is a good example. Is that a trade or is it theft? The same can be applied to income tax and VAT – trade or theft? Maybe we just call that extortion? How about someone charging £60/hour for non-skilled, low effort, labour? Is that a fair trade? It’s certainly not, but it’s not theft either because you have a choice. Most of the time. But what if you can’t physically manage the £60/hour non-skilled, low effort, labour? Does it then become theft? It’s an enforced unbalanced trade, so what would we call that? And what if the economy has been rigged such that there’s lots of this kind of ‘trade’ taking place, and it’s not small businesses but mega corporations? Something is clearly rotten.
Total misunderstanding of trade. It’s never`
“I give you something, you give me something of equal value (value not necessarily equating to direct worth).”
If I value what you have to be the same value as what I have, then why would I trade. There’s no benefit to me.
And if you value what I have to be the same value as what you have, then why would you trade. There’s no benefit to you.
It’s only when our valuations differ do we trade. I want the money you’ll give me over my valuation of my time AND you want the time I’ll give you more than the money.
Then we both benefit. And there’s a trade.
Judas was the only thief in Jesus’s entourage, and it didn’t end well for him.