In a controversial conversation platformed by the New York Times and recently discussed in The Atlantic, streamer Hasan Piker implied that he might steal a car if it carried no consequences. In the interview, author Jia Tolentino also casually admits to shoplifting lemons from Whole Foods. Although petty theft is common, the interview clip spread quickly because the justification for looting felt oddly assertive.
Piker referred to the iconic anti-piracy campaign that sought to use moral vibes (rather than rational arguments) against taking physical property to convince people to further control their impulses and not copy music without paying. The anti-piracy clip “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” indicates an implicit assumption from 2004 that American society was broadly agreed on the stability of physical property. In other words, most Americans do not think “property is theft.”
In The Property Species, Professor Bart Wilson argues that property is not merely a legal construct but a deeply embedded social practice. Humans develop shared understandings of “mine” and “yours,” and these norms allow cooperation to scale beyond small groups. Property is not just about ownership. It is also about coordination.
From that perspective, the casual dismissal of theft as “not a big deal” is not morally or economically neutral. It chips away at the shared expectations that make exchange possible.
Markets rely on more than prices; they rely on trust that boundaries will be respected. This insight echoes a long tradition. Adam Smith, often invoked for his theory of the invisible hand of markets, also emphasized the importance of justice. Before markets can allocate resources efficiently, people must refrain from taking what is not theirs.
In my recent paper with Bart Wilson, “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car: Moral Intuition for Intellectual Property,” we test how people think about taking different types of goods. As I discussed in “Everyone Take Copies,” laboratory human subjects were quick to label the taking of physical property as “stealing.” The players all considered it unacceptable within their small group. No one wants their stuff taken, and every human has a concept of “mine.”
Much rule-following is done out of a sense of obligation, which might prove hard to recover if lost. Russ Roberts made a similar point years ago in his EconLog column on Napster-aided downloading as theft. He wrote:
“We know that the threat of being caught and punished isn’t the only reason that people pay legally for something rather than stealing it. There are costs of theft other than monetary costs. Some people feel guilty taking something for nothing. Culture and norms can be used to encourage socially beneficial behavior. After all, people leave tips even in restaurants and in taxis where repeat visits cannot explain such generosity. People choose not to litter even on a deserted mountain trail.”
Much of rule-following is voluntary. It is sustained by internalized norms, not external enforcement. That is why casual erosion of those norms should concern us.
What would Piker think of a world where the “microlooting” he claims to approve happens at scale? Ambiguity over property rights has real implications, such as stores raising prices to cover shrinkage or closing in high-crime neighborhoods. These costs are often borne disproportionately by already disadvantaged populations.
Once norms deteriorate, rebuilding them is hard, both at neighborhood scale and the national level. This is easily visible in countries without strong property systems. Countries with weaker property rights struggle to attract investment and sustain economic growth. The difficulty of reversing that decline is not merely theoretical. It can be seen in the decades-long work of nations actively trying to repair their institutions. Colombia offers one such example. As Omar Hernandez notes in his discussion of the country’s reforms, building reliable property institutions is a long and difficult process.
Hernandez wrote, “Although Colombia has implemented reforms to improve the investment environment and strengthen respect for property, the path to more robust and reliable protection remains long.”
Hernandez, and many development economists, express the desire to move an entire group of people to an equilibrium of stronger property rights and less tolerance for theft.
“For Colombia to move toward a freer and more prosperous system, it is crucial to strengthen the institutions responsible for protecting these rights and to promote transparency in the titling and restitution processes. Only with a solid framework of property rights can the legal certainty needed to incentivize investment and economic development be guaranteed.”
