Where is the line? Why is property theft deserving of the end of a human life?

In many parts of the world, a car used to get to work. If you can’t get to work, then you can’t make money, and if you can’t make money then you can’t eat.

Does everyone who gets their catalytic converter stolen have enough money to get it fixed? If not, then this crime might be tantamount to depriving someone of their whole car

It’s not just a random part of a car their stealing. It’s entirely possible that loosing the catalytic converter cascades into being jobless and homeless.

So what if the argument that having your car disabled could spiral you into homelessness is more of a critique on our lack of a safety net? What can the average citizen do about that? At this point, not very much. The system is cruel, yes, but it’s the one they live in.

In my city, catalytic converters thrives are known to be highly organized, armed, and prone to violently confronting people who try to chase them off. A few people have even been shot for trying to do so. The police are too busy with shooting after shooting to do anything effective to try to stop them. When you have a group of people going out night after night, stealing with impunity and threatening anyone who gets in their way, it becomes very difficult to muster any compassion for them.

So if the police are useless and you are beholden to this powerful and highly organized pack of thieves, you think going out there and shooting them is going to make your life any better? What happens if you don't 'get' them all and now you're in a shootout with multiple armed opponents? What about the rest of their organization, reckon they will let you get away with it? Personally, I'd rather have my car temporarily damaged.

What can an average citizen do about their safety net in the US? Probably a whole shitload, anywhere from political participation, union involvement, volunteering, voting for politicians that support a better safety net.

Physically ripping out a catalytic converter from a persons car is.

And don’t forget, it’s not like the police will do anything to help you…they’ve abdicated their role in many places for many crimes.

So, yeah, you can drive a car without a cat, but not without a muffler (generally). Fix it tickets still incur a monetary cost.

This is incorrect for modern diesels that have a DPF system and inject DEF fluid. The cats are required hardware. You may be allowed 50-250 miles without them then the vehicle will not operate. It is well within possibility that someone stealing your cat between two places in Texas could be a big problem for you.

The point being that humans defining natural rights goes against the concept of "natural". The entire exercise is a catch-22.

Funny how in each case where this comes up, natural rights always means something different. Almost as if the term is consistently used retroactively to justify extreme measures rather than to inform people of their rights per se.

You have not proposed a solution to this issue.

Your reply also stinks of moral realism which is a huge can of worms unto itself.

Property theft to many, even implicitly, is very much the equivalent of the theft of some quantity of their life. People work and struggle, expending some quantity of their life to acquire property. To forcibly deprive them of their property is the removal of some portion of their life.

The other way to view this is that in an ideal world, this is done by the state. The state alone possesses the means for other punishment. The individual cannot detain, nor can they fine or garnish wages. The sole means of action available to the individual is force. Thus, if the state is derelict in it's duty, the citizen has only the application of force at his disposal. When you're applying force, you'd better be willing to go to lethal, since being unwilling to do so drastically increases the risk to yourself if the counterparty doesn't play by the same rules.

This portion can be made whole again by replacing the property, either through insurance, through restorative judgements against the perpetrator, or various other means.

Taking a life is final.

Not if the original property is retrieved or the thief is made to pay.

I'm not sure in the context of this discussion, the worth of a human life, that your plea to consider where stuff comes from is that important.

Steal a candy bar, no biggie. Steal a car and I won't sweat that death.

Ideally though, the police would intervene. That they aren't is the root cause of this problem.

In an entirely reversible manner.

Perhaps only one place (Texas) uses this to justify regaining possession of property, which is what the GP was talking about.

Also:

> At most the Castle Doctrine is an affirmative defense for individuals inevitably charged with criminal homicide, not a permission or pretext to commit homicide.

The perpetrator delegated it to me when he chose to break into my house.

If you want to argue that human life has inherent value that can't be voluntarily given up, such that it's never right for me to take someone's life in defense of my property, the arguments in favor of that seem to be religious in nature. They don't always begin that way, but ultimately you have to back up your opinion with something objective if you want to convince me that I'm in the wrong. Basically you'd need to cite a higher authority in order to change my mind, and then proceed to convince me that the authority (a) exists; and (b) backs up your position.

