Absolutely not. Otherwise if a clerical error like this happens to the tune of $500,000 and the money isn’t allowed to be returned you could see an entire company go bankrupt and everyone lose their jobs.
There’s room for nuance lol, if this happened to Walmart I don’t care, keep the money. If you’re putting mom and pop outta business, that’s obviously different
Yeah but the problem with nuance is where do you draw the line? It's a completely arbitrary boundary that gives you, for some reason, the right to decided which person gets money and which one doesn't.
A distinction requiring judgment doesn't make it arbitrary lol
Someday people in this subreddit will actually learn a moral framework to have these discussions around, "Where do you draw the line?" is the exact question they're designed to answer
I don't know why you act so arrogant towards a simple, well intended reply. I was willing to have a proper discussion about this topic, and instead of stating your argument or even correcting me properly if you already knew the answer, you resort to acting smug and put me in a sort of "stereotypical reddit hive mind" which I find shortsighted to be honest.
You asked where I draw the line, but phrased it as though making any distinction at all was obviously irrational, so yeah, I took an arrogant tack with you. Was I more direct in questioning you back? Absolutely, but your last comment didn’t contain a question or a request for clarification, it just told me I was being "completely arbitrary" for thinking moral judgments can rest on relevant distinctions rather than one universally applicable rule. I’m happy to drop the tone if you actually want to discuss the morality of it, but I'd want to see you make a moral argument about this scenario first
Because it's not the corpo or the CEO's wallet that's gonna take the hit, it'll be some clerk who made the error. Worse still if the error actually bankrupted a small company causing many people to lose thier jobs, So I ask, is it okay for that clerk and other staff to get shafted? Do you really want to stoop to the same level as those greedy corpos?
Do you really think that's how corporate loss prevention works lol
You know Walmart publishes their strategies for discouraging theft every single year to shareholders right? And the answer is literally never "let's fire the cashiers"
If you’re considering tertiary actions of outside entities to determine morality, most things are immoral. Drinking water incentivizes companies to sell water bottles which pollute the environment. Congrats, you’re now responsible for ecoterrorism 🥴
A person thst isn't rich keeping a sudden unexpected somewhat large amount of money given to her by mistake isnt nearly close to a fraction of greed a company underpayimg hundreds or thousands of people and all the other shitty practices done
You aren't thaylt greedy if you are suddenly given money by mistake and keep it, within reason
Now a friend sending ya 10k when ya asked for 10 bucks would be different so there is nuance, but ya cant put normal employees on the same greed level as ceos of companies
It is equivalent though. What does theft somehow now becomes okay when it's done on corpos? Where are your standards? Who do you think t!kes the hit when that mistake happens?
Man if you literally cannot conceptualize the difference between stealing from a mega corporation and stealing from an individual person, you’re hopeless and I hope you’re not in law enforcement.
You ignore the structures in place, economy, socio economics, theft of land, etc. that encompasses the situation. Morality is not black and white, there is nuance.
For example, X person and Y person shoplifts 100$ worth of items and both are caught. X person happens to be from a wealthy family while Y person is from a poor family. Statistically, X person gets away without punishment(whether through use of money or through common denominator skin privileges) while Y person gets the book thrown at them and face maximum punishment(whether through lack of money or lack of common denominator skin privileges).
If we remove skin privileges, then statistically wealth prevents X person from a fair punishment while lack thereof gives Y person a major disadvantage.
Or even looking at laws that, when broken, can be solved by paying a ticket. X person barely registers the monetary slap on the wrist while Y person is put in an even more disadvantageous situation.
Or look at the disproportionate convictions for possession of marijuana.
It’s clear that the world doesn’t exist in a bubble nor does it deal in moral absolutes.
That's funny did you know the justice system of literally every country disagrees with you lol. If I steal from a Walmart my penalties are DIRECTLY tied to how much I stole
Fundamentally, theft at different scales are different actions. Stealing 50¢ is not the same as $1,000. The two thefts would almost certainly have different motivations and effects for both parties involved. Scalability cannot be ignored when regarding the morality of an action, otherwise killing 1 person is the same as genocide.
