Why Shouldn’t I Steal?

The most common answer to the question is with the absolute statement: because stealing is wrong! However this statement is far too simple and as there are no absolutes in moral matters, I think that it is only fair that we challenge this statement and ask why is it wrong?

I have always been told that stealing is wrong. As a small child I was taught to believe that stealing was a terrible evil and that to steal would make me a bad person or even a wicked person. As a child this makes perfect sense. A small child’s view of the world is black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, but as we get older shades of grey appear and matters become confused.

The psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg undertook studies of children’s moral reasoning and posed them with a moral dilemma: A man whose wife was dying of a rare form of cancer has been told that a special drug invented by a pharmacist may save her life. However the man is not able to pay the pharmacist, who has hugely inflated the price above its true cost, as he is the only one who can make the drug. After collecting money from friends and neighbours the man is still short. He begs the pharmacist to reduce the price or allow him to pay later, but the pharmacist refuses because it is his property and he wants to make money from it. At night the man goes back, breaks in to the pharmacy and steals the drug. Was the man right to do this?

Very small children and moral absolutists will often say that he should not steal under any circumstances. However most older children and adults will see other aspects to the issue and often support the actions of the man to varying degrees. After all is the life of the mans wife worth less that the pharmacists right to make money?

In this simple dilemma we see that the, oft quoted, “stealing is wrong” position is not able to stand up, in most peoples opinion, to the simplest of challenges. Therefore why shouldn’t I steal?

I have no dying wife and no competing moral reason why I need to steal. I am not starving, in medical need or defending my loved ones, or myself but maybe I would be as right to steal, as I am to buy, what I want!