Disaster Ethics 3: Taking Things

As we saw in the first post in this series, the Catechism speaks of the possibility, in situations of urgent necessity, of taking another’s property without it being the sin of stealing.

In the second post in this series, I tried to sketch the general type of situation in which this is licit. I suggested that it occurs when you cannot get what you need by paying for them or through the government or another aid agency. I.e., when you can’t pay and are on your own.

In this post I’d like to talk about what things you are allowed to take in such situations and what other rules there are concerning taking them.

Regarding what one is allowed to take, I think it would be helpful to think of things as falling into three classes:

1. Vital Necessities: These are things that you (or someone under your care) must have in order to live. If you don’t have one of these things, you either will be dead very soon or you are likely to be dead very soon.
2. Practical Necessities: These are things that you (and those under your care) could reasonably be expected to survive without until the crisis is past, but having them will aid you immensely.
3. Non-Necessities: These are things that might be somewhat useful to you (and those under your care) or that you just would like to have.

What goes into each of these three categories depends on who you are and what the circumstances are.

For everybody, a certain amount of food and water is a vital necessity. You will die in short order if you don’t get it. (And you’ll be debilitated before that, further jeopardizing your survival in a crisis.) It is a practical necessity ot have a reserve supply of food and water, so some food and water beyond the vitally necessary amount is also a practical necessity. If you still have more food than that (e.g., enough food to weather the whole crisis without finding more) then lucky you, but that extra amount is a non-necessity.

In much of the world for much of the year, shelter and clothing are practical necessities but not vital necessities for most people. It isn’t pleasant, but it is often possible for people to survive outdoors and naked for significant periods of time if they have to. In other parts of the world, at certain times of the year (e.g., winter), and for certain people, however, shelter and clothing are vital necessities. If one has a large amount of shelter (e.g., a couple of houses or a house and a tent or a very large house) or clothing then past a certain point the shelter or clothing surplus becomes a non-necessity.

Guns and knives are generally practical necessities in an emergency. They can be vital necessities (e.g., if someone is threating your life with one or if you foresee that your life is likely to be threatened by someone). You can also have so many guns and knives that the excess are non-necessities.

Medicine can be anything from a vital necessity to a non-necessity, depending on how much you need it. (Think: heart medicine vs. acne medicine.)

Then there are all kinds of non-necessities, such as books, CDs, video games, color TVs, computers, etc., etc., etc. These can, however, become practical necessities or even vital necessities in specialized circumstances. For example, if an armed man takes your daughter hostage at gunpoint and says, "You go into that BestBuy and get me a color TV or I kill your daughter!" In that case, the color TV is a vital necessity for you (since someone under your care will be killed without it), though it remains a non-necessity for the hostagetaker.

Now: Supposing that you are in a situation where you can’t pay and can’t get what you need from the government or another agency, what can you take without it being theft? I suggest the following:

• You can take what is vitally necessary as long as they are not also vitally necessary for someone else. (For example, if you have no food at all and your neighbor enough food that some of it isn’t vitally necessary for him then you can take from that portion of his food. You must leave him the amount that is vitally necessary for him and those under his care, though.)
• You can take what is practically necessary for you as long as it isn’t vitally or practically necessary for someone else. (For example, you need shelter and your neighbor has a tent in his garage that he’s not planning to use or likely to need to use. You can take the tent).

I’d even go a little further than the Catechism and conjecture that you can take non-necessities in at least one circumstance:

• You can take non-necessities if they have no identifiable owner. (For example, you are walking down a street and find a color TV set sitting in the middle of the street. There is no electronics store nearby. It isn’t clear where the TV came from. The TV is not a vital or urgent necessity to you, but you could use it to barter for something that you do need. You can take the TV.)

Hanging over all of these is also a prudence requirement: You can’t take something if the odds are that more harm than good will come from doing so. There is almost always risk in taking something that doesn’t belong to you, and good to be achieved has to be proportionate to the risk you are assuming.

For example, suppose that you need a gun. It’s a practical necessity, though not a vital one. Your neighbor has a couple of gun cabinets that are full of firearms–more than he and his family can use. Unless you happen to stumble onto one of these gun cabinets when you know that your neighbor isn’t around, it would be very unwise to try to take one of your neighbors guns without his consent. He may shoot you if you try.

Similarly: Suppose you find something in the street that could potentially be identified at some point as stolen merchandise (e.g., by a serial number on it). You’d better weigh the odds of getting caught and punished against the benefit you’ll get by taking this thing.

The above, of course, are considerations that are hard to implement. For one thing, the defitions are vague and hard to apply. How much food is vitally necessary vs. how much is practically necessary vs. how much is non-necessary? I know of no way to objectify that. You’d just have to take your best guess, and people might make different guesses (leading to potentially violent confrontations). That’s the nature of emergencies, though: You just have to do the best you can under the circumstances.

Hopefully, these principles would make it easier to navigate an emergency in a moral manner. I just hope the readers (and myself) never have the misfortune to be in such a situation.

Incidentally, the above principles also only apply to taking things against the will of the owner. If you have his consent or if his consent may be presumed then you can take anything you want. Sometimes asking first is the best way to get what you need–even in a crisis.