The continued complexity of understanding theft as discussed in a previous essay by Maldys Shrubb.
In the previous essay I boiled down the idea of theft to a violation of agreements that parties had regarding the ownership of items. I expounded on the premises in relation to a theft amounting to a violation of agreements rather than a simple movement of objects. While moving objects with certain intent is considered theft, it is more commonly understood as theft if the presence of mens rea, or the guilty mind, was found at the time of the event.
What I feel that I must continue to explain is the vast importance of the presence of these agreements in all aspects of life and more significantly, the relationship of agreements and things beyond physical objects. Since theft is succinctly described as a conceptual violation, one can understand that other concepts can become violated as an act that could be considered theft. For example, if someone told you that they were going to meet you at the park at 2 o’clock, and they never showed up, you could argue that it was a theft of your time. No physical objects transferred possession, such as the example I provided with the Magic card.
In some cases, people don’t consider taking items theft, such as free flyers you might find in public places. Another thing people don’t consider theft is the concept of gift giving. Gift giving becomes increasingly complex as you consider the nature of agreements between the benefactor and beneficiary. Sometimes the arrangement is supposed to be temporary, and the ability or inability to return said gift becomes problematic. It is because you make the agreement with your neighbor that you will return his weed trimmer that the transfer of the item is not considered theft. Both parties must agree that this is the case, as most people do not wish their items to be taken without their permission.
Intellectual property is a vast domain of legality that encompasses an enormous number of court cases in determining if theft has occurred on some level. People believe that their labor in creating an idea, pattern, song, etc., is only intended to be bought by means of transaction. This could also mean that someone gets control or credit of it. Theft of things that are freely available but that someone has some proprietary claim over is commonplace. Some people believe that theft of this kind is a victimless crime, if you consider the high number of people using file sharing programs that seek to avoid high mark ups by vendors and other corporate interests in the artistic and intellectual communities. It is considered both thefts to try to sell Rick James’ “Superfreak” as my own song as well as download it illegally.
What exactly does this mean for the world of theft and to what extent can theft be measured? Can theft even include a human life (Someone stole another person’s life.) If a person stole someone's life saving medicine, could you not argue that the cost of the agreement violation was a human life? Let us say that one person was adept at a computer programming skill that would be deftly replaced by artificial intelligence, we can argue that an algorithm stole that person's lifetime of skill building and labor efforts. This would push beyond even the simple barrier of the presence of criminal intent when aggregating the total cost of theft. National identity, culture, livelihood, memories, and familial bonds all become subject to the domain of theft.
This requires us to place a moral responsibility to determining when theft occurs, and the significance of its inimical effects on a person or persons life. This brings us to the arduous task of determining value of all things and creating an equitable census for all goods and services that have been, are being, and will be produced by all people. This is one of the tasks of the Utilitarians which began their inception by the scholarly works of John Stewart Mill and Jeremy Bentham. The goal of Utilitarians is to determine net good over net harm when seeking any possible outcome. A very difficult task which can be fiercely debated by lay persons and scholars alike.
There are two forms of Utilitarianism which are prominent in the philosophical community. Act Utilitarianism and Rule Utilitarianism. Act utilitarianism states that each individual act must be weighed as whether it brings more overall good than harm (not necessarily to number of persons.) Rule Utilitarianism requires that rules or laws be conceived with the same formulaic approach as the previous form of Utilitarianism. The two are not necessarily separate or incompatible worldviews to leading a more ethically sound life, but rather, two components of an even larger framework. These modalities of thought must be applied to consideration of acts and even rules as forms of theft.
With due consideration paid to a reasonably valid ethical system, we must consider how prevention and punitive measure are placed on those who violate the sacred agreements of proprietary rights. These rights are of course more fundamental in the United States, where private property is considered a cornerstone of our societies’ national identity. In this country two fundamental court systems have been established to determine rights and restraints on these agreements, both criminal and civil courts. Criminal courts determine whether the person has committed an egregious trespass against the society at large, and civil courts are used in determining disputes between two parties on the matter of which party is more entitled in their claim that an agreement was violated.
