[nietzreznor]

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Everybody seems to agree that looting a store of a loaf od bread to allow your children to survive, is totally OK. And burglarizing a middle class couple of their one valuable possesion, an engagement ring, so you can make a necklace for your Persian cat, isn't.

But where do you draw the line? Suppose through absolutely no fault of your own, you have to work two jobs to feed your sick wife and kid. Your neighbor inherited a billion dollars recently, hasn't moved yet, takes drugs from morning till night, and keeps 50 hundred dollar bills on his coffeetable in his unlocked home. He staggers out one day and you can walk in and grab that money to more nutritiously feed your family and get better medicine. What argument, other than it is against the law, makes it wrong for you to steal his money but not wrong for the desperate looters to loot?

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Looting the loaf of bread from the store isn't "right" in the sense that it is unconditionally the right thing to do. It is an unfortuante situation in which a person has 2 conflicting moral obligations (not stealing from others and feeding his/her children) and decides that feeding the children is more important. As would most people I think if they were in this situation. This isn't to say then that stealing here is "right"--perhaps this person should turn himself in afterwards. or perhaps it is only OK because the crime (moral crime of stealing) is small. I think we would have to reconsider our actions if we would have to kill an innocent person to let our children live.
In (most) less serious situations though this issue shouldn't even arise.