[Avodah] Hasagat Gevul of a bus company

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jan 08, 2013 at 11:33:28PM -0700, Daniel M. Israel wrote:
: As far as the letter where the stamp was not canceled, it is not clear
: to me why keeping it is failing to return an aveidah. It seems more an
: issue of g'neivah...

The worker or equipment that failed to cancel the stamp effectively
lost the money.

: But, in any case, I don't see what this case has to do with the case of
: the CC. In that case the post office didn't provide any service at all,
: and there was no obligation to use their service...

RMKlein's point, as I understood it, exactly. Unlike in his case, this
isn't an aveidah at all. The gov't has no claim on the money. Which is
why RMK attributes the CC's purported actions to pure qiddush hasheim.

The only situation that I thought of so far where the story makes
sense to me is if the CC wanted to teach the observers (1st, 2nd and
n-th hand) not to cheat the gov't. After all if the CC were to be honest
on his tax forms (berabbim? how would that happen?), they might say
that such scrupulosity is for a Chafeitz Chaim. But if he does something
really above and beyond, maybe they would aim for following the actual
din as a humbler goal for themselves.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I long to accomplish a great and noble task,
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