This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why do people think I should feel guilty shoplifting, when literally so many people in the world want to use other people for what they have?”

You seem to want to justify shoplifting as a form of protest.

Meanwhile, protesting is a means by which systemic injustices are challenged by publicizing grievances. The point of doing that is to garner widespread support and enough momentum to make a systemic change that addresses a grievance over a condition which victimizes many people.

Sometimes, protests must be escalated to such a degree that some form of tradeoff between victimizing an aggressor and sacrificing someone in an act which alerts an otherwise unaware public of the severity of a grievance.

The incident between Luigi Mangioni and Brian Thompson from United Health qualifies as a situation in which escalation was deemed necessary (by Luigi) to sacrifice one’s life to alert the public to the severity of a systemic injustice.

Most often, protestors sacrifice only time and effort to address injustices. The goal of protesting, however, is to help people other than themselves who may or may not participate in the protest itself.

The purpose of a protest that can successfully gain support and make meaningful change is never to benefit an individual at the expense of victimizing someone else because that’s just another form of victimization.

It may be true that the degree of victimization is practically invisible to the victim such that they suffer a loss on an unnoticeable level, but they remain victims nonetheless.

It may very well be that the stores absorb their losses from your thefts with little impact on their operations, but that’s mostly because they amortize their losses across their operations. That means that a proportion of the cost of their products contains a piece of math they’ve determined recoups their shoplifting losses through every product sold.

Your thefts as an individual may be unnoticeable. Cumulatively, however, with others who think the same way you do, your thefts contribute to the increased cost of products that everyone bears while the store factors in a profit margin for managing those losses. Your thefts contribute to their net revenue while further victimizing those who pay full price for their products.

You may view your theft as a personal protest, but it’s an act that solely benefits you and injures all other consumers more than it injures the store you steal from. For this reason, your behaviour is considered selfish, over and above being a crime that contributes no benefit as a protest to the issue you criticize.

Your reasoning shares more in common with the stores you steal from when they add surcharges to an expected percentage of loss that’s padded enough to profit from.

Your reasoning and theirs are based on misanthropic, spiteful, and opportunistic thinking to justify an essentially parasitic behaviour.

You may not feel guilty about your choices, but they are neither justifiable nor actions to be proud of. However, the risks you take will one day result in criminal charges against you, while no one will be interested in empathizing with your reasoning.

You will carry a stigma of shame for the rest of your life once that happens, and no one will be sympathetic to whatever suffering you might experience as a consequence of your criminal choices.

Furthermore, your shame will be compounded by the reality that you will have become exactly the type of person that you justified harming through your thefts.

In short, your reasoning makes you a hypocrite, and you may not feel guilty about stealing from a greedy operation. You might still want to consider alternative forms of protesting to make your point — assuming, of course, that you believe your reasoning instead of just making excuses for being precisely the same as the people you criticize.

The circular and self-serving nature of your reasoning is precisely the same reasoning every criminal uses to justify their behaviour.

After all, in their minds, they also believe “everyone else does or would do the same in the same situation they’re in.”

Try to imagine the chaos that would ensue if everyone made the decisions you have made for yourself using the same reasoning you employ.

Society would shut down, and that’s why you will get no mercy when you inevitably get caught. After all, it’s never an issue of “if” with repeat offences but “when.”

Your luck will eventually run out, and you will be caught. If guilt isn’t enough to motivate you, then understanding how impossible it is to shoplift indefinitely might help you to reconsider your choices.

Security systems are improving every day. It’s already impossible enough for security experts to keep up with all emerging technologies, let alone someone like yourself. Cameras are cheap nowadays and tiny. You won’t know where you might be recorded, and it’s only a matter of time before you won’t know about the GPS tracker hidden in the liner of the coat you steal.

Good luck, though. Maybe you’ll convince a billionaire to give their people a decent raise just to convince shoplifters to stop shoplifting… which will happen after cows learn to fly. 😜