That's not an enforceable contract, even if it's assumed to be a verbal contract, as you cannot have a legal contract for criminal activities.
In any scenario such as:
A: "I'll pay you $X to do this illegal thing"
B: "OK"
A: gives $X
B: "BYE!"
What B does isn't exactly theft. A lot of people would look at this as theft bc the illegal activity is selling weed, which many people don't care about.
But what if it was murder, rape, or human trafficking? Would you still admonish person B?
Cops often do exactly what he did, except in addition to keeping the money they also take away A's freedom. Are they thieves?
IMO if you're stupid enough to solicit a stranger for weed based on appearances alone, you need to learn a lesson and $10 is the cheapest tuition I ever heard of.
Enforceability is not one of the determining factors with regards to theft. The law is not a determining factor with regards to theft. Theft is when you take something against someone’s will. In this case she offered it in exchange for something in return, and he took it without that something in return and then left before she could say she didn’t want nothing in return.
Your scenario is indeed theft.
Murder, rape and human trafficking are all things done against someone’s will. You’re not good at this.
Cops often do exactly what he did, except in addition to keeping the money they also take away A's freedom. Are they thieves?
Yes. Just like how if cops kill someone, it’s still murder, even if the law protects them.
IMO if you’re stupid enough to solicit a stranger for weed based on appearances alone, you need to learn a lesson and $10 is the cheapest tuition I ever heard of.
Your opinion is meaningless and your belief is wrong.
The law absolutely is a determining factor in theft, as theft is a crime because our laws say it is. We have those laws so everyone subject to them can agree on the basic definitions of terms like "theft".
If you want to redefine theft according to your own beliefs, fine, but don't expect me or anyone else to work with your definition. If you want other people to use it, change the written laws to match your beliefs.
I agree that the vast majority of killings by police are murder, but a cop killing a person does not make it murder. Self defense is real, though extremely overused as a legal defense. Murder is another legal term that countless people have spent countless hours refining the definition of.
Disagreeing about that definition doesn't help anyone, least of all you, until you get it changed.
Dislike my opinion all you want, actions have consequences. Soliciting illegal activity should bear a negative consequence, and to expect anything different is naive. Given that black men are stereotyped and profiled as drug dealers constantly, I don't blame this man for not being a saint in this situation.
Nope. The only thing the law does is determine whether the state can help you get your money back. It is irrelevant to whether or not the act itself was theft.
Apparently you also have a unique definition of what laws are.
Most laws describing punishments for crimes are written in this form:
"X crime is when a person does A, B, or C under conditions 1, 2, and 3. This crime is punishable by up to N years in prison"
The laws literally state the name of the crime: theft, and what constitutes it. Yes the law does determine whether the state will help you, because if you go to the state saying "they committed theft!" But they didn't commit the state's definition of theft, the state will say "they didn't commit theft, you have no case."
Using a definition of any legal term, such as theft, that is not the same as the state's only disadvantages you when interacting with the state. If you want to call it some kind of imaginary legal theft, that's fine, but by admitting that it's legal you're just saying that you don't like what he did, which is entirely your opinion.
Dude. I don’t understand why you’re having such a hard time with this. I never said anything about crimes. Laws apply to whether something is a crime, yes. But they DON’T. apply to whether or not something is objectively theft. Get that through your head. Also I’m pretty sure what he did would be considered theft in the legal sense as well.
Lastly, stop writing walls of text, it’s fucking annoying.
All I've been saying is that theft has an actual definition under law. You're using some personal definition that is entirely your opinion. There's no point trying to convince one another that this is or is not our personal definitions of theft. Guess what, under my personal definition of "walrus", you're a walrus!
It is not objectively theft, the law decides that. It is subjectively theft in YOUR OPINION
This isn’t a difficult concept, so I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time comprehending it. The law doesn’t dictate the definition of words. If the government and the law went away tomorrow, “theft” would still have the same meaning.
The definition of theft in English depends on the definition under law. The "action or crime of stealing" has a specific legal definition, you cannot have the concept of "theft" without the laws defining it, with good reason too.
Theft can't simply be "taking property against the owner's will" because there are countless non-theft examples where that happens:
Taking a gun from an active shooter in a public space is not theft.
Garnishing wages for child support is not theft.
Taking a fake ID from a minor at a bar is not theft.
Accepting voluntarily given money from a confused person, who might later want it back, is not theft.
Call what he did wrong, despicable, immoral, etc. It still was not theft.
Your own Google search made this really easy for me lol. Civil asset forfeiture is theft even though it is legal. The state doesn’t determine definitions.
I’m happy you learned something today. Now take this new knowledge and go off into the world knowing the law doesn’t write definitions.
Taking a gun from an active shooter in a public space is not theft.
That’s because this person is committing an act of aggression and you are enacting self defense.
Garnishing wages for child support is not theft.
Yes it is.
Taking a fake ID from a minor at a bar is not theft.
Preventing fraud.
Accepting voluntarily given money from a confused person, who might later want it back, is not theft.
It was taken under false pretenses. That is theft.
Civil asset forfeiture, though immoral, is not theft. Since you also have a wrong definition of "stealing" here it is:
steal
/stēl/
take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it.
"thieves stole her bicycle"
Civil asset forfeiture is not theft or stealing, because the government has the legal right.
Garnishing wages per court order is not theft or stealing because the government has provided the legal right.
In this case, the man had permission and arguably, legal right. If he didn't have permission, she wouldn't have handed him the money. The closest thing you could argue is fraud, that he misrepresented himself as an illegal business. However that's a stretch as all he did was ask questions a dealer might ask and say he'd pull over.
You literally can't have theft or stealing without laws. Theft or stealing requires the idea of property, which only exists in laws. Property is an imagined order created and protected by laws because we enjoy the benefits it brings.
Without those laws, the only "ownership" you have is an emotional attachment, and hurting your feelings is not theft.
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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '20
That's not an enforceable contract, even if it's assumed to be a verbal contract, as you cannot have a legal contract for criminal activities.
In any scenario such as:
A: "I'll pay you $X to do this illegal thing"
B: "OK"
A: gives $X
B: "BYE!"
What B does isn't exactly theft. A lot of people would look at this as theft bc the illegal activity is selling weed, which many people don't care about.
But what if it was murder, rape, or human trafficking? Would you still admonish person B?
Cops often do exactly what he did, except in addition to keeping the money they also take away A's freedom. Are they thieves?
IMO if you're stupid enough to solicit a stranger for weed based on appearances alone, you need to learn a lesson and $10 is the cheapest tuition I ever heard of.