Judging a legislature by how many bills it passes is like judging programming productivity by lines of code produced, and has the same issue that Edsger Dijkstra identified with the latter: it should be lines spent, not produced. "The current wisdom is so foolish as to book that count on the wrong side of the ledger."
>By one-sided political propaganda
Yea because things are only factual if they agree with your chosen team policies.
Metrics on how many bills this congress has passed by this point in term vs previous ones are not hard to find. But you'd just dismiss that as "political propaganda" because it disagrees with you.
Land in desirable areas is limited and zoning and other government red-tape prevents high-density housing from being built (or any housing being built period in cases like San Francisco).
They are invasive (in the US) and grow like weeds completely taking over and crowding out native species. Having many of them screws up the nitrogen level of the soil further crowding out/killing native plants.
Other commenters have covered most of the reasons why they are awful, but my main complaint is that they will completely take over your garden beds and wooded areas if left undisturbed.
Of course there is - being mugged(or having stuff stolen from you) can ruin your life, not even in any physical sense but psychologically it can be devastating. I've had a bike stolen from my house, I didn't even witness it being stolen or anything, just one morning I woke up and the house was broken into and my bike gone - relatively minor financial inconvenience in the grand scheme of things, but for the next 2 years I hated living in that place, I was uncomfortable in my own house and scared of walking around, I honestly felt violated in the sanctum of my own home and couldn't get relaxed around there again. Eventually we moved and in the large portion it was exactly because of that.
So please tell me, even assuming if that person stole my bike to buy bread - how can it possibly have been moral given the impact it had on the life of another person?
It's a little odd that you've changed the topic from stealing food to survive, to stealing someone's bicycle (regardless of your halfhearted comment about the possibility that they stole your bike so they can go buy bread... which... what?).
If someone needs to steal something (anything) in order to survive (an actually survival need), hopefully they will be able to do so in a way that doesn't cause a bystander the kind of difficulty you're talking about. Like they could steal the bicycle from a bike shop instead of a person's home.
But ultimately, if it's actually a survival need, I hope if push came to shove, I wouldn't put my psychological well-being (something that, when hurt, can be healed) above someone else's life (something that, when lost, cannot be returned).
>>It's a little odd that you've changed the topic from stealing food to survive,
Why is it odd? OP said stealing to survive is never immoral, to which I said that of course it is, because theft has a profound impact on the victim, no matter the reason for stealing. People who are victims of theft rarely know why they were stolen from, so they cannot adjust their emotional response as if every thief is stealing to feed their families - and I think acting as if that's a reasonable assumption in any way is well, unreasonable. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
>>But ultimately, if it's actually a survival need, I hope if push came to shove, I wouldn't put my psychological well-being
Sure, and neither would I, but I don't accept that stealing is the moral choice - the person could have literally knocked on my door and asked for food and I would have given them food, and I'm sure majority of people would as well. Again there is a bunch of assumptions there, but I find the whole conversation a bit disingenuous - there is of course actual undeniable theft where the alternative is death in various places around the world, but I refuse to accept that this is the kind of theft most people are talking about here - no one in any modern country is stealing to survive, literally every developed country has programs that will just give you food if you ask - dying from starvation should not be happening anywhere with even a semi functional social system.
You think the sanctity of your home and peace of mind is worth another man dying, rather than eating, when your bike could have saved him?
... You and I both know that your bike wasn't robbed to prevent starvation, making your example completely beside the point. If it had been robbed to prevent the starvation of a human, you ought to feel happy rather than violated - your small sacrifice saved a whole life!
America has more than enough wealth to feed everyone on the planet, but 10 million kids are hungry in the US right now. Someone is stealing that wealth, and it isn't muggers. Try to gain some perspective, despite the daily news telling you to be scared of the poor.
Your approach is gross. Blessing theft the way you do creates two victims, the one from whom it is stolen and one who is not steered towards a better way to live.
The US even still has tremendous opportunity to build a life and earn money. Stealing undermines one's ability and focus to build such a life and undermines the surrounding community as well.
