5 ms·

The notion of objects being replaceable and therefore you shouldn't do much when they're taken is.. I think?... an invention of risk departments at modern corpo

• ultimafan 3y ago
  Agreed, and at the risk of saying something inflammatory, it really grinds my gears when I hear people argue against lethal defense of property with comments along the lines of, "Is your X really worth more than someone's life?", as if the moral and ethical burden should fall on the victim and not the aggressor. Property and ownings aren't free, you often cannot replace them without cost or replace them at all if they are sentimental. The money I spent to buy them, and the money I will spend to replace them, did not come from nowhere, that represents time wasted out of my life, that I will never get back. In a sense someone stealing something from you is not just about the material value of what was stolen but the transfer of all the hours of your life you wasted to afford it to someone who didn't. In an abstract sense it is an indirect assault on your lifespan. The real question to thieves should be, is YOUR life less valuable to you than my possessions?
  • ajkjk 3y ago
    Well, I mostly agree although I think lethal force is often not in the 'within reason' clause of my stance. Depends on the circumstances but Americans love to jump to talking about lethal force way too fast and it's creepy. Not to mention that it results in, well, a lot of death. But it is really more than just the hours it took, or sentimental value. It is also the coherence of the worldview that "one's stuff is theirs and they'll get to keep it and the world will agree". That worldview in its own has value: it causes things to make moral sense; it's necessary for our lives to function. I would not allow it to be compromised without a defense.
    • ultimafan 3y ago
      >Well, I mostly agree although I think lethal force is often not in the 'within reason' clause of my stance. For sure, there definitely are situations in which case it would be absurd to try to justify as within reason. But I would say burglaries, home invasions, muggings, carjackings or any theft that has an implication of violence towards the victim and the like squarely fall into the "within reason" category regardless of the actual amount attempted to be stolen. >Depends on the circumstances but Americans love to jump to talking about lethal force way too fast and it's creepy. Not to mention that it results in, well, a lot of death. I know what you mean, but I think this comes about as a result of Americans being one of the few peoples in the world in the unique position where they have the right to do something about it, and many of them are afraid of this right being curbed or taken away. There are not many countries where your average everyman can just walk into a store to buy a weapon that would actually be reasonable to use in a self defense scenario without harming yourself and then use them to legally protect themselves, their families, their properties. And those are rights sadly that many people in the US campaign against even knowing that once they are gone they are not likely to get them back. In other countries, people do not bring up such topics because they know the reality of having such rights in the future are more or less an impossibility.
      • zwirbl 3y ago
        Or people in other countries are actually glad that the risk of being shot are minimal while still being safe
        • ultimafan 3y ago
          Crime exists everywhere on different scales. The genie is out of the bottle so to speak in the US, so gun control on a scale that brings America in line with other countries while also keeping citizen's rights and safety intact is imho not so much possible anymore. Does not feel like there is a good black and white answer to that, I would say the risk of being shot while not committing crimes is quite minimal in the US as well.
          • 3y ago
  • wahnfrieden 3y ago
    The largest category of property theft in the US is wage theft. Are workers justified to use threat of lethal force to regain stolen wages from their employers?
    • droopyEyelids 3y ago
      Leaving aside the question of justification, one of the mysteries of life in the United States is that with so much gun violence there is so little of what you describe.
      • kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y ago
        That becomes less of a mystery when you look at the gun violence details. A significant chunk is self-inflicted, and another significant chunk is gang related. Remove those and that leaves a surprisingly small amount of gun violence when you consider there are 1.5 guns per American.
      • nradov 3y ago
        In the vast majority of cases when people use guns to prevent theft, no shots are fired. Usually brandishing a weapon is sufficient. These incidents happen all the time, yet they don't appear in any official statistics.
    • ultimafan 3y ago
      Wage theft is abhorrent but does not have the implication of violence behind it, so I would say no, take it to the law and go work somewhere else. It's a far cry from knowing a stranger has broken into your house and violated one of the few sanctuaries you have and potentially put your family at risk, and left behind the trauma of family members never feeling safe in that home again (and that is something I can tell you from experience). You do not know what he is thinking or what his motivations are. You do not know how he will react to your presence or to the presence of your family, but you do know for him to have broken in he is not in the right state of mind and his reasoning skills have issues.
      • 3y ago
  • i8comments 3y ago
    Lethal force is only to be used in self defense, when your life is truly threatened and you truly have no other way of stopping them.