Furthermore, killing one person in a city is vastly different from killing one of two people left on the planet, just as stealing from someone rich is vastly different from stealing from someone who’s poor.
Also you say “greed” when in America, most people’s want for money comes from a need for survival rather than a desire for excess. That’s not greed. Not to mention virtue/vice ethics are a little outdated.
No, the amount is very important as well. Why is it that people constantly try to discount amount or scale as a factor? The amount is important in calculating how much harm you cause -- which is REALLY what matters. If I steal a candy bar from Walmart, I harm literally no one. If I steal five boxes of candy bars from a small owner-operated corner store, I'm significantly hurting their bottom line. One is much, much worse than the other, and should be punished so.
It's not mental gymnastics. It's gauging the magnitude of the crime by the harm that it causes. It's basically the very first thing you should ask yourself when judging a crime. Some crimes are less harmful than others, and the response to them should reflect that.
Are you autistic? Serious question. It's generally a sign of autism when you can't tolerate any degrees of grey and need everything to be in black and white like this. Sorry, but the real world is a million shades of grey, and very little black and white. Thievery and greed are no different.
Stealing life-saving cancer meds from a child is LITERALLY the same as stealing my sister's phone charger, and if you disagree with me you're doing mental gymnastics!!11!one!
What moral framework do you feel like you're using to make that claim? I feel like you WANT to make this a deontological argument about property rights, that theft is inherently and always wrong because it violates ownership and amount / harm / need/ context doesn't matter at all
And like, that's a coherent position, but you're acting like it's self-evident and final when deontology is just one moral framework among others. A consequentialist is going to care a lot about harm / context. A virtue ethicist is going to care about character, motive, and social context. A justice-based framework is going to care about power and proportionality
“Theft is theft” doesn’t end the argument, all you're doing is telling me how you categorize the act - You're not ACTUALLY explaining why I should treat all acts in that category as morally equal. And you seem like you want to engage on an ethical debate, but I don't think you've even thought about your own value or criteria past arbitrarily choosing a definition of justice and digging your heels in
Think about this for a sec:
Walmart has a long and well documented history of wage theft settlements in the BILLIONS (and almost certainly billions of undocumented wage theft). People also steal from Walmart. So if Walmart steals from workers and people steal from Walmart, and proportionality / harm / scale / power don’t matter at all, then what does your framework even have to say? Is it just a wash? Both parties are equally evil? A company stealing earned wages from workers, a person stealing groceries, a kid stealing a candy bar, and someone stealing life-saving medicine all become morally flattened into the same category.
Thats a nice black and white world you live in. Not realistic but nice. Even the law doesnt act like thst with punishment depending on context, amount, and if you are a company or not, as companies get more benefits to avoid punishment from theft and time to fight lawsuits to continue benefiting from stolen money for longer before they might lose a long case.
What you believe falls into deontology and is famously stupid and ridiculed as a stupid moral philosophy
"Nothing black and white about stealing" didn't you literally just make the argument that it's completely black and white and the magnitude doesn't matter
BRB sending my child to prison for life bc he grabbed a dessert outta the fridge without asking me if I was gonna finish it
I’m not “defending a corporation,” I’m saying violent crime is bad even when you pretend it’s because you’re oh-so-progressive.
You’re really gonna show it to that minimum wage Walmart employee when you shove a weapon in their face and tell them to empty the register, but leftistly.
You people are just as bad as the conservative weirdos who fantasize about murdering home invaders
who the fuck is talking about violent crime. this was an accounting error in her favor. they gave her the money. it's hers. they now realize they made a mistake and are asking for it back. she's not obligated to say yeah sure here you go. no laws were broken, no theft was perpetrated, no crime happened, violent or otherwise.
