Stealing Magazines

What’s wrong with people who read magazines and newspapers at the airport or drug stores without buying them? First of all, they block the other impatient people who are in a hurry from grabbing the stuff that they want and paying for it. Secondly, it’s more than a little sneaky, it’s dishonest. People publish magazines and newspapers at great expense so we will buy them. Standing and reading them is not just cheap it is stealing from the publishers. Let’s get philosophical and employ Kant’s Categorical Imperative to this behavior. Kant said that one should only behave in a fashion that one would wish that everyone would behave the same way in a like circumstance. If everybody did this, nothing would get sold at vending counters and at the minimum one would not be able to buy this stuff at counters but only through subscription.

The publishers over the years have tried to thwart this behavior with plastic over wraps, but I have even seen people remove the wraps right there and start reading.

I’m always tempted to offer these people some money, not to be kind, but to humiliate them in front of others. We lack good humiliation these days. I’ll bet someone would stop doing this if he were so humiliated.

So, come on, knock this off. It’s disgusting and beneath you.