Laws are inconsistent and don't always make sense. My guess is they consider someone who actively chooses to go into a restaurant with the intention of not paying is more of a thief. Everyone needs a place to live (homelessness is de facto illegal in many respects) and failure to pay your rent or mortgage seems both more sympathetic (on the surface at least) and passive, because it may be due to circumstances beyond your control (loss of income, health problems, etc).
One is theft of product and the other is failure to meet contractual obligations
Here’s my not-a-lawyer opinion:
If you refuse to pay rent, you are breaching a contract that you signed, which is not considered criminal (ever, afaik).
Ordering food at a restaurant probably doesn’t count as a contract, so it’s just regular theft (which is criminal).
I could have to do with the transfer of property vs. services. When you don't pay at a restaurant you're stealing property (food). Rent is a service, the landlord doesn't lose property if you don't pay rent.
Utility bills and rent and such are also contract disputes, there's no contract involved with a restaurant.
Or its down to intent. If it could be proven that you had no intention to pay a bill, that's probably criminal fraud. Conversely, if you're at a restaurant, refuse to pay and argue that service was inadequete, that'd be a civil issue.
Just spitballing here.
Not a lawyer, but public utilities operate under civil oversight, usually a state or.county board of public utilities. The matters are civil in party because public utilities are usually necessities-- heat during cold snaps, water and power during heat waves, etc. The utilities are obligated to provide the product, and receive special benefits for access to market with provisos that they can't just shut people off without due process. The "elderly lady on a pension" scenario. The public utilities can generally also write off losses.
Restaurants are entirely a luxury venture, where walking out of a bill amounts to theft of goods and services. You don't need to eat out to survive.
It's not consistent, but it is how the laws work.
One is stealing food, the other is breach of contract.
Similarly: your employee steals from you and it's a crime. You don't pay your employee and they have to take you to court to get what you owe them.
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!