David is shocked by my claim that it is alright to steal from Bill Gates to save your child’s life:
If Bryan thinks it’s right to steal from Bill Gates to finance expensive cancer surgery with “a reasonably high chance of saving her life,” then that principle must apply to tens of millions of people who could have their lives saved even more cheaply by being able to get food.
Think of, say, 100 million of the poorest people in India. They could ward off starvation for a year or even two with an extra $1,000. That’s $100 billion, which is enough to wipe out Bill Gates’ net worth, especially after Melinda is done with him.
That seems wrong to me. How few people have to benefit from stealing from Bill Gates to make it right to steal? 10 million? 1 million? 10?
Working backward, it seems wrong to me for even one poor parent in India to steal from Bill Gates.
My general position, to repeat, is that we are morally obliged to respect libertarian rights unless the consequences of doing so are very bad. So where does David think I’m going wrong?
1. He might think that we are morally obliged to respect libertarian rights regardless of the consequences. This seems like a crazy view. You shouldn’t steal a dime to save the world? Come on.
2. He might think that the consequences of stealing from Bill Gates to save your child’s life are actually very bad. I’m open to this possibility, but let me walk through my reasoning.
a) The original hypothetical only posited a single person who had to either steal from Gates or watch their child die. Per Huemer’s general approach, I just accepted the hypothetical and ran with it. And the consequences of this one hypothetical individual stealing do indeed seem very good on net.
b) David is right that lots of people are in similar or worse positions than the parent of the child with cancer. Wouldn’t the principle that all of them are are morally entitled to steal from Gates lead to bad consequences (i.e., destroying incentives to produce wealth, plus general chaos)? No, because almost none of these desperate people are in a position to steal anything notable from Gates. If these desperate people said, “I’m hungry” and you told them, “Fortunately, it’s morally fine to steal money from Bill Gates,” they would understandably be puzzled. “And how am I supposed to do that?!” would be the obvious reaction. (Some could pirate Microsoft software, I guess, but very few could make much money off of this).
c) You could change the hypothetical so that all of the poor people are in a position to steal from Gates, leaving societal devastation in their wake. Then, of course, I’d revert to my anti-stealing default.
d) At this point, you could demur: “While people shouldn’t steal due to the bad consequences, Bill Gates is still morally obliged to voluntarily give all of these poor people the money they need.” I say this overstates; see Huemer’s Objection #6 to the Drowning Child hypothetical.
Still shocked, David?
P.S. I’m on vacation through the end of August, so expect light posting until then.
READER COMMENTS
Scott Sumner
Jul 14 2021 at 1:54pm
“You shouldn’t steal a dime to save the world? Come on.”
Recall the famous Coke machine joke in Dr. Strangelove.
Jon Murphy
Jul 14 2021 at 3:31pm
I’m not convinced by 2b and 2c. It seems to me that those objections are the thrust of the issue at play here and you just handwave them away.
If 2b holds true (“almost none of these desperate people are in a position to steal anything notable from Gates”), then the statement ” it’s morally fine to steal money from Bill Gates” is meaningless. It doesn’t apply to the real world.
If 2c holds true (“all of the poor people are in a position to steal from Gates”), then it is not morally defensible.
So, we either have a moral claim that is irrelevant or incorrect.
2b and 2c are corner solutions. Corner solutions do not make good guidance.
Jon Murphy
Jul 14 2021 at 3:43pm
There’s another Smithian angle here that is missing.
The rules of justice, which include a stricture against stealing, exist for a reason. Justice is the very foundation of society. Its rules can be broken (after all, that which does not bend will break) but they should not be done willy-nilly as it weakens the fabric of civilization.
With that in mind, all sorts of institutions pop up to avoid the very ethical issue you pose here: mutual aid societies, family, friends, bank loans, charities, etc etc etc. They develop to avoid having to rely on causing injustices in order to achieve some outcome. Thus, context matters here. If the individual steals from Bill Gates, even a small amount, to save his family, but he ignored other less injurious ways of solving his problem, then I’d say the behavior is indeed blameworthy.