You clearly think you're a great guy/gal/whatever for thinking that someone should be thrilled to be stolen from and you're oblivious to the nothing-but-more-misery this approach practically generates.
I'm kinda on your side here, but you did say "you ought to feel happy" after being robbed by someone who needs it more than you do, which is a bit ridiculous.
The hypothetical situation wasn't "someone who needs it more", it was someone who is literally starving to death.
A contrived situation, no doubt (though not mine). But despite HNers claims to the contrary, some people actually do starve to death because they can't earn for a variety of reasons. And, rather than take care of those people, the US vilifies them.
This leads to a society where tech-bubbled freaks get slightly rabid at the notion that it's morally ok to steal to survive - even going so far as to flag such comments.
I laugh, but the tech community keeps putting up these red flags the last few decades, and it's actually worrying. The disconnect from reality is unfathomable. There's people here claiming that stealing bread to save your life is just as bad as stealing 8 billion dollars - that's unhinged on a level that's hard to imagine.
>>You think the sanctity of your home and peace of mind is worth another man dying, rather than eating, when your bike could have saved him?
Yes, because they could have just asked and I would have given them food. Literally anyone would I'm sure.
The thief in that case choose the path that inflicts psychological damage, because they were too cowardly to just ask for food. In that case they have literally zero of my sympathy. Thieves are the worst people in the society just after murderers and rapists.
Saving that human life is the job of the institutions that we all sacrifice a huge portion of our resources and freedoms to.
It's not the job of an individual to keep their property available in case a desperate person needs to steal it in order to survive.
The implication of what you're saying is that any crime is morally justified as long as the perpetrator is doing it in order to survive, and the victim isn't killed. Which is insane.
> The implication of what you're saying is that any crime is morally justified as long as the perpetrator is doing it in order to survive, and the victim isn't killed. Which is insane.
That doesn't seem insane to me. I think you've phrased it in a somewhat unfair way. But I don't think doing what you need to do to survive is really a moral issue. Certainly it's best to secure your survival without hurting anyone else. But if the choice is between death and making someone else uncomfortable, I don't think I'd blame someone for choosing life if they have to make someone else uncomfortable or inconvenience them.
Certainly the scales have more trouble balancing when it moves from discomfort/inconvenience toward physical harm, especially permanent physical harm. But also consider that in many cases people do have a choice how they react: a shopkeeper, when confronted with someone stealing bread, can get physically involved and risk their safety for the sake of that bread, or they can let it go and consider it the cost of doing business.
This is why most people recommend that if you get mugged, you don't try to play the hero: you just hand over what the mugger wants, and let them go. Your wallet or phone or laptop isn't worth your life. This doesn't make it ok for the mugger to do what they did, but ultimately what matters is the outcome: do you want to get out of it relatively unscathed, or do you want to risk injury or death? Once you're in that situation, you do get to choose how you react.
Anyhow, that doesn't make it "right" or moral or whatever if the thief ends up hurting the shopkeeper during the theft, but it's hard for me to get too up in arms if the thief has no alternative than stealing food. It's understandable, even if it's a bad outcome.
The consequences of robbing someone under threat of violence go far, far beyond them losing their property, even if they aren't physically harmed at all. Calling this making someone "uncomfortable" or "inconveniencing them" is disingenuous bordering on dishonest. In many cases, the victims of robberies are simply unable to continue leading normal lives, even though their limbs are still attached to their body as before.
I can't believe I'm arguing that it's immoral to steal on HN, but here we are...
Yes, you might decide that breaking your moral code to feed yourself or your family is an acceptable tradeoff, but it's a tradeoff nonetheless. It's a conscious choice. A lot of people in history made a decision to go hungry instead.
Children might see the world in Marxist generics where some ambiguous, but for some reason always "wealthy" people stole all the fruit trees and poisoned the water. Adults usually deal with specifics. Who are all these mysterious people are? Do you think the food just fell from the sky before the industrial age? What do you think happened to the people who stole before the industrial age, hungry or not?
