question: opinion on shoplifting? ive read that it has made several poor employees lose their jobs. what is a better way to smash the state on a personal level that won’t hurt the poor or poc?

kropotkindersurprise:

burnmeumi:

kropotkindersurprise:

I think what you’ve read is corporate propaganda. Large stores and especially corporate stores have theft calculated into their costs. 

What I’ve read though is that shoplifting has made life better for hundreds of thousands of employee-shoplifters and customer-shoplifters, by taking some of the profits away from the bosses, that don’t really have a right to those profits anyway.

Think of it like this; Every ten-dollar mascara you steal is probably about 8 dollars you keep out of the pockets of the shitty investors in the misogynistic and bodyshaming cosmetics stores or pharmaceutical industries.

The wages of individual shop workers selling these things are only the tiniest fraction of the profit, and theft is covered by insurance.

But of course: No, you won’t help smash the state by shoplifting, but you will help yourself, and thats important too! The corporate bosses suffer a loss they wont even notice, but you have will have something concrete and tangible that will improve your life in some way! 

Some people will react to this post with tales of shops where thefts are directly taken out of employees’ checks, but you should ask yourself: Is the problem there the thief who takes the tiniest percentage point off of corporate gains, or is the problem the bosses who move the weight of that (for the company) entirely insignificant loss to an employee for whom that (otherwise corporately  insignificant) loss might mean paying not being able to pay for healthcare for a family member.

Clearly the bosses who shift losses from theft to their workers are the problem here, not the occasional thieves. 

Steal away, my dear followers! Just be safe!

I think it really depends on the corporation and the amount of profit lost in how bosses deal with shoplifting when it comes to how they respond to the employees.

Like yeah shoplifting can be better for the person stealing the thing, especially if you’re in poverty and need food and clothes and self-care stuffs. But depending on which corporations and which branch if it’s a larger corporation, employees could be blamed for it (based off several different reasons) and if they’re really unlucky ones they could be layed off or get their pay docked, which at that point you’d be fucking employees that need that job/money.

So yeah, the bosses are the issue but not much we can really do about that really because when people are punished, it’s the employees and not the bosses.

Sure, not much we can do about it…, except forming unions, working and voting to help others unionise, fighting shoplifter- or employee-blamers whenever you hear them, and clearly blaming the real culprits in these situations ourselves

 Like what you are saying here is yes, people get fired for missed cents of profit… So? Get angry at the real culprits and ignore your fellow working class peeps just trying to take something for free. They are NOT the problem, and you obviously realize that. So action should be taken to form retail unions, not to post on the internet condemning shoplifters.