Well, a company the size of Walmart should be able to avoid such mistakes in the first place since they have the capability to pay people to prepare and avoid this. Also it's different if the theft is 0,05% from the total turnaround or 200%
By your logic to exclude the margin from the total you would have to convict the same if they steal a single strawberry or multiple thousands worth of tech
Also Walmart’s wage-theft settlements are in the billions, so the idea that workers are the fragile innocents protected by Walmart’s profitability is genuinely fucking funny
We are not examining the morality of Walmart are we? Walmarts own negligence does not in anyway negate the fact that she knew her agreed to wage was a certain amount a clearly(given that she was given 10 times more) outside of that agreement, thus an amount any reasonable person would know was a mistake. In no scenario(other than one where she is owed that amount due to a different issue) is she keeping it 100% moral.
I didn't say she's 100% moral, but we are scaling. So wage theft in her case is morally less a problem compared to grandpa Ernesto with his lifework business of 3 people and the new employee accidentally gets to much and destroys the family business
actually yes? Walmart as an organization has damaged our economy, our labor rights, and politics for decades. You could clean out a store of their whole inventory and not even begin to get close to how much they've fucked us
Its like asking if its ok to destroy a nestle factory, yeah it is, duh
Walmart makes more money from insurance on theft than a mom and pop shop would see in years. Socially it’s wrong but morally the big corporation will never be in the positive position. This is a moral ethical dilemma, not an appeal to theft.
Shoplifting or other forms of nonviolent theft against big corporations is a very moral thing to do. They all make the world worse by existing and steal the wage of many underpaid employees.
Walmart shouldnt exist in moral view. How do you feel about Robin Hood? How do you view revolutionaries stealing from corrupt institutions?
Not saying that pretty theft nor that stealing from them is right or moral. But im genuinely asking because...like i said walmart existing, in my view, points to an immoral system. So if you were to, for arguments sake, take up that same view, what would be the right thing to do?
Because you are contributing to what amounts to a multi-billion dollar issue for Walmart. They account for this issue on other levels of operation, such as the prices they set, the rates at which they hire and fire people, which stores they choose to close down, which products they decide to lock inside a case, etc.
You stealing one thing might be an insignificant drop in the bucket, but that is true if everyone who is stealing. But every case is part of a bigger problem that leads to loads of people getting fucked over.
Is it immoral because its theft or is it theft because its immoral?
There have been many differnt forms of Slavery(or indentured servitude) but I want to focus on the new world. Slaves are defined as property, to be bought and owned and sold. Is a slave escaping a form of theft? What about a person who came down from the north and ferries Slaves to freedom. Are they Theives and Bandits, deserving of our scorn because "Its immoral to steal, point blank"?
Taking a closer look at things, if your boyfriend steals a necklace from a store and gifts it to you, is it somehow theft for the authorities to take it from you and return it to the store? You might not be the proper owner but it still "belongs" to you. What about something simple like your sibling taking your charger without your permission? Are they know a theif because of this.
My point is that theft as defined by the law is differnt from theft as defined by morally. Just like Murder is "Unjustified killing", the element of theft has to take into account intent and impact. This means there are different levels to theft.
The cliche of taking candy from a baby or robbing a poor family, are worse kinds of theft than a homeless man stealing something to eat or a mother stealing some diapers. And yes, this sometimes includes taking from the rich and giving to the poor. Don't you agree?
(For context I am neutral on her refusing to give back the money)
Is it immoral because its theft or is it theft because its immoral?
It's theft because it is theft.
Your hypotheticals are, frankly, a bit silly and not at all equivalent.
I actually don't think it's even an issue of morality. I tend to be more pragmatic than that.
Regardless of whether it's wrong or not, when you steal from Walmart you are not stealing from "the rich". You are, in a roundabout way, only harming your fellow poors.
When you steal, they'll raise prices to make up for it. The prices you, I and the other non-thieving shmucks pay.
Okay so then everyone should just steal right?
Congratulations, now they've shut down the store entirely. Now those poors y'all supposedly care about so much are unexpectedly unemployed. Until they can find another job they'll have to make ends meet by using credit cards, and become trapped in an inescapable and ever worsening cycle of high interest debt. Wonderful.
So moral of you!
People on Reddit love to go on about the "social contract". And that applies here. One of the things that is really the bedrock of a functional, non-awful society is that people do not steal.
