Taking, not stealing

Aquinas says that when a starving person takes food needed for survival from someone who has too much, the act is a case of taking but not stealing. Aquinas’ reasoning is that property rights subserve survival, and in case of conflict the property rights cease, and the food ceases to be the property of the one who has too much, and so it is not theft for the poor to take it.

I think what is going on may be a bit more subtle than that. Suppose Alice and Bob both have too much and Carl is starving. Both Alice and Bob refuse their surplus to feed Carl. According to Aquinas’ analysis, both Alice and Bob lose their ownership.

But I think things may be a bit more subtle than that. Suppose that shortly after Alice and Bob’s wrongful refusal, Carl suddenly wins the lottery. It does not seem right to say that Carl can now take Alice and Bob’s surplus. Yet if Alice and Bob lost their ownership upon refusal to feed Carl, then either the surplus now belongs to Carl or it belongs to nobody, and in either case it wouldn’t be stealing from Alice and Bob for Carl to take it. Similarly, if after Carl’s lottery win, Alice were to take Bob’s surplus food, Alice would be stealing from Bob.

We could say that Alice and Bob regain their property when Carl wins the lottery, but it is strange to think that something that belongs to nobody or to Carl suddenly becomes Alice’s, despite Alice having no deep need of it, just because Carl won the lottery.

Here is a different kind of case that I think may shed some light on the matter. As before, suppose Alice has a surplus. Suppose Eva the mobster has informed David that if David doesn’t take Alice’s surplus, then Eva will murder Alice. Any reasonable person in Alice’s place would agree to having her surplus taken by David, but Alice is not a reasonable person. David nonetheless takes Alice’s surplus, thereby saving her life.

I think David acts rightly, precisely because as Aquinas thinks one needs to resolve a conflict between property and life in favor of life. But I don’t think we can analyze using Aquinas’ loss of ownership account. For if David takes Alice’s stuff, then Eva who made David do it is a thief (by proxy). But if under the circumstances Alice loses her ownership, then Eva is not a thief. I think the right thing to say is that Alice retains her ownership, but it is not wrong for David to take her stuff in order to save her life.

What should we say, then? Is David a thief, but a rightly acting thief? That is indeed one option. But I prefer this one. When you own something, that gives you a set of rights over it and against others. I suggest that these rights do not include an unconditional right not to be deprived of the use of the item. Specifically, there is no right not to be deprived of the use of the item when deprivation of use is the only way for someone’s life to be saved. This applies both in Aquinas’s case of starvation and in my mobster case. It is not an infringement on Alice’s ownership over her surplus when Carl takes her stuff to survive or when David takes her stuff in order to save Alice’s life. But when Carl’s need terminates, he does not get to then take Alice’s stuff, as if Alice had lost ownership, and the mastermind behind David’s taking the stuff, who unlike David isn’t acting to save Alice’s life, is a thief.

In fact, if we think about it, it becomes obvious that there is no unconditional right not to be deprived of the use of an owned item. Suppose I have my car on a plot of land that I own, and I foolishly sell you all the land surrounding the small rectangle that the car is physically on top of. By buying the land, you deprive me of the use of my car, barring your good will—I cannot drive the car off the rectangle without trespass. But you don’t steal my car by thus depriving me of its use.

Thus, neither Carl (when in need) nor David is stealing, even though both take something owned by someone else.

Aquinas quotes St. Ambrose with approval: “It is the hungry man’s bread that you withhold, the naked man’s cloak that you store away, the money that you bury in the earth is the price of the poor man’s ransom and freedom.” While St. Ambrose’s sentiment is very plausibly correct, on my account above it is not correct to take it literally. When Alice wrongfully withholds her surplus from starving Carl, the surplus is not literally owned by Carl. It is still owned by Alice, who has a duty to pass ownership to Carl, and Carl in turn is permitted to use Alice’s surplus—but it remains Alice’s, even if wrongfully so.

