If you see someone shoving six bottles of whisky in their coat, yes you did.
There’s a difference between stealing for survival and stealing for profit.
Comment on Chocolate kept in anti-theft boxes as retailers warn it's being stolen to order
tetris11@feddit.uk 15 hours ago
If you see someone stealing food, no you didn’t
scholar@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
Nah, I didn’t see jack, daniels or otherwise. Fuck the corporations.
scholar@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
It doesn’t affect them: they’ve already been paid. It’s the shop who takes the loss and the average customer who ends up paying more.
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Whether or not I saw something has zero to do with what they’re stealing and everything to do with where they’re stealing from.
You do not steal from Mom and Pop shops. I will not say anything to the staff, but I might pay for it or I might direct you to a better place to go steal.
If I see something in Walmart, no I fucking didn’t. I don’t care what it is.
scholar@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
You would watch criminal gangs strip your local shop of high value items to resell for profit, and then offer to pay for it? We’re not talking about someone in need stealing essentials here.
TexasDrunk@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
You bring up a good point. No, I wouldn’t. I phrased it poorly. Imagine I’m having empathy for those in need or redirecting dumb ass kids doing dumb ass kid things.
But honestly criminal gangs aren’t generally doing penny ante local shop bullshit. They’ll shake them down, but it’s just not worth it to steal from local shops when big retailers offer more goods in one place. Unless it’s a boutique shop, and I’ll be honest, I don’t go to those.
teft@piefed.social 13 hours ago
These companies are stealing from people but you draw the line at a poor person stealing from them?
scholar@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
My local shop is stealing from me?
tetris11@feddit.uk 15 hours ago
Well I’ll draw the line at alcohol which I see as a public negative. But chocolate?
Can you honestly tell me that the price increases for it have yielded in a better quality product. Someone has to rebalance that scale if the government wont.
FishFace@piefed.social 13 hours ago
Chocolate has experienced extremely high inflation lately because climate change is causing crop failures in countries where chocolate is grown. So no, it hasn’t yielded a better-quality product - it has just been necessary to have chocolate on the shelves at all.
That puts a floor on the price that retailers can sell the product for and have it make sense. If carrying the product at that price results in losses due to theft, there’s no point selling it for less, because that will incur greater losses. They might try anti-theft measures, or increasing the price to balance the losses - neither of which benefit people in general. If none of that works, they’ll just not sell the product at all.
tetris11@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
Shouldn’t the retailer soak up some of those costs if their suppliers are unable to deliver? In a rational economy where there would be more competition, surely they would take that financial hit to retain their shoppers whilst offsetting the cost on another product.
They don’t seem to be doing that. None of them seem to be doing that, and I’m just not buying that the reason is solely because of climate change
scholar@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
This isn’t people stealing chocolate because it’s expensive, it’s people stealing chocolate, cuts of meat, and alcohol etc. to resell. They aren’t ‘rebalancing’ anything, they are organised groups who are stealing in bulk to make a profit. This actually increases prices of those goods for everyone else.
tetris11@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
Surely they’re reselling at far lower prices than they’re listed in stores (otherwise who would buy their stolen goods), which forces then the official price for that product to go down in the area, in order to retain shoppers.
For example, there was a time when my cornershop guy was selling 12 packs of Coke for £3.50. I didn’t ask where he got them, but I definitely stopped going to my local Sainsbury’s which is currently selling 4 packs for £4.50.
booty@hexbear.net 15 hours ago
Frankly if you see someone stealing from any corporation, no you didn’t. Mind your business.
MurrayL@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
I think that principle is intended to apply to staples, when people in poverty are forced to steal food so as not to starve.
Stealing bars of Dairy Milk and then selling them on seems like a different thing.
tetris11@feddit.uk 15 hours ago
It’s bringing the price of that product back to reasonable market levels and having a knock on effect on the general pricing of that product in general.
Whilst I agree it’s different from stealing staple foods, it’s still something I’d happily turn a blind eye to as it’s an unofficial public service
FishFace@piefed.social 13 hours ago
Sainsbury’s profit margins are about 3.8%. Any individual profit might have a larger margin than that, but the maximum downwards pressure on price you can exert overall is that much, which equates to 10p on a £2.75 bar of dairy milk. Is that what you mean by a public service?
Chocolate has experienced extremely high inflation lately because climate change is causing crop failures in countries where chocolate is grown.
tetris11@feddit.uk 13 hours ago
3.8% over what time period? If that’s still compounding from the 7.2% from last year isn’t that still an overall increase for the shareholders?
You make it sound like they’re so close to losing money
LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 hours ago
They’re selling them to people who can’t afford to buy them at the actual stores for full price. Essentially a service where you pay someone to take on the risk of stealing for you, plus a sort of grocery UberEats.
Where there’s demand, there’s supply, the people who do the supply part looks like learning to code hasn’t worked out for them so good, nor has our society in general. People who do the demand part, they’re just poor.
There’s a vice documentary about this and from the people shown it’s pretty clear that they’re not going through all the hassle of this because they have such easy lavish lives.
Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 hours ago
They often get flogged in pubs around where I am, I absolutely have never ever bought Pringles off a guy for £1 a tube rather than the ripoff £3.50 they retail at.