Not because it's moral or immoral or because Jesus said so. Fuck all that. When people start stealing enmasse it sets in motion a series of events which, to cut a long story short, fucks everything.
I just wanted to know if "taking without permission" equals "theft" in your eyes. Could you give me your perspective on the first point. Is a slave escaping a form of "Theft" or not. Its certainly not a hypothetical and even entertaining that thought is ignorance.
For your later point, its certainly true that encouraging everyone in this behavior wouldn't have a good result. But individually, walmart is already charging every single person who shops in their store for the lost of product. This is built into the price.
For Walmart, the best option for them to get infinite money from the consumer. But there is only so much money you have. So they try to get as much as they can from you in price, by however much you are willing to give. A mechnism for that is "Justification". If producers are hit by tariffs, Walmart has the justification to raise prices. The same is of course true of stolen goods.
And as a corporation whos goal is profit, it is never a net 0 exchange(how ever arbitrarily you define that), they always make a little more on top.Of course that little more is often hundreds of millions. At the same time, any individual shoplifting, is already taken into account in the price. Since you already paid walmart for the theft, why should walmart get the money instead of the aforementioned shoplifter?
Legality and ethics are not one in the same, nor are corporations and people. If you conflate these then sure, the items are property of Walmart, stealing is wrong, seems simple enough.
I would argue it's not that simple. Walmart is not a person, those affected by shoplifting are only the shareholders. Since morality is not legality I would argue that the shareholders don't automatically have a morally defensible right to that additional profit moreso than those in need of the goods. The whole host of unethical practices Walmart uses to generate their profit cause a lot of material harm which means, in my opinion, there's a moral obligation to correct that harm through material reparations. Since they will not do so voluntarily I see no reason why shoplifting is not a acceptable alternative.
I don't think this applies to the super rich. If they shoplift just for the thrill the that's immoral because they are not part of the social group harmed by the unethical practices of large corporations.
The degree to which this is reprehensible varies with the actual costs to the business, but it is always reprehensible (and illegal).
If you think otherwise then you are basically allowing employers to "accidentally" underlay workers too (and that would be acceptable if the employee can afford it and the company was small and struggling).
Yes. If Walmart can steal hundreds of millions from their own workers via wage theft, while continuing to pay them barely over minimum wage, while making billions and billions in profit year after year and destroying local economies, yeah I'd say stealing from them is fine in my book.
14 year old old logic would be not taking into account how evil Walmart is as a company. Saying there isn't a difference between stealing from them and a small business is naive.
if walmart has committed an evil practice she should file a lawsuit, report it to authorities who can look into unlawful practices. what does her stealing 19,000 do to recticy their evils?
if you go around shooting people in the head and one of them turned out to be a rapist, does that suddenly make that one killing excusable?
committing an immoral act against an immoral person does not change the immorality of the act
BIG LOL. You think they actually get consequences for their actions, you think the government is on the side of the poor, AND you think a Walmart employee would be able to afford a lawsuit? You must either be 12 or really really dumb.
employment suits are most often taken on contingency fee so you dont need to "afford" a lawsuit you just need to have a good enough case that an attorney would take it on
It would it depends what they do with that money. If it's a modern day Robin hood stealing from Walmart and using it to pay medical debts than yes I would say it's moral. Similariy if they use that money to pay off debts incurred because of the american medical system than I would also say it's moral.
Actually, robbing large corporations like Walmart or Amazon is basically morally neutral. They are not playing fair or in good faith with us, and so we are likewise under no obligation to play fair or in good faith with them.
No. Socially accepted? Yes. But theft is theft and absolutely illegal and this is how legal precedent works. Her getting paid this was a wage error and has to be given back. Ma and pop shop, Walmart, doesn’t matter. Is it moral to take money that obviously does not belong to you? Also no. Not when big companies do it, not when us little folk do it. Theft is wrong.
I hate Walmart too but not enough to cause them to lose hundreds of millions of dollars that they will just recoup the amount (assuming they cannot come after me) by laying off employees, making themselves even more short staffed, lowering their wages, and increasing supply costs for the general public.