Indeed, here is an argument against the hypothesis that ownership literally passes to the needy. Suppose Carl is starving, and Alice and Bob refuse their surplus. Now, shortly after Carl coming to be starving, so does Fred. On an account on which ownership literally passes to the needy, Alice’s and Bob’s surplus belongs to Carl, and if Carl comes to claim it and at the same times so does Fred, Carl gets to defend that surplus, violently if necessary, from Fred, as long as that surplus is all needed for Carl’s survival. But it seems plausible that as long as Carl’s and Fred’s need is now equal, they have equal rights, even if Carl came to be needy slightly earlier. Furthermore, suppose Alice has ten loaves of bread and Carl needs one to survive. Which loaf of bread becomes Carl’s possession? Surely not all of them, and surely no specific one. It seems better to say: while Carl is in dire need, Alice has no right to withhold surplus from her. As soon as Carl and any other needy person has taken enough not to be in dire need, Alice may defend the rest of her surplus.

Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom

The Catholic Church teaches that celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom is better than marriage. Until recently, I assumed that this was celibacy which was chosen by the person as a sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom. On this interpretation, celibacy which was not chosen by the person—say, because some internal or external factor precludes marriage—does not have that superiority.

But now it has occurred to me that there are two senses in which celibacy can be for the sake of the Kingdom. First, the celibate person may choose it for the sake of the Kingdom. But the second way is that God may choose it for the person for the sake of the Kingdom. Understood in the second way, an involuntary celibacy can still count as for the sake of the Kingdom.

The same point would apply to such things as poverty and obedience. Some choose poverty and obedience to better witness to the Kingdom of God. But for some, God chooses it. And the poverty and obedience can still be for the sake of the Kingdom.

The above is especially true if the calling is embraced with gratitude and love. In that case, we can have a genuine sacrifice of something that, paradoxically, may not even have been available to one. Think here of two early followers of St Francis who joyfully embrace the poverty that he preached: one came from a rich family, and sold all he had, and the other was very poor, and had nothing to give away. It would be problematic if the formerly-rich Franciscan had a permanent superiority in his poverty. Instead, I think, we can say that the always-poor Franciscan is still making a sacrifice by embracing the poverty, by renouncing griping, by rejoicing in God’s gift. The same can be true of a eunuch who embraces celibacy.

A consideration in favor of factory farming

In the US, the number of days per week that people in the under $25,000 income bracket (2012 data) consume meat is approximately the same as in higher income brackets. It seems very plausible to think that what makes this equality in the consumption of meat possible is the affordability of meat resulting from factory farming.

Suppose this is so and factory farming were eliminated. Then, there might be little change in the consumption of meat by people at the top of the income scale, as they could afford meat from small and expensive operations, but we would expect a significant decrease in the consumption of meat at the lower end of the income scale. Since people’s feelings of happiness and misery are largely tied to comparative evaluations, this inequality would be likely to lead to increased misery in those at the lower levels of the income scale who are already living lives of quiet desperation.

Moreover, observe that the impact that a pleasure has on a life intuitively depends on what other pleasures are available in life. Suppose I ceased to eat meat. But my own life is really great, and opportunities for pleasure abound. I have a wonderful family, a really fun job, access to Baylor’s incredible recreational facilities, books, video games, microcontrollers from Aliexpress, and enough leisure to enjoy all these. Losing regular access to the gustatory pleasures of meat would make only a small dent in my subjective wellbeing. (It would mostly be a nuisance: I would have to think harder how to fulfill my high caloric needs.)

But imagine that I am really poor. I am trying to support my family by holding down multiple low-paying jobs. There are few pleasures I have time for in my life and much stress. In that context, losing regular access to meat would take away one of the few pleasures in life—the pleasure of eating meat with a regularity that in the past mainly the rich could afford. Moreover, the pleasures of eating are often not just solitary pleasures but communal: I would lose sharing this pleasure with other family members living difficult lives.

In other words, the elimination of factory farming would have a highly unequal effect: the rich could still have their meat, and meat plausibly makes for a much smaller contribution to the well-being of the rich given all the other opportunities for pleasure available to them; but the poor would lose much of their access to one of the much smaller number of pleasures in their life, which would be a much greater loss.

Now, of course, an argument like this won’t justify every inhumane farming method in the name of making meat available to the poor. But it seems to me to be a serious argument in favor of some factory farming practices. Moreover, there is here a positive, albeit weak, argument in favor of even those of us who could afford meat farmed more humanely to eat factory farmed meat: in doing so, we contribute to the economies of scale that make meat affordable to those in lower income brackets to a historically unprecedented degree.