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Why is it stealing to borrow money/items from people and intentionally not give them back?

Chinchou1984

Chinchou1984

If a panhandler asks to borrow money from you, whenever or not they say they will pay you back you should give the money as a gift with no expectation to be repaid. You cannot call them a scammer unless they don’t use the money for its intended purpose (such as faking being homeless or suffering from cancer).

If you go on a donation site such as gofundme and give money to someone who says they will pay you back, you should give the money as a gift with no expectation to be repaid. Unless they don’t use the money for its intended purpose (such as faking cancer) why would it be fraud?

Borrowing money/items from people and intentionally not giving them back makes you a shitty person and you deserve to have your relationships ruined with all your loved ones such as family, friends and coworkers for treating just one person like this but if being a freeloader (which is what this is) isn’t a crime then why is it illegal to mooch off others like this? It’s not like you’re physically taking things from other people without their permission. If they expect to be paid back they could just learn to not loan things they cannot afford to lose especially if you cannot pay the money back but this thread told me (although it’s basically impossible to prove without you confessing that you never intended to pay the person back) it is fraud.
 
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Obligatory IANAL.

I explain this from a couple different angles, big-picture starting at criminal offenses, then going down to civil offenses, and then societal definitions.

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When you say you will give someone money (pay back a loan), but you know that you will not give them money, that is lying and deception.

When you use a lie to get money or assets from someone, that is the legal offense of fraud. Like, pretty much the textbook definition. From Black's law book:

[The] knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or her detriment.
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Legal definitions aside, "lying to get somebody's money" maps pretty nicely onto "scamming."

If you go on a donation site such as gofundme and give money to someone who says they will pay you back, you should give the money as a gift with no expectation to be repaid. Unless they don’t use the money for its intended purpose (such as faking cancer) why would it be fraud?
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If they knew they would not pay you back, it would be fraud because they lied to you about their intentions to get your money. If they planned to pay you back but were unable, it would not be fraud, because they didn't lie about their intentions, they just weren't able to do what they intended. The issue would become more like, bankruptcy. You could still pursue legal action, but it would be civil action and not, like, a crime.

Many people would not care about being defrauded by a cancer patient, or not being paid by a bankrupt cancer patient, because cancer is awful and more important than money. This makes sense. Most borrowers are not cancer patients, though.

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Let's say you originally intended to pay someone back or return a borrowed item, but midway through, you decide you want to keep it, even though you are able to return it. What would that be?

That seems the civil offense of conversion, at least in the U.S., which is like, the less strict version of stealing that doesn't wind up getting you in prison.

the wrongful possession or disposition of another’s personal property as if it were one’s own.
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You're possessing someone else's money or property and exerting a perpetual control over it, which you'd be allowed to do if you owned it, but you don't.

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A loan is like an informal contract. The lender agrees to give you money in exchange for you giving them money in the future. When you don't give them money in the future, you break the contract.

If we allowed people to welch on contracts like this, the economies of our societies would probably suffer. Disney could say "If you act in my movie, I'll give you 10% of the profits," the actor could act in the movie, Disney could withhold the money and leave them starving on the street, saying "I didn't physically force this person to act without their permission. They agreed to act. I just violated the shared understanding that made this permission possible." This would be a scam, and bigger-picture a worse world.

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You cannot call them a scammer unless they don’t use the money for its intended purpose (such as faking being homeless or suffering from cancer).
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When you give out a loan, the intended purpose is that the borrower uses the money as a way to get more money later to pay you back. You gotta spend money to make money, and the lender gives the borrower money to spend, so that they can make money, to pay back the lender.

Think about a payday loan, for example. The lender gives the borrower money so that they can pay for food and utilities until the borrower gets their next pay check, which they can then use to pay back the lender. (Payday loans have other ethical issues, which I won't get into here, because that would be a tangent.)

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"Don't loan money you can't afford to lose" is wisdom and advice. It's not saying what is or isn't a scam, and it's not law. If you're drunk in public and somebody uses your lack of awareness to swipe your wallet, that's still stealing, even though it's unwise to be drunk in public.
 
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If you do this with money you owe the government you're sent to prison and are forced to create a Hit Smogon Thread in a tradition of ritualistic shaming but all of a sudden if it's money people owe me I'm being "miserly" give me back the 20 dollars I lent you in 2019 Andrew you impoverished assclown
 
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