In my first two years of high school, I stole everything from ties at Wal-Mart to an iPod from a classmate. However, in the years since, I’ve stopped stealing as the realization came that I could be arrested for a piece of gum. (Hell if I’m gonna get into such stupid shit…) Yet many of my friends and colleagues around me continued their thievery. Someone even stole $600 of lacrosse gear at a lacrosse tournament. I mean, what is wrong with America today? Is this really what it’s come down to? One of the richest countries in the world, and its citizens won’t even pay for a Hello Kitty pen? Most don’t even get punished!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning the act itself. I refuse to argue whether it’s ethical or not. (And trust me, I’ve tried. Ethics class totally confuses me.) But I do want to say that our policing/justice department is inadequate in dealing with the issue. Whatever prevention measures the government is taking today simply doesn’t cut it….does it? But then, it came to me: Whatever thievery acts we’re committing just simply aren’t enough
Perhaps we should really just keep stealing. In fact, start stealing more. Fact is I don’t think our administration really cares too much about larceny. Maybe if major corporations start losing trillions of dollars and the economy falls into a bigger shithole, the guys up top will start to sweat. You should even steal from those small, family-owned businesses. Start a riot like Sublime’s “April 29, 1992” song. Maybe with disorder, the government will be forced to bring order.
So all you CEOs, police chiefs, store owners: You want people to stop stealing, right? So get people to stop stealing! Don’t waste millions of taxpayers’ dollars to catch just a couple shoplifters. Install a better supervision system, impose harsher penalties, or run better ads showing how “un-cool” stealing can be. (That ad before you watch your DVDs just doesn’t cut it).Want us to stop downloading music for free? Hire better hackers, instead of backing screw-up organizations. Force us to think that stealing is wrong and will ruin our lives. Until then, be warned, more ties are gonna go missing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Stealing is likely due tho the socioeconomic hierarchy . There really is no middle class in America. There's an upper middle class, that may as well be called rich, and a lower middle class that's just barely above poverty. And all of these people are forced to live together in the same country. While meaningless trinkets don't affect adult life greatly, the little things are what make children happy.
ReplyDeleteThe children of the lower middle class are forced to be amongst those those of the upper middle class, the have-nots have to watch those who have. Perhaps the fact that they can't have all the great things others kids have is what encourages stealing.
I remember the first thing I stole: a Snoopy eraser. I thought I was going to hell. Since that was in the third grade and I already knew I was damned, it let me off the hook for all the stuff I did later. Atheism does away with all that bother completely.
ReplyDeleteIt's much harder to get away with retail thievery now, I imagine, with all the dye packs and safety strips and all. I think if there were a way to punish someone for illegal downloads, like planting a virus in your computer, people would freak out and get indignant.
For some reason, people feel entitled to steal certain things, since it seems like there's no victim. Certainly the millionaires who write music or direct films are not going to be personally hurt. It's just everyone who works for them and the idea that intellectual property is important.
Why should a company that's doing business demand a price for its wares and services? Because it has value to the consumer and it takes capital to develop them. So asking companies to do a better job of scaring us, to make us think they'll ruin our lives misses the point of personal responsibility. One can't be shocked into having respect for another's property. {stepping off soap box}
But this is really funny. I'm not always a humorless jerk. Honest.