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ruveyn
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28 Jun 2011, 3:29 pm

LKL wrote:
A couple of years ago I had two loads of clean laundry stolen from the back of my car (at the time, I was driving a 15 year old Honda Civic that had been broken into so many times that the locks no longer worked). Aside from the clothes on my back, it was basically all that I had to wear. What cost me several hundred dollars to replace probably all, or mostly, ended up in a dumpster somewhere. Some people really just don't give a sh** about how much they hurt other people.


Welcome to the human condition.

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LKL
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28 Jun 2011, 7:14 pm

Some humans are parasitic, yes. Many species, in fact, have parasitic elements - those who steal nest sites or mating opportunities that one individual has worked to obtain, for example. Encouraging a culture of 'looking out for number 1,' or 'Viva Yo,' only encourages this.



CrinklyCrustacean
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30 Jun 2011, 7:56 am

Oodain wrote:
Moog wrote:

Not really, cos I can't do anything about my thermal energy dissipating, and besides, if it didn't I'd die of overheating. You could say that the universe is stealing your thermal energy, but there's no lawyer would take that case. :lol:

There's a big difference between shedding 'my' matter and energy naturally, and having someone take a chunk of it against my will.

I don't think anyone considers air conditioning as a form of stealing. Maybe we should try and convince people they are having their thermal energy stolen in workplaces and business premises. I can see humour in that.


didnt you borrow the energy from the universe to begin with?

*mutters something about conservation of energy...* :lol:



TheRedKipper
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04 Jul 2011, 10:03 am

I had two video tapes stolen from me when I was a kid. They are replaced now.

I admit to stealing stuff when I was little.



iamnotaparakeet
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05 Jul 2011, 11:16 pm

When working as guard of a fireworks tent, which requires staying 24/7, I chased away some brats who were going to spray paint the tent walls and later my wife and I chased out a jerk who was attempting to be a thief, my wife saying "Hey! Get out of here" and me yelling "I have a rifle!" while I got the rifle ready if needed. They evacuated rather than attempting to persist and so no killing was necessary, so that was pretty good.



Philologos
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05 Jul 2011, 11:22 pm

I trust you are not a smoker!



RedHanrahan
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05 Jul 2011, 11:38 pm

Philologos wrote:
I trust you are not a smoker!


I have the power to resist this one temtation, just :wink:

peace j


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iamnotaparakeet
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06 Jul 2011, 1:49 pm

Philologos wrote:
I trust you are not a smoker!


I saw my dad die for over half a year of lung cancer. I was already opposed to smoking before then, but that settled it for me.



iamnotaparakeet
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30 Jul 2011, 8:28 am

Vexcalibur wrote:
iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Vexcalibur wrote:
Theft? You and I both live inside the system, so we would both agree that theft is unacceptable. However, for the guys who stole your stuff, they don't care. They got out of the "system". Survival of the fittest is truth, but what social Darwinists don't get is that men can actually redefine their environment. What the thieves did was to notice that they can't survive in the environment that was set by society. By ignoring the concept of property, they become able to survive without the blessing of the society.

All in all, it does not matter if we think it is unacceptable, it will continue to happen and to suggest changes to society to make it impossible to happen won't work, because thieves are already outside of our society. Ok, there is something that we could do to remove theft, and it would be to remove the concept of property so that theft would be impossible, but we do not want that, do we?


Neither you nor I know the economic state of the thieves with any certainty, and yet you are willing to assume off the bat that they're some sort of "noble survivor".

You are wrong my friend, I never attributed nobility to their actions. To me (and you) their actions are crap. And they are evil and a very big inconvenient.

There is nothing noble in their decision to prefer the good old violent way to access resources rather than accepting our arbitrary conventions about property. There is probably nothing noble in the way these arbitrary conventions were set either (I guess that a lot of people were tired of having to constantly fight for things so they, as a society agreed to make theft illegal).

There are thieves of all economic levels. I think that many thieves are actually struggling people, but then we have thieves that already possess a great monetary position and continue stealing.

The decision to just dismiss the notion of property, I would say is composed of many possible reasons. A common one should be that the individual is unable to perform well under our rules. Whether it is because of lazyness, a disability, a society bias against them or a broken economic system that does not allow people to climb from the bottom by just hard work. Or maybe they just want the "thrill" of a thief's life. Or maybe they want 10 times more money than they do, even though they are actually in a good, decent economic position already.


Quote:
As for the not wanting to "remove the concept of poverty"
I meant to say property.

Quote:
You are wrong my friend, I never attributed nobility to their actions. To me (and you) their actions are crap. And they are evil and a very big inconvenient.
On the other hand, those people that decided to live more like animals and be thieves probably think the same of those who don't.




ruveyn wrote:
Even without property there would still be killing which is theft of life. So theft will not go away even in a society without property. Edit: And that's actually what I said in the first place.

ruveyn

That's interesting.

And murder is really something that you cannot discourage people of doing. We have the psychos who get almost-sexual pleasure from it. Then on the more normal side of things, crimes for advancing position in a hierarchy will always happen as long as we have organization in society. And even if we get rid of that. Crimes of passion will occur for as long as there is some emotional part left in humans.


Arbitrary? You have items stolen from you and watch how arbitrary you think it is that theft is wrong.



ruveyn
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30 Jul 2011, 8:30 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Philologos wrote:
I trust you are not a smoker!


I saw my dad die for over half a year of lung cancer. I was already opposed to smoking before then, but that settled it for me.


Obi-Wan was wise, not to smoke. I kicked smoking back in 1962 and I have not regretted it. Better never to smoke at all than to kick the habit.

ruveyn



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30 Jul 2011, 9:11 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
When working as guard of a fireworks tent, which requires staying 24/7, I chased away some brats who were going to spray paint the tent walls and later my wife and I chased out a jerk who was attempting to be a thief, my wife saying "Hey! Get out of here" and me yelling "I have a rifle!" while I got the rifle ready if needed. They evacuated rather than attempting to persist and so no killing was necessary, so that was pretty good.


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30 Jul 2011, 10:01 am

I don't think theft is never right. I don't care if you're dying. You don't take what isn't yours. And if you do, you'd better accept what you get in return.



Vexcalibur
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30 Jul 2011, 11:08 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Arbitrary? You have items stolen from you and watch how arbitrary you think it is that theft is wrong.

I have had items stolen from me plenty of times and so did my family.

It doesn't change the fact that our definition of property is arbitrary. We consider theft immoral because we were raised in a world in which the concept works the way we defined it does. But that concept is not universal, pretty clearly there are human groups out there in which property does not work that way. And there are animals in which you being able to take out stuff from other by being stronger physically or mentally is fair game.

We set the concept of property probably because it was too tiresome to constantly defend our stuff and fighting for it was also tiresome , even for the strong guys. So we decided that once something is property of a guy it is bad to take it, no matter the guy is weaker than you. And it works great. Except that it makes us vulnerable to thieves. In fact, our system rewards people that break those conventions because they have more way to get those stuff. So we invented punishment and thus law and religion. But then again, it doesn't seem to work to stop them.


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30 Jul 2011, 11:16 am

Keet, is this what you were referring to? I don't see him saying anywhere that there are poor honest thieves and a lot of what he is saying makes sense when it comes to the concept of property.



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30 Jul 2011, 4:10 pm

Maybe in cases of survival, but like, I wouldn't steal to survive from a person who was also trying to survive.



ruveyn
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30 Jul 2011, 5:56 pm

donnie_darko wrote:
Maybe in cases of survival, but like, I wouldn't steal to survive from a person who was also trying to survive.


Steal food from overweight people, but never from skinny people.

ruveyn