Your needlessly ridged, hyper literal view of the world is going to be problematic eventually. (lol ask me how I know. )
Making an unfair offer to someone, after lying and/or gaslighting them when they're desperate or vulnerable, and THEN working incredibly hard to prevent them from undoing or recovering from a mistake. Might not meet your strict definition of stealing (still possibly fraud which would count as theft), it's clearly deep into the ethics of stealing.
Which is the authors point.
The thesis isn't a legal one "these people have committed the crime of theft". It's an ethical one, what these people are doing is equivalent to stealing; and a just society would prevent them from getting away with this asshattery.
Making an unfair offer to someone, after lying and/or gaslighting them when they're desperate or vulnerable, and THEN working incredibly hard to prevent them from undoing or recovering from a mistake. Might not meet your strict definition of stealing (still possibly fraud which would count as theft), it's clearly deep into the ethics of stealing.
Which is the authors point.
The thesis isn't a legal one "these people have committed the crime of theft". It's an ethical one, what these people are doing is equivalent to stealing; and a just society would prevent them from getting away with this asshattery.