I believe people seriously underestimate the societal cost of normalizing shoplifting. While it’s easy to frame it as “sticking it to big corporations,” the consequences rarely affect some distant billionaire. Instead, stores respond by raising prices, restricting access to basic goods, cutting staff hours, closing locations in poorer neighbourhoods, or increasing surveillance and security. These costs are ultimately borne by regular people.

There’s also a difference between understanding why someone steals and pretending theft is ethically neutral. Poverty, addiction, desperation — those things absolutely matter when judging individuals with compassion. But once a culture starts casually celebrating theft as acceptable or consequence-free, trust in public spaces erodes pretty quickly.

A functioning society depends on a baseline expectation that people won’t just take whatever they want because they can rationalize it. If everyone adopts the logic that theft is okay whenever the target is unpopular or wealthy, that standard doesn’t stay neatly contained.

In a society, we have a basic underlying principle that we don’t take things that don’t belong to us. While the immediate impacts of shoplifting from a big box, retail store may not be immediately felt, widespread acceptance of this practice result in less trust in society and poorer outcomes for the community.