My kids love Mark Rober. Most days, they beg me to watch his modern engineering videos on YouTube. They especially love the ones about Mark trying to outsmart squirrels in his backyard. You might know him better as the inventor of the porch pirate glitter bomb.

This time of year is a busy one for logistics and delivery companies. While ordinary people are away at work, their online orders arrive at their homes, piling up on the porch. Aware of this reality, thieves drive through neighborhoods, stealing packages.

Property theft is often characterized as a victim-less crime, but every crime has a victim. Companies may cover the loss, but those losses are passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. If they don’t, they’ll go out of business, destroying jobs. For those losses that are not covered by a company, the recipient has to absorb the blow. There’s no difference between stealing a package off a porch and taking cash out of someone’s wallet.

As we watched this year’s iteration of Glitter Bomb 4.0, I was very sad. Not only had the criminals become more organized, turning crime into a mere business transaction, but the full reality of what was happening hit me. The people caught on camera with the stolen boxes were in depressing homes. Stuff was everywhere. Many thieves tripped over items on the floor as they tried to get the bomb out of the house as quickly as possible. This is poverty in America today. A stifling overabundance of cheap goods.

It offended my sense of justice. I watched people who were willing to steal from people they didn’t know, in the middle of the Christmas season, receive nothing more than a prank in return. What they deserved was so much more.

It is always wrong to steal.