"There’s one thing that’s stealing when you are a teenager and you want the adrenaline rush. And part of it is about testing the rules..."

"... and getting away with something. But what I’m seeing on TikTok and social media is people saying that they’re stealing from Whole Foods not just for the thrill of it, but out of a feeling of anger and moral justification. Because the rich don’t play by the rules, so why should I? And Jeff Bezos has too much money — he’s a billionaire — so why should I have to pay for organic avocados? My friends and I have started calling this microlooting, because it has a slight political valence to theft, as opposed to just the thrill of getting away with something. Have you noticed this around you online? Have you noticed more people talking about stealing in this way?"

Says NYT writer Nadja Spiegelman on an episode of the NYT "Opinions" podcast, "'The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?'Why petty theft might be the new political protest."

Those other 2 characters are New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino and Hasan Piker, a political commentator I blogged about a year ago when he was being touted as the potential "Joe Rogan of the left."

Tolentino says: "I think it’s great that the valence of property is on the table as something to be toyed with, in terms of direct action. We’ve forgotten that there is a long and storied history of sabotage and engagement with property destruction, even, which is abhorrent to people...."

Piker: "In the Marxist tradition, adventurism is the action that is oftentimes decentralized. Oftentimes, anarchists will say, 'This is the propaganda of the deed.' The action itself, no matter how violent or how disruptive, is justifiable because the disruption is the point.... So, concepts such as microlooting indicate that there is an energy there, just like you said...."

Reminds me of Abbie Hoffman's "Steal this Book." That was half a century ago. Here's the NYT article from 1971: "Ripping Off, The New Life Style." 

Hanging on the wall over the dinner table [at the commune] is a framed sampler: “The Best Things in Life Are Free—If You Steal Them From the Bourgeoisie.”...

RIPPING OFF—stealing, to the uninitiated — is rapidly becoming as much a part of the counterculture as drugs and rock music.... [H]undreds of young people live solely off goods they are able to liberate from private enterprise and funds they manage to extract from the Government. Thousands more supplement conventional income with frequent forays, as often for the sheer joy of bilking hated institutions as for the plunder itself.

Middle‐class youngsters who 5 or 10 years ago would have been work ing their way up the corporate ladder can now be found stuffing their pockets in supermarkets, shoplifting in department stores or collecting relief benefits from assorted public agencies (often defrauding several states at the same time). College graduates who once might have dreamed of, say, a law partnership, now fantasize knocking over a Brink's truck....

There's even a handbook for rip off artists. Written by Abbie Hoffman and appropriately entitled, “Steal This Book,” it contains instructions on how to cop everything from bowling shoes to buffaloes.... “I enjoy blowing people's minds,” admits Hoffman; who has been known to walk up to complete strangers and ask, “Would you hold this dollar for me while I go in that store and lift something?”... 

Behind the new morality of theft without‐guilt is a radical ideology— some would call it a rationalization— which sees America as a society based on the rip‐off, its most respected citizens businessmen who have most successfully held up the most people. Stealing from these robber barons, runs the argument, is certainly more moral than working for them. It may be called a crime, but it's only a justified redistribution of the wealth. “The dictionary of law is written by the bosses of order,” writes Hoffman. “Our moral dictionary says no heisting from each other. To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.”.... 

Critics on both the left and the right... say counterculture rippers are, in effect, stealing from all the people. “They're not revolutionaries,” Jarvis Tyner, a Communist party youth leader, says accusingly. “We're struggling to get welfare pay ments increased, and they're giving the government an excuse to put down welfare. They shoplift, so supermarkets raise their prices, and the poor pay more for food. It's a game for middle‐class rejects, and it takes the dignity and seriousness out of the real social struggle.”...

“Saying that shoplifting accounts for high prices is like saying that people using colored toilet paper are responsible for the ecological mess,” argues Hoffman. “All our rip‐offs together don't equal one price‐fixing scheme by General Electric. What we have to create is a nation of revolutionary outlaws and do away with the concept of money entirely. We want a society where your birth certificate is your passport, and everything is free.”