And time theft can also be a substantial issue. While this last example can be difficult to prove, especially if your business operates under any kind of honor system, the bottom line is that it still costs a company money in some way.
But what would cause an employee to do this at all? While some circumstances — like a compulsion, revenge for a perceived slight, or dire financial straits — could push an employee over the edge, the simplest answer to this question is because they can. This may sound pessimistic, but that harsh dose of reality should motivate you to protect your business from employee fraud.
Regardless of industry or size, all businesses need to take precautions to prevent employee theft. But knowing where to start can be difficult. To dissuade employees from theft, consider the following tips:. A common mistake made by countless business owners is a failure to safeguard information and property. Forgetting to ask for that extra set of office keys back or neglecting regular password changes can have astronomical consequences for your business. Passwords should be changed on a frequent basis to ensure compliance.
As an added bonus, this will thwart outside hackers, too! Whether you run a retail store, a restaurant, a healthcare facility, or a corporate office, even the threat of security footage can be enough to convince employees to not commit a crime.
In many cases, businesses may not even be aware of the vulnerabilities within their own organization. You can then review recommendations made by those conducting the risk assessment and train your employees accordingly. No doubt, that information is outdated at best and dangerously inaccurate at worst.
Fortunately, we live in the age of tech — so there are now much better alternatives than a written account or an Excel spreadsheet. Inventory tracking software is used for everything from retail stores to government organizations.
Because these programs track products in real time, everything will be accounted for. Remember to keep track of both your supply inventory and your product inventory, if applicable, since both are prone to employee theft. That said, your hiring practices could make the potential for employee theft more likely than it needs to be. A failure to conduct thorough background checks for job candidates can lead to costly mistakes later on. While you should never let stereotypes cloud your judgment, you should be cautious about who you hire.
One rash decision could result in thousands of dollars in losses for your business. You can make it safe and easy for these employees to speak up by setting up a confidential tip line to report possible instances of crime.
Some businesses incentivize people to speak out against employee theft, but that may not be appropriate in every case. Micromanaging your employees can definitely backfire. That way, ignorance is absolutely no excuse. But there are some workers who will take advantage of your trust and use these opportunities to commit crimes.
One case I can think of is the religion set up by Mike Smith in Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land , where the handling of the collections plate was a bit unorthodox. As a final solution, if people only value things which cannot be taken from them, there is no reason to worry about theft:. Take my love. Take my land. Take me where I cannot stand.
I don't care, I'm still free. You can't take the sky from me. Rowling touched upon Goblin's understanding of ownership, in which the Goblin who creates something is the true owner, and if someone buys an item from a Goblin, when they die the ownership of that item reverts to the creator, as opposed to an heir who inherits all of the items they own.
This could be the basis for this society, in which the creator of an object would be understood as its true owner, and customers simply buy their items for a set number of years or life , after which the item's ownership reverts back to the maker. Also, if people were to steal from others, technically nothing has been stolen as the person who owns the item has not changed, it is now just a different person using it.
They were just careless enough to let it out of their possession. This would not count for food etc. Having a society like this though would need many other considerations, as it is so much different to our own concept of ownership.
This could include renting anything from homes to common items becomes the norm as opposed to buying things. Buying would simply be renting for a given amount of time for a one-time sum. Security would become much more important, due to the fact people can't have things stolen from them, but people would still want to retain ownership. Trading items would be much more common, as currency would hold much less value when nothing ever really 'belongs' to you.
In order to transfer true ownership, this would need to be done via 'gifting'. Every craftsman would need their own identifiable insignia, in order to prove an item is theirs. The item would also need an 'ownership until' date inscribed onto it as the paperwork would get out of hand , which would essentially work as an ownership record so one could see how long the item has been in service.
People would generally attempt to make very high quality goods in lower quantities, as they would not want to be left with lots of cheap stuff they could not sell, that when they managed to get rid of would eventually be handed back to them further down the road.
This would mean that apprenticing, particularly to the top craftsmen, would be highly sought after. People would only go into business with each other with people that they trust completely, as they would then have joint true ownership of the things that they create.
