From the article:

Obviously, none of this is a big deal. Despite what some on Bluesky might insist, I am not advocating that these people be drawn and quartered in the town square. But they activated a very particular pet peeve of mine, which is that even when rules seem small and inconsequential, breaking them for pure selfishness doesn’t only imply that the rule-breaker don’t care about the rules. It implies that they still want to enjoy a society where everyone else follows the rules, but they don’t, because they are special. And unlike fare evasion or shoplifting, these people cannot claim, even insincerely, that financial hardship or a rebellion against capitalism, AI, or Jeff Bezos was at the heart of their decision. They were at Disneyland!

I would argue, as I have before, that most people who evade fare or shoplift are also not doing it because they must steal to survive. Not to beat a dead stolen lemon, but when well-off writer Jia Tolentino notoriously joked about shoplifting a couple lemons from Whole Foods and people responded by confronting her outside her home, I thought that was a bit much. It was, after all, just lemons. But this behavior pissed people off (even if they went too far) precisely because Jia Tolentino (and other upper middle class people who steal for thrills, convenience, or for political statements) are not only stealing, but benefiting from a society where most people don’t steal. If literally every customer stole from Whole Foods instead of paying, there would simply be no Whole Foods, or the security would ramp up significantly to the point that shopping there would be very unpleasant (see: everything now locked up at CVS after people decided the rules didn’t apply to them). In that same interview, Hasan Piker defended shoplifting by pointing out that a certain amount of loss is baked into these businesses’ pricing model. That may be true, but it still assumes that only certain people will shoplifting. Why do you deserve to be in that subset but everyone else doesn’t?

The same is true, quite frankly, of Disney. Sure, things will not fall apart if only some people cut the lines. But why do you get to be one of those people?