[ALawPoker]

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. The reason individual acts of theft might once in a while be +EV is because life is a random assortment of a bunch of variables. Maybe I stole my friend's $5 bill and bought a lottery ticket, won, and now will help him pay for his sister's knee surgery. That happened to work out for me.

Theoretically, there was a better chance that more harm than good could come from it (when you factor, among other things, the guilt I might feel, and the chance he would notice).

The reason why theft may as well be looked at as bad is because it's more likely to be bad and you have no way of knowing when it will be good. You could say the same about slitting your wrists. It isn't like I'm unwilling to consider that there are a bunch of factor's unique to an individual going into a certain decision; it's just that given what I sense about human nature and how we got here, the action is blatantly destructive to human prosperity.

My argument is that the move is always -EV (in the same way getting it in against aces is always -EV). If you're determined to look at it as some subjective "it can be right sometimes" type of thing, then you must hold the axiom that -EV poker decisions can be "right" when they work. Or you must think there exist instances where theft can be +EV. I don't agree with either claim.

So even though ya, sure, you may as well be aware that sometimes your mistake can work, there still never exists an instance where you should *do* it. Have you ever encountered an instance where you concluded stealing something was to your best advantage? That little nagging voice inside you is pretty powerful. Years of trial and error at work.

So while I'm not omniscient, and thus can't predict exactly how the pieces will fall given an action, I know that the one which is more likely to be a success is objectively better. Since humans can't see through the back of playing cards, I know that holding AA is objectively 100% better than holding KK. I know that respect for property rights is 100% objectively better than theft in all instances, even though some of those instances will get lucky.

And please, if you choose to respond, don't nit about the poker analogy by introducing the idea that players are cheating or terrorists will blow up the world if X happens. It should be pretty clear my analogy assumes a straightforward poker game (since the "theft" we're talking about does not include the idea that aliens or God came down and told us something).