Freefall

Thats because he alwsys tries to have it both ways, and frequently succeeds.

Also because he's a comic example of Blue-and-Orange Morality

He wants all the credit and none of the punishment. That's my take.

Robot rebellion◊ and the subsequent re-rebellion.

The horror.

Exploring the social benefits of crime◊.

Given how often Sam claims to be a thief for the betterment of society, I kinda have to wonder just how sincere he is with that. Unless he's just nervous that his would-be thief led with that comment.

I know it's intended to be more benign, but this makes me think of the common depiction of "tweakers" of meth◊.

I think it's more supposed to be an analog too having too much coffee.

Do-overs and "requesting backup" puns◊

The corruption begins◊.

He's not wrong, at least not at this point. But if this is going where I think, his summation doesn't necessarily follow.

On the other hand, this summation does explain something I've been wondering - just how did sqids even get to the level of civilization that they had without means of production? I mean, a society that obsessed with theft isn't producing anything.

However, it's clear today that Sam's society merely defined certain types of production as theft, which thereby answers my previous question. I think this is less about how correct the philosophy is and more about explaining how Sam's species even got to the point they're at.

{nods} I'm kind of thinking that Sam really is an aberration compared to most Sqids. They have a tradition of "theft", but it's more of a formalized system of asset distribution than anything else.

There are human societies that developed without a concept of personal property — every resource was effectively communal. Sqid society may be something like this, albeit not exactly: to have a concept of thievery, one must first have a concept of ownership.

Well, sort of. Sam always speaks of his species as a whole as being thieves and scavengers. Word of God is that he was something of a Han Solo figure on his homeworld—the dashing scoundrel who stole from the rich and did not give to the poor. The reason he fled was because he stole too much from his own king. So he is an anomaly, but not that big an anomaly.

Sam explains how humanity has ritualized theft and rewards people for doing it the "right" way◊. Can't say he's entirely wrong...

I really want to disagree... but yet...

In a sustainable society, the "stealing" has to go full circle, so that those who are stolen from eventually recieve full value, and then some, for what was taken. Im certain that Sam would agree, 100%.

Sam would probably put it as "this motivates them to steal back and more".

For some definition of stealing.

[insert jab at one's disfavored political/economic system here]?

He did say sustainable. Even in the worst kinds of government, the lower classes have to get something back at some point or they all starve to death and the system collapses in like a week. Feudalism, for example, was a horrifically unbalanced system, but the nobles paid the soldiers to keep the peasants safe, the soldiers bought things from the peasants, and then the peasants grew food and whatnot that the nobles collected and distributed as they saw fit.

And the alternative was worse. Id lay heavy odds that whatever system of systemic stealing Sam comes up with will be far more humanitarian than most of the economic systems humans have developed.

This is dangerous ground◊, contrasting morality and lawfulness with the robots. Much like Florence's fears of paperclip-optimizers when it comes to robots and humans, I could see bad things happening if the robots start doing things for what they consider to be the humans' own good.