This would be because of the legal grey area that exists in the space between someone dying and their belongings being returned to the true owners. One, potential, reason for anything to be considered immoral by us is that if we don't do them generally we can't trust each other. If I can trust that you don't steal my stuff, I have an easier time guarding it as in, I don't have to and we're also a lot less likely to try to kill or just avoid one another.
If we don't kill each other and don't mind being around each other, we might start to engage in trade or just bond and make families; if we don't trust each other the least, we won't do any of those things. Mixing fear for ones life in it, won't make things better. Exactly why we consider certain actions to be immoral is hard to guess, but I think this theory makes sense.
Any society where stealing is acceptable or even laudable would be unlikely to consider it stealing; as Chaotic suggests, have a look at the Kender from Dragonlance. We do have something that might look a bit like what you're asking for, but only a bit.
Societies based on socialism or similar concepts generally distribute goods to the population based on needs in some fashion. Such a society might be considered a "Robin Hood"-society as it "steals from the rich" and "gives to the poor". Of course, these aren't the acts of individuals. You might consider how stealing is considered based on circumstances; in some countries it's perfectly legal to steal if you must do so in order to survive. Stealing is immoral because of our evolution as a species.
When a pack of hunters brings back a large prey, should they share it with the lazy ones which refused to hunt? If yes, soon there would be no one willing to risk their lives to hunt. And all would perish. You should also look at kenders from Dragonlance.
For the purposes of this answer, I'm going to call it "stealing" when an individual or small group uses force or stealth or trickery to take possession of of something against the will of the person who rightly possesses it. They'd quite possibly have different words for stealing they consider moral and stealing they consider immoral.
Stealing is immoral amongst humans because we consider property rights to be important. Taxation is an interesting example, when thinking how different cultures might treat property differently, because those who disagree with it do consider it a form of theft.
Those who consider taxation to be just, do so on the basis that the believe the right of the state to tax has sufficient foundation to override property rights, despite the disagreement of those who say the state cannot have rights that override individual rights. So a Libertarian views our culture as one in which a particular form of theft is considered right.
But it's not what I'm calling "stealing" here, solely in that it's perpetrated by the near-consensus of society as a whole, not just by some individual who fancies a new TV.
I'm not a Libertarian, and I don't consider property to be absolutely fundamental. However, it is clearly rather important to the way our society is constructed, and also to historical societies going back thousands of years. So it's no small change to have everyone running around trying to take stuff from each other all the time. For society to support this, you'd need something like:.
In all these cases, your Orcish society will lack the consequences of the ability we have in our society to maintain a warehouse full of sticks perhaps as part of the role of a stick manufacturer or trader , and most importantly to share the burden of defending that warehouse across society as a whole by taking action collectively against stick-raiders and by personally refraining from taking sticks even when we have the opportunity.
The difference between an immoral act and mere business, is that people respond negatively to immoral acts that would otherwise be nothing to do with them, and refrain from immoral acts that would ostensibly benefit them. Even in pre-modern societies that didn't have police in fact, especially in such societies , the group as a whole was still upholding property rights by condemning thieves.
With no such condemnation, property rights either don't exist at all or else are much more difficult to uphold, and therefore the things we reward with great wealth in our society crucially: trade and organisation of labour are less well-rewarded. There aren't going to be a whole lot of Orc merchants, because being a merchant is so much more difficult if the defence of your stuff is not "socialised" to any extent at all. By "socialised" I don't necessarily mean there needs to be a police force which everyone helps pay for, merely that people on the whole will go out of their way to assist a wronged party and hinder an immoral actor, simply because they recognise the act as immoral.
If it's not immoral, you don't get that. I'm not a ruthless free-marketeer, and I don't think like Libertarians do that property is the ultimate right. I don't think merchants have to be able to keep all their profit in order to be incentivised enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.
