Comment by wakawaka28 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wakawaka28 | Hacker News Reader

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Are you kidding? It is rare for someone to deliberately break the law and also be ethically upright. I'm saying that he is not obviously compromised. His murderer on the other hand apparently is. You can imagine a world in which murdering someone you have no connection to, based on a bunch of BS, is ethical. But civilized people don't think that way. If you don't like the way insurance is done, the civilized thing to do is to lobby for better regulations or something, not go on a killing spree.

The justice system generally doesn't tolerate revenge, even when the average person might feel it justified. If someone murdered your child in cold blood right in front of you, you don't get a free pass to go out and lynch them. Civilized people know this is necessary to keep innocent people safe and ensure some kind of consistency in outcomes. How much less justified is "revenge" like this case, where there is no connection between the attacker and the victim, the perceived offense is abstract and arguable, and taking the guy out does essentially nothing to make the world a better place?

> It is rare for someone to deliberately break the law and also be ethically upright

Strawman. Your goal is to prove that there is full alignment between ethics and law in our current system. If there isn't, then we cannot use one's adherence to the law as an indicator of their ethical standing.

The Holocaust was legal once. Harboring Jewish political refugees was not.

The Palestinian genocide is legal now (according to the US, not the ICC). Speaking out about it at univerities is met with extreme police action.

Slavery used to be widespread in the West, and freeing/harboring escaped slaves would land you in prison or a grave.

> The justice system generally doesn't tolerate revenge

That's an idealistic take. The reality is that the justice system is frequently used to make examples out of political dissidents.

This has been true for millennia. My patron saint, Joan of Arc, was burned to the stake for essentially wearing pants. Are you going to sit here and try to tell me that burning a 17 year old at the stake for not being "womanlike" is ethical?

The person you are responding to seems like a hall monitor that might have reported “the coloreds” for using the “wrong” water fountain 60 years ago.

Intentionally/ostensibly mistaking the legal system for a system of ethics is such a colossal red flag that someone is willing to allow the exploitation of innocent people in order to improve or protect the quality of their own life.

You would think on a forum called Hacker News that people here would be more sensitive to how Corpgov warps society's perception of political dissidents, given the history of our own kind.

You should post this higher up . It's the most succinct way I've seen anyone put it across the many threads on here with hundreds of comments, most of which I read.

Most political dissidents don't kill anyone. There's no indication that this guy tried to do anything within the system to effect positive change. How would you feel if a tech company CEO was murdered because someone's life was wrecked by automation? Nearly any business or government official could be targetted on the basis of such ridiculous self-righteous vigilantism. It's the kind of rationale that leads to political purges, lynchings, and even mass murder. We have legal systems in place to protect everyone from the tyranny of mob rule and other forms of uncivilized behavior.

What happens if mob rule becomes the last possible means of enacting meaningful change?

It depends on what the "meaningful change" actually is. Lots of possible changes are meaningful but not worth killing people over. Not all proposed changes are actually possible. Mobs of people are usually really stupid and bloodthirsty. Look at the 1970 Cambodian coup for example. You don't want to open that Pandora's box unless there is a real urgent emergency or violation of natural rights. If people were as excited about losing weight as they are about some CEO getting shot, we could all have much cheaper insurance and maybe the government could even afford to give us free health care. You should look into what the government pays for and how much they pay for it. It's really eye-opening. The government isn't a magic money machine. If they pay for something, the value is extracted from somewhere in society either in monetary form or through inflation.

What a stretch. So you're insinuating I'm racist because I don't approve of a guy being gunned down for no good reason in broad daylight by another guy who could have had a bright future, and even been a successful activist for the cause he was allegedly trying to advance. Two lives ruined, two families wrecked, and probably more to come as this is egged on.

The comparison of violent vigilantism over what is really a financial issue to a peaceful civil rights movement is so classy. You don't know what you're really supporting, and if things continue in this uncivilized trajectory, you will regret it.

>Your goal is to prove that there is full alignment between ethics and law in our current system. If there isn't, then we cannot use one's adherence to the law as an indicator of their ethical standing.

This is the real straw man. Have you ever heard of a generalization? Of course we can and do use adherence to the laws of the land as an indicator of general moral character. They rarely deviate far from the moral demands of society, and are in fact the only rules that we all have in common with our compatriots.

>That's an idealistic take. The reality is that the justice system is frequently used to make examples out of political dissidents.

That has nothing to do with vigilantism, and in our country dissidents are almost never murdered like this.

>Are you going to sit here and try to tell me that burning a 17 year old at the stake for not being "womanlike" is ethical?

I think notions of what is ethical change over time, and so do the laws. Your example is way off topic and misses the point. This guy was a boring bureaucrat who was probably doing his best to run an upstanding business that inherently pisses people off sometimes. You can't be a terribly evil person in modern times without breaking some laws. There is no way to see this random act of violence as "eye for an eye" no matter how much you hate insurance companies. There is no equivalence between walking up to someone unprovoked and shooting them dead versus making necessary financial decisions that might give people vaguely worse health care. Even if you could calculate that a specific change in policy that this CEO did result in some deaths, the nature of the business makes such things inevitable (short of gross negligence or evident malice for the customers). It certainly isn't as contemptible as armed robbery, murder, felony theft, or burning someone alive for bad fashion.

