this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
1141 points (99.1% liked)
Flippanarchy
2333 readers
1748 users here now
Flippant Anarchism. A lighter take on social criticism with the aim of agitation.
Post humorous takes on capitalism and the states which prop it up. Memes, shitposting, screenshots of humorous good takes, discussions making fun of some reactionary online, it all works.
This community is anarchist-flavored. Reactionary takes won't be tolerated.
Don't take yourselves too seriously. Serious posts go to !anarchism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
Rules
-
If you post images with text, endeavour to provide the alt-text
-
If the image is a crosspost from an OP, Provide the source.
-
Absolutely no right-wing jokes. This includes "Anarcho"-Capitalist concepts.
-
Absolutely no redfash jokes. This includes anything that props up the capitalist ruling classes pretending to be communists.
-
No bigotry whatsoever. See instance rules.
-
This is an anarchist comm. You don't have to be an anarchist to post, but you should at least understand what anarchism actually is. We're not here to educate you.
-
No shaming people for being anti-electoralism. This should be obvious from the above point but apparently we need to make it obvious to the turbolibs who can't control themselves. You have the rest of lemmy to moralize.
Join the matrix room for some real-time discussion.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Or what if it's those crazy luxury foods, something like waguy beef or stuff, and you're stealing it to sell it forward? And you're going to buy a new television with the money
Being pedantic it'd be more correct as something like "it's never unethical to steal food to feed someone, from someone that has more than enough". But that doesn't have such a nice ring to it
An unethical case of stealing food: There was, for a time, a black market for geoducks.
A geoduck (pronounced gooey-duck because that's how it's said in the local native language, I don't know why it's spelled wrong in English) is a burrowing clam native to the North American West coast. They're incredibly long lived, the oldest recorded specimen was 179 years old. And their siphons look like giant cocks, which will never stop being funny.
They are edible. North Americans don't have much of a taste for them, they'd get used as a cheap meat for chowder. But they're very popular in Asia. The clams are harvested largely for export, and because of the black market, they were over-harvested, threatening the geoduck population and the overall ecosystem of the Puget Sound.
Or what if you're a lazy asshole that decided it's easier to just steal food than do anything for society in exchange for food?
In a democracy, political authority flows from the body of the people to the government. All power wielded by the government is borrowed from the people. We The People invest our political authority in government, which uses it to provide services and justify the collection of taxes.
We are each owed a return on that investment: A "citizenship dividend". That "lazy asshole" who chooses not to do anything else is already owed a basic subsistence for the use of his political authority. He shouldn't need to steal food or do anything more for society to merely maintain his existence.
You have the most important part flipped.
The authority we give the government is not to provide services. The authority is to collect taxes, which are used to provide services.
Anyone can provide services, but not anyone can collect taxes. The government can only collect taxes because we gave them the power to do so.
Without taxes, the government cannot provide the services. A lazy asshole that avoids paying taxes is preventing the government from providing more services, even if he "gave them power".
The case of the "lazy asshole" is not one in which he needs to steal food to survive. The case is of a perfectly capable person that could be doing literally anything to earn an income, but chooses not to, since stealing is easier. Even if he has an income, he may prefer spending his money on more expensive luxury goods, since he can save a lot of money by just stealing the food.
By doing so, he's being incredibly antisocial in multiple ways:
I could go on. But I believe this is more than enough to get the point across.
When something is stolen, society doesn't just lose the value of the item. A 1€ item being stolen might be a loss of 10€ for society.
There's 2 choices:
Both cases should remove hunger as a problem. Only in case 2 would the lazy assholes be hungry. But being hungry should be motivation enough to work at least the bare minimum. Which means nobody would be.
What both cases have in common is: nobody has the need to steal food. Therefore, it should not be allowed, neither legally nor morally, due to it being incredibly antisocial and expensive.
The solution to hunger is not "let them steal". It is "give them food".
Exactly. That's where we should be right now. It's commonly known as a "Universal Basic Income", but it should be thought of as a "Citizenship Dividend". The government should be compensating each of us for the use of our individual political power, much like Alaska compensates its citizens out of its Permanent Fund from oil revenue.
That's actually a big part of the problem. People motivated by the desperation of "hunger" are willing to accept bare minimum wages without complaint. They allow themselves to be extorted, and in doing so, they drag down the wage expectations of everyone around them. Why should I pay you a living wage when I can just hire that lazy asshole at a poverty wage? You want actual money; he'd work for literal peanuts if he's hungry enough.
I don't want that lazy asshole stealing from me. I don't want desperate people in the labor market, dragging down wages. I want them at home, eating Doritos, drinking Mountain Dew, and playing CoD in their parents' basement. If the government is going to give us each a Citizenship Dividend, he can afford to buy his Doritos and Dew: I'll go ahead and sell them to him.
Then I'd rather feed them and help them become a functioning member om society, than imprison them and feed them in prison.
There you go, the MAGA rationalization: I'd rather have 1000 children starve, than have a system where one person I dislike might gain something that I've determined they don't deserve.
Or maybe we could have a system where the people that actually need it are given food, in order for there to be no excuse for stealing food.
Stealing food is still stealing, when you do it you indirectly increase the price of it for everyone else.
If everyone else just puts aside a bit of money to pay for food for those that actually need it, we can have both no starving and no excuse for stealing. Which would result in food being cheaper for everyone.
"It's never unethical to steal food to feed someone, from someone that has more than enough, if you don't have any other more ethical options to get it soon enough" sounds even less catchy