Sir Thomas Sean Connery said:
Well now you're just being silly.
It says right in the OP: For this exercise, there is no connection that would point this at you. You could walk away with the money and no one would know it was you.
So read a bit more.
Second, just because they're a business doesn't mean I should just bend over and say "Well, they gotta make money!" No. Fuck that. They have to be held to a standard the same as any other business. Granted, the position that rich = evil is stupid. However, equally stupid is the opposing position that being a business means everything they do is their right and the costumers just have to take it or leave.
Third, I wouldn't feel righteous either way. I simply wouldn't care because in the modern world, most if not all banks are extremely unkind entities. They take houses, sell bad investments and generally screw people. Does that make it morally right? Probably not. If upon reading the article that someone (me) had taken money from an ATM, you wanted to shed a tear and damn me to hell, you have the right. I would feel nothing.
Finally, I get what you're saying, but I'm just not seeing fees going up from that tiny of an amount. If they did, myself and many others would simply change banks as you suggested originally. The bank would know this would happen and I doubt they would be willing to lose people over 200,000 dollars or less. It just doesn't make sense from an economic perspective. There's also a massive difference between a loan that they can hold you to and crack down on, and a chunk of money they can do nothing about.
So I reread the OP and you are 100% correct the OP says that no connection would be make to you, but it still says nothing about you knowing it or having guarantees of this. There's no voice of God telling your hypothetical self the rules of the hypothetical scenario. In the interests of not being silly though if you can honestly think of a situation in public where you would know 100% that you couldn't be caught for breaking the law then I'll just accept your awareness of the future.
The position that the consumer should just accept the terms of the business or leave is stupid? Why? No one is forcing you to accept the terms, there are no guns to kittens heads saying open an account or the kitten gets it. You say if fees go up people will switch banks, so you accept that you don't have to bank with this bank that you've decided is ripping you off even though they told you everything about their fees and you accepted it.
Yes banks aren't nice, no one is going to disagree with you there, that being said they take homes from people who can't/won't/aren't paying for them, I do feel for the people who loss their homes to the banks, but it was spelt out in black and white that if you don't pay the bank will take the house back. Yes the bank lent the money in the first place, but where is the personal responsibility for borrowing too much and not budgeting for interest increases, loss of a job, unforseen circumstances, etc? Two wrongs don't make a right, and stealing from someone just because they've done other people wrong still doesn't make it ok. If you're going to steal the money don't hide behind "the banks are evil and steal from everyone so its not bad to steal from them" because that's bullshit, at least be honest, you'd steal because you're greedy and want money that you don't have to work for.
Your last point... again you're assuming you and everyone else in this scenario would have some sort of meta-knowledge, just like in real life you wouldn't know why the bank increased its fees, just that it did, or maybe it'd increase its interest rates. From your posts so far it seems far more likely that you wouldn't change anything you'd suck it up, and ***** and resent the banks for taking more money from you. If more people did actually vote with their feet we would see some big changes in the banking industry, sadly though alot of people talk big but just don't follow through.
As for being unable to do anything about missing money... I've laid out two possible options, increase fees (even if its just 5 cents, a bank with 1 million customers each paying 5 cents more would make an extra $200,000 in just 4 months) or increase interest. Additionally they could not increase staff pay for a quarter, charge more for other services, cut spending on more profit creating works, etc. There's alot a multi-billion dollar company can do to get back that money and you wouldn't even notice.
