Defending your life is not the same thing as preserving your life at someone else’s expense.
If I am allowed to steal medicine because I’m sick, in order to preserve my life, I am allowed to never work and just steal food, in order to preserve my life.
An individual’s freedom to act towards their continued existence does not include actions that are detrimental towards another person’s existence. Civilization can not exist when one person is allowed to sacrifice other for his own good.
Of course, law is not without a sense of proportionality. Stealing medicine from a store shelf and stealing medicine from someone else who will also die without it are different events. In the first case it may be in the person’s best interest to steal the medicine and accept the liability of his crime, though the morality of doing so can be questioned.
Well, the way I’ve always put it is that you only get the morality boost when stealing is your only option. A person who has to steal because they refuse to work is not restricted in their options. Stealing is only moral because the only other option, allowing your child to die, is even more immoral. If other, more moral actions exist to avoid the same evil, then you must take those options, whatever they might be.
The problem with that is that there’s basically no objective criterion for proving that this is the case. Will the child die in one second unless fed? One day? One week? One month? At what point are you allowed to decide that there’s “no other option”? And do you really mean “no other option”? Have you tried catching and eating pigeons, or rats? How about tree bark? Dandelion or maple leaves? Refuse from dumpsters? As soon as you say, “Look, I’ll steal before I make my kids eat ant-covered food from the garbage,” you’ve lost the moral high ground.
And on a practical level, it’s almost-but-not-quite impossible to be completely without choices, including relatives, friends, churches, charities and begging.
Well, now, the last point is true, and these horrific, it-must-be-Armageddon-so-who-cares scenarios can be a little tiresome. That being said, remember we are talking about medicine here. Like, say the kid has pneumonia and needs antibiotics. You could try growing your own penicillin, I guess, but even if you managed to a lot of bugs these days are immune.
You’re quite right. Ants are good protein anyways. And the formic acid gives them a nice tang.
I was going to respond to the OP, but your post is uncannily similar to what I wanted to say, so I shall just add my 2 cents.
First, why is the parent of the sick child destitute in the first place? OK, he might be a victim of government confiscation, or of some uninsurable natural calamity, but if he is responsible for his plight then I’d question the morality of his parenting a child which he could not afford to care for adequately.
Second, if it were moral to steal to keep the child alive, then it would be moral to kill someone to obtain his liver for an organ-transplant. Morality is not the same as acting in your best interests. The purpose of law is to penalize IMMORAL acts sufficiently to make them AGAINST your best interests.
And the purpose of morality, in a libertarian society, is not the preservation of your own life, liberty, and property, at any expense, but a system of rules to best protect EVERYONE’s life, liberty and property with minimal conflict.
Arguing whether or not it is moral to initiate force against another (theft) even under dire circumstances simply leads us back to the collectivist socialist idea that sometimes it is ok to take from one for the benefit of another. Either something is wrong or it isn’t. If you follow the logic of “oh, it’s ok because the child might have died” then someone could just as easily say “yeah, I’m taking your money because the poor children in Africa need food” or “the poor are in need of housing” or any number of socialist programs.
No, stealing the medicine, even to save a life, is not moral or legal. But you can’t always act in a moral and legal way. If it were me in that situation I would first ask for the medicine begging for charity. Failing that I’d steal it and live with the consequenses. I’d rather sit in jail while my child lived then try and live with the idea that my child died and I could have done something about it.
I guess my version of morality is different than y’alls. Morality is something you live. You can theorize all day about morals but if, as many have said here, you would in fact steal for your child, in my mind that is your morality. You have decided that is what you should do in that circumstance. You are open hypocrites, and I mean that in a purely observational way. Your morality is revealed in your actions, not your words. If, truly, the mentality that it is ok to steal for someone in dire need is behind statism, than not one of the people, including myself, who states that they would steal for the child is truly an enemy of statism.
You or I could say we realize the property owner is doing nothing wrong when he shoots us in self-defense, but do we mean it? Again, if he started shooting, would we just stand there and die? If I could not flee, I’d probably shoot back. If you would do the same, then, we certainly aren’t respecting his right to shoot us in self-defense. Again, we place our own needs and wants over the property, rights, and even life of the current possessor.
Indeed, the only way to really respect his right to defend himself is to go to him and say, “I’m going to take that medicine now, with your permission or not. If you don’t want me to, you’ll have to shoot me.” If you use stealth to accomplish your theft, you are denying him his right to defend his property just as surely as if you are shooting back at him.
I was suggesting recognition in principle, but OK. To put it in archic language, would you would still demand that the full penalty of law be imposed on thieves, sick children or no? Would you convict such a man of theft, as you should? Would you acquit the property owner for using lethal force, as you should? If the thief “defended” himself, taking the life of the property owner, would you convict him of murder, as you should? Would you vote against any measure intended to relax the law against theft or murder in such cases?
We can stipulate that if you were the accused, you’d tell a sob story and hope the jury buys it. We can also agree that that’s hypocrisy–but if you can answer “yes” to the above questions, that’s still something.
No one is suggesting that the law recognize the right to steal in this scenario, only that the parent will steal. The question is one of responsibility. If she is held responsible for the theft, regardless of it’s necessity, that does not support statism. If she is relieved of responsibility by a law recognizing her right to do so, that is statism.