In determining guilt or whether renumerations are due are based on what is correct behavior for the reasonable mind. This is based on the belief that what a reasonable person might think is guilt or deserving of entitlement by a jury of peers. This system for all its merit does have some downsides. Sometimes the claims of a reasonable person are overridden by sheer emotion whipped up by some silver-tongued demagogue. Sometimes the valid claims are overridden by deception or unscrupulous legal practices that a clever mind might throw at a given party who might be unable to afford or have time for litigation. It is just a fact that the court system itself is sometimes guilty of theft itself.
The decisions made by the court system is upheld (typically) by the executive branch officials and therefore might be unstoppable by a just or unjust party or claimant. The fact remains that someone may or may not have had their agreement violated in a manner inconsistent with their perceived notions of reasonable standards or justice. This is just one of those awful facts of life that can occur regardless of what mechanisms of justice are being implemented or what society you reside in. Again, it defaults back to what most people who support the court system by means of agreements would argue.
Let us try to examine a more universal significance of the violation of agreements than try to restrict it to the American legal system. The fact of the matter is that people disagree about what people should control what lands, what political bodies are even valid, and who is considered the leadership in any given place. These fundamental disagreements can be boiled down to theft if we broaden the context wide enough to validate this viewpoint. For arguments sake, let us try to view all war and destruction of the world because of theft. One nation views the land as theirs and violates another country's expectations that borders would be respected. Again, a large-scale violation of agreements.
Theft as a worldwide concept is not even limited to the human species. Environmental activists and animal rights activists argue that certain human projects are thefts of biomes that are essential for certain species to survive, and that such theft is deleterious to the world’s ecology. Even the presence of inorganic materials can cause disagreements over which parties can or should control those resources. Furthermore, there is a massive debate about whether those resources should be taken in the first place. Does the collective human need for rare earth metals for smart phones and computer screens warrant calling its’ extraction theft? Can humans even make agreements with the earth if theft is all based on agreements?
I would say that the agreements still technically fall on the humans to believe and enforce. It would just fall under the purview of the Utilitarians to decide if there are agreements worth making that prevent the taking of certain materials out the earth. Two competing species of birds cannot make an agreement over which territory they dominate, the weaker species is simply pushed out of the area, and sometimes even out of existence. It is only fair for one person to say another that it is theft, since more complex morality questions are reserved for humans on this planet. Or are they? Some animals display signs of empathy, compassion, and even the ability to treat the wounded of their own kind. Perhaps they have their own forms of agreements.
This brings us to the complex questions of whether morality or ethics exist outside the human mind, or if they are a social construct intended to bind the species together for collective good. What if there existed an alien species which had no proprietary restrictions and all items used by said species were never considered to be owned in the same sense as they are by people? This might invalidate theft as an intrinsic disagreement with people as a necessity of humanity’s existence (is theft just a natural part of life?). Some claim that communism poses a solution to the conundrum of the disagreements related to theft, but humanity has yet to see a working model of that paradigm in existence.
This essay is a continuation of the previous one that, given additional thought, arose a myriad of questions and state of consternation. The author vehemently seeks to produce an argument or philosophical epiphany that could resolve the violation of people’s agreements with one another. Sad however, that so much of our current society functions on that problematic state as a necessity. It would be as if the fire department’s job was to both create and extinguish fires. Is there a real impetus for people to resolve this debate or is it the inevitable course that humanity degenerates into bitter fighting over the last of the Earth’s resources?
I would rather not end this essay on a dyspeptic note, but I must confess that it is imperative that we see some kind of common action taken to resolve some of the existing disagreements within humanity's scope. Peacemakers, lawmakers, environmentalists, scientists, scholars, and everyone else (really) do have their work cut out for them. While I do not advocate an encroaching paternalistic force overseeing all the world’s problems, I cannot abide inaction. We must find ways to understand the agreements that we make, be flexible when needed, and honor them to the best of our abilities.
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