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This is a question for the libertarians out there. If you were starving and your neighbor had a field of produce, would you steal food from the field or would you respect property rights and continue starving?
not a libertarian but I still have my views on the subject: as much as I would love to say I would protect the rights of the property owner, if, indeed I was truly starving I would probably help myself to his garden. But I am not sure how we are defining honest starving? It is a rare person here in our country that is truly starving. Many are hungry, but there are food banks, soup kitchens, friend, relatives, school lunch programs and other ways to get something to eat.
still people did not have to starve. My parents were married in 1929 and had their first child in 32 while dad was a senior in college. They did not stave or steal. My husbands parents also managed to survive though the depression. They were working class, no educations, not even high school and they managed to find some type of work. They never took a penny from the government. I can tell many stories like this, so don't think there wasn't a way to live. Heck even my fathers second wive's family had just immigrated from Poland and they were able to take care of themselves.
Breaking the law is always an option. There is no magic law fairy that enforces laws on our behalf. You can do something you know is wrong if you are desperate, so scruples are not enough to guarantee we follow the law. We need enforcement and punishment.
totally agree with this....we do need more law enforcement, b/c you cannot depend on the moral conscious of humans.
In a sanctuary city, an illegal just rapped a 5 year old little girl....
breaking laws for convenience, only leads to trouble...and once it affects you, it becomes a whole different story....just think of that little girl and her poor parents....
laws are not meant to be broken, but unfortunately a whole lot of people think they are....
but again, has anyone here really really been hungry to the point of starvation? I don't believe anyone who is going thru that, thinks about what is moral....starvation they say is down right awful....
The point is a toy model in this day and age that is designed to be easy to conceptualize.
So climb the hedonic treadmill. If not food, what about affording living arrangements within commuting distance of major population centers? If you could live in an RV on public property and walk to your job at Google, would you? Or would you rent 5 to an apartment with strangers? Or commute for two hours from the Central Valley? Only two of those options are legal.
I would also add that the legal systems we have contrived to solve these problems are precisely what has enabled our species to have largely solved the food scarcity problem.
Due to occupancy laws, 5 to an apartment is also illegal unless it's a 3br apartment, in which case it'll be a lot more expensive than if it was possible to share a 1br with 4 others.
So the only legal option is the 2 hour commute from the middle of nowhere desert.
I have been homeless and starving at a couple of points in my life. I never stole food - or anything else - when I was.
That's good to hear (that you presumably overcame the situation, and without having to steal).
I do have to ask what you mean by starving though. Did you have access to soup kitchens, charity from strangers, or public water fountains at least?
Or did you experience the kind of starvation where you grow fuzz all over your body, your hair goes orange due to lost pigment, your belly gets distended, and your body is slowly eating your heart?
That's good to hear (that you presumably overcame the situation, and without having to steal).
I do have to ask what you mean by starving though. Did you have access to soup kitchens, charity from strangers, or public water fountains at least?
Or did you experience the kind of starvation where you grow fuzz all over your body, your hair goes orange due to lost pigment, your belly gets distended, and your body is slowly eating your heart?
The poverty stricken in America are obese, and many of them are even morbidly obese, including their children. What you are describing happens in Third World countries and very rarely in America.
And if anyone is starving to death in the US, it is only due to very unusual circumstances such as mental illness (anorexia) or being homeless and mentally ill, or going on a hunger strike. Or a situation of being imprisoned by some weirdo and having food being withheld.
I would certainly steal food from someone who had more than they needed, if there was no other way to keep me and mine from starving. And if the risk of being killed while taking the food was high, I'd consider a preemptive attack on the owner.
Well there you go.
The property rights are upheld as long as the *property owners* are wise enough to take precautions, arranging and making sure that there is plenty of food to go around, other than their own *field of produce.*
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