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

There are certainly people in this world who would sit on top a mountain of food that will spoil if not eaten a foot away from a starving dying man and tell him he's not allowed to have any because they'd like to watch him suffer.

In that case stealing is quite alright by me.

Yes, well they're stealing from someone, aren't they? But of course, it's ok if someone steals from the heartless grocery store owner, isn't it? I feel as if you would have a different opinion if anybody was allowed to walk into your house without your permission and ransack your fridge (and anything else they felt that they "need").

The moral problem with theft isn't that it is illegal. The problem is that one person expended their own personal resources to create the good. The person has spent their own time, money, and/or intelligence to create some good that now has value. The thief, who has expended zero effort to create nothing, takes the fruit of the producer's labor for no work, on the basis of his "need". What kind of society does this produce, where you can take things from others solely on your basis of need?

You seem to be making the cliche mistake of associating morality with need. I hope one day you don't need to learn this isn't always correlated...

So now a homeless guy reads "Food is free if you're hungry!". He goes... really?? Walks into store. Right away, the store security is eyeballing him, because he's homeless, and the store owner reads the news, too. So now the homeless guy has a decision: since he's being watched even closer now, does he give up early, or make a brazen attempt? He makes the attempt... now the security catches him. "I'm hungry!" he says. "Too bad", security says. They take the food back and call the cops. One court case later, the guy is released. The store still has their goods.

There is plenty of recourse to cover theft (that which already exists and resulted in the guy getting caught the first time), food is not free, insurance doesn't go up. And pricing is already adjusted to offset theft, like I mentioned in another thread. The effect on the bottom-line for markets is nearly zero. Everything is the same as before this judgement, except the prison isn't full of homeless people who can't pay their fines.

Like someone else mentioned, either homeless people will be banned from stores, or they will be scrutinized more, and outdoor markets may retain some new form of controls or increased security. Or their culture will simply adapt to this new way of life, since not every person who can steal will steal (a weird idea for the US, but many foreign cultures work this way).

But there will not be roving gangs of hungry homeless trampling children and busting down stores. Business will not decline from the ravages of the hungry. And in a weird twist of the judgment, if they stole to have food, they'd no longer be hungry, and therefore would be committing crimes again. The judgement's language is very specific about the nature in which this took place and what it means.

My point, which you still do not seem to understand, is that someone who is starving is not in a frame of mind where you can expect them to be able to calmly and logically go through the available options, weigh them, find the most moral one, and execute on it.

Hence why I asked if you have ever experienced starvation rather than just hunger.

To me the above ranks with the (admittedly apocryphal) "let them eat cake". Technically, yes, he "could" have done many things.

I find that an utterly ludicrous claim given that the court was applying the law, and that parliament is free to change the law if they believe it is being misinterpreted.

Others would find it ultimately antithetical to society overall to threaten people with prison for a theft like in this case. I certainly would.

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

Then society would need to decide whether to deal with that by tightening up this law, or find other ways of treating the poor with some degree of dignity.

Consider such laws a recognition that life has greater value than property, and an incentive to ensure society keeps that in mind when deciding how to structure itself.