Juan Manuel Sánchez Gordillo, Mayor of Marinaleda from 1979 to 2023 (among other things) has been described exactly as a “modern Robin Hood” in newspapers^[1], especially in reference to their supermarket raids:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Manuel_Sánchez_Gordillo

In mid August 2012, Sánchez Gordillo attracted considerable media attention both within Spain and internationally due to his role in raids on supermarkets in nearby towns, Seville and Cádiz, where food was stolen and handed out to poor families and to food banks. The items stolen were part of a list chiefly made of rice, sugar, pasta, milk, olive oil and flour. Sánchez Gordillo did not personally remove food, but was outside in the car parks while members of his union conducted the raids. Several of these members have been arrested and later released, though Sánchez Gordillo himself has immunity from prosecution. Sánchez Gordillo has however said he is happy to waive his immunity and go to jail for his cause, in fact he said he expected to be jailed in order to make his message spread further.

And stole from the poor, not the rich.

If anything, a software pirate at home is a far greater example.

I think rules, written or otherwise, should have exceptions to account for extreme circumstances like this, but a lot of online people just go ‘No, if you don’t bring your cart back you’re a BAD PERSON no matter what!’.

To treat any rule as immutable is an idealist junk perspective. Rules, like all ideas, need to be applied to a context, and I personally don’t see the point in codifying every possible exception. Law officials, programmers and others can tell you how Sisyphean that task would be.

So yes, there are exceptions (obviously!). If you’re putting your cart back and you injure your leg, you don’t have to crawl on your arms just to put it back. But we can still generally say “people should put their cart back after shopping” and it’s clear that we’re generalizing.