Re:Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines sho...
by wvenable on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @10:10PM
(#3246239)
> Shoplifting is merely a counterexample to the logic "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law"
Perhaps if 90% of the population shoplifted, then any law against shoplifting would be bad. What is missing from the question is why the majority of the population would shoplift.
Re:Sweet sanity: 75% of Americans say infringement fines sho...
by masterzora on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @11:10PM
(#3246353)
That is a very valid line of reasoning and one that I would implore everyone to explore in such a situation. But, as you said, "perhaps". It does not directly follow that it is necessarily a bad law.
1. I don't agree with the statement "shoplifting is necessarily immoral" so it makes no sense for my own argument to hinge on such a fact. 2. My argument does not only work for an immoral crime; it is merely illustrated by an example of a law people think is not wrong. Shoplifting is merely a counterexample to the logic "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law". I do not take this on to conclude that X is not a bad law which would be begging the question. 3. The original logic was begging the question, not I. The statement "If X is a law that a lot of people break then X is a bad law" only holds if X is already a priori a bad law (and, even then, it requires a few more statements to actually work).