JOHN DeMONT: Is it OK to shoplift to eat?

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But I have it on good authority that there, in front of a Superstore, a yellow banner with black lettering was unfurled calling for the legalization of shoplifting, presumably in that very store which is owned by the Canadian food retail giant Loblaw Companies.“They just wanted A flashy sign,” the inquisitor wrote on Reddit, “to bring attention to how much money the CEOs of the different grocery stores are making.

The big grocers should take this seriously and not just because if they don’t do something, Ottawa will. In Canadian grocery stores, my sense is that the theft is mostly low-level stuff, but the pilfering is soaring in lockstep with the rise in food prices.In some cases, the theft is surely driven by need:— or pinched by circumstances or the rising costs of food and housing — and need to take desperate measures to acquire the essentials of life.

Which is why I called Saint Mary’s University associate philosophy professor Todd Calder, whose area of expertise is ethics.Is stealing groceries an act of civil disobedience — a peaceful form of political protest, in this case against corporations that are perceived to be jacking up grocery prices? If that is so, some might argue, according to Calder, “it is OK to break an unjust law, as long as no one is hurt by it.

An act of theft, to this way of thinking, might be justified if it allows an individual to feed their family by shoving a couple of boxes of KD under their coat — an act which has no impact to the bottom-line of a billionaire grocery chain owner.

 

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