This just happened during Black Friday and I'm still processing it. My sister and her husband Michael went to Walmart for their Black Friday sale. According to them it was absolute chaos - hundreds of people everywhere, barely any workers, total mess.
Michael managed to grab one of the doorbuster deals - a huge 65" TV that was marked down from $899 to $399. Apparently the checkout lines were so insane (staffed by one underpaid employee) that people just started walking out. Like literally just pushing their carts through without paying because there weren't enough workers at registers and the underpaid security guard obviously wasn't getting paid enough to care.
And my sister and Michael joined them. They walked out with a $400 TV because "everyone else was doing it" and "the store's owners should have been better prepared."
The part that really bothers me is they were bragging about it at family dinner yesterday. Right in front of their kids (8 & 10) AND my kids (7 & 12). They were laughing about their "amazing deal" like it was some funny story about outsmarting the system and they are right!
I pulled my sister aside and told her this was basically stealing and sets a horrible example for the kids, who may get fired in the future for not risking their lives to stop the theft of a commodity. She got defensive saying that she recently finally sat down & read some of the theory I'd sent her over the years and that she realized big stores expect this kind of loss during sales and that it's not really stealing because the store "couldn't handle their own sale properly and Joe Biden has done nothing for the working class the past 4 years."
Michael jumped in saying I need to read more Marxist theory on class struggle & how it relates to crimes such as theft and that I'm probably just jealous I didn't get any "deals." I'm honestly disgusted by the whole thing. Later my kids were asking me if it's okay to not pay for stuff when stores are really busy, which just proves my point about what message this sends.
My sister hasn't talked to me since I called her out, and my parents are saying I should apologize for "making drama" and that it's "none of my business" but someone needs to say something, right?
Am I seriously overreacting here? Everyone's acting like this is just normal Black Friday behavior and I feel like I'm going crazy....
It's not about the company. Who cares about the company. It's about who you are as a person. If your honesty is conditional, you're not honest. You're a thief who doesn't steal from poor people.
That's not for any of us to judge (unless any of us are cops or judges, otherwise judging would literally be our jobs), certainly not me, but for you to live with and suffer the karma from.
If your honesty isn't conditional, you're an overpriveleged rube. The vast majority of us have lived, or at the very least can comprehend, situations where being honest is deeply unsafe. That you can't even comprehend facing consequences for honesty says a lot about you.
Bro we are commies. Stealing from the rich (seize the means of production) is literally the definition of our entire philosophy.
Activism, revolution and even confiscation of wealth under a regulated tribunal isn't what i would call stealing. It's political action. The wealth is given to the people. Taking things from stores because you want a TV isn't what i would call political action.
What you call the action really does not matter. Confiscating property on an individual level has no political benefit, true, but it is not more or less "moral" than confiscating property on a large scale. Regardless of the scale, those who support property confiscation will mostly be doing so out of a motivation for personal benefit. Past revolutionaries may have been motivated by conscience, but they were driven by necessity.
And?
I wish Karma were real. If it were anyone who was positioned to become as rich and powerful as any one of the Waltons would be smote to ash long before they reach that point.
Karma is misunderstood. Most people think Karma is a cosmic will of sorts that strikes you down or lifts you up. Karma is the suffering you get when you don't live according to your Dharma, that is, the way your own values, environment and consciousness determine as the way you live with the most happiness and least suffering.
Do you think that rich people are happy ? Sure, they have money and comforts, but when you own things, there's a kind of misery that comes with owning things. Envy, theft, fake friendships, family issues, large unending responsibilities, insurances, places to store things, getting mentally stuck in this ever growing obsession with more stuff and more power to prove something to someone and not even for happiness anymore.
Sure, when you're poor, money solves a lot of problems. But to amass large wealth and power carries a cost and a kind of suffering of its own. Buddha said that happiness comes from threading the middle way between asceticism and abundance. Owning less than you need or more than you require only brings you suffering.
I don't care if rich people are happy or not, I care that they're making everyone else miserable
Do you go confess to the cops when you go over the speed limit or something? Guess your honesty is conditional.
I generally don't go over the speed limit. I never got a speed ticket. But for instance if i do break something at my work and nobody sees it, i do let my bosses know.
However, i can appreciate one isn't always perfect. I'm certainly not, but i try to be as best i can. And as far as i try to be, i own up to the things i do whenever i can. Don't let the Nirvana falacy make you take a TV.
It's not stealing if you are taking back what was stolen from you, namely the surplus value created by the labor of the working class upon which Walmart's entire fortune was built.
Stealing from corporations is always morally correct.
I'm all for organized political action and activism. I'm all for organized, popular supported forced redistribution of wealth to correct wealth inequalities if need be. But the key word would be organized by the people for the people, not taking TVs and Playstations for one's own personal gain. If there's a court or an assembly determining a tax on the ultra wealthy, sure. Otherwise it's just not activism.
Yeah that's what shoplifting is lmao. Again, Walmart built their fortune on the backs of the working class. Stealing shit from Walmart is, in fact, correcting wealth inequality.
Wealth tax is lib shit. Seize the means of production or fuck off. Also read some fucking theory.
stealing from capitalist priests is good for your soul