If they give it (the same) definition, it doesn’t make it wrong or invalid either.
Murder and manslaughter are both unlawful (but perhaps not completely unjustified in the case of the second). Just that there are additional elements in the case of murder as mentioned above. So the distinction still stands and is ancient.
All that shows that property and even life aren’t really absolutes.
Wouldn’t liberty be a condition of society anyway?
The typical answer to your question here is that there is an additional consideration that theft doesn’t satify that rape and attempted murder do.
And that is the question of being over-powered. When one overpowers another, they put the overpowered in a state of utter helplessness where that person can do anything to them, up to and including killing them.
Putting someone in an overpowered state gives you life and death power over them. This is why the woman being raped can shoot to kill and the person being attacked with murderous intent can do the same.
But there is not necessarily any overpowering involved in a theft. Usually its done by sleuth without confrontation.
If overpowering a person was involved (by threat or applied violence), then it would be robbery anyway.
But what when you are confronting the thief in his act?
Now assume the bestolen person uses force against the thief, would that be a crime he should be prosecuted for.
There’s no such thing as a wrong or invalid definition. But that wasn’t my point. My point was that the age of the traditional distinction between murder and manslaughter is irrelevant.
As I said before, the distinction is irrelevant in light of the definition that I’m using for “murder”, namely “unlawful/unjustified killing”. What you seem to be doing is insisting that my definition for “murder” is somehow wrong. It isn’t - it’s just different from the traditional definition.
The difference between burglarly, theft and robbery. (In this link, please, disconsider the government part. Stick to the definitions).
I picture this situation as the thief grabbing the bubblegum and starting to run away. In that scenario, he used an amount of force (taking others property without asking). Naturally, the shopkeeper can demand the thief to put it back, probably to no avail. In that case the thief is violently retaining the shopkeeper’s property without his consent, so he can use a larger amount of force to try to retrieve his property, because just asking was not enough. If the thief pulls a gun, there is no way to know if he’ll actually shoot or not. The gun may be unloaded. Heck, it may be even a toy gun. But, in this situation, the thief is obviously forcing the impression on the shopkeeper that the latter’s life is in danger. In that case, shooting the thief down would be justifiable. Is this perfect? What is perfection? Does it even exist? How to measure the exact amount of force that is just to defend oneself? Well, you can more or less define situations like I did above, but there’s no rocket science here. I don’t think these kind of arguments prove or disprove any law theory. Which is the best law theory? If you ask me, naturally, I’ll say that is law based on the NAP. It would bring perfect justice? Well, I don’t think this concept is possible, but I can argue that it is the most just and logical that I know of.
Anome said:
"
And that is the question of being over-powered. When one overpowers another, they put the overpowered in a state of utter helplessness where that person can do anything to them, up to and including killing them.
Putting someone in an overpowered state gives you life and death power over them. This is why the woman being raped can shoot to kill and the person being attacked with murderous intent can do the same.
But there is not necessarily any overpowering involved in a theft. Usually its done by sleuth without confrontation."
Certainly, in the case where someone steals a piece of gum, according to the standard you have just given, you are correct. However, armed robberies occur every day. SO basically, it is not OK to shoot someone who steals your stuff unless they are armed it would seem.
The other examples I gave, home invasion (armed) and car jacking (armed), and I’ll add another one, armed robbery on the street, would all be cases where you can shoot them. A classic stick up job, gun out, give me your wallet deal would be the a street robbery scenario.
We can even take the gun out of the equation and say a purse snatching, or an unarmed car jacking, and an unarmed home invasion. In every case, the person can physically overpower the victim without using a weapon. There are many examples of people simply being beaten down by bigger people and having their stuff taken.
Even without force, or a weapon, I would still think it was OK to shoot someone to stop them from stealing my stuff. A very realistic scenario:
You have just bought a new car with your hard earned money. You pull up to a mail box and get out to mail something. A theif jumps in the drivers seat and tries to take off. In that scenario I have no problem pulling the trigger.
Another scenariothat is realistic:
Many people in america leave their doors open. You have your door open and some stranger walks in, looks around, and not realizing anyone is home, starts looting. You walk in on him and pull your gun. He starts to run with your item, and as he clears your door you manage to shoot him in the back. Even though this introduces the problem of trespassing on property as well, still, I don’t see a problem with this at all.
