By Wesley Adams
The act of taking what’s not yours, stealing—like all crimes, is inarguably illegal and ethically wrong, yet somehow manages to fluctuate heavily on the morality scale. Is it wrong for someone with little to no money to take food or hygiene products from a billion-dollar corporate store? Is it wrong to pirate a movie or show when the streaming service overlords decide that you now actually have to subscribe to Floopy or Thneedle or Peewee just to watch something? Is it wrong to pirate an older Nintendo game that they either don’t even directly sell anymore, or do sell on the Switch 2 as a rerelease for $60?
Whether you’re a raging Kleptomaniac or a morally upstanding, law-abiding citizen, or somewhere in between, chances are you can probably agree that stealing is okay sometimes. I personally know quite a few people who would never be caught dead shoplifting, but openly admit to committing piracy like it’s nothing. And a common consensus that I’ve heard is that “stealing from big chain corporations is okay, but not from small businesses,” as well as “pirating from big game dev companies and streaming services is fine, just as long as you’re not pirating indie projects.”
And it’s hard to see much error in these takes; when you pirate something, then sure, the seller loses a sale, but you’re not taking a physical product, so as long as it’s not an indie developer who needs every sale, then what’s the issue? Go pirate Tomadachi Life, Nintendo will survive. (The Shield does not condone stealing, and that statement was a joke.) And regarding shoplifting, is it morally worse to steal from a big chain store, or to give money to said chain store, that they will then go and use to fund genocide, support ICE, or roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion policies? Like, genuinely, a large majority of people treat shoplifting as the dirtiest thing for someone to do, as if giving your money to a company that will use it to take (and or ruin) lives is somehow better. It doesn’t make sense to me.
But what’s my point? Am I suggesting that everyone ought to just start helping themselves to free goods from Target, Walmart, Home Depot, and any Disney retailer? Or to just go and pirate the hell out of the latest AAA game, new Disney+ show, or anything like that? Yes, …maybe, uh, no… of course not… I just wanted to talk about the morality of stealing, and that maybe the “wrongness” of it isn’t as black and white as people make it out to be. Just support small businesses, support small artists, and if you do decide that your local big-box store or streaming/ game development giant might not need or deserve your money as much as you do, then do what you think is right, just be smart and careful about it.
And never steal a car, rob a house, steal from a car, or mug anyone. And don’t even think about stealing anything that’s alive.