I knew a man who was homeless for a while. Of course he needed food, so he told me that he would go into corner markets, grab a sandwich or whatever and walk out the door, announcing to the stunned clerk, “Hi, I am homeless and really hungry. I am going to steal this, ok? Bye.” He said almost all the shopkeepers just let him steal the item, and in some places, he did it over and over, and the clerks never cared. Surely a conservative thinks this man belongs in jail.
I know another man who became disabled and unable to work. He applied for disability but was waiting to get on. In the meantime, he had no income. He had a bunch of credit cards, and he started running them all up just enough every month to survive. At the same time, he stopped making payments on his cards. He was able to do this for a while somehow, and I think he borrowed $3-4,000 this way. He kept transferring money from one card to another and then running up the new card.
After a while, they all cut him off and started demanding payment. He told them that he was not working and had no money. They got mad, but he blew them off. Then they sent him to collections agencies, and those pestered him for many months.
Finally he filed for bankruptcy to wipe out $13,000, mostly in credit card debt. He told one bankruptcy attorney what he had done and the man excoriated him in the lawyer’s office.
“You stole money! You are a thief! I cannot work with you. Bye.”
Never mind the absurdity of an attorney criticizing anyone on moral grounds. This attorney probably made $150,000/year, if not a lot more. Here was a man making $150,000/year excoriating a man for stealing so he could survive. I certainly do not begrudge a man who steals so he can survive, especially from a large bank, which probably deserves to get ripped off anyway. At any rate, they can afford the lost money more than the man running up the card.
And there is conservatism. You have no right to steal, even to survive. However, when it comes to business, to conservatives, business = theft. That’s called “the free market.” The biggest and best thieves of all are praised for their “ruthlessness” at stealing money with a pen.
After all, a man can steal a lot more money with a pen than with a knife.