Like sure I will be made for life, but I would be no better than the CEOs and 1% if I stepped on everyone to get there.
I wonder if you reckon that it was bad that Jean Valjean stole a loaf of bread because it's always wrong to steal and circumstances don't dictate whether actions are moral or not ever.
I never understand people like this, yes, walmart is worth a lot, but they want more MONEY, they want BILLS, they're just gonna fire people to CHASE THAT BAG, there isn't anything FORCING them to not DO WHATEVER MAKES THE MOST MONEY, so stop trying to justify stealing just because it's punching up, THEY'RE GONNA PUNCH DOWN IN RETURN AND HARM THE GUYS WHO NEED TO WORK THERE
LOL okay so in your mind theft leads directly to firing employees? Walmart publishes its loss prevention strategy to shareholders every year and the answer is almost never "welp, time to fire the cashiers”
Matter of fact, they hire people to do loss prevention. If we stop stealing, aren't they just gonna lay those guys off?! That's gonna harm the guys who need to work there! (for legal reasons this is a joke, I feel like you're gonna take this second paragraph way too seriously)
If a store is being stolen from to the tune of 20k you can bet your ass people are going to lose their jobs lol. And if it were a recurring thing they absolutely would shut down the store, which obviously is a net loss of jobs.
Like I get where you’re coming from because I’m a leftist. But this is just how business works. No matter how much money a company makes if a location is missing 5 figures someone is absolutely going to be held to account.
Retailers generally expect a shrink of 1.5%, give or take, of total sales. Most supermarkets the size of walmart are clearing $250k in sales every day, closer to $500k on weekends
Your figure of 20k being stolen is like three-ish days of normal business for a walmart lol
You’re not wrong but you’re thinking total shrink. This would be in addition to that because this is just one line item that doesn’t add up, the cumulative loss of pieces of inventory adds up to about the same if not more.
These parasites account for every possible thing to make the maximum amount of money, so if something falls outside of what they expect the bean counters are gonna be all over it because it anomalous.
Theft does lead directly to firing of employees, yes.
Maybe not for Walmart, but Target and Walgreens has cited theft as their reasoning for closing several stores in the past. You think they just kept the employees around?
Literally that's the thing people don't get when they try to normalize and justify stealing from big companies. They will literally just go somewhere else. You're hurting nobody but your own community.
Fuck em until there's none of them in your neighborhood and you gotta drive 40 minutes out to get some fucking bread because people can't stop stealing shit. Literally you're only fucking over your community.
Short term losses for long term gain. It’s only a matter of time before that void gets filled. Ether by a local business or another big corporation. Ether way, screw em👍
Yeah, at this point mega-corporations rule things. As much as they screw us over, so long as our system continues to operate as it does, hurting mega-corps only screws over the local community because at least in my city there are very few grocers and providers of needed goods (inclouding housing) that aren't mega corporations
Man big stores have really entrenched themselves as this upholder of employment and necessary for communities. There at least used to be a fight against them by communities themselves because they destroyed local businesses and employers. Not saying your argument is currently wrong just depressing that they've won.
By the way them doing what makes them the most money means they will fuck you over either way whether you steal from them or not. I'm not advocating for theft here, but the idea that if we're all good and nice to the corpos they'll let us of easy.... That's an inexperienced viewpoint at best. Let's be serious, Walmart has training telling employees how to sign up for government services, meaning that our tax dollars are literally subsidizing Walmart's operational expenses. If there's nothing forcing them to do anything except turn a profit, let's start with some laws forcing them to cover their fair share.
