10: A formal Definition of Stealing 5160
One of the basic rules of economy is that value is created by exchanging (not by printing money).
----
==Lets imagine a simple example:==
Person A has lots of pens. For them a pen is only worth 1$, a sheet of paper, however is worth 4$. Person B has a lot of paper for them a sheet is only worth 1$, but a pen is a valuable item worth 4$.
Person A wants a sheet and Person B wants a pen. They decide to exchange A gives a pen to B and, B gives a sheet of paper to A.
At the end of the exchange, both have lost 1$ of value, but got 4$ in return, meaning that they have made 3$ of value each.
A total of 6$ of value has been created by the exchange.
----
Now lets look at what happen during theft. When something is stolen, no exchange happenes between the parties, therefor no value has been created. In fact for society as a whole the yield is negative, as the thief had to spend energy (value) to get what he wanted. So although he enriched himself, he also made everybody poorer.
We can consider this a definition of stealing: A transfer of goods that results in a negative creation of value.
The same is true, to a lesser degree, when one of the parties cheats the other by providing an item that is less valuable than previously thought. Like a pen that does not write.
