Ali Baba was lucky. He was just facing the 40 thieves. He wasn’t up against a bunch of “fiscal conservatives” and the Moral Majority. He never met a MAGAt or a QAnon nut.
I suspect Ali Baba and all the 40 thieves knew about the 10 Commandments and all of them knew they were breaking at least 1 commandment, but the stealing part of being a thief is the simple honest part. They confronted people who had stuff, waved a sword threateningly, and proceeded to take their gold and jewels. Straightforward theft.
I guess that’s the sort of thing they call honor among thieves, not one of them was a lawyer writing those agreements you have to accept before you enter some website or use software you purchased. Those lawyers have made theft legal and much of the time you have no idea what the heck they’re stealing from you.
But they are. Probably. (I say “probably” because it protects me from liability in a defamation of lawyers suit. Ali Baba never imagined that sort of thing. He only worried about scimitars.)
If the Chil Thieves (chil is forty in Farsi, and it sounds cool, like they’re land pirates, the chill thieves) were more devious they would have operated a protection racket of some kind. They’d come up with a set of commandments and make everyone follow them - at a price. You don’t want so many commandments that people can’t remember them all, but you don’t want too few so that it’s easy to abide by them. 10 is a nice round number.
That’s what the 10 Commandments are, in fact, the principles behind a protection racket from “God.” Don’t believe me? It’s right there, “you shall have no other gods before me.” It could not be more plain: don’t go running to some other god to protect you because I’ll hunt you down, I know where you live, where you work, and where your wife and kids are. Do not make me do something we might both regret.
But the really clever and insidious commandment is, “honor thy father and mother.” Of course you have a father and mother so that seems very nice, but wait! There’s more! This particular protection racket is going to be run by people we’ll just call “father,” or “pater,” or “padre” and sprinkle in a few with no real power who we’ll call “mother.” The fathers are the enforcers and the mothers are there to be the comforting shoulder. Mother will hug you and hold you tight and tell you, “listen to your father and do what he says. He wants the best for you.” And you’ll do as she says because you don’t want to disappoint mom.
So that leaves 8 more commandments to come up with. These chil thieves aren’t too creative and they only have theft on their mind, so they come up with, “thou shall not steal.” After that they have a bunch of others that all basically amount to theft of one kind or another, theft of life, coveting ( which is motive for theft), adultery…they’re all just different forms of theft. Except keeping the sabbath. So, fine, they’re not taking that from you. Just make sure you tithe at the appropriate time.
But wow! What a successful protection racket you can build on this simple set of commandments! And temples, because our father who art in Heaven still needs a place on earth for the people to come, keep the sabbath, and be reminded of the potential loss of their soul if they don’t pay up.
The great danger to this racket is independent thought and liberal education. When people forget the commandments or learn unapproved information they stop keeping the sabbath and more important, they stop tithing. Maybe they even start to place some restrictions, or worse, make you pay a tax!
Where do ordinary people learn new ideas or to maybe think for themselves? That’s right, schools and libraries. A simple solution for the schools is to put a reminder of the commandments up, maybe right next to the flag where the kids face and recite a “pledge of allegiance” every morning. Those guys think of everything, let me tell you.
Libraries are trickier. They are so full of information that it’s hard to know which books to crack down on, which ones will give kids the wrong ideas.
All this availability of information in modern society makes things hard for a simple thief. They must sometimes long for the good old days of simply threatening travelers with a cutlass. But honestly, the money is much better in this newer paradigm.