Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thieves and other "bad actors" are often a consequence of deeper underlying problems. People don't tend to steal that much when they are economically comfortable. OTOH with no legal resort to get sustinence, you're guaranteed to get people to resort to illegal means. I'm rather baffled how educated adult human beings keep on analyzing the world using moralistic fairytale level concepts like "bad actors" or "evildoers…
Nah, thieves are scum. People don't steal cars and bikes to buy food, they do it because they're selfish and want a shortcut to get the things they want. In any first world country there are ways to get food without resorting to taking other peoples' possessions that they worked hard for. There are many people out there having a really hard time who would never even think about stealing because they were raised with…
Re: Passwordless: a different kind of hell?
#61It’s a matter of degree. We often put people in the position where they need to do some pretty terrible, degrading work just to eat. In my view as the alternatives you have get worse, it gets less morally questionable to steal. Furthermore, I think it should largely be evaluated by the harm it does to others, e.g. stealing a car from a sheltered rich person who can afford an uber in an emergency does them much less harm than from a poor person, who may not be able to get to work and put food on the table. Im not even saying it’s fine to steal the rich person’s car, just relatively okay. Thieves are definitely selfish, but so is everyone else in our free market system. We consider it a virtue when the right people do it.
Look, most of the time I agree that like, fuck thieves. I just also agree think that the underlying issues are inequality, alienation, and other socioeconomic shit, and that condemning thieves morally is counterproductive because it distracts from the useful changes to prevent them from becoming thieves.