All the arguing here about her moral choice is jumbling contexts. The first context is her own choice, the second context is the choice presented to people whom her choice affects. Going back to what I said earlier, her moral context is broken, she doesn’t have morality to guide her in such a dilemma. But everyone else’s moral context is intact. It still demands that they protect their property rights. If they decide to give her the medicine from charity, they have preserved their autonomy with relation to their property. If they choose not to give it to her, but then cannot, will not, or are prevented from defending (at least attempting to) that property against her, they have lost that autonomy.
The question, in regards its impact on statism is not: is it right for her to steal the medicine, it is: is it still considered stealing.
Good questions. Excellent questions. At first, I wanted to say I would. Now that I think of it, though, I’m not so sure. If I would have done the same thing in the same situation, and indeed, if nearly anyone would have done the same, should I punish someone for what everyone’s expressed morality demands? Do I accomplish anything by punishing? Have I truly made any change? People are saying they would steal the medicine, with full consciousness of the consequences if they are caught. So clearly, punishment is not a deterrent in these circumstances. I can not say that the person accused is any worse a person than I am if I would have acted as they did. Mere circumstance divides us.
I would demand that the person work to compensate the previous owner for the loss. However, in the case that the owner had died in the conflict (assuming no heirs) there would be no one to compensate.
Note that there are some differences from statism in this position. I do not hold that a person has a right to act as a mercenary in this situation. Stealing for a wage is different than stealing for someone to whom you have a legitimate prior obligation. Your obligation via your contract is illegitimate, as a mercenary or hired thief, because you have no actual justification to steal from that person yourself. Your need is not there. A bit garbled, but I hope you take my meaning.
Thus, government thugs stealing for you is not justified. Your “hiring” them is, but their agreement to do so is not. The middleman is in the wrong. Even if we say that stealing in these circumstances is moral, if everyone acts morally and you are incapable of personally performing the theft, you’re SOL.
Here’s a perspective on that, though: stealing to save a life, and accepting the consequences, we can empathize with. But does that justify eliminating the consequences? One could view accepting the consequences as a “penance,” or testimony to one’s belief in nonaggression, which has no place in libertarian law, but which makes sense at the same meta-level as our empathy for the thief.
A more utilitarian argument would be that eliminating the consequences reduces the cost so that those who would steal without accepting the consequences are now incented to do so. Retaining the consequences at least limits such behavior to those who are willing to pay the price.
That’s an excellent point. I think you’ve just made a cogent argument against aggression-to-save-life need not translate into institutionalized aggression. It’s solid against legalization. I’m not so sure about decriminalization, though, because I’m fuzzy on the difference between that and legalization.
It also raises a new question. If your son is dying, aren’t you saying that it’s moral for him to steal the medicine, but not you?
No, now you are trying to argue that you are a perfect man who commits no wrongs. Stealing is wrong pure and simple. Stealing to save a life does not make my theft moral. I don’t have the right to steal but I have chosen to consciously commit an act of aggression against someone in order to save a child. Am I right in doing so? No. Does that mean I support statism? No, that’s just stupid. It just means I’ve committed a crime – I purposely violated the non-aggression axiom. I’m not justifying theft on any grounds. I’m just telling you what I’d do. And if you read my post I said I would first ask if the person would donate the medicine. Failing that you bet your ass I’d resort to breaking the law and saving my child. Anyone that says they’d just allow their child to die is either a liar or a psychopath.
And besides there is a BIG difference between you personally stealing and having some bureaucrat in Washington doing it and getting rich from it as well.
Your obligation to preserve their life was not solicited by them, but inherent to the parent/child relationship until the child is no longer dependent. I’m having a bit of trouble putting this to words, but the prior, legitimate obligation to preserve their life is what obligates you to act in their stead. It is a paren’t role to act for their children when they cannot; it is a unique relationship.
No, not a perfect man. If I steal a candy bar just because I wanted it, I think I have done right, but most would think I did wrong, and they’d be right. However, if I’d steal the medicine, and you’d steal the medicine, and that guy over there would steal the medicine, I think that we’ve established that the widely held, simplistic phrase that “Stealing is wrong pure and simple.” is established as something most of us don’t really believe. Indeed, if, as you say, not doing so would make you a “psychopath”, than it is absolutely ridiculous to say it’s wrong to do it.
Again, you can say it up and down all day and all night, but your actions prove you don’t think it’s wrong. And, as comforting as you might find it if they were, morals are not simple. People have been struggling with the question, “How ought I live?”, for millenia. That struggle will not be resolved by simplistic deontology.
If you are in a car accident that, while accidental, is completely your fault (looking for a cheeto or something) and you wreck the guy’s ability to provide for himself, are you not obligated to provide for him? You are the cause of his dependency, so you must provide for it. Thus it is with children. They did not ask to be created, you imposed this upon them. Whether you intended to do so, as with the car accident, is immaterial. Thus, inasmuch as they are conceived and born into a state of dependency, you are obligated to provide for that dependency until such time as they can reasonably be considered independent.
True. That’s not a positive obligation, though: it’s a consequence of your actions. That it’s an “unintentional” consequence doesn’t excuse it.
I don’t think I’ve seen the “children as car accident” approach taken before, but it’s interesting. You might be on the trail of a viable libertarian legal doctrine of child-rearing. You’re equating child-rearing with caring for someone in a coma with complete amnesia as a result of a car accident: the other driver has an obligation to care for them, gradually relinquishing control to the patient as he recovers consciousness, the ability to fend for himself, etc.