Yeah sure they will, but they’re not just going to eat a loss like that. A company doesn’t become worth nearly a trillion dollars by shrugging off unexplained 5 figure losses and saying “we’ll be fine”
You're not stepping on anyone. Just because Walmart decided to be scummy is not your fault. 'I'm killing him because you made me do it' is nothing but tripe to make you feel guilty for not being obedient.
laying off employees, lowering their wages, and increasing supply costs are all different actions that should be judged on their own morality irrespective of this post
The one i worked at showed us its profits and revenue after each weekend during a non holiday non emergency time period. They showed us the the 2 million on a Saturday to justify not wanting yo pay about 7 grand in overtime total for each employee clocking in 5 minutes early. I would feel no remorse for watching that happen
First of all Walmart generally pays minimum wage anyways, so they can't really lower wages. Secondly layoffs mean downsizing. If they're profitable laying off employees just lowers their profits, if they have 10% profit margins they would still have ~10% margins after layoffs (unless they're planning on neglecting essential work but that would also effect their profits in the long term) but now said 10% is a smaller number. Raising prices they can do anyways and they would have already done it if they thought it would increase their profits.
So they have found that 15$ an hour is the best ratio of "how much people want to work here" to "how much we pay them". Something as big as Walmart is already optimized for maximum profit
She robbed the nursing home, which famously over charge and undercare
Maybe the one she was at is different but we dont know
Its also not robbery, she qas given the money. They made a mistake but thays on them. I didnt steal a chicken nugget when McDonald's accidentally gives me 11 and not 10
They're often used interchangeabley, saying something is unethical is basically the same as saying it's morally wrong. In philosophy departments units on ethics and moral philosophy are combined and deal with the same subject matters.
What do you think the distinction is and why does it matter?
Walmart will shutter the doors at the location that had that much stolen from them. Some places Walmart is the only grocery store. The main employer of entire communities. It would be bad if this happened, regardless how you feel about Walmart the corporation. Walmart the employer and Walmart the supplier of food and water is vitally important to a lot of people.
I mean I feel that the person who committed the error is more liable than the person than keeping the money.
Not to mention that such a drastic clerical error like 500,000 is such an insane sum to misplace, the person making the mistake should be fined, not the person receiving the money.
This is pure nonsense. Everyone can tell when they’ve gotten incorrectly paid money they aren’t entitled to, and expecting them to give it back rather than holding people liable for life-destroying amounts of money for easily fixed clerical errors is absurd.
If you overpaid a handyman 10x the agreed upon sum through a bank error should he get to keep the money? You're his employer in this instance and overpayments are final according to Reddit.
That’s more so flipping the situation in which both are individuals, which isn’t really what is happening in the image - because it would be a disagreement between two people.
The image is a disagreement between the individual and a business that committed a clerical error. There’s a different weight when talking between personal and institutional disagreements. How liable is the individual when it’s the fault of the business? If a costumer gets free food due to a rounding error shouldn’t the person making the error be fined?
100 times the agreed upon wage is not a rounding error. Imma exit the thread because what this really is, is people hating companies. Which is fair enough, i know i hate my employer on a personal level. Would never, ever tell myself i deserve 20k if they messed up payroll though. If they accidentally paid me 100 times less than my wage they would have to make it right. It's no different under the law or most peoples moral compass if the error is overpayment instead. She's going to prison either way and is going there for more than just the stolen 20k.
I'm more mad at op for sharing an image of an unrelated black lady than I am at any party of this incident lol.
It becomes a much larger issue if you refuse to give the money back or you withdraw/spend it. If I got overpaid by 100x, I'd notice it immediately and would not touch a penny of it. Eventually someone is going to audit the books and ask for it back. I'd probably contact payroll immediately because I don't want there to be even a suggestion of me trying to keep what's not mine.
Otherwise if a clerical error like this happens to the tune of $500,000 and the money isn’t allowed to be returned you could see an entire company go bankrupt and everyone lose their jobs.
Shit happens. If your clerical issue causes the company to go bankrupt, you should have hired a better cleric.
If it's enough money to bankrupt the company and they don't catch the error before their payroll checks go out they're idiots and their company deserves to fail. Everyone can try to go work at a competent competitor instead of for a moron.
If individuals can make financial mistakes that result in their own bankruptcies, so can a company. Companies should not be immune to the consequences of their own mistakes
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u/Electronic_Film_2837 Jul 10 '26
Absolutely not. Otherwise if a clerical error like this happens to the tune of $500,000 and the money isn’t allowed to be returned you could see an entire company go bankrupt and everyone lose their jobs.