Well considering that the IRA only targets the millitary. And has publicly apologized every time a non military or government target was hit. And considering that the ULA targets innocent civilians. Yes it would make a difference. But, we are getting away from the debate on stealing. I’ll address your earlier post later today.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Libertarian *
**
That’s utterly absurd. People were feeding themselves for thousands of years before the concept of profit was dreamed up. Are you really suggesting that money is a more fundamental need than food?
What? I suggest what I said and nothing more.
Yes, there has been food for as long as there has been biological life, but not the food that OldScratch wanted to loot.
You see, if they don’t get you your food, you’ll have to get it for yourself.
Do you think it’s easier for people to feed themselves now than it was thousands of years ago, since specialization and capitalism have allowed everyone not to have to grow and/or raise their own?
I don’t know how it is now, but at one point, the Irish were practically slaves.
Also, I wouldn’t say the IRA always strikes people who aren’t innocent. When they planted the bomb that killed Lord Mountbatten (uncle of Prince Philip), two of his grandsons were aboard. They were twins, both sixteen. One was injured and the other was killed.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pldennison *
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I’d say specialization makes it easier for people to feed themselves. As for capitalism, it seems to depend on who you are.
Spiritus Mundi:
As I understand your argument, you are essentially saying that copying intellectual property without payment is stealing because it is in violation of the law. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
But what of the morality of copying intellectual property without payment? Suppose I further restrict my hypothetical intellectual property system to one that is identical to our current system, except for a single difference. The difference is that the act of copying some intellectual property without payment by some people under some circumstances (call this act A) is universally permitted. Since this system is at least as good as the current one at promoting progress in science and the arts, A cannot be a morally wrong act in this system. As a result, A cannot be considered stealing in this system either, since stealing is a morally wrong act.
But wait! Isn’t morality independent of laws? Surely if A is moral in a system whose only difference from ours is that A is permitted, then A is moral in our system, and cannot be appropriately called stealing.
Well…Don’t overlook the idea that you can’t steal from anyone or any institution that doesn’t embrace the concept of ownership. Some (they’re dwindling fast) cultures today still do not subscribe to the ownership concept.
How the “it’s mine” thing started no doubt was the result of a quantum leap in self-centeredness (or some other “centricity”). when someone thought "Gee…with [insert posession here] I can do even more for myself or family or whatever group the person wanted to support.
Nonetheless, some societies picked up on it and the people with Stars on their bellies had more than the ones that didn’t and posessiveness took off like a new Pentium chip.
From then on Stealing became synonymous with BAD. So’s I thinks.
Wow. you made my pathetic post seem even more so by rendering it redundant in the face or your impeccably worded retort. I kneel. 
Good afternoon to everybody.
I have been a lurker on this message board for many months. This has led to the slightly surreal feeling in posting this message that I know many of you, despite the fact that you clearly never will have heard of me. It also means that I’m fairly well up on etiquette around here. In particular I never like it when a poster flagrantly ignores the OP in order to fly off at an irrelevent tangent.
Nonetheless the comment that inspired me to end my self-imposed silence was this one:
** Oldscratch: “Well considering that the IRA only targets the millitary. And has publicly apologized every time a non military or government target was hit. And considering that the ULA targets innocent civilians. Yes it would make a difference. But, we are getting away from the debate on stealing. I’ll address your earlier post later today.” **
Hmm. I’d like to declare first that half my family are Irish and indeed my great-grandfather was part of the original IRA and always claimed to be first to Michael Collins when he was assisinated. This comment however was out of line.
I am British and have lived in London all my life. One impression we very much have over here is that Americans do not understand the Irish situation at all. This is not an attitude helped by these kind of comments. The situation is immensely complicated but one unequivocable fact is that the IRA do target “innocent civilians”. Of course they sometimes disagree about the word “innocent”. When a bomb is planted in a tube station in London - as one was just the other week - how is that “targeting the military”?
I have learned a great deal of respect for your opinions, Oldscratch. Please do not disappoint me.
Thankyou for indulging my diversion. Hopefully now that I have emerged from my lurking status, you will be seeing more of me. I’m not promising anything though!