But they have to get something, and public recognition of their entitlement to whatever's left after tax is something. Merchants in a medieval-style society expect to hire guards, of course, and rich people in the modern world hire guards too. But when those guards catch a thief, they rely on the support of society to do something about it. So when you hire a guard you get more for you money than just physically obstructing thieves, you also get that thieves the guards catch are "dealt with" and thieves who fear being "dealt with" by society are deterred.
There's a cost of doing business, but not so high as cost as it might be. You might think that private guards could just beat the thief up or kill them on the spot, so that thieves are "dealt with" without the help of morality. But if stealing isn't considered wrong, and killing people is considered wrong, then actually you can't do that because then you're the bad guy and society acts against you for beating people up who've done nothing wrong. There's a direct tangible benefit to property owners in society considering theft wrong, even if it doesn't look like society is really doing much about that belief.
However, you don't in practice get large-scale trade without large-scale rewards, and if the prevalence of theft reaches the extent that it's impractical to hold surplus, and actually there's no reward at all in accumulating wealth by trade or management, then economic growth and the large-scale co-ordination of resources may be very difficult to achieve. Furthermore, if any surplus is subject to being taken, then only those physically powerful enough to hold onto a surplus is going to have one, and everyone else will live basically hand to mouth.
Farming might be supported in what you describe: you don't raid someone's small field that they need to live, and you don't take their only coat, because that's too close to killing them.
But as soon as someone has two fields, or a slightly nicer coat that they wear on special occasions? Then it's in someone else's interest to stop farming and instead make a living taking that person's surplus. If excess production isn't somehow rewarded then nobody will have anything nice. Of all the ways that have been attempted to reward the generation of surplus, property so far is the least useless.
When you steal, you are harming someone for you own interest. As long as from the point of view of the society there is no reason to consider your interest more valuable than the one of person you are robbing, stealing will be considered immoral. For example, the thefts or Robin Hood are widely considered morally acceptable, because he stole the rich causing them minimum harm to give to the poor greatly helping them. From the point of view of the society, there is a net gain in the process.
But you do not even need a net gain to make the situation morally acceptable. For example, in the film Now you see me , magicians rob banks without harming anyone. It does not harm anyone and since it is very cleverly done nobody except the police object. So, the occidental society seems to meet your criteria. Theft is "neutral" since its moral judgement depends on the context, and if it is cleverly done no killing, small harming it can be considered laudable.
From there it is easy to build a society accepting theft, even in an institutionalized way. For example, everybody could just keep some traditional object, with no practical use, just to prove everybody that nobody can rob him, and everybody will try to steal everybody but only that particular useless object.
I think you have got yourself an impossible, Catch situation here. On the other hand, if the group and individuals didn't think that there was a property right, then taking the object would be fine, but again, by definition, it wouldn't be theft.
An example of this and the arbitrariness of it all-- property really is just socially constructed , consider a patent. For 17 years you have a property right in your invention. You can get the government to punish egregious violators and you can sue infringers. Thus 'theft' of a patent via infringement is theft and is not OK.
On the other hand, the second the 17 years are over, the property right vanishes. Now people are free to use the patented invention. But it isn't theft, exactly because nobody thinks that a property right exists. The most you will be able to do is either a find a society that doesn't have many property rights but actually that doesn't meet your criteria, because then taking stuff isn't even theft For instance, where the government is happy giving all water rights to foreign companies and forcing the population to pay to use water, while the population itself believes that the government can't allocate these rights so that taking water will not be viewed badly by the average person in the street.
Of course, it would still be technically theft, but might be impossible to enforce. As far as societies with fewer concepts of property, nomadic groups will have a much more constrained concept of property because they can only carry so much stuff with them anyway.
Maybe you can remove the concept of stealing. A society with high moral values is a good starting point.
Imagine a world which provides enough for everyone to survive. Imagine a society with high moral values which is more community based and less individual based. Where the property belongs to the community except maybe the weeding ring and other few things of sentimental value and those things essential for living taking the last piece of food from a beggar or medical drugs is a big no-go.
