Rats In A Sack

According to the Financial Times of 21st January 2013 retailers reckon that they lost £1,600,000,000 in theft and deliberate damage last year, yet only reported 12% of the crime to the police.
This is an astonishing sum, especially given that supermarkets and chain stores have electronic tagging technology that makes it extremely difficult to ‘lift’ goods.
In a free society people realize that stealing is wrong. If they are short, they can usually ask a neighbour to tide them over. They are not at war with their neighbour.
But in a regulatory society possessions are relative, subject to the whim and regulation of our masters. We are all fighting for our place at the trough.
As passivity and self pity take hold so does the notion that shoplifting is not theft. Most shops are anonymous, owned by companies, not by individuals, so shoplifting does not seem as if it were stealing from a real person, but rather from an anonymous ‘them’.
Increasingly, a person’s income is relative to their relationship with the state rather than to their relationship with an economic activity. Increasingly, income depends on income tax and state allowances that are 'claimed'.
Wealth is divorced from effort and becomes ever more dependent on what you can get out of the 'system'.
Naturally, the notion arises that anybody who is in any degree wealthy has managed to work the system, that it is unfair, that they are thieves.
The Financial Times tells us that only 12% of  thefts from retailers were reported to the police. But there is little point referring matters to the police. They don’t want to upset their crime reduction figures by reporting ‘crime’.
So the notion of theft, the notion of working for a living, the notion of honesty itself collapses with the connivance of the state.
It is in the interest of the military bureaucratic complex throughout the world to sow discord, to increase crime, to let us fear our neighbour, to have us retreat into egotism, to fight it out like rats in a sack.