- Piker: “Would you steal a car? I’m like, yeah, sure. If I could get away with it, if it was as easy as pirating intellectual property, I would do it.”
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Spiegelman: “Would you steal from the Louvre?”
Piker: “Yes.”
Tolentino: “I would not be logistically capable of executing such a fact, but would I cheer on every news story of people that I see doing it? Absolutely.”
Piker: “I think it’s cool. We’ve got to get back to cool crimes like that: bank robberies, stealing priceless artifacts, things of that nature. I feel like that’s way cooler than the 7,000th new cryptocurrency scheme that people are engaging in.”
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Spiegelman: “Would you steal from Whole Foods?”
Tolentino: “Yes. And I have, under very specific circumstances. I will say, I think that stealing from a big box store — I’ll just state my platform — it’s neither very significant as a moral wrong, nor is it significant in any way as protest or direct action. But I did steal from Whole Foods on several occasions. I’ve been involved in a neighborhood mutual aid group since 2021. And so every week I would go get groceries for Miss Nancy, my now family friend who lived nearby, and she wanted to go to Whole Foods. She wanted food from Whole Foods. And I was like, OK, great. And so I’d be getting Miss Nancy all of her groceries, and then I would finish, and I’d be like, oh my God, four lemons, I forgot four lemons. And on several occasions I was like, I’m just going to go back, grab those four lemons and get the hell out.”
- Piker: “I’m pro stealing from big corporations, because they steal quite a bit more from their own workers. However, one thing that might even help your ethical dilemma is the fact that the automated process that they design, these companies know will increase shrink, right? So it’s actually factored in. The lemons that you stole are factored into the bottom line of these mega-corporations regardless. And they still end up having increased profit margins, because they no longer have to pay the cashiers that they used to hire, as opposed to this automated system, knowing full well that people are still going to be able to steal a lot more efficiently, as a matter of fact, through the automated process.”
That’s just a sample from many equally nauseating statements. Read the rest if you dare, or if you want to understand the sick culture the U.S. is fighting right now.
The pandering moderator ends by saying, “Jia, Hasan, thank you so much for being here. This has been such an interesting conversation. It’s been a real pleasure to talk with you both.”
I wish she had projectile vomited on both of them. Their ideas aren’t even new: Abbie Hoffman wrote “Steal This Book,” making the same arguments 60 years ago from the standpoint of the violent Sixties radicals. But at least Hoffman was witty: these people are simply smug, simplistic and arrogant.
And unethical beyond excuse or redemption.
Ethics Alarms 
Piker comes from wealth and the interviewer lives in a 2 million dollar brownstone.
When their assets are taken they will be the first to complain.
Based on the Times editorial stance I assume someone breaking down their paywall so all can read free of charge or their photographers cannot sue if someone takes their images without royalties will be just fine and dandy with them
To make this even crazier, Nadja Spiegelman is the daughter of Art Spiegelman, most famous for chronicling the saga of his father Vladek surviving the Holocaust in the “Maus” graphic novels. If she had to live through what her grandfather did, I’d expect she’d be a lot more grateful for her current privileged existence.
They seem to think of themselves as modern day Robin Hoods. But here they are stealing from the rich to … give it to ? … the rich? … i.e., … themselves? Clearly, the Times can no longer afford to hire anyone who’s an actual adult. Do we need a new saying? “Don’t trust anyone under forty?”
The erosion of morals is appalling, disgusting and frightening. There is no actual justification for theft, but the assertion that big corporations are stealing from their employees isn’t explained or challenged. Even if that were true, only the employees could use that reasoning, not everyone else.
Unethical beyond excuse or redemption – spot on.
Apparently, this is so lefty-cool it comes with it’s own neologism, “microlooting”, though with all the same old justifications thieves have voiced for millennia. Not everyone is on board: https://nypost.com/2026/04/23/us-news/real-new-yorkers-furious-over-microlooting-writers-shoplifting-at-local-whole-foods-she-is-rich-i-am-not/
Piker is all for theft until it’s his car that disappears, his house that the squatters move into and his bank account that gets emptied.
Anytime Lefty can pair lazy, unethical corner-cutting with sanctimonious Gosh I’m Nice/I’m Dialed In/Look At Me smuggery, they’ve got a winning combination.
Along those lines, there’s something in our nape of the neck called No Mow May: People allow their lawns to grow unabated during the month, ostensibly to aid pollinators.
To no one’s surprise, their lawns end up looking like abandoned tangles of urban blight. Come June, neighborsnextdoor (THEY Report/YOU Decide!) posts display a quantum shift from missing cats and how they’re saving Mother Gaia to soliciting professional de-thatchers and small engine repair because their lawn mowers broke while trying to level their self-inflicted weed-choked morass.
I asked my neighbor/pal (a world-renowned entomologist with a wicked sense of humor) if there was anything really beneficial to these efforts. His reply; a head-shaking, condescending sneer accompanying a “Well; I guess so long as they think they’re doing something” said it all.
PWS
That’s just a sample from many equally nauseating statements. Read the rest if you dare, or if you want to understand the sick culture the U.S. is fighting right now.
All across America (and definitely in the culture where I live) people feel that they are being cheated and defrauded. Take for one example the man who assassinated the insurance executive of the cheating, stealing insurance corporation that refused to honor its side of the business by authorizing procedures.
I can report that here (in South America) the perception that people with more standing, wealth and power always (always!) get away with cheating, dishonesty, and robbery, while the “little man” always pays for his crimes.
Similarly, up North, the same dynamic applies except the US is far less corrupt.
The US culture is in deep, deep crisis, and I find it quite hard to understand 1) how this cane about and 2) what the solution is.
Those privileged kids need to take a trip to a “food desert” and do some reporting about why food desert exist. Hint: it has something to do with shoplifting.