As regards the OP: FWIW I have distinctly left-wing tendencies (many of my friends know me as a bit of a commie). These have however mellowed over the last couple of years as I have been involved in studying economics and finance at a post-graduate level - studying these subjects has given me a slightly different perspective.
From an economic viewpoint alone, theft is certainly a non-optimal allocation method of wealth (as pointed out in excellent posts earlier by, amongst others, tymp and lemur866). I think however that one argument oldscratch and Mr Feely are using is that it is not necessarily a sub-optimal allocation of utility. An optimal utility distribution however will necessarily be dependent on your world view and belief system; different axioms lead to essentially logical arguments yielding different answers.
As for the old chestnut of who owns a public company’s profits - why the shareholders do of course! In the UK at least 40% of equity is owned by pension funds and 30% by “ordinary people” via Life Assurance companies. A further whack is owned by other types of funds in which the little guy has a direct interest in. If nothing else this shows that to attempt to distance the stockmarket from the public is a futile exercise.
(I do note that in the case of a public co however, ownership is divorced from control; some profits are retained for investment in the business. The implications for that are probably best left for another post.)
regards,
Patrick
Kabbes - welcome aboard. A very polite first post, considering.
Oldscratch - re the IRA, you posted bullshit and I’m bloody annoyed. Where the hell do you get your information? Doesn’t CNN cover little incidents like one-ton van bombs going off in city centres in other countries, or does your socialist worldview conveniently filter out stuff like that?
Well. I don’t want to turn this into a discussion on terrorism. If anyone want’s to start that one feel free. Also, I’m feeling sick today. I’m about to go home and sleep. So I’m not going to address any of the comments on stealing. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow, if I don’t feel like I’m about to puke my guts out.
However, I do want to throw out two comments about the IRA. 1. The bomb last week wasn’t planted by them.
2. They have generally warned authorities anytime a bombwas planted. They have apologized when they accidentally kill civilians. This is a war to them. Innocents will die. That doesn’t make it right. But, considering what the Caholics have been put through, I can understand their anger. I’m not going to mention terrorism or the IRA any more in this thread. If you wat to raise any points, again start a new one.
Oh and kabbes. Welcome aboard. Great first post.
oldscratch:
Will you be answering my question tomorrow, too?
Mr Feely:
You misunderstand if you think I am arguing that stealing is immoral because it breaks the law. It is more accurate to say that theft does not occur when an individual freely gives a thing away. In the hypothetical society you create, people who place their work in an environment where the explicitely established rules of conduct allow others to take it without paying are giving their work away. In our society, the laws serve to make explicit the protections due intellectual property, therefore creators of intellectual property who do not explicitely waive said protections cannot be said to be giving their product away freely.
Therefore, those who take said product are thieves.
The law serves only to make clear the expectations of the owner/originator of the intellectual property.
If you will go back to my very first post in this thread (you remember, the one that dealt directly with the question asked in the OP), you will find that I make no reference ot the law in my argument that theft is immoral.
As promised I am answering. My god was I sick yesterday. I was suprised I was able to post even semi-coherently.
Anyway. I’ll revise my point slightly. I tend to get somewhat polemical in GD.
If someone [cough]Bill H[cough cough] comes down and starts preaching the fire and brimstone on stealing. Most working people should in fact call them for having somewhat misplaced priorites.
This whole thing is dumb.
If you can justify stealing as reapportioning of wealth, then you can justify murder as reapportioning of power.
Society puts rules in place to protect it’s individual members. Society, pretty much across the board, believes that individuals have the right to own posessions. You are ultimately arguing against that right. You are arguing against the desires of the vast majority of people. And you are arguing on the side of wrong. You might as well argue that murder is appropriate. Oh, I see above that you already have.
Well, if you want a system with no laws, go move to Antartica and set up camp. But don’t try to break my system. Or the system of every other civilisation on the face of this planet.
Now I think we’re getting to the heart of it.
Well, I appreciate the change in wording. However, I disagree that it is incumbent upon working people to alter their morality to accomodate material envy.