In short, I think the question “is it ok to steal from Bill Gates” is too imprecise and vague.
zeke5123
Jul 14 2021 at 4:36pm
Okay — poor people aren’t in position to steal from Gates. What about stealing from the local millionaire 1K? What about the local 100Kaire 100 bucks? From the local 10Kaire 10 bucks?
It strikes me that once you accept that stealing can be morally permissible if the benefits to the thief are great and the harm to the thieved is small, then there are many situations where people are in a position to steal and you would say that is morally justified.
But once when you do that, you end up severely destroying the notion of private property and so the individual utilitarian calculus changes because the game keeps being played. Stated differently, if this was judgement day sure steal from Bill Gates to save your dying child. But the problem is unlike the Almighty we have to deal with what comes after Judgement Day.
Jens
Jul 15 2021 at 9:42am
The benefit does not primarily or directly affect the thief.
john hare
Jul 14 2021 at 6:08pm
As an employer, I have had numerous ex-employees that felt it was fine to steal from the company, some even when they were taking home more than I was after I paid all my expenses including their wages.
I am extremely careful around anybody that considers that they have the right to steal when they feel like it. Moralizing theft is evil.
Michael Stack
Jul 16 2021 at 4:05pm
Nobody here is claiming it is OK to steal merely because they ‘feel like it’. We’re asking whether it is EVER ok to steal – are there ever circumstances that would justify theft?
Regardless of whether folks here are OK with theft under extraordinary circumstances (some are, some are not), nobody is defending theft whenever you would like.
Employee theft is a big problem, and not one commenters here are defending. If my employees were stealing from me, I’d be pretty frustrated by it too.
John hare
Jul 16 2021 at 4:29pm
The title of the post includes when is it alright to steal. The employees i refer to decided it was morally correct to steal with all sorts of justifications. This post asks when it is valid, unfortunately many people feel they have the right to make that judgment in circumstances far less than dire. It’s possible that I might steal in extremis, but I’m not going to claim it’s alright.
I have probably interacted with too many people (fortunately not recently) that know stealing is okay. Especially if someone has more than they do, or has a business, or is part of an out group.
Justification is a cliff, not a slippery slope.
BC
Jul 15 2021 at 12:44am
Maybe, it is immoral to steal from Gates, but one might find it understandable that someone might commit an immoral act to save their child. People do immoral things. A starving person might steal some food from a store even though they still believe that stealing is wrong.
What’s the difference? Well, if you thought it was immoral to steal from Gates, then you might confess your theft after you saved your child and try to make amends to Gates. If you thought that your actions were completely moral, then you might think amends were unnecessary. Confessing your theft, trying to make amends, and accepting punishment if Gates decided to press charges all seem more moral than simply declaring that one’s actions were moral under the circumstances and walking away.
Joe FC
Jul 15 2021 at 7:16am
I disagree with your first point for the same reason I disagree with other forms of consequentialism. What is a good or bad consequence is subjective and should therefore not be used to decide how we should treat others. Consequentialism fails to address how we should reconcile differences in what we view as the best consequences and the best way to achieve them. Such differences should be reconciled by deferring to those whose body or property is to be used or otherwise interfered with, not those who have the power to enforce their view. The opinion of a person with the capacity to enforce it should not weigh heavier than the opinion of someone without that capacity. Of course, people who can enforce their opinions and preference often do, but you can’t get an ought from an is.
It also seems like it would be impossible to determine whether a particular act of theft is wrong under this theory because it would depend on how much not only the victim but also other people who find out about the theft can tolerate before they give up and stop producing (assuming whoever is making the moral judgement views that as a worse outcome than the death of a child). Perhaps stealing $2000 to save a single child will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back after someone else stole $20 million to save 5 children. Neither thief can know in advance what consequences their actions will have.
Ben Kennedy
Jul 15 2021 at 8:31am
This whole discussion is a case study on why nihilism is the only sensible way to approach morality. When two very intelligent, well-educated people find a conflict between “don’t steal” and “don’t let children die of cancer” it calls into question this entire program of extracting anything useful of moral thinking. Also note that the leading moral intuitionist out there seems to have a consequentialist safety valve just in case intuition produces screwy results. There’s a word for that person – a consequentialist.