If you don't think income and wealth inequality is real, I'm not sure what anyone here is going to do to help you understand this better.
The fact remains that we could feed everyone on the planet... if we chose to. Capitalism just doesn't incentivize us to do so.
You talk about how stealing bread to survive would be "breaking your moral code", but I think it's absurd that we've gotten to this point. How is a society moral if it allows people to starve? I won't say two wrongs make a right, but when society actively allows people to die of hunger, I think those tut-tutting about moral codes need some side-eyes and eye-rolls directed their way.
And we are all culpable to a certain extent, as members of that society. Perhaps those of us who donate our money or time to help those in need are a bit less culpable (along with people who are just scraping by and don't have the money or time to spare). But if we've benefited from that system (as I have), we share some of the blame (as I do). And go further and consider people who actively vote for politicians and policies that remove social safety nets and make it harder for people on the margins to feed themselves. All the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" the US who seem to think that no one deserves any help for anything. It's disgusting.
I said "stealing to eat". Because the claim was "stealing is never moral and is just as bad no matter the amount".
You heard "point a weapon at a stranger and demand the contents of his pockets".
And, since this seems to be really confusing to a lot of people here for some reason, stealing tens/hundreds of millions of dollars from people is in fact unambiguously worse than mugging someone for their wallet. It's far more violent, and causes far more suffering.
The topic of the thread changed at some point; you seem to still be on the original topic, when the rest of us are talking about stealing food to survive.
You realize Le Miz is fictional, right? No one needs to steal to eat, some people choose to steal rather than earn. Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance, don’t take your moral philosophy from Disney movies and broadway.
> Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance
That's your opinion and your conception of morality. My moral code isn't so rigid that I can't imagine a world of nuance, a world where things aren't black and white, where things don't fit neatly into little boxes.
There are plenty of people in the world who end up in bad circumstances due to things outside their control. And yes, some of them need to steal to eat. Even if it's just for a little while, so they can work on improving their circumstances. Something that's incredibly hard to do when you're malnourished.
This might be the most out of touch comment I've ever read, to the point where it genuinely looks like sarcasm mocking someone who would think like that. Apologies if so.
There is no amount of “being in touch” that could justify literally criminal behavior. The consequences of propagating lawlessness are far greater than starving to death. Unless, of course, you have a self-centered point of view and/or no principles.
If you have a problem with the way the world works, there is always a non-violent course of action to take to change it. There is no other option. If you think there is another option all you have to do is say so, I’m sure the keepers of law and order and the voting masses on whose behalf they act are equally willing to deal with whatever you choose.
I think it's criminal that society allows people to fall into circumstances where they become homeless and/or hungry, to the point where they're desperate enough to need to steal to eat.
"Criminal behavior" is a construct of human society. Morality is, too, for that matter. I have no problem with someone stealing food to survive. Hopefully they are able to do so without harming anyone else. If someone does get harmed, I won't hold the thief blameless, but I also can't find it in my heart to condemn them, either.
> The consequences of propagating lawlessness are far greater than starving to death.
That's a false dichotomy.
> Unless, of course, you have a self-centered point of view and/or no principles.
Do you think no one irl ever stole bread to feed their family only to be extremely punished? ...
> No one needs to steal to eat, some people choose to steal rather than earn.
You're wrong. You're a hundred kinds of wrong. That mindset is a deep, deep sickness.
> Stealing is immoral regardless of the circumstance
If the choice is between stealing and starvation, the moral thing to do is steal. Which is, in fact, the scenario we are talking about.
Not everyone can earn - and in a society where wages have become untethered from productivity for over 50 fucking years, where the social contract is broken and ground into dust, where healthcare and housing are seen as privileges rather than rights, you might start to expect getting pushback on such untethered and inhuman views.
> don’t take your moral philosophy from Disney movies and broadway.
Better than taking it from literal comicbook villains.