> This is the real straw man. Have you ever heard of a generalization? Of course we can and do use adherence to the laws of the land as an indicator of general moral character.

The irony of claiming that the fundamental principle of my argument is a straw man and then presenting a new straw man directly after. Who said anything about morals? We're talking about ethics. Do you know the difference? Society does not have moral demands, it has one or more ethical consensus. Please learn the difference between the two before trying to argue with authority on them.

> in our country dissidents are almost never murdered like this

What are you talking about? I was talking about domestic smear and ruination campaigns on a slew of political dissidents from the past such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, Timothy Leary, etc... COINTELPRO?

> There is no equivalence between walking up to someone unprovoked and shooting them dead versus making necessary financial decisions that might give people vaguely worse health care

This sentence does a lot of hand-waving. Vaguely, indeed. I think, if you look for it, you will find the quantification you're looking for. The difference is one act of direct violence vs tens of millions of every day acts of indirect violence, in a system where the class perpetrating the latter acts of violence continually gain the upper hand incrementally over time, like a political ratchet. Our forefathers would have revolted over much, much less than we put up with today.

>The irony of claiming that the fundamental principle of my argument is a straw man and then presenting a new straw man directly after. Who said anything about morals? We're talking about ethics. Do you know the difference? Society does not have moral demands, it has one or more ethical consensus. Please learn the difference between the two before trying to argue with authority on them.

Your argument IS a straw man. You literally put words in my mouth. Try learning what a straw man is before using the expression.

>Society does not have moral demands, it has one or more ethical consensus. Please learn the difference between the two before trying to argue with authority on them.

You should try using a dictionary. The first definition of "moral" on dictionary.com is this:

> of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical:

If you go to 'ethic' then all two of the definitions are here:

> the body of moral principles or values governing or distinctive of a particular culture or group:

> a complex of moral precepts held or rules of conduct followed by an individual:

So you're wrong, plain and simple. I don't care about some philosophy class attempt to split hairs here. The distinction is really a red herring that you're getting obnoxious about.

>What are you talking about?

You said that the state would retaliate against dissidents, in response to me saying that the state will not tolerate acts of revenge in general even in the face of popular support for the offender. Again, it will not suffer people who are following the law to be murdered. You brought up the dissident thing presumably to relate Mangione to a dissident. But dissidents don't murder people. MLK, Malcolm X, all the dissidents most people admire, are not murderers.

>This sentence does a lot of hand-waving. Vaguely, indeed. I think, if you look for it, you will find the quantification you're looking for.

Perhaps I would find it, but the real numbers are discovered through trial and error and are not at all straightforward to interpret. You really want to get people in a frenzy over some unintentional policy mistakes with outcomes that can only be understood with advanced statistics and a mountain of data?

>The difference is one act of direct violence vs tens of millions of every day acts of indirect violence, in a system where the class perpetrating the latter acts of violence continually gain the upper hand incrementally over time, like a political ratchet.

Apparently you don't understand the definition of "violence" either. Unfortunately the word has been so abused that the dictionary now has totally wrong definitions in it.

>Our forefathers would have revolted over much, much less than we put up with today.

This much I agree with. I don't think they would tolerate income tax or gun laws. As for health insurance I think they'd just say, nobody is forcing you to buy it, so you don't get to just go on a murder spree as revenge against the industry.

> dictionary.com

Friend, I'm not going to use the literally lowest common denominator dictionary.com as a source of the distinction between the concepts of morality and ethics. This is the definition of cherry-picking on your part. There are centuries of philosophical literature on the subject. Google "morality vs ethics" and actually spending some time to understand what you're talking about.

> Try learning what a straw man is before using the expression

No, my argument was not a straw man. It is literally the basis for the original discussion, but you can't seem to comprehend that.

Now you're just sarcastically parroting back things that were said to you. This is just immature, you're arguing in bad faith and becoming increasingly vitriolic, so this conversation is over. Please review HN guidelines, and learn to argue in good faith and without a bad attitude.

I don't believe you were here arguing in good faith either. If you are then you at minimum don't understand what a straw man is, and accused me of having constructed one while doing the exact same (the Fallacy Fallacy plus a factual error). How ironic is it that you, someone arguing that someone who followed the law (specifically our laws) can be overwhelmingly immoral to the point of deserving to be murdered, is going to lecture me now about the art of civil conversation and the rules of the site. I think you knew deep down how ridiculous your premise is and refused to let it go. All of your pedantic red herrings are not going anywhere with me. I hope you reflect on the real topic of conversation and think about how your family would feel if you were murdered because one of your products made someone's life somewhat worse.

> It is rare for someone to deliberately break the law and also be ethically upright.

I’m laughing from the back of the bus on this one. I mean if I sat in the front that might not be allowed, it might be breaking the law. OMG.

"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the very highest respect for the law."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

This quote is painted onto one of my lockboxes and I have read and internalized it daily for over a decade now. Such a powerful sentiment, and I wholly agree. In my pursuit of accountability of law, I have come to understand just how much I respect the importance of law, as an anarchist.

Again very well put - do you have a Bluesky or anything to follow?

https://bluesky.cosmo.lol

Thank you for the kind words. Adding them to the pile of inspiration to finally start blogging. I'll be on the lookout for your account. Currently my bluesky feed is garbage and I need to train the algorithm.

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