(08-06-2013, 12:36 PM)Ildur Wrote: I wouldn't reduce stealing only to a matter of scarcity. There's plenty of people out there who steal luxuries (like, say, cars), sell them for profit and then buy a brand new pair of shoes instead of food, water, medicines, or whatever. Not to mention you can't remove scarcity in a world with finite resources. You could maybe camouflage it if you somehow managed to give every man, woman and child the exact same set of stuff. But then you'll run into people who have different necessities, or who just want different things. And in turn you'll run into people who, upon seeing this people having different stuff than them, will demand you give it to them too. And if you don't? They might steal them. And it wasn't a problem of scarcity, but a problem of 'you don't need this'.That's the materialism I was talking about, but that has little to do with what the person I was responding to was talking about (which was entirely about 'needs').
Anyway! Back on topic...I...uh...pickles? Yeah, let's go for pickles.
And a lot of that is societal, created by a consumerist culture where having the next great thing is fetishized to a possibly unhealthy degree. Imagine a society where 'making do with what you have' is given the highest order of importance, and you'd have a very different picture.
Also, too late, this train will not be derailed!
