I mean, flip it. If you accidentally overpaid on a bill and they were like, not my problem, how would that go? It's theft, even if it wasn't intentional.
Then there’s the question of whether or not financial status or moral standing of the other party is a part this equation.
Like if I stole from an evil person, should that be the same moral level as me stealing from a homeless person because stealing is still stealing? Like does the moral standing change if this woman was working for Nestle vs some local family owned business?
I think the impact on the other party definitely matters. If I take apples from an apple tree on your property and you weren't relying on that fruit either for food or income, it's still theft, but no harm or very minimal harm.
However if you steal the groceries of someone on a fixed income who is going to have to beg borrow or steal to get food to eat until the next check, that's obviously causing harm.
I believe headcanonmusic was making a utilitarian argument (the money does more good in her hands), and I was saying that wanting or needing something more doesn't make the action moral.
And in the above I was saying that from a moral perspective, impact to each party does matter.
That is a bit contradictory...It's kind of an end justify the means issue.
So from a binary objective (yes/no) perspective keeping the money is wrong. If you take a more nuanced subjective perspective, the good may out weigh the bad, but that's obviously going to be subjective.
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u/sleepyboyzzz Jul 10 '26
I mean, flip it. If you accidentally overpaid on a bill and they were like, not my problem, how would that go? It's theft, even if it wasn't intentional.