Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 406 posts

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#251

Post by protomyth »

KingMob wrote: post #209
sethhochberg wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory that is the whole point of taxpayer funded support programs... we can't all be there, but we do all pay taxes for the specific purpose of having a better society (including things like food banks, soup kitchens, etc for people in need).

And in America, the amount of those taxes set aside for feeding the hungry is below the required amount to cover everyone.

I would need to see the actual data on that because that is definitely not my experience with social programs in the US. There is money in the federal programs for the US even not counting private organizations and states.

You don't actually have to provide income information when you first sign up for commodities programs these days (it is required later), and EBT provides a fair amount.

Shelter is the bigger concern than food for US poor. We really need to look at the whole idea of housing. Training money is there, but its pretty useless without proper shelter and transportation systems.

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#253

Post by thaumasiotes »

School-Cotton wrote: post #122
distances wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm speculating based on the rules in Finland, assuming they would be quite similar in Italy. In Finland a store may not choose their customers based on a broad criteria (such as age, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation or other reason related to the person). I'm sure being poor would be included in this list. Badly behaving customers can be expelled.

I see. There is no such rule in the U.S., although a lot of people mistakenly assume there is one. So I thought you might just be mistaken. I'm not sure whether the law in Italy is more similar to the U.S., or to Finland.

> There is no such rule in the U.S., although a lot of people mistakenly assume there is one.

There certainly is such a law. It's not something to be proud of.

> In US law, public accommodations are generally defined as facilities, both public and private, used by the public. Examples include retail stores

> Under United States federal law, public accommodations must be accessible to the handicapped and may not discriminate on the basis of "race, color, religion, or national origin."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#254

Post by thaumasiotes »

dragonwriter wrote: post #228
VLM wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is no such rule in the U.S." Careful with online lawyering, its illegal not to bake a marriage cake for a gay couple, to cite a recent famous example.

That's not a counterexample. That's an example of the short and defined list of prohibited axes of discrimination (the specific law at issue included sexual orientation as an enumerated category protected) discussed upthread in the US and contrasted with the Finnish rule against discrimination on any broad category. So, its not an example of the US having a rule like the Finnish open-ended rule.

What makes you think the Finnish law prohibits discrimination based on "any broad category"?

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#255

Post by kitsune_ »

protomyth wrote: post #189
nowprovision wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you've been pretty privileged in grand scheme of things, university, regular jobs, maybe the lowest point has been backpacking etc... Parent have at least one car, yawn yawn yawn.. No one is stealing from you, they are stealing from a supermarket. Privileged people always seem to think in black and white, theft is theft never an excuse blah blah, quite often making the cliche mistake of associating morality wit…

I've not been privileged all my life. I have a dislike for fish because of some of things and situations we were in. It is never, ever ok to steal. Stealing from a supermarket is stealing from a person or people. Just because you cannot name who is affected doesn't mean it isn't people. It is black and white. The morality and legality are in alignment in this regard. This whole "shades of grey" leads to the blackness…

Nothing man made is ever black and white. There is no universal physical law of morality.

We can describe two different acts with the same word:

> A guy stole a sandwich from a super market because he was starving > A guy stole a Ferrari because he always wanted to drive a Ferrari

These two things are not the same.

The temporality of property rights is especially interesting. I hope you do realise that at some point in time there were no humans, and as such no such thing as property rights.

When a human first laid claim on a stretch of land, you could argue that this in itself constituted theft, at this very moment this person deprived every other human being from accessing or cultivating this land. What moral right did this person have to claim this land?

From there, millennia of war and conquest, laws and civilization.

In Switzerland, where I'm from, patrician families still hold vast estates, dating back to feudal times. They legally own all of this but what about the morality of it? These estates were acquired centuries ago.

By modern standards, the morality of it back then was clearly not given, because the wealth was amassed on the back of a populace in servitude. Add to this, that this has an impact on society today, by extension these inherited properties are limiting today's generations to express themselves.

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#256

Post by dragonwriter »

nowprovision wrote: post #158
stronglikedan wrote: post #133

I'm apparently in the minority, but, after reading the article, I still maintain that there is never a reason to steal from your fellow man. The potential for abuse due to hunger being subjective notwithstanding, there are social programs in place to accommodate the needy. Do they not have these programs in Italy? I am a very compassionate, empathetic (to a fault) person, but I just don't see the justification for th…

I bet you've been pretty privileged in grand scheme of things, university, regular jobs, maybe the lowest point has been backpacking etc... Parent have at least one car, yawn yawn yawn.. No one is stealing from you, they are stealing from a supermarket. Privileged people always seem to think in black and white, theft is theft never an excuse blah blah, quite often making the cliche mistake of associating morality wit…

Other than the fact that the parent post is all discursive ad hominem (as pointed out in another reply), its also extremely presumptive and grounded in rather false premises. Often, people that have been through hard times have the most black and white view of what is morally right in such times, and cling to them quite strongly as an important part of their identity, often one which helped psychologically in getting through hard times.

