I seem to remember spending five years following the story of someone who did terrible things because he couldn’t afford cancer treatment…
For some reason you believe passive selfishness - not exerting themselves enough to actively aid other people - to be a crime that justifies somebody’s murder, while active selfishness - murdering and robbing innocent bystanders who did not create your predicament but have what you need - is not.
You would have humanity reduce itself to the level of feral dogs, snapping and tearing at each other to feed themselves. Nobody wins in such a scenario, not even you and your merry band of raiders. You’d probably be the first to die, because a belief in preying on innocent bystanders to preserve your own life makes you an active threat to everyone around you. Nobody wants you around if the only thing stopping you murdering them for their kidneys is that you don’t need one… yet.
WW didn’t get into the meth business to pay for his treatment. He was terminal, and he was trying to make sure his family had enough to survive on after he died. So yeah, that’s a clever story as far as it goes… it just doesn’t go very far.
I know, but for us commies it’s still a funny dig at your health care system ![]()
However, it goes a little further than you’re implying. Did you read the comments?
A false distinction, since the so-called "passive selfish " people are not passive - they are at a the apex of a system designed to exploit others for their benefit. They don’t use violence much because they don’t need to. Personal violence is put in a special category not because it’s worse, but because it is the resort of the otherwise powerless.
This is really classic libertarian thinking. The only real function they want the government to have is to stop is any attempt by the impoverished and disenfranchised to use the one thing they have left after everything else has been stripped away, violent uprising. Any other sort of ruthlessness and selfishness is fine, but not that because its the last resort of the desperate and might actually inconvenience the wealthy and powerful, who don’t need it.
As opposed to your ideal of a society where the dogs on the bottom just lie there and let the feral dogs on top eat them alive? If the people on top don’t want the war of all against all, then they shouldn’t fire the first shot.
A society that is killing someone for profit is a society that no longer deserves the loyalty or obedience of the person it is killing. It has unilaterally thrown out any social contract with that person at that point.