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Comment by notsotrue | Hacker News Reader

By this logic, money theft is 'not a crime' if poor.

Being poor shouldn't mean you can't get basic life-sustaining things like food, shelter, clothing. That's why being poor is not an excuse for stealing but being hungry is.

Agreed, I'm all for basic income, and social safety nets. But stealing them, isn't the right answer either. The burden should be on the state to provide those necessities, not the local business owners.

So do you think, then, that the homeless should forego food until the state steps in out a principled concern for the free market?

What I think is that the burden should be shouldered by the state, and not small business owners. What this ruling does, is place the burden of caring for the 'hungry' on grocers, which is an unfair burden. Unless the courts decision came with a way to compensate the grocer, this ruling is idiotically naieve.

Usually, compensation is the subject of civil lawsuits, not criminal process (though some systems allow restitution to also be addressed as part of a criminal action, but even there civil action is also available.)

So the grocer is going to sue 1000 insolvent hungry people? For what exactly?

OK, but how do you think the actors in this story should behave, given that that is not the case? Should the homeless man starve to death? Or perhaps the judge should sentence him to years in prison for stealing less than ten dollars' worth of food?

In many jurisdictions people are allowed to kill other people if it's done in self-defense. If the alternative is dying, lots of things become legal.

In many jurisdiction around the world, people get stoned for having sex. Just because some jurisdictions allow something, doesn't stop it from being murder.

So when you are poor and starving to death, you shouldn't steal because you believe in some sort of governmental idealism?

So when I'm freezing to death, it's not okay to steal money for shelter?

There is absolutely no way that a central system (even at the state or county level, if you're in the US) can surpass in allocative efficiency what an individual can do for themselves.

While I agree with you in principle, placing the burden on an entity far removed from the local context will always leave people underserved or forgotten entirely, in which case their instinct to survive will hurt the local business owners regardless of whether they would have helped voluntarily or not.

Unless it really is a true basic income.

So you place the burden on the grocer, and absolve the state and the thief?

I agree, basic income is the answer. But this judgement isn't logical or sound.

Judging the act not to be subject to criminal sanction is very far from judging it to be "the right answer", or even legally permitted in systems which have both criminal and civil remedies.

So who pays the grocer? It's both unlawful, and unethical to place the burden of feeding hungry people on the shoulders of the grocer as a cost of selling food.

> It's both unlawful, and unethical to place the burden of feeding hungry people on the shoulders of the grocer as a cost of selling food.

If its the effect of the law and legal system, it is not unlawful for the burden to be placed there, even if the individual takings are unlawful. Whether its unethical or not is debatable; its basically equivalent to the government taxing sales of food and using it to fund feeding the indigent (since the grocers costs of doing business are recouped in the prices charged to customers), which (while rarely explicitly done with food) is actually a not-uncommon model for providing goods or services deemed essential (that is, taxing sales to those who can afford it, and using the proceeds to subsidize those who can't.)

Yea, no. Grocers in low income areas shoulder the burden, while grocers in high income areas don't. The poor, subsidies the poor. Brilliant.

Considering Italy is a welfare-style state, this just opens up cannoli snatching and such instead of going to whatever socialized or charitable shelters and services. Unhealthy high sugar and high caffeine foods will be in demand by snatchers.

Ironically, this is going to hurt the working poor the most who work at low margin restaurants, retail shops, etc as people just grab whatever they want because there is no more law protecting them. It also seems like a good way to get into beatings or even knife fights as small business owners and workers get fed up with thieves and now have an apathetic police that won't protect them. Those in high volume areas like food stands at train stations will feel the brunt of this, meanwhile I suppose the kinds of restaurants an Italian judge dines at won't even notice. If Italy wants to expand its welfare state benefits, then it should do that through its legislature via taxation, not via judiciary decree attacking its poorest workers. If the Italian poor can't find these socialized benefits then someone needs to ask by the welfare state is so inefficient and find a way to fix that.

More than likely the unintended consequences will be chasing out 'poor looking' people from various shops as retailers fear legal theft. Now the poorest won't be able to buy things they need and they won't have the resources to fight this discrimination via a lawsuit. On top of that, there's no Hollywood style theft where you just steal bread cooling itself on the window sill. It will involve breaking and entering, fights with the shop owner, collateral damage (a child trampled during a chase), tempers leading to weapons use, incentivizing snatching expensive food to be sold on the black market, and other issues.

Its obvious no one thought this through. What if a hungry person decided to smash up a €5,000 vending machine to get a sandwich or a coffee? Does the Italian government pay for the repairs? I imagine it won't. This is a bad ruling for Italian small business.

If society has failed people so badly that they're starving in the streets, they should probably expect riots let alone petty theft.

You expect riots when healthy, well-fed people suddenly stop receiving handouts. By the time people are actually starving in the streets, they don't have the energy to riot.

> What if a hungry person decided to smash up a $5,000 vending machine to get a sandwich or a coffee?

Did they legalize smashing up $5000 vending machines if you're hungry too?

> Does the Italian government pay for the repairs?

Do Governments usually pay for repairs to private property?

Murder is "not a crime" if self defense in most countries. And while we certainly have our debates about when it counts as self defense very few people seem to discount the notion entirely.

You do not have a basic biological need for money, actually.

actually you do

technically this is not true

It's not true in any way, technical or otherwise.

technically it is more true than anything else

Please go into more detail about the basic biological need for money.

sorry, I'm just yanking your geekchain

Please refer to other posts.

I don't think anyone is saying poor people should be allowed to rob banks or mug people. The article is about stealing small amounts of food to stave off hunger.

This site has a threaded discussion system, context matters. The post you are referring to was responding to someone who specifically made the point that this was analogous to allowing poor people to steal money, which is clearly not the case.

In this context, it's clear you are both in agreement.

Exactly, I was simply trying to elaborate on emodendroket's point to point out the flaw in nosotrue's logic. Sorry if I didn't make this clear enough.

Why not, food isn't the only item at the bottom of Maslows pyramid. Food being the only one you can steal. The rest must be acquired through currency.

Stealing a couple morsels of food and stealing thousands of dollars to rent an apartment don't really seem that similar to me.

How so? Depending on where you live, going cold will kill you far far quicker, than going hungry. If the arguments are on need, then the need for shelter here in Canada trumps the need for food, by a long shot.

You may not, but you don't live in Canada. Here in Canada, food is secondary to shelter. If you have the energy to steal, you won't die today. However, if you have no shelter in -40, you're dead. You can't steal shelter, but you can steal money to exchange for shelter. So, yea, you do have a basic biological need for money...

Food is a bit more essential.

Is it? Here in Canada, an empty belly won't kill you if you have the energy to steal, but the -45c nights will absolutely turn you into a popsicle. And you can't steal shelter. But you can steal money to provide a roof.

How so?

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