Unless there's an argument I've overlooked, which is always possible. Are there other points of view on this, that don't boil down to either appeals to emotion or appeals to a mysteriously-absent higher moral authority? (Yes, there's the philosophical argument that the state should have a monopoly on violence, but that has the same flaws as the original argument, and can't always be applied in the heat of the moment.)

Lethal force to defend a life makes sense. Most cultures do not approve of using lethal force to defend property.

There's also the problem of the shooter misjudging the situation, shooting some teenager's playing chase, for example, or someone with alzheimers, etc. I actually know of a drunk that tried to break down the door into his apartment, but it turns out he was in the wrong building. Didn't deserve to die.

But I understand why people feel this way. Nobody wants to be robbed. In our consumerist culture possessions are the most important thing to many people.

I'm not saying that they didn't give gifts. Lots of people like to give gifts. I'm saying that ownership probably was a bigger deal than we give them credit for - but we will never know.

Europeans and Native Americans interacted. They observed each other. They talked to each other. For quite some time.

Kondiaronk [0] was a highly respected chief, statesman, and political philosophizer. Louis Armand de Lom d’Arce spent time in North America and wrote a book based on his dialogs with Kondiaronk [1]. This book was famous for a while. It contrasted the freedom and justice Indians had for themselves with the injustice of Christianity, subjugation to lords, and the problems associated with money and other facets of the European way of life. The book precipitated a lot of philosophical soul searching, an off-shoot of which was the idea of the "noble savage", which was used to eventually discount any ideas these primitives had as irrelevant to civilized modern people.

I'm not sure if I understand your comment. Are you saying that Kondiaronk would not have known how Indians lived?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages_to_North_America

I wouldn't think that the spread of smallpox invalidates what he said, just because things may have been different in the past, maybe for his tribe, maybe not so much. I'm sure that he would have known if a disease drastically changed his culture a hundred years prior.

Even before smallpox there was quite a variety of native cultures, Kondiaronk being Huron, who were quite different than the Inca and Aztec, for example. He probably would have criticized them, also.

Someone taking your car is fine if you can go take a different communal car.

If everyone else still has private property, and now you can't get to work or the store, that's a very different and very bad situation.

which, in the OP's world view, does exist, and it overrides the burglar's right to life.

Your argument against the OP's moralism is that the burglar's right to life should not be overridden by the OP's property rights. This is why moralistic arguments are flawed - different people (perhaps different cultures) have differing morals. The law, as codified by society (and hopefully, agreed to democratically) is what should be used to judge actions, not moralism.

edit: changed "claim" to "argue as if".

The word "burglar" assumes that property rights exist.

Note that I mostly think the inconsistency is silly and should be pointed at, I don't have a problem admitting that property rights exist in most societies.

edit: "intruder" has the same problem as burglar. Along with "home" and "robbery".

What I'm hearing is that you've never been the victim of any sort of assault.

Lucky guy.

Without a layer of social construction, it's just the use of dominating force, an exercise of power. If you want to argue that is how the world works, that's fine, but you are demanding that other people justify their social constructions and then assuming that your social constructions are not social constructions.

It's natural for me to defend my property with lethal force. (Consider how many animals will do the same thing, if another animal tries to take their food or mate away.) Consequently, assuming it's your position that I should not be allowed to do that, you have to pass a law and use force to stop me.

That means that yes, you're the one who gets to justify your unnatural (but still potentially optimal) point of view. Exactly why are we better off if we strive to remove the personal safety risk from criminal acts? It seems that we're starting to see the results play out in real time -- ask anyone who was shopping at the Nordstrom's in Walnut Creek the other day, for instance.

Does that mean I'd be inclined to shoot someone for stealing the catalytic converter from my car, parked at curbside on a public street? Honestly, I can't see myself doing that, because according to my personal values that would be a pretty sociopathic thing to do. But I'm also not inclined to interfere if someone else wants to do that. The recent trend towards de-policing and non-prosecution of property crimes will certainly lead to more instances of this kind of dilemma playing out on the street. If law enforcement won't act, you can't be too surprised when individual citizens do.

I'm making an abstract point about the form of the argument the other commenter constructed upthread, not advocating that property rights aren't real.

I wouldn't kill a person over stealing a candy from me, or trespassing on my lawn.