SirNitram wrote:Essentially, we should abandon civilization as it has existed for the last twelve thousand years and return to the era of living in caves and beating off those who come by our cave with sticks and rocks. Legal systems of all kinds are extraneous.
Nice slippery slope fallacy here.
Only if we accept the preposterous premise that unarmed robbery carries the death penalty. Since it does not, you're full of the brown stuff.
Actually, it could be. In some countries IIRC, drug trafficking can be punished by death. Some countries like Singapore hand out punishments for chewing gum in public! The point being that penalties are variable, and I see no particular reason to put a stop on it at the point of robbery.
There is a very good pragmatic reason for not using draconian punishments - it might stop some of them from fighting to the death when caught. But morally? Hmm... remember, how draconian a punishment is depends on the Consquences * Avoidance Difficulty. It really isn't that hard to not rob is it?
'Police are no good, we should all be armed vigilantes'. Again, nothing but arguing for the dismantlement of civilization.
Police are great for deterrence. They aren't actually very good at protecting your rights when someone does try them. In fact, apparently the US Supreme Court had at least once decreed the police are
not responsible for even protecting your
life. So who can protect them, except yourself?
While you are screaming about vigilantes, why do you think they appear? If the police can easily recover our shit soon after them being stolen, do you think we really
want to risk our lives engaging the thief (why give that worthless buttfucker a chance to kill us, eh)? If they are stealing my can of coffee, do you think I'd seriously risk engaging him? But they are stealing shit that are important to us and the police are next to totally useless in these scenarios, so we decide to defend our shit.
And here we see the absurdity of the arguments in full view: In your braindamaged view, it's not even physical, tangible, objects we're defending, but an abstract, an unproven and unverifiable we're supposed to shed human blood for.
I'd agree, but to me, the right of property and the property itself is almost one and the same.
Simply put, your entire argument is that civilization is bad, vigilantism is good.
Nice false dilemma here - artificially polarizing the situation into anarchy and being allowed to protect your own shit within your
own home.
I'd agree that Alyrium's answer here:
The next time someone tries to take something from you, just give it up nitram. because might makes right and you have no right to your own stuff.
is a straw. On the other hand, your own moral position makes it impossible to truly defend your property. You can
bluff and hope they'd be fooled. You've been lucky so far, Nitram as even you admitted. But what if they aren't?
Reading? It's a good thing. Meet the invader with a weapon. If you can immediately ascertain he's unarmed(As they quite commonly are without any kind of weapon.. Do you think the clever ones want to be blown away?), drive him off or force a surrender.
Hopefully, the "drive-off" part was
before he had stolen your shit, and not after.
Seriously, what is this 'How big were they?' bullshit? The threat of force is quite well enough no matter what the size these days. But no. Let's mindlessly advocate the only way to get our rights is to take them by brute force instead, because 12,000 years of civilization? Has to be wrong.
In general, if he's bigger than you, unless you are armed with a gun, he is more likely to choose engagement or flight than submission. If you are much bigger than him, it is a lot more likely he would evaluate Surrender as his best choice. Personally, I expect that if I confront a thief with my body, that he either laughs as he runs or he attacks me.
And at no point has it been claimed otherwise. It has been the persistant statement of those here that, in face of direct harm, you can fight back with as much force as required.
And I think you have completely misunderstood his idea. In confining your thoughts of "only option" to situations where he directly engages you, you have revealed your thought pattern.
Take your optimistic presumption he'd be unarmed. But let's say he runs instead of submitting. If you're an Olympic runner and can run him down then tackle him into the mud, great. That's what you should do. We all agree if you can do that, then you shouldn't shoot him. But suppose you are me, slow, small, wimpy. What can you do? Let him go? That means you basically hadn't defended your property rights at all. You bluffed, and he called your bluff, and you can't or won't back your bluff. So you fold.
That's also not much of an option, and proves his original point. You can't defend your property rights, simply because in this instance he happens to be fast. Ergo ... Speed made Right in this case. Not exactly very righteous an end, if you ask me.
Or let's say he's unarmed, but is willing to chance that you won't shoot (your morality basically bans you from shooting in this instance) and charges you, hoping to at least disable you to ease his escape (it'd be easier to escape if he can get say 30-60 minutes of extra head start over the police you'd call). Now what do you do? Suppose he's big, strong and fast. Is your life really in danger?
Probably not. But if you don't engage him, you aren't going to be able to beat him, so he'd get off scot-free. Again, not shooting doesn't sound like much of an option.
When you read "only option", try to read it as "only option to defend your property". It is distinct from "first and best option to defend your property".