Where it is no problem to go to your neighbour and borrow a wrench needed to repair the water pipes in your house - even if he is not there for outsider it looks like stealing. He will take the wrench back when he needs it - or another neighbour who needs it. It doesn't have to be something material, community labour and living a moral life also count.
People who don't abide these morals are indirectly punished by society not inviting them for dinner up to declaring them to outlaws. So there is no concept of stealing - as long as you give back to society.
Edit: Maybe you want to have a look at the series "No game no life" where it is lived up to eleven. It is explicitly not cheating if you are not caught and this and bending the rules as much as possible is the main point of the series and is socially accepted by the society in there.
Left anarchists do not believe stealing is wrong. They are OK with stealing everything except personal property like toothbrushes. I believe it is possible to work in a small community when everyone agrees to live like that, but will fail in a larger community because it neglects to take into account the basic human emotion of greed.
It also neglects to account for sociopaths. I believe egoists have a form of morality that you are talking about. Rick Sanchez is an egoist. Swindling or stealing from a fellow gypsy is an offense to be dealt with, swindling or stealing from a non-gypsy comes under gypsy law only to the extent that it creates problems for other gysies. Why is stealing wrong? Because when you steal, you are taking away the labor and time of someone else.
Each stolen object can be followed back to the time or money spent to purchase or make it. A lack of well-defined property rights reduces the prosperity of an entire civilization. Stealing wouldn't be wrong if everybody always had whatever they want available to them. Either because of a massive surplus, or because people need very little. Alternatively, if keeping you possessions, including stolen ones, is impossible.
The definition of stealing is that it is wrong: "To steal: to take something that does not belong to you in a way that is wrong or illegal" from Merriam-Webster. If it is considered ok it gets a different name, like "taxes" I'm not joking.
This implies that the society does not collapse just because it is considered ok to -- even forcibly -- take money that originally is not rightfully the taker's.
The society's well-being depends a lot on what is done with that money. If children are educated with it the society will do well; if wars are waged the society will do less well. A similar "redistribution" could, I imagine, be achieved by Robin-Hoodesque mechanisms. Such a society would, as I see it, be fragmented enough that the term "steal" has different meanings for the different factions.
The rich would consider Robin Hood's heists stealing; he would probably call it something else. Eve Online seems to be an example "society" where theft and anything else, I think is not illegal. The same act which is forbidden for some people or when done to some people may be allowed if done by other people or done to other people.
For example, murder was a crime in National Socialism, but not when Jews were murdered. Doctors may kill people in some countries under certain conditions but laymen may not. Taking things from a rival "tribe" may be ok, taking things from the own people may not. This culture prizes cunning. Thieves are punished and ostracized, not for the crime of theft, but for the crime of being caught. In this sense, theft is not considered immoral, being bad at it is.
In this society, virtue signaling is the ultimate virtue, certainly not the virtue itself. This keeps society running and "civil" as all need to pretend to be virtuous, and will only be otherwise when they can get away with it.
As an example from DS9, the Ferengi character is playing a human in their version of chess. The human comes to a realization and calls out the Ferengi, "You're cheating! Where stealing is considered immoral, there are religious or societal values that are in opposition to thievery. I'll let others expound on that. Can a society exist that allows stealing?
Sparta had a practice encouraging theft during childhood in order to develop desired skills. Your society could have an exaggerated form of this. In many groups you can see a "sharing culture", when each member of the group has right to take and use many things tools, etc if they are lying around and just not currently in use by somebody else.
Apart from ancient communities, scientific laboratories often operate this way equipment, laboratory dishes, etc may be free to access to any member of the laboratory. This is not strictly "stealing" because the taken item does not become a property and must be returned when no longer needed.
But externally this looks very similar: an item can be taken away from you as soon as it is not in use or actively guarded. This way of sharing is efficient but have problems with enforcing requirement to return the items in a timely manner and proper condition. If this becomes a problem, or if resources are limited, some more formal rules reservation, single person in response, etc may emerge, deviating from the "stealing culture".
It would be possible in a society that has no concept of ownership. Or if the concept of ownership is limited to what you can carry with you. For example. Person A needs a shovel.