Black and white thinking can, sure, be a result of privilege, but it can also be a product of its absence. Aside from being fallacious to attack a speaker for your presumption of what in their background might be the motivation for their ideas rather than addressing the ideas themselves, you'll also quite often be wrong on that presumption.

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#257

Post by wissler »

steego wrote: post #214
stronglikedan wrote: post #133

I'm apparently in the minority, but, after reading the article, I still maintain that there is never a reason to steal from your fellow man. The potential for abuse due to hunger being subjective notwithstanding, there are social programs in place to accommodate the needy. Do they not have these programs in Italy? I am a very compassionate, empathetic (to a fault) person, but I just don't see the justification for th…

> I still maintain that there is never a reason to steal from your fellow man. * Stealing something back * Stealing Hitler's secret plans * Stealing a portion of everybody's property/income, but providing vital protection, infrastructure and social services in return. * Stealing the heart of a girl from a guy who abuses her. * Stealing land from the commons to efficiently put it to work * Stealing land at market valu…

Has it occurred to you that getting your own property back (i.e. justice) should not be regarded as "stealing"?

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#258

Post by tmptmp »

from the article

>>Stealing small quantities of food to satisfy a vital need for food did not constitute a crime, the court wrote.

What about the loss sustained by the owner? Or perhaps if the "not-so-rich clerk" at the supermarket was in charge of the goods and had to pay for the losses? Whose going to give that "not-so-rich clerk" the lost money?

Tomorrow if a thousand "hungry" people stole "small quantities of food to satisfy a vital need for food" then what?

I mean, such "populist" rulings are ultimately antithetical to democracy based society.

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#259

Post by protomyth »

noir_lord wrote: post #244
protomyth wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've not been privileged all my life. I have a dislike for fish because of some of things and situations we were in. It is never, ever ok to steal. Stealing from a supermarket is stealing from a person or people. Just because you cannot name who is affected doesn't mean it isn't people. It is black and white. The morality and legality are in alignment in this regard. This whole "shades of grey" leads to the blackness…

> This whole "shades of grey" leads to the blackness that destroys people and civilizations. I'd argue that seeing the world in black and white is what destroys people and civilisations rather more. Many of the worst abuses of history have come from black and white thinking (people with black skin are not people, jews are not people, people without my political beliefs are not people).

> Many of the worst abuses of history have come from black and white thinking (people with black skin are not people, jews are not people, people without my political beliefs are not people).

That's a crap argument, and has nothing to do with morality that's base racism and can be just as easily phrased as some shades of grey. I'm getting sick of people twisting what people say into some racial thing when we are talking about concepts and morals.

Every time someone says "the end justifies the means" or "well, its really not that bad" or "I'm not cheating as much as them" makes the world becomes a worse place. Keeping your morals and doing the right thing benefit everyone.

Re: Italian court rules food theft 'not a crime' if hungry

#260

Post by pyrale »

jerf wrote: post #195
nowprovision wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you've been pretty privileged in grand scheme of things, university, regular jobs, maybe the lowest point has been backpacking etc... Parent have at least one car, yawn yawn yawn.. No one is stealing from you, they are stealing from a supermarket. Privileged people always seem to think in black and white, theft is theft never an excuse blah blah, quite often making the cliche mistake of associating morality wit…

History has a lot to say on this topic. I don't think it supports the thesis that people should just be allowed to steal because Privilege. Society is much better off with some people helping the poor and law and order being maintained. It's rather a black-and-white view to think we must choose only one or the other. If you want to feel moral, go feed a poor person today. You'll feel much better. Don't assault the ba…

> History has a lot to say on this topic. [...] Society is much better off with some people helping the poor and law and order being maintained.

What history has to say is that, at many points, society has failed to provide help for the poor on a volunteer basis, and that said people have died of starvation and/or violated the law to avoid it.

If you expect that the normal order of things is for people to voluntarily donate in order to avoid hunger problems, then you have to admit that law and order will be broken on occasions, because the nominal food-providing mechanism occasionally fails.

Post reply on HN