The “No one needs to steal to eat” mindset is a “deep, deep sickness”? My brother in Christ what kind of backwards world do you live in? Where on this planet is it acceptable to steal, especially in a mugging situation that implies physical confrontation and the threat of violence? I can’t tell if you’re trolling, you’re actually asserting that you live in a fairytale defending something like Robin Hood.
Wages have never been tethered to productivity, arbitrage has existed since before there was even a currency. Healthcare and housing has always been and always will be a privilege, your human rights only extend so far as they do not infringe upon someone else’s human rights. Doctors and construction workers cannot be compelled against their will to do work, neither can the collective taxpayer.
I think the problem here is they are imagining extreme situations where you genuinely don't have any opportunity to survive without it. Such situations could exist, like in Mao's Red August and a score of other such historical tragedies. But what the commenter is not understanding is that "Morals" matter jack shit in such a situation. "Morals" are a product of civilization, if you are not being treated as human by your society you have no obligation to act as human either.
> But what the commenter is not understanding is that "Morals" matter jack shit in such a situation. "Morals" are a product of civilization, if you are not being treated as human by your society you have no obligation to act as human either.
My gut feeling here is that this isn't even a moral issue at all, but I've been having trouble articulating that point. You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this.
> The “No one needs to steal to eat” mindset is a “deep, deep sickness”? My brother in Christ what kind of backwards world do you live in?
This one! Our world is pretty backwards! If you can't see that, you must live a privileged, sheltered life.
Do you think a world where medical bills can bankrupt people is not a backwards world? Do you think a world with homeless people is not a backwards world? Do you think a world where we incarcerate people by the millions for smoking a plant is not a backwards world? And these are just a small sampling of things that happen in the US.
If you truly don't believe we live in a backwards world, I don't know what to say. You're just so completely out of touch with the reality we live in that there's no way to have a productive discussion.
If we're going to talk morality, a lot of land ownership and resource extraction stands on very shaky ground, given that a lot of land was at some point in recorded (or recent) history stolen from someone else. And stealing is always immoral, so...
From the recent stuff, remember the lab leak theory where any mentions of which were getting removed from Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, including the scientific papers that looked into it?
There was an actual rise in crime, both perceived and statistical, immediately after he was elected. Hell, Boudin ran on a campaign that people like his terrorist parents should not be prosecuted.
It's a well documented fact that Boudin refused to prosecute pretty much anything besides police officers. Why would police officers arrest anybody in that case?
It's the same story with other Soros-funded prosecutors: Gascon in LA, Kim Foxx in Chicago. To give them credit, they don't hide that their own goal is to protect criminals. People should listen.
The majority of these challenges are direct result of the government's corruption and incompetence. See e.g. housing crisis, or student debt issue, or massive drug proliferation.
Communist Manifesto and Lenin's books are allowed without any comments though. There are books by actual terrorists too, like Bill Ayers. Books advocating for segregation. One can go on.
Exactly. Why do those books get a pass? They encourage readers to do abhorrent things such as keep slaves and behead nonbelievers. If we're going to censor books because they cause people to hate others, then major religious texts should be first in line. The fact that censors don't go after these books is evidence that their actual goals differ from their claimed goals.
Despite HN regulations I am aware that you are arguing in bad faith and don’t care at all about the facts of the case. But I think it’s important to get the facts out there for other people.
Once again: eBay’s policy is not to ban harmful ideas generally or anything that might be morally icky. They have a specific policy against racist items, in any form. That includes the blatant racism in some of Dr. Suess’s books. The policy is reasonable and not that complicated. If you want to buy something racist, there are other websites.
eBay is not trying to police everything, they just don’t want racist stuff on their website. That is their perogative as a business and is hardly a meaningful threat to free speech even considering eBay’s market share.
Part of the reason this preposterous “debate” keeps raging is that people keep inappropriately elevating the issues to abstractions, since the specifics of the case are really not controversial:
- Just as YouTube and Twitch do not allow pornography, eBay does not allow racism. That does not mean that porn and racism are banned under the 1st Amendment. Likewise there’s plenty of stuff on YouTube that’s more immoral than any legal pornography, but YouTube never claimed to ban everything bad. They just don’t want to be associated with porn. Likewise, eBay doesn’t want to be associated with racism.
