There are many conjectures about how ownership should work, varying between cultures and individuals; what constitutes fair trade, right to information, responsibility in advertising, are the more subtle examples. People are usually primarily occupied with personal property, taxation, liability and seizure.
The idea I'd like to focus on is, when is it okay to take someone's stuff without their consent? Many view taxation in this light. Yes, the people who pay taxes receive services in return, consisting less of roads and firemen and more of military protection and an endless legislation and judicial staff determining which of our behaviors disqualify us from living amongst the rest of the sheeple. But ALL people who pay taxes do not have a choice in the matter. Whether you agree with the way the government is spending your money, you can go to jail for not giving it to them.
And yet many people consider taxation a legitimate form of asset seizure. Many also see lawsuits for divorce, business fraud, and damages as a legitimate basis for unconsenting asset seizure.
And yet, when a person takes something from another person without going through judicial channels, we call it thievery, and we say that that is definitely wrong, even if the reasons for the larceny would be considered legitimate through such channels.
So let us ignore the law for a second, and consider unwilling asset seizure from a much broader perspective. What all, beyond divorce and fraud, can legitimize the taking of my stuff, without my prior knowledge or consent? Are injustices of my forefathers against the thieve's forefathers sufficient? Because that seems to be the logic being used by the little cunts that keep taking whatever isn't bolted to the ground.
There are many individuals who feel that they have been cheated, by birth or by the system, out of their fair share. That they are just as or more entitled to the nice things that I have than I am. This is usually forcibly rectified by the welfare state and the government-mediated redistribution of wealth. But some inpatient or unsatisfied individuals prefer to take the matter into their own hands and take from those whom they perceive to be wealthy, to give to themselves, whom they perceive to be poor.
Is this acceptable? Is this morally defendable? Regardless of law, does the strength of the equal wealth argument over-rule the argument for secure personal property? The construction that there are some things that belong to me and no one else is not one that exists in all cultures. Therefore, on a cosmic level, I may not be justified in calling this violation of my personal property a moral shortcoming of the instigator. He was simply answering to the higher authority of the moral principle of equal wealth distribution.
If I follow that logic, then I shouldn't be angry whenever somebody comes into my yard, takes bolt-cutters to my locks and runs away with my belongings. But that isn't going to stop me from locking everything up.
Why? Because these people don't actually check our relative wealth when they decide that they deserve what I have.
I happen to be in a very precarious state of wealth. When considered as a dependent, I am wealthy because my sponsor is wealthy. But if considered as an individual - and, practically, if I chose to refuse the support of my sponsor - than I am very poor, even more poor than the youths whose wealth is measured by that of their support systems. So, granted, I may have some of the nice things that a shrewd poor person would not waste their precious remaining dollars on, but if those things were taken from me, then as an independent, I would not waste my precious remaining dollars replacing them. Soon, the few truly valuable things I own will be relics of a past life.
But actually, the most expensive drains on my resources are not things. A place to sleep at night is the foremost. Following that, monthly bills. Food, phone service, vehicle insurance. Those are the things that cannot be done without, and are the greatest hungry mouths to feed.
The kids who steal a bike because they need one, that I can partially understand. The people who cut locks on the most expensive bikes they can find, or take mp3 players because they think they can resell them, are pricks. The kids who steal little trinkets for their own use, I can slightly understand, because they do not have the left-over income to get toys any other way. So, somehow, its more okay to take what you need or want, than to take what you don't need or want, so that you can convert it into raw cash and reconvert into something that you do want. Perhaps that has something to do with the net 50% loss of value across all those conversions, due to overhead. But should I be more sympathetic if that cash is spent on food, or a place to sleep at night? My knee-jerk reaction is that the money will not be spent that way, because it is so terribly unlikely that a person could get enough cash turnover from theft to keep them with room and board. Which means that they must have secured those things some other way, and this theft is just extra. I use as evidence in conjunction with this conjecture that the homeless who are looking for enough to eat do not have enough money to invest in bolt-cutters (if they do they would be too conspicuous trying to maneuver a shopping cart full of dirty clothes and a $2000 bicycle at the same time) and if they broke into a bag of belongings would take everything down to the shampoo, not just the mp3 player.
Ergo, thievery might have its role in the redistribution of wealth, but not as it is practiced where I live. People steal for unneeded and (I believe) undeserved personal gain, from people that they know nothing about except that these people own something they want. Much like how religion has the potential to be a powerful force of good in the world, non-consensual asset seizure may, in a Robin Hood sort of way, be used for the utilitarian betterment of human kind, but the overwhelming examples today demonstrate that this is not so.
