Unless you’re that store’s manager, you should be more upset that people who are hungry aren’t being fed to the point they resort to theft.
Actually, you should be more upset by that either way. I understand not wanting to support theft of food just to eat but something is wrong when you condemn it.
I support theft of food to eat.
I don’t support organised crime denying babies food.
I think it would be a net zero for babies getting access to food because it’s not like it’s being stolen to be destroyed or processed into something that won’t eventually get fed to some baby.
Though it might be equivalent to scalping if the goal is to create a shortage to sell at a higher price in the same area. But I’d bet that if it’s being sold locally, it’s at a discount.
you cannot know which one is which when you see a person shoplifting
if you snitch on them, there are two outcomes:
-
whoever organised the crime of stealing baby formula doesn’t get their daily quota from the person they told to do it, and either helps or punishes the person desperate enough to go and do the actual shoplifting for them. You helped a corporation avoid theft
-
a baby goes without food, and an already impoverished parent is financially, legally, or socially punished. You helped a corporation avoid theft
is it worth it to possibly make a mother cry as her baby goes hungry, to try to help a corporation?
In fairness to their argument, I have actually seen serious consequences from the mass theft of baby formula. When I worked in a children’s hospital, we had babies coming in with malnutrition problems because they required a special formula that was completely unavailable. The parents couldn’t buy the formula because it was out of stock at every store they were able to get to with the transportation and time available to them.
People stealing massive amounts of formula cause massive problems because the specialty formulas are hard to find to begin with, and these people are clearing out store shelves to sell it overseas.
The wealthy parents that live in nicer neighborhoods with fancier stores and fewer problems with shoplifting don’t run into this issue. It the poor families in food deserts that are most impacted by this kind of mass theft, and they’re the families least able to work around it by just going to another store to buy it.
