Remember, it’s never theft If you steal from the British Museum.
What are they going to do, really? Demand you return their stolen shit?
Would be a better story if they were Egyptian. The Greeks have more archaeological sites and museums than anyone can visit. The British, and even the Ancient Greeks and Romans, pillaged Egypt for everything they could carry away.
The British Museum has the facade of the Parthenon and refuses to return it. Trust, the Greeks deserve to steal from there.
More information on that for those curious:
tbf, there’s still a whole lot of ancient artefacts just lying around in Greece. Almost as many cats. Ya kind of get used to walking to the store and passing ancient ruins between a couple apartment blocks.
That may be so, but if I came to your home and stole a bunch of your stuff on the basis that “it’s fine, they still have loads left, so it’s okay to steal this”, that would be a dick move.
Isn’t that basically tax?
Not really. When you pay tax, that money goes towards infrastructure and services that benefit the collective good of where you live. Even when those services aren’t necessarily things that you directly benefit from (e.g. Youth clubs if you are an adult who doesn’t have any loved ones who are young people) are still indirectly beneficial. For instance, youth clubs and other extracurriculars can help reduce antisocial behaviour (and other petty crime) from teenagers and help support them to be engaged within their community. [1]
Greece is not benefitting from these artifacts being held in the British museum. Perhaps once upon a time, one could make the argument that these artifacts are better looked after in the British museum (I believe the Elgin marbles were removed at a time when Greece was experiencing significant political turmoil due to gaining independence from the Ottoman empire), but that claim is pretty dubious nowadays. Greek cultural heritage is being held in the British museum because of the same extractivist philosophy that the British empire was built on.
[1] I realise that in practice, taxes don’t really feel like they function in this way, and even those of us who are more than happy to contribute to things they don’t directly benefit from are often unhappy at how our governments choose to spend our taxes.
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REVENGE!
