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Comment by will_dev_4_food | Hacker News Reader

When you say it’s like this one way but not the other, you have conceded to relativism. You have basically said there is a time and place for stealing someone’s wallet, and that acting as a moral agent in society can be suspended under the right conditions.

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Is that a valid argument though? Of course things should be judged on a case by case basis, and not on dogmatic one size fits all rules.

Even courts take context into account for the same action (e.g. whether a murder was in cold blood or premeditated, whether someone stole because they were hungry or just greedy, etc).

And, yes, "there is a time and place for stealing someone’s wallet", as well.

But it's equally illegal to kill anybody based on race, class, political belief or religious belief.

Is that true? If the murder is racially motivated and thus a hate crime, isn't the sentence longer?

It's equally illegal to perpetrate a hate crime on anyone of any race, nationality, gender, etc. It's a bit harder to do it on people who are not in a systemically-discriminated-against class, but if you find a way then it's a hate crime like any other.

Tell that to the soldiers spreading democracy.

It's equally illegal for soldiers to kill non-combatants.

That's a comparatively recent law though. Hasn't been always the case (e.g. colonialists used to have "open hunting season" for native populations at certain times and it wasn't at all like killing one of their own race). And I doubt in the 30s South killing a black person was "equally illegal" as killing a white person (if not in law, surely in practical legal outcomes -- people just getting a slap on the wrist).

As for those other things (whether it's equally legally bad to kill someone regardless of "class, political belief or religious belief") all of those have been contested in actual law across societies (including western ones), even 20 and 30 years ago (and tides can always turn one way or another again).

Do you have a point? Your comment isn't applicable to the conversation we're having in this thread.

I think most people would agree that there are indeed times and places when stealing is acceptable. It is never ideal, but sometimes the alternatives are worse. The bad sort of relativism is a weakness of principles, not the same set of principles leading you to prefer different actions in different circumstances.

For another example of this kind of relativism, I would harm somebody in self-defense or the defense of another, but I would not harm somebody just because I didn't like them. The underlying principles are the same even though the right action is conditional on the situation.

I honestly don't understand the connection between what you said and what the person you're replying to said. Can you explain it another way for me?

Scale affects things. An audience of 12 vs 12 million is a significant difference.

Or, it could be that the two things being compared have entirely different contexts to them, and thus do have different rules.

This is the road to rule by men and not laws, since at that point any politician can make up whatever "context" they like to interpret the law any way they see fit.

Be careful about the precedent your setting and think about who may wield these powers in the future. I'm sure President Alex Jones will think it quite necessary to make exceptions to ordinary laws and rules when taking down the global pedophile cabal is at stake.

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