Person B has a shovel. Person A takes the shovel, uses it, and keeps it. Till someone else needs the shovel and takes it. Or in a community that shares everything. There have been cultures where stealing within the tribe was not considered wrong. Or, at least, it was considered beneath the dignity of the victim to respond to so petty an injury except, perhaps, for contemptuously telling the thief, "I would have given it to you if you had asked.
They were cultures with a strong warrior tradition, tribes where everyone knew each other, and living in regions where nomadism is a necessity. Nomadism tends to limit possessions anyway, because everything has to be lugged to the new site, particularly of heavy things, where it's better for the tribe to have only as many axes as would be used at one time, because that way you don't have to lug as many.
Notice that the thief who can't exactly disappear with the stolen goods is at least implicitly scorned as someone who cares more about material goods than proper honor and status. There are two directions you can go. First, you could have a society without a concept of private property, at least for certain things.
For example, food could be considered community property but weapons and buildings are private. As long as that society punishes those who don't pull their weight, it could work. In a capitalist society, you could make theft of certain kinds of wealth legal, to discourage things that are bad for society. For example, cash is handy, but having too much cash on hand is a threat to your world's fragile financial markets, because it can be spent very quickly and cause sudden shocks to markets.
So the government allows you to steal cash to discourage people from hoarding large amounts. Those who really need to keep their money safe have other options. As people have mentioned, there are societies in history where stealing was considered ok in certain situations that we would consider wrong in modern Western society.
In Sparta, stealing food for themselves and other items was considered a rite of passage , even though they would be flogged if caught in the act keywords being 'caught in the act'. There wouldn't be as much of a punishment for those who got away with it.
A rite of passage called the counting coup for some Native Americans would be about stealing weapons or horses. Some natives in the Plains regions even stole wives from other tribes as part of their rite of passage. Well people consider it immoral in our society because it could take important resources and items one group of people need to someone who doesn't need as much stealing medication or food someone needs to help yourself, taking textbooks someone needs to pass a test just to use it as reference book, etc.
In some cases, what you steal could be dangerous nuclear launch codes, a warning about a potential disaster a leader of a village need, etc. The Plains Region's natives could sustain themselves and the Spartans not only sustained themselves, but started an alliance in the form of the Peloponnesian League that lasted from 7th century BC to 4th century BC. Some good answers on this already, but I would like to point out a couple examples where it was considered stealing, and was deemed acceptable.
In summary, theft can provide a service to the thief and the "victim," as well as society at large. It can be a way to circumvent problematic customs like a dowry.
It can provide a bonding experience, entertainment, or a way to vent social stress by taking out aggression on a scapegoat. If you had a higher probability of losing what you had produced there might not be utility in creating excess. More effort would have to go into securing your property and being on guard than in spending time and effort in making theft attractive things.
If people could not form alliances where fear of theft could be set aside then it would be an every man for himself proposition. Humans have prospered because we have formed United fronts and worked as team members on tasks too big for one person to accomplish. It's not inherently that bad to allow some people to live without working, and just take other people's resources, if there is enough surplus.
The real thing going bad is to allow people with lower status to play chicken. They make troubles that the people with higher status must resolve. If not, something very bad may happen. It's bad for all the people.
But the people who has the ability to solve those problems are burdened much more. It's even worse than the whole society being fed by a single person, who can decide how much to share. Other people can threat to "destroy" the surpluses, if not satisfied by sabotaging, to negotiate on any trivial matter. Even the good people can drop their responsibilities at all when the whole society faced some problems. If this cannot be prevented in some way, I'd say the culture cannot last long after there is any surplus that people may make a long time schedule.
But it can happen if, for examples:. I assume "immoral" implies there is morality at all, so excluding the case that everybody is your enemy. I'll answer a slightly different question: why is stealing illegal? Aside from morality concerns, the people in control of government are typically the ones that have more stuff than the people not in control.
