Virtue only comes about after answering questions like, "Why not microloot?"

Virtue ethics is a matter of thinking critically about the justification of behavior.

Condemnation of others in terms of vice is not a direct way to encourage critical thinking.

If you deliberately scan one fewer lemon than you are taking at the self-checkout at Whole Foods, you might be “microlooting.” This newly coined term does a nice job of distinguishing the highly punishable crimes of shoplifting and looting from what would be going on in a “sneak an extra lemon after buying others” situation.

The term "microlooting" was coined in a New York Times Opinion podcast. The “micro” in mircolooting makes it clear that the amount being taken must be objectively trivial. Of course, shoplifting might involve trivial items, too. And neither is an interest in destroying the business, or in causing much harm (a commonly shoplifted item is baby formula). The difference is that a shoplifter might be motivated by anything at all, from need to habit to thrill. A microlooter is motivated in a distinct way: it’s fairness. You are microlooting that lemon if you think the corporation you are transacting with deserves at least a lemon less than what they are charging. It is a small (“micro”) rebellion against our commercial system and its pricing.

The defining feature is not need or self-interest, but the belief that our economic system is a bit unjust and the pilfered item functions as a bit of correction. This would mean it is not experienced by the actor as low-minded but as a high-minded, symbolic protest.

This idea has raised the hackles of a slew of cultural commentators. To them, the idea that petty theft could ever be high-minded is insincere, hypocritical, and dangerous.

Microlooting is not just about swiping an extra lemon

For example, Thomas Chatteron Williams, writing in The Atlantic, insists that The Times’s “very silly conversation” about microlooting is what leads to the law itself losing “its legitimacy.” The mechanism is this: if “political and economic elites” are said to “violate” or are even “perceived” to “violate” the “social contract,” then........

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