• Endorkend@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Between highschool and starting uni, I did a small stint as a cashier.

    I called the cops on two people, one was stealing beer, the other some keychain. Both cheap items, but not necessities.

    I saw multiple people steal baby formula and diapers and there wasn’t a bone in my body that even thought of calling the cops on them.

    The first are stealing to steal.

    The later are stealing to survive.

    Imho the law should make a clear distinction between the two too.

    • Tyfud@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Agreed. Though judges have some leeway here, there’s nothing official that would give them an incentive to treat the cases differently other than their moral compass.

        • PsychedSy@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Ah. My point was that those are some of the easiest to resell. Sudafed is used in the creation of meth.

          • elint@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Wow! Easily accessible to be stolen? In my country, we have 2 sudafed formulas – the meth kind (pseudoephedrine) and a different type (phenylephrine). The meth kind is only available by asking the pharmacist and showing your state-issued identification. The other kind is freely available to steal.

    • MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Problem is that you open one item to be allowed to be stolen, you then set the precedent of anything being allowed to be stolen. That’s what welfare and social programs are for.

      • 10_0@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I would imagine that other workers in his store wouldn’t be so human and would balance out this precedent

        • atkion@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          The slippery slope argument is not always a fallacy. The strength of a slippery slope argument relies on the ability to show that the initial action will actually lead to the predicted outcome. The fallacy comes in when connections are drawn between unrelated concepts - an easy example of this is the argument that legalizing abortion will lead to the legalization of murder. In this case, I think it’s pretty likely that making a certain item legal to steal will pave the way for more items to be legal to steal in the future. After all, who decides which items should fall under that law? I’m sure there will be plenty of people with very strong, differing opinions on the topic.

        • Knightfox@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Would you care to provide some additional context? On some levels I agree with you, but I would be interested in hearing the rest of your thoughts on the matter.

        • Norgur@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          That’s why crimes do not have a set penalty but a range for the judge to… well judge taking things like that into account.

      • dan1101@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Yeah just because stores sell food doesn’t mean they should feed people for free. There are a lot of costs involved in getting food onto the shelves such as planting, growing, harvesting, transporting, packaging, and distribution, and the costs of running the store. This especially applies to small mom and pop stores.

        Same sort of thing with non-food items, track any particular item and they don’t just appear on the store shelves, it takes a lot of people and effort and materials to get them there.

        • Endorkend@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Hence why stores should deliver unsold goods to food/supply banks instead of tossing it.

          The cost was already made, the item gets written of for not being sold, still does some good in the end.

          • MindSkipperBro12@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            There may also be legal issues if the stores products gets someone sick or hurt because the store will probably get caught in the legal crossfire.