It is in their best interest to make it illegal for the have-nots to come and take their things. Note that in the counter-examples like the Discworld Thieves Guild and Native American tribes, it is almost always one group stealing from a larger or separate group.
If this penchant existed throughout the entire population, I would expect notions of private property to break down entirely. In the same way that a wife might grab a husband's wallet to pay for a pizza in the real world, in this hypothetical world it could be perfectly normal to reach into the pocket of the next guy in line to pay for your lunch.
This sort of outlook on property can still make most of the things you want to happen, happen. Even if all property is shared and you can take whatever you want legally, it makes you rather look like a jerk if you steal someone's insulin shots that they desperately need. It seems unlikely that "robin hood" redistribution of wealth would be particularly exciting. Anyone could do it, and it's unclear whether the wealthy "victim" would have any legal standing to stop thieves.
Being that stealing is legal, any sort of traps or guards that would cause harm to thieves are almost certainly themselves illegal to maintain. Even something as basic as padlock manufacturers might seem like some of the greasiest predators, since their industry only exists to stop people from doing something that's both legal and socially acceptable.
And why would the rich lock things up anyway? Perhaps they might lock up rare pieces of art, but why save money in a vault when you can literally just walk over and drive off that new Rolls Royce without paying for it? Actually, now that I get to this point, why does this society have money at all? However, there is still some leeway to have laudable exploits in the style of redistribution. Perhaps it's perfectly acceptable to take money out of someone's pocket in public, but for some reason or another it's considered a faux paus to have them realize that you're doing it.
This could be extended to "getting caught" for almost any kind of stealing, although many people probably wouldn't bother to guard their belongings anyway, since they could just take from someone else whatever they needed.
Because we value our own survival higher then that of others. Property except for wealthy people is key to survival. Tools, crops, housing, transportation are not luxuries, they are necessities. In a society where ownership and possession of objects are not systematically linked.
Now, such a society would not likely have a word for "steal", except when the act of asking for an object is annoying like you have to invest half a day in doing specific rites , someone would want to start to shortcut it. Yes, but that's a tad more complicated but not any more then our rules regarding who may date who, when, how and what may happen then are in our culture. You could e. They would regularly steal the "best" toy of another cat, parade with it it front of some other cats and place it in "their" own regular sleeping place.
If the victim cat made a fuss, they would return it, but usually it just "appeared" at the victim cats sleeping place on its own after a day or two, so I assume it got stolen back.
A culture where stealing is not wrong? By definition, NO. Because calling it "stealing" requires it to be wrong! As for the taking of property to not be wrong.. All that requires is a culture that does not acknowledge "property" in the first place. I mean, taxation is a reality in pretty much all societies, and it basically is systematic robbery unless we are talking about direct taxation in which case it's more like theft. So you first need to figure out why you don't consider it stealing before even asking your question.
Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Could I have a culture where stealing is not wrong? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 11 months ago. Active 1 year ago. Viewed 14k times. I have two questions.
One may be too broad, one is much more specific. Why is stealing immoral? Improve this question. Vincent Midwinter Sun Midwinter Sun 2, 1 1 gold badge 11 11 silver badges 24 24 bronze badges. It's not really a society based on thieving or on lauding thieving, per se.
But it is basically a government sanctioned thieving protection racket where thieves have quotas, etcetc. You pay to make sure you only get robbed of so much. And people in the city with the thieves guild basically just accept robberies as a part of life.
The gypsies and the gangs are typically proud of how they interact with the outside world. Or must the theft be tolerated even within the group? They may pretend not to notice the stealing. This is building off your "stealing is bad because it's actually murder".
If a desperate, starving street urchin steals my bread, I may be honor-bound to let them steal it and pretend not to notice , or else I may as well have murdered them. Show 16 more comments. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Brythan Brythan If someone gives their word that they will not steal your stuff, they'd better not steal your stuff, or else they will be snubbed or worse by everyone who knows they gave their word.
Nobody would work, and those who did would be robbed. I don't think it is possible without it being a horrendous place to live. There are no punishments for attempting to steal. Nothing to lose.
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