This seems like a great opportunity to look at how these things can happen at babble (specifically: how things can go from zero to "troll attack" or "neo-Con violation of the AUP" or "war on the poor" or whatever).
First of all, I'm not stigmatizing anyone. I pointed out that a man who has a long history of crime acknowledged -- took some ownership of -- his intent to choose to commit more crime. If I'm not mistaken, taking ownership of your choices is the first and necessary step toward making better ones. And given that this man's history of choices has, thus far, involved a lot of criminal choices, I think it's a good thing. How that "stigmatizes" him is beyond me. To whatever degree he's stigmatized, I might suggest that being a career criminal might play more of a part in it than my acknowledging his honesty.
Second, I'm not talking about "the poor", I'm talking about one individual. And I'm talking about him in the context of his criminal behaviour, not his income.
Third, it's you who began to speculate on the motive for his theft. I merely pointed out that if you need food, and you're stealing from a store that primarily sells food of all sorts, swiping plants you can't eat seems a bit silly, doesn't it? Like wanting to hear some music so you build a robot than can play the synthesizer. A bit inefficient and tedious, and involving unnecessary steps, no? I mean, compared to simply swiping food directly??
Now some people might speculate that he wasn't stealing plants with which to somehow buy food, but rather was intending to buy drugs. What do you think of that theory, Cueball? If nothing else, it's a bit more consistent with stealing something you can't eat. And if that were the case, is it really reasonable to say that he's driven to crime because our welfare system doesn't pay for the basic essentials of survival? Isn't that a bit of a distraction, if drugs are the elephant in the room?
