Before delving deeper into the relationship between socialism and shoplifting, I’m going to take a quick break to anticipate your number one objections to shoplifting (other than getting caught); won’t this hurt the companies and their employees? and won’t shoplifting in the long run increase prices?

Police spend £13,000+ on 50 cardboard cutouts

The answers would, of course, be no and no.

First, it’s important to remember that a company isn’t a person, so there’s no use personifying it and equating stealing from Sainsbury's with mugging a man. A company is a separate financial entity from its owner and created purely to create profit, and shoplifting is stealing from a non-human entity, not from the pocket of a human being.

The argument that shoplifting hurts the workers and employees is far more interesting, even if it’s just as invalid. You might fear that by shoplifting you’re reducing the pay of the countless english literature grads. working at Waterstones, pushing their dreams of writing a comprehensive history of microbreweries even further into the future.

But thank god this isn’t the case.

A company isn’t a charity, and it doesn’t employ people out of pity for their failure to get a publishing deal on a how-to guide of beard trimming. If the company could get away with paying less or employing fewer workers, they already would have. And so it would make no sense whatsoever for a business to respond to shoplifting by firing a cashier; this would only reduce revenue even further as fewer customers can be served.

The same is true of shoplifting leading to higher prices; if a company already can raise prices, it will. Competitiveness is key, which is why H&M wouldn’t hike up prices due to shoplifting as it would only lose customers and revenue to Topshop, and probably more shoplifting.

Regardless, the above is completely irrelevant with the knowledge that all companies plan theft into their budgets as ‘shrinkage’; setting aside money out of anticipation of shoplifting. Shrinkage budgets will account for millions, and as such are rarely fulfilled, instead being translated into pure profit for the shareholders. So even if shoplifting made a significant dent in the shrinkage budget (it mostly accounts for internal, employee theft), the victims would be the massive hedge funds and shareholders that own these companies. In the case of Waterstones it’s $35,000,000,000 ‘vulture’ fund Elliot Corporation that loses out, whilst billion dollar owners Richard Hane and his two spouses miss out every time you take jewellery from Urban Outfitters.