- Some of Dr. Seuss’s children’s books have bigoted depictions of nonwhites, including cartoons black people that resemble “darky iconography,” which anyone in good faith would agree are deeply racist.
- Since eBay doesn’t allow racist items (and had good reason to be concerned about racists rushing to buy discontinued Dr. Seuss books), it banned the items from its store.
Nobody seriously thinks that YouTube is censoring the porn industry. It is true is that the “buy racist crap to own the libs” industry is much smaller than porn and probably can’t easily survive without eBay’s help. I fail to see how that’s eBay’s problem.
It would probably trigger more debate if the link you referred to actually explained this thesis more convincingly rather than focus on the often deplorable language.
E.g. the oft denounced 'On the Jewish Question' that is predictably cited in your link is a work arguing for the political emancipation of Jewish people.
It does so with language that is offensive to a modern reader by turning around and mocking the arguments used by Bruno Bauer who argued against political emancipation.
That [use of language] makes it problematic, and I wouldn't recommend it to someone without commentary on the polemical debate it was a part of.
But Marx is addressing and attacking the very kind of political oppression of Jewish people that forced his father to convert to Lutheranism - which the article of course mentioned without later citing its relevance to 'On the Jewish Question' -, making the point that Jewish people should have political rights without being forced to abandon their religion.
As evidence of Marx willingness to use now-unacceptable language, it works. As evidence that he hated Jews it's a massive own goal for the article writer to use an article that argued for expanding Jewish peoples rights.
There are many legitimate criticisms to level against Marx' language. But this article is dishonest or ignorant in it's presentation of a lot of it.
To address specifically the Communist Manifesto, suggesting it is talking of a conspiracy suggests you have not read it, or understood it. If anything one of the key aspects of Marxist thinking was to directly denounce the idea that the individual actions of a few have much - if any - impact on history, and to present a conception of the way society changes as one controlled by historical and economical necessity, inevitably developing based on market forces.
The idea of capitalism as a conspiracy runs directly counter to the Marxist idea of historical materialism, so it's bizarre to try to frame his work as promoting a conspiracy theory.
Furthermore, the whole first chapter is fan-boy level praise for capitalism as having brought humanity to a level of development not seen before, and for how the free market is the "battering ram" that over time forces even the worst bigots to drop xenophobia, driven by economic forces.
If he was promoting a conspiracy, he was speaking awfully well about the supposed conspirators, given the idea of the development of new modes of production as the wheel of progress is a central thesis of Marxist thought, and his insistence that socialism/communism is a necessary consequence of capitalism rests on the idea that economic progress is inevitable and detached from the actions of individuals.
The Communist Manifesto presents capitalism as a huge step forward, just still flawed and something that would eventually give way to another step forwards.
This idea of Marx as promoting a conspiracy is an inherent demonstration of a lack of understanding of Marx writing, because it lifts up the idea of great leaders where Marx consistently put that idea down and criticised it, by talking of whole movements in terms of forces and modes of production within which the individuals - even the capitalists themselves - are trapped and playing out a role they have little control over.
Ok if you think eBay should ban more books then go tell them that!
Incidentally this isn’t true:
> Books advocating for segregation.
Or, rather, if such books are available it is against eBay’s policy and they should be reported. eBay has a specific policy against items that glorify racism or endorse racist stereotypes: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/prohibited-restricted-ite...
It does not have a policy against everything morally icky, but it’s quite clear about racism. Mulberry Street and If I Ran The Zoo are both racist and against eBay’s policy.
The issue is that they are not just removing racist or hateful content according to some kind of standard. They are going after hot topics of the day, whatever it happens to be.
Even worse, hateful and racist content that is ideologically aligned is explicitly allowed. One would be hard-pressed to find anything more blatantly racist than White fragility or works of Dr Kendi, and yet you would not see eBay banning them, up until they fall out of favor.
