Comment by ncallaway
5 years ago
> The human life of the people looting your property is more important than the well-being of you and your family who will be in debt after that, I see.
Your argument here seems to be that human life is worth less that the value of looted goods. So, if someone looted a TV, you think their life holds less value than a TV?
I want to interpret your reply charitably, but I’m really struggling with this sentence.
The answer seems self evident: Yes. Obviously. Without a doubt of course a human life (even a life that is doing something like looting) is worth more than the value of what it’s carrying.
Should we stop someone looting things? Yes. Should we kill them just over the theft? No, of course not.
Having been around that culture quite a bit, I think it's safe to say that quite a few people believe that yes, personal property has enough of a sanctity/value that it's worth capital punishment to enforce that as a societal norm.
The logical hole in this is that when one traces back "why" personal property has such a high value, the only source of its value comes back to it being thought of as an inseparable part of the life-experience of the person who owns it. To contrive an example, let's say someone's a pre-computer author (i.e. before easily duplicable backups), writing one of those life's-work novels, and they have a single copy of the manuscript of their magnum opus - to threaten to destroy the manuscript is to threaten their life's work; to threaten everything they poured their life's passion and effort into. It's conceivable that to destroy it might literally kill them by driving them to suicide.
But that's exactly the hole in the logic: at it's most extreme where property really is equatable with the value of a human life, the only thing that gives this property any absolute moral value is the value of the human life and passion that went into building it. If you've then got a conflict between "a holder of property" and "someone who wants to destroy that property", really it's just a threat on your "life".
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One is then simply asking a question of whether it's justified to take another person's life to protect your own.
Most secular ethics frameworks say no; christianity and buddhism repeatedly and explicitly say no, over and over again, including direct quotes from christ himself.
> Your argument here seems to be that human life is worth less that the value of looted goods
I do not subscribe to the notion of universal value. I do think however that for someone the value of looted goods can be greater than the random person who looted them, surely you must also agree with this.
Anyway, looting has effects in the real world too, it is not only "oh no, I lost some value", it is "they looted my shop so my family might go hungry".
> Should we stop someone looting things? Yes. Should we kill them just over the theft? No, of course not.
If we have the option to stop them (along with the rest of the looters) without killing them then sure.
> I do think however that for someone the value of looted goods can be greater than the random person who looted them, surely you must also agree with this.
Oh, no! I absolutely don’t agree with this! I would actually stop interacting with someone who agreed with that sentiment, mentally tagging them as a sociopath with no respect for human life.
Do you really believe that there is no human on earth that believes that the value of the goods looted from them is higher than the one who looted them? If so (no offence intended) I think that you might be detached from society.
> mentally tagging them as a sociopath
You would discriminate against people solely due to their feelings - something which they have no control over and does not affect you?
2 replies →
If your entire store gets looted or burned down, completely eviscerating your livelihood (potentially leading to homelessness for you and your family) or threatening your well being and safety then it's probably not about one guy carrying a TV.