Lusankya wrote:I'm arguing with a guy who thinks that stealing is moral because it helps the economy. (And clearly the only reason not to steal is because God told you not to.) The fact that it's someone else's shit and therefore you don't have any right to nick it, unless your safety's on the line eludes him, naturally (because apparently the fact that the thief ends up with the stuff makes up for it).
I wish I could remember the name of the French Economist who dealt with this type of argument. He laid out an analogy:
"Some young man breaks a shopkeeper's window. Due to the shopkeeper's vigilance the hoodlum is quickly caught.
The police are preparing to take him to jail when he explains that he's done the town a favor.
He points out that the shopkeeper will need to replace this window, and so he will have to pay a glazier to make a new window, and workmen to install it, and workmen to caulk the edges, and a painter to paint a sign on the window.
In short he's made everyone better off. The credulous city officers agree, and so they release the young man with a commendation for a job well done."
Now you can take this analogy and try reductio ad absurdum, since this was such a good thing for the economy to break one window (or in your argument steal one ______) it's obviously a great idea for the economy as a whole, as a matter of fact this new "better" economy would consist of nothing but hoods to break the windows and glaziers and workmen to replace the windows. An economy like that would produce nothing, instead expending all its energy on maintaining the supply of unbroken windows.
I'm not sure I did that properly, so I'll give you a slightly more economic answer. The theft directly removes wealth from the rightful owner. That doesn't help the economy at all; nothing is made, no service is rendered, assets are just shifted around. Next lets assume the rightful owner decides to replace his/her property (I don't want to refer to amorphous stuff, and amorphous people, so the owner is now Jim, and he had a TV stolen). He goes to Best Buy to replace his TV. The benefits of his purchase percolate down, store owner, salesman, manufacture, assembly line worker, etc. Unfortunately Jim has only a finite supply of money, so in order to purchase his TV has only a few unpleasant choices, he can forgo some other purchase, he can dip into savings, or he can go into debt. If Jim forgoes other puchases, then the benefit to the economy of buying the TV is cancelled out by there being no benefits from the forgone purchases. If Jim dips into savings, then the pool of money for investment shrinks which has its own detrimental results. If Jim goes into debt then he'll need to consume less in some future period to remove his debt. And so the gain to the economy is balanced by a forgone purchase at some time in the future. There's one more little wrinkle to this scenario, suppose the thief instead chose to work for the money to buy a TV. His labor contribution would contribute to the economy, and he wouldn't be harming the economic interests of another individual. In short the net economic effect of the thief is roughly zero (and less than if the thief had chosen to earn the TV), all he's done is redistributed wealth towards himself.
Personally I prefer the Reductio ad Absurdum, just because an economy of just window breakers and glaziers is so patently foolish.
last second edit: after reading some of the other posts, the idea of the thief working was already mentioned. I'd suggest that as a point to emphasize, comparisons between the thief as a contributing member of society, and as a thief.
