it depends on what the courts say.

The court decide what laws are to be enforced, the laws being decided by the legislative part of the government, which is formed of the people, who are you.

So indirectly, our subjective morality decides what the courts say, indirectly. I’m asking what your innate sense would tell you to do in that hypothetical?

My mom once paid a painter hundreds of dollars in cash, and he lost most of it when pulling his hand out of his pocket and the money blew away. Anyone who finds that money should get to keep it.

Well, in transactional situations that would be pretty subjective. Who fudged it? Subjective. Depending on the sum, there could definitely be an argument.

And what if it was like an open check (btw checks are not a thing everywhere, I’ve seen maybe a dozen in my life and I’m 34, they’re so insecure we don’t use them) for a million dollars? With the value, it would definitely be different.

I think there are laws about lottery coupons as well. Different ones for different places in the world, but still.

Some of those laws say for instance you have to return it, but also that returning something very valuable gives you the right to a finder’s fee.

So “finder’s keeper’s” isn’t quite as simple as we’d like to.

In this specific instance, I really don’t mind someone having abused the system, but technically it would be at least a bit of fraud here. Tanking up once or twice for free would be an understandable happy accident, draining 28k worth of gas is clearly malicious and organised theft.

I don’t mind the occasional theft from corporations, but 28k is a bit beyond the normal robin hooding. Corporations suck currently but we can’t replace a thieving system with a system with even more thieving.

Casual thieving fine, but this is rather organised