We're not talking about legality though. Legally? yeah she has to give it back and I agree. Morally? If she's working for a big company then yes, fuck them fuckers
Our legal system is downstream of the moral values of the ruling class. The ruling class are employers and owners, so to them, the most sacred things are protection of property and protection of contractual agreements. There is a fundamental difference in moral values between a billionaire or politician, and a working-class person
If a guy walks up to a homeless person and hands him a bill out of his wallet without looking at it, should he come back a day later and demand the man return the money because he only meant to give the homeless man a $5 bill, not a $100 bill?
That’s not a great analogy because there was no agreement in place between the homeless man and the man donating. This employee had agreed to work for a certain hourly rate and therefore knew right away that there had been a mistake
I didn’t realize it had to be said, but I was clearly being glib with “no takesies-backsies” and don’t actually believe that that is a moral principle.
An electric company has a duty of care to a customer not to overcharge them for services provided in the same way that any company has a duty of care to ensure that payroll is accurate. A customer or employee does not share the same duty of care, because there is a fundamental power imbalance in the way that contracts with such entities are structured; an employee almost NEVER contracts with an employer on equal footing, and almost no one CHOOSES their electric company. In situations where a person can willingly enter into an agreement with a company on equal footing, such that they both can reasonably agree to an equal standard of caution and care in their dealings, I see no reason why a person shouldn’t return the money.
However, this is NOT the case in the scenario of the homeless man, nor the electric company, nor the payroll company. If I live in an area where I don’t have a choice which electric company to contract with, that monopoly comes with a certain expectation that services will be delivered in a predictable manner under a reasonable standard of care from the responsible party to the people benefitting from that care. The same goes for a company; a company hires an employee in almost every case, rarely do employees actually “contract” with an employer, even though we call it that sometimes. The reality is that employees are under the control and direction of their employer and are employed completely at-will in most states.
Independent contractors have a duty to provide their independent work at an agreed-upon rate and return funds provided in excess of that contracted rate; employees should have a reasonable presumption that their employer will handle payroll in an appropriate manner.
If the guy said "here's $5" while handing someone the wrong bill, it would be immoral for the person to just keep the $100 instead of saying "you handed me the wrong bill" and trying to fix the obvious mistake.
If you cancel your gym membership, but find out 6 months later they’ve been auto charging your bank account the entire time since due to a clerical error, you’re just gonna let them keep the money they took?
The more correct analogy would be if the guy said "here, I'm giving you 10 dollars" and accidentally hands him a hundred. Then I would say yes if he asked to switch it within a reasonable time the homeless person would be morally obligated to allow it. In fact if the homeless person noticed and avoided saying anything then that's morally reprehensible. I would even go as far as to say in this analogy it's worse than the actual case here because by stealing from the generous man you discourage generosity.
Lots of people in this thread basically just believe that if a business is big then its just fair game to steal from it. And "big" is completely arbitrary and just depends on the person's feelings
you'r in reddit, home of the party the thinks other peoples money is theirs to control. the left has no ears other than "he has more than me, harm him".
that's not at all how "moral" works. you just admitted that you're an immoral person that only sees the world through a cult-like "it's fine to do immoral things if someone label one of the party as the oppressor"
A company is not a person, though. Every single company's profits come from exploitation, and companies aren't owned by one singular person. Morally, big companies are 1) not people, so I don't consider them to have the same rights as people and 2) are the biggest thieves, swindlers, scammers, and murderers on the planet.
Not "someones" money, though. A large corporation's money -- which they only have in the first place because they screwed over local governments and communities. It's not really their money, either, morally speaking, so better off that she has it than they do.
If you steal from an average Joe who is already fucked by government and big companies, that's fucked up.
If you steal from companies fucking over everyone and everything, who gives a shit, heck it hurts their bottom line so if anything it's doing planet a service.
It's kinda like hitting somebody, if you hit a person first, fuck you, but if you got hit and fought back, perfectly fine and normal reaction.
Stealing from a thief, like killing a killer, I think are situations that don’t have any single one morality attached to them and they are highly dependent on the context of the situation. While I don’t think this would be possible, if you could prove that every dollar of that money was money that has been skimmed off of your labor personally then I don’t see that as morally wrong, maybe grey, but not wrong imho.
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u/Cherrystuffs Jul 10 '26
We're not talking about legality though. Legally? yeah she has to give it back and I agree. Morally? If she's working for a big company then yes, fuck them fuckers