We just need to come to terms with the fact that morality evolved so sub-Dunbar groups of hominids could get a survival edge – that’s it. When we apply our evolutionary derived imperatives to a modern technological global economy, we shouldn’t have the expectation that the consequences will be good. Following normative moral and political theories could easily lead us into a dumb multi-polar trap that blows up the world. What worked for sub-Dunbar populations may not work for us all. This is why we all need to accept the consequentialist escape hatch and be willing to work against bad outcomes even if avoiding them is inconsistent with our moral theories. We should be talking about our goal state of our actual society, not getting bogged down in pointless trolley problems
Mark Z
Jul 16 2021 at 3:52pm
Consequentialism and nihilism are not the same things, and in fact are mutually exclusive, so are you saying we should be nihilists, or consequentialists?
Ben Kennedy
Jul 18 2021 at 9:01am
Nihilism with respect to ontology and truth-value, and consequentialist with respect to practical decision-making
Tom Howe
Jul 15 2021 at 9:26am
Many libertarians have a deontological ethic; they have Rules. Their rules are very good… so long as you remember that the purpose of the Rules is to organize a peaceful, productive society. This is the way people should plan to live their lives; the benefits are huge. But there are rare cases, often called Life Boat Scenarios, when the future of the general society is of small concern. Prof Caplan’s dying child is one; my need to get an irrational a$$hole out of my life boat is another. The adjective “rare” is important, here. The multitudes of poor Indians will be in a WORSE situation if they all find a way to steal that Bill Gates cannot defend against. The poor Indians CAN break society; Prof Caplan’s emergency cannot. That’s what makes his unethical decision tolerable.
Mark Young
Jul 15 2021 at 12:12pm
I am wondering, Bryan, whether you hold that the person who steals for a morally acceptable reason incurs a moral obligation to reimburse the person they stole from? Is the parent of the sick or starving child morally obligated to pay back the stolen money once they get a chance? Or is it your opinion that, having done something that is not morally wrong at all, that that’s the end of the matter?
Mark Young
Jul 15 2021 at 12:15pm
After the emergency is over, that is.
zeke5123
Jul 15 2021 at 2:17pm
This is a consistent rule going back to Roman law. That is, an emergency necessity can trump immediate property rights but the person claiming necessity must make the property holder whole for damages incurred during the emergency.
There does appear to be wisdom in this ancient rule.
Mark Young
Jul 15 2021 at 5:38pm
More wondering —
Well, what if I were to tell you that I am in the perfect position to steal from Bill, and for a small extra fee I will get you that what you need? Of course I have no morally acceptable reason to steal from Bill myself, but you’ve got a perfectly good reason and I don’t see why it wouldn’t be OK for me to steal it on your behalf. And my fee is just a small amount of extra money you need in order to avoid starvation, so it’s covered, too!
Good business model?
andy
Jul 18 2021 at 3:43am
I think it’s not.
It would be ok if you had no other ‘better’ option; but you have. You can ask other people to contribute. And if there was ‘only one child’, they very likely would.In such case stealing the money is wrong.
If there were ‘more children’, it’s likely you wouldn’t get enough money. But in such case stealing wouldn’t be ok, as per 2c ?
mark
Jul 21 2021 at 4:32am
You know Bill Gates, I assume. And that he actually is giving over 90% of his wealth to save/better poor peoples lives, right? 😉 Bless him!
You do not know Cardinal Frings, I assume. Catholic. German. He preached it’s morally OK to take (i.e. steal) coals from the freight trains to keep your family from freezing in Germany after WWII. The verb coined for this was “fringsen” (to fringse). Wikipedia: “His New Year’s Eve sermon on 31 December 1946 , in which he referred to the looting of coal trains and the bad supply situation in the grim winter:
We live in times where the single individual, in his need, ought to be allowed to take what he needs to preserve his life and health, if he cannot obtain it through other means, work or bidding. ” (end of quote) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-R68236,_Hamburg,_Kohlendiebe,_Kinder_verstecken_sich.jpg
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