[Blarg]

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As I said, it's not the stuff itself that matters, it's my time and energy that went into acquiring it. I really don't need a lot of "stuff" to get by. Look at it this way, by taking what I earned by my labor against my will, he is, in a sense making me a slave. There's no piece of paper saying I'm his, but if I have no rights to what I work for then that's what I am.

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I believe this very strongly. Unless you've been truly poor for any extended period of time, it might be impossible to fathom how incredibly hard it is to make any headway financially when you're on the bottom, and how even the smallest luxuries become windfalls that are proof of an enormous amount of time and effort in your life that it took you to get them. When a poor man finally is able to buy a t.v., it's an enormously big deal that means he has had to make some pretty disheartening and dehumanizing sacrifices, and when it's stolen, what is stolen is not just an object like a person with more money can go out and get tomorrow, but an actual meaningful chunk of his life that he'll never get back. The hurt is real. "It's only money" when money is plentiful. When everything comes hard, you really screw someone bad when you steal from him, and even deny his humanity.

I think that this is one of those issues that is basically impossible to understand if you haven't been poor. And I do mean that. It's just beyond comprehension if you haven't lived it, and for real, not the fake broke that some kids think they knew in college, where help was always a phone call away if they just steeled up their nerve and swallowed their pride enough to ask.