I agree with what you say, in fact, that's why I specify:
unless they are in a total state of savagery
When people enter a state of real need in which, almost, they stop being self-conscious.
But that is something that in the developed countries has little, very very little, existence. The poor in the United States or Europe are not even remotely comparable to poor people in Africa, Asia or Latin America. This is what I meant when I said that they had shoes, although I should have said "new shoes".
Do you think that people in poor countries don't have needs as well, don't also live in hostile environments, and even though they may not have winter in Africa, they may have other problems such as water shortages?
The difference is that people from developed countries got used to living on the state, subsidies, or the charity of others. They became dependents. How is it possible that someone, come into adulthood, does not have a shelter to protect themselves in winter if it is a cyclical event?
In poor countries this does not happen. That returning to the objective of the publication, is because they don't have such concepts as unemployment.
Of course it is up to us, to the "outside observers", to make such a distinction, and although you tried to contradict me, you gave me the reason to give, also, your opinion.
Only in a state of unconsciousness in which man can't discern between the good and the evil of his actions, is he justified, because he was incapable of doing anything else, but at the moment in which any person believes that he can subjectively decide when his "needs" are more important than those of others, then the whole society begins to collapse.
By the way you forget that those who steal for "needs" end up leaving other people unable to meet their needs. And I would bet every time that those who need more are the second and not the first.
If I, guiding myself through extortion, agreed to do wrong to others for "my needs," then I would become the same as the extortionist, and continue the cycle of aggression. Putting others also, who have nothing to do, in similar situations.
Is that justified? As a thief stole me years ago, I am "enabled" to rob other people?
Don't think I'm talking about judges and courts, if I were talking about the state, then again we should admit that most people in the world are free, because they have freedom guaranteed by law, or that everyone is democratic, simply because based on the law, only a handful of countries declare themselves non-democratic.
Of course we are all human, and we make mistakes, and we would probably do immoral action because of extortion, I will not even discuss that. But the case you are raising is truly exceptional, and it does not really represent the issue we are dealing with, because it would be misleading to classify an act out of extortion in the same way as an act out of necessity.