And so going back to the mild infringement, someone comes into your store and takes some item. They are on your property, you don’t know their intent or whether or not they are armed, and they are running away with your stuff. In this case I refuse to stand there and watch my hard earned cash walk out the door. At the same time, trying to subdue this guy physically puts be in danger of being shot or stabbed. I’d rather brandish my firearms, have him put it back, or hold him in place until security arrives. If he doesn’t give me my property back I have no problem shooting him, if even just to wound him in the leg or something.
I do see the merit of your arguements. Auto said that killing someone takes away all off of their rights, fair enough. Rape does not take away all of someones rights and yet most I have asked people will say its ok to shoot a rapist trying to rape you. Still, I can see where one would say, on the face of it, too much force was used in a given instance.
Anenome said that there must be a case where someone is being overpowerred. OK, it seems like a reasonable standard. People can over power you with or without weaponry, and very rapidly.
My standard, I guess, will be the initiation of aggression. I am just very hard on aggression and I think that the society that tolerates aggression and protects the rights of those who openly initiate aggression against people, helps to grow aggression.
An example of this today: In criminal circles, when you shoot someone and you have a good chance of getting caught, you shoot below the waist so that it is not considerred attempted murder. Criminals are known to exploit these kinds of laws and push what they can get away with rightup to the edge. If a criminal could be killed for any kind of attack, they would certainly think twice IMO.
Clayton - I agree with many of your points, and disagree with some of them.
I think its extremely important to define one’s terms. I have sometimes found myself arguing with someone, only to find out through discussion that we actually agreed. Our definitions for words were different.
To me . . . its basic and simple. ‘Liberty’ is having the ability to live one’s life as they choose, as long as it doesn’t harm or infringe on the right of others to do the same. Such Liberty provides the framework for living up to one’s full potential - - if they choose to do so.
Human beings get the things they need to survive from nature and combine it with their own labor. We can get physical goods by either producing them, trading what we’ve produced for the production of others, or by taking it from others.
Criminal gangs such as the mafia use violence and fraud to take what they want. They are nothing compared to the criminals controlling governments. I don’t know how many people the mafia has killed - - hundreds maybe ? This is nothing compared to the hundreds of millions killed by governments. The advantage that government has over the mafia is that they are able to employ large scale sophisticated propaganda. Its my personal experience that the vast majority of people would rather work to produce what they need and/or trade with others peacefully. There is a social, perhaps biological, aversion to killing other human beings - - for most people. If their physical survival needs are met and they aren’t under direct physical threat - - it takes a lot of mental conditioning to get people to attack & harm others (bootcamp, propaganda of various types, etc). The controllers of government are able to invent righteous causes and ‘enemies’ to scare and enrage people on a vast scale. The people, many of them now soldiers, may head off to defend word concepts that theyve never really even examined, and harm others who they had never met before.
So my definition of “Liberty” is likely far different from whatever was said to be a justification for Vietnam, Iraq, Libya or any number of wars around the world.
Yes, I view Liberty is an ultimate value - - in the way I define the concept for myself.
But the root problem is that defining what is “merely living one’s life” versus “infringing on the right of others to do the same” is extremely complex and discussions of the subject tend to be fraught with special pleading. Such a definition of liberty, then, is next to useless because it doesn’t tell us anything about what’s wrong with the current order. USG claims that invading Iraq and Afghanistan “to keep America safe” is just living without infringing on others. The Iraqis and Afghanis, naturally, feel quite differently.
I don’t have any solutions but I think we can identify some things that are not solutions. Monopolizing law and security is not a solution. Worldwide government is not a solution. (cf Hoppe) This tells us that the solutions must lie in some other direction… perhaps reducing the scale of government and making government more localized so that those who make decisions are closer (socially, economically, geographically) to those affected by the decisions.
I pay five times in Federal taxes what I pay in State taxes. This is backwards. I can drive to my State capitol and protest if I feel that strongly about something. But I live 3,000 miles away from Washington, DC. I can’t afford to fly to DC to protest, at least, not unless the Federal government gives me a couple thousand dollars of my money back to do it with. And then there are the well-known problems with “voting” from public-choice theory. Increasing the locality of government will decrease the costs of being politically informed (and rational) and increase the benefits of being politically informed (and rational).
Clayton -