Stealing from a small business is far more immoral than stealing from a corporation like walmart.
Most of you got this answer wrong.
Letting home depot employees fuck up cause they cant count and give you free stuff does count as stealing.
It isn't as straightforward a question as it looks at first for a few reasons.
One of the assumptions built into the question isnt about the companies but about the owners. It's assumed that the small business is owned by a poorer person and the large corporation is owned by a rich person or rich people. What if in one hypothetical situation your small business was owned by Bill Gates and the huge corporation was actually owned by a modest middle class family? In that case it isn't about stealing from a big or small company, it's about the more standard stealing from the rich or the poor.
Another thing is the use of the word "far". Not that it's just more immoral, but far more immoral. Such language suggests that the orders of magnitude are so great that it totally changes the moral calculus of a question.
But what is the telos we are striving towards? Today people might say the telos is sort of utilitarian, so you just want the most people to be the post happy and so stealing from a small organization is going to cause more unhappiness than stealing from a large one (the bike cuck problem). If on the other hand the telos of life is a life well lived, then stealing at all is damage to your honor, your virtue, the amount of sin in your soul, and so the act of missing the mark isn't about who you transgress against, but about the integrity of yourself and both are similar marks against you because the end result is you're living a life less well lived regardless of the direct measurable consequences to the world at hand.
In the end, we can all agree I think that we should steal not from small businesses or large corporations, but from homeless people. They have less debt than any of you and if they're high enough they won't even notice their stuff is missing. As well, they won't harm any customers or supply chains up or down, they don't have an economic multiplier effect, and as one famous fictional character tells us, if you steal enough from them you could even help reduce the surplus population which will have far ranging positive effects!
One of the assumptions built into the question isnt about the companies but about the owners. It's assumed that the small business is owned by a poorer person and the large corporation is owned by a rich person or rich people. What if in one hypothetical situation your small business was owned by Bill Gates and the huge corporation was actually owned by a modest middle class family? In that case it isn't about stealing from a big or small company, it's about the more standard stealing from the rich or the poor.
Another thing is the use of the word "far". Not that it's just more immoral, but far more immoral. Such language suggests that the orders of magnitude are so great that it totally changes the moral calculus of a question.
But what is the telos we are striving towards? Today people might say the telos is sort of utilitarian, so you just want the most people to be the post happy and so stealing from a small organization is going to cause more unhappiness than stealing from a large one (the bike cuck problem). If on the other hand the telos of life is a life well lived, then stealing at all is damage to your honor, your virtue, the amount of sin in your soul, and so the act of missing the mark isn't about who you transgress against, but about the integrity of yourself and both are similar marks against you because the end result is you're living a life less well lived regardless of the direct measurable consequences to the world at hand.
In the end, we can all agree I think that we should steal not from small businesses or large corporations, but from homeless people. They have less debt than any of you and if they're high enough they won't even notice their stuff is missing. As well, they won't harm any customers or supply chains up or down, they don't have an economic multiplier effect, and as one famous fictional character tells us, if you steal enough from them you could even help reduce the surplus population which will have far ranging positive effects!
@sj_zero @Sirpantangelini what you are explaining does not exist. super rich guys dont own small business. and families dont own mega corporations
@sj_zero I disagree. Its ok to steal from publicly traded companies. They steal from you all the time.
Its not ok to steal from privately owned companies however.
There are actually a few examples of small businesses being owned by the super rich. In fact, something that qualifies as a "local small business" can secretly behind the scenes owned by larger aggregated funds that hold ownership in a bunch of small local businesses. The family that owns the mega corporation Uline owns a number of small local businesses within a fund that holds such things.
As for an example of families who own what look like mega corporations, franchise rights are a good example of that. Yes, the sign on the door says super ultra megacorp, but it's actually a small business operated by a local family who ends up kicking back a portion of the proceeds to the franchising company.
Notwithstanding the fact that publicly traded companies can be held by for example pension funds, meaning that no individual rich guy holds that company, instead it's collectively held by a large number of working-class people who want to retire someday.
Regardless, for the sake of my argument I don't need my hypothetical to exist. I simply needed to have the capacity to possibly exist. There's nothing stopping Scrooge McDuck from opening up a lemonade stand, and people who look rich because they own something big and important regularly end up penniless.
As for an example of families who own what look like mega corporations, franchise rights are a good example of that. Yes, the sign on the door says super ultra megacorp, but it's actually a small business operated by a local family who ends up kicking back a portion of the proceeds to the franchising company.
Notwithstanding the fact that publicly traded companies can be held by for example pension funds, meaning that no individual rich guy holds that company, instead it's collectively held by a large number of working-class people who want to retire someday.
Regardless, for the sake of my argument I don't need my hypothetical to exist. I simply needed to have the capacity to possibly exist. There's nothing stopping Scrooge McDuck from opening up a lemonade stand, and people who look rich because they own something big and important regularly end up penniless.
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