    • ultimafan 3y ago
      I don't know the context in which you mean that, so maybe I am misunderstanding you. But in my eyes someone who has chosen to commit theft on your property is already showing enough of a blatant disregard for social norms and the safety of you or your family that your life would be considered threatened. It's not possible to know their intentions or motivation and I wouldn't pass judgement on someone who chose lethal force in that kind of situation.
      • jemfinch 3y ago
        For what it's worth, the only state in the United States which agrees with your philosophy is Texas. Every other state requires an imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm to justify the use of lethal force. (And honestly, Texas only holds that position because of its huge size and ranching background, where cattle rustling stood a major risk to the state's economy.)
    • balderdash 3y ago
      100% agree - but I think that extends to when your life was threatened in defense of your property
  • Obscurity4340 3y ago
    I hate that argument too because it very callously disregards the assymetry of intention and information when in fact you almost can't responsibly assume its anything other than life or death. Its so very easy for the barristers perched up in their High Courts to dictate homilies while after the fact of someone trying to kill you and they don't want to put them back in prison or get the press hounding them due to statistical irrelevancies although that should not be totally ignored in other more appropriate forums for such civil discussion
  • okasaki 3y ago
    Unfortunately, ultimafan, we can't just kill people for wasting our time.
  • chmod600 3y ago
    TR went to significant risk and effort to retrieve his boat and see that the thieves were jailed. It would have been much easier - expected, even - that he would have just shot them dead. Of course not everyone is TR. He is a high moral standard to live up to, and he was also a lot stronger than most then and certainly most today.
• svat 3y ago
  The article has this quote from Roosevelt: > “In any wild country where the power of law is little felt or heeded, and where every one has to rely upon himself for protection, men soon get to feel that it is in the highest degree unwise to submit to any wrong…no matter what cost of risk or trouble. To submit tamely and meekly to theft or to any other injury is to invite almost certain repetition of the offense, in a place where self-reliant hardihood and the ability to hold one’s own under all circumstances rank as the first of virtues.”
• vkou 3y ago
  > an invention of risk departments at modern corporations. No, it's an invention of an industrialized society that, for the most part, has material goods in relative abundance. Very few people are actually in a situation where some burglar is in a position to ruin them to destitution. We aren't subsistence peasants, for whom the theft of a farm animal could have been the difference between life and starvation. Violence, inflicted either by you, or at you, on the other hand, can very well be the difference between life and ruin, and it's baffling how so many people seem to treat the use of deadly force as if its some kind of video game, or Stephen Seagal flick.
  • ultimafan 3y ago
    >Very few people are actually in a situation where some burglar is in a position to ruin them to destitution. We aren't subsistence peasants, for whom the theft of a farm animal could have been the difference between life and starvation. Don't about 60% of Americans live pay check to pay check? Though anecdotal what I tend to see while lurking is that HN is a bit of a bubble. There are plenty of people for whom the theft of their car, which they rely on completely because of the difficulty of living in many parts of the US without one can lead to financial ruin. And that is not mentioning the future potential of your life lost by any trauma associated with knowing your home is not safe and someone has broken into it, and potential income you will lose struggling with those thoughts or the anxiety of it.
    • vkou 3y ago
      > Don't about 60% of Americans live pay check to pay check? It's way less than that, closer to 20%. And if you're in that kind of financial situation, you won't be able to afford killing someone over property. If you're that precarious, even if you're eventually 100% cleared of all the legal questions, the costs/time spent on it will ruin you. That kind of poverty is highly correlated with... Having a lot of difficulties navigating the justice system.
      • ultimafan 3y ago
        That's fair. I've never been in such a situation, and hope that I never will. When my family faced a break in we were thankfully not home at the time, did not have much of value that could have been or was lost either. But I would still not pass moral judgement on someone in a similar situation who did happen to be at home and choose to protect their property. And I do find it sad that the legal system would potentially ruin their life over it.
• Simon_ORourke 3y ago
  True but there's also been apocryphal stories of burglars suing homeowners for injury on their property when stealing their stuff.
• rjmill 3y ago
  I see it more deeply ingrained in martial-arts/self-defense culture. First lesson is often to avoid violence by whatever means necessary. You don't know if the thief has a weapon or backup on standby. Your wallet is much cheaper than the risk of serious injury or death. The "hands on" self defense skills are a last resort.