5 ms·

My comment may sound cliché, but I genuinely believe this, no material possession is worth more than a human life. A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life

My comment may sound cliché, but I genuinely believe this, no material possession is worth more than a human life. A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot.

Geonode 18d ago
The thief shouldn't value something more than his life then.
- rationalist 17d ago
  More specifically: The thief valued the gain of the crime more than the risk of the crime.
bryanlarsen 18d ago
That's not cliché; Texas is the only state that applies stand-your-ground to crimes against property alone.
- giardini 17d ago
  bryanlarsen says "Texas is the only state that applies stand-your-ground to crimes against property alone." Not true.
  - bryanlarsen 17d ago
    Not true in which direction? If another state allows it, which one? Lots of states apply stand-your-ground against robbery, but robbery is a threat to a person, not just property.
GaryBluto 18d ago
Nobody is forcing people to risk their lives to infringe on other people's rights. Whenever I see a news article about a criminal killed in the act, I never think "I wish they were alive.", I think "I wish they never went down that path in the first place that lead to that scenario."
- carlob 18d ago
  > Nobody is forcing people to risk their lives to infringe on other people's rights. Except poverty, ignorance, hunger, addiction, untreated mental illness...
  - GaryBluto 17d ago
    Those people are still in control of their actions, with the exception of those with untreated mental illnesses who are even more likely to be a danger to you and others if apprehended.
  - giardini 17d ago
    Hey there, Otto! Otto's "I blame Society" speech from the movie Repo Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3b5Q7b8YXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3b5Q7b8YXo
huimang 18d ago
> A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot. So don't go around stealing catalytic converters. Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home. And on the "replacing" part- on whose dime? What if someone's only means of transportation is affected, and they lose wages or outright lose their job? Are you going to pay for it? Of course not. No, a better reason to not allow shooting of common thieves is that you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this, but they either don't care or are incompetent. Which leaves the ordinary upstanding citizen stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Man extracts taxes from their earnings, and thieves who ruin lives get a slap on the wrist because "lives are oh precious".
- qlte 18d ago
  > Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home. Florida road rage incident leaves 2 girls shot after fathers' stand-your-ground gunfight https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/florida-road-rage-incident-girls-shot-georgia-father-charged https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/florida-road-rage-incident-...
  - huimang 18d ago
    I was referring to homes. This situation likely could've been avoided by not engaging in recklessly stupid behavior like road rage and escalating the situation (with one's family present, to boot). Also, a news article of some random altercation doesn't change anything about what I said: It's simply impossible to be shot (or clubbed, or beaten up, or whatever) by someone in their home for invading, if you never invade people's homes in the first place. So don't do that. And don't steal catalytic converters either.
    - ElProlactin 18d ago
      In your original comment, you stated: > It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home. The clear, plain-English implication of what you're suggesting is: your risk of getting shot (in the US) is, to a large extent, directly correlated to your invasion of other people's homes. Except that there's no evidence to support this. According to FBI data from 2015-2019, the ratio of criminal gun homicides to justifiable homicides (as in self-defense) was 34:1. Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.
rayiner 18d ago
You’re removing context by referring to a generic “human life” as if we don’t have more information than that.
deleted 18d ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 18d ago
This sounds great in theory, and I used to agree, but: a. There's no guarantee against escalation, a property crime turns into a violent crime very easily. b. Property crime can have a deep psychological impact on the victim - something the perpetrator demonstrably gives zero fucks about. c. The police and justice system in 2026 don't care about prosecuting property crime. Having no recourse at all if you're being robbed (a common situation when defending your own property is effectively illegal because of the risk to the perpetrator) is grossly unfair.
budman1 18d ago
If I kill you over a $2K catalytic converter, my sanity is gone. I could never sleep at night without thinking about what I have done.' A life is worth a lot more than $2k for my sanity.
- honeycrispy 18d ago
  It's not just $2k lost here. There's a lot to be said about the immeasurable value of a high-trust society. As another commenter said: It's incredibly easy to not get shot; don't burglarize someone's home the same way you wouldn't jump in front of a moving train.
  - rossy 18d ago
    Holding the threat of death over people isn't the way to a "high-trust society." Maybe you think it's the way to something similar, but you have to give up the word "trust" because it doesn't apply here. If the only reason I think a man isn't going to rob me is because I will shoot him if he does, I don't trust that man. A society which only has low crime because everyone is able to use lethal force to defend themselves and their property isn't one I would call higher "trust" than one that maintains the same crime levels without that threat.
    - s1artibartfast 18d ago
      I think that is the wrong way to think about it. The end state is you can trust others because nobody even wants to or considers it. Punishing violators is being proposed as how to build the norm that no one wants to steal.
      - mlrtime 18d ago
        Correct, the "No object is worth someone's life" is easy to say. However if you want a high trust society, it needs property rights. That only comes through enforcement of some sort.
    - ipsod 16d ago
kashkhan 18d ago
its not about the money. its about the threat to your life. A mugger may be stealing $50 in your wallet, but the crime is the threat to your life.
Eueudhsbsj32 18d ago
The life of most of the people who steal catalytic converters is not worth much.
mannanj 18d ago
this is so untrue, gullible and naive. so if I steal your home, your car, your food, your water, and everything material, and you end up starving and dead or stranded on the side of a ride in a desert where no ones coming to help you - are you are saying that is ok since that stuff can be replaced? You absolutely can cause death to a human and take a human life through material theft.
arjie 18d ago
Ah, but that’s not the choice. The choice is whether there exist probability p, life L, and material possession m such that the possession is worth more than p times L. The conclusion that there is no such triad seems clearly absurd since we allow people to build things for us the construction of which offers them a non-zero chance of death. It is reasonable to say that a precise frontier is not describable because of Sorites but to say no triad exists implies that you only participate in an economy consisting exclusively of zero risk behaviour[0] That seems improbable. Once we’ve dealt with that, perhaps we may be able to conclude that catalytic converters exist on one side of the frontier or on the other side or perhaps we might say that they lie along the Sorites boundary. 0: we are not unreasonable. We might even choose to consider imperfect information about the risk, the risk being at a Pareto optimum, the risk being at optimum against counterfactual, etc.
- carlob 18d ago
  A great example of this triad is driving a car: many people choose to do so every day and a small but not insignificant fraction of them will die because of it.
none2585 18d ago
Life is pretty easy to make actually
jdhendrickson 18d ago
No, your comment sounds incredibly privileged and naive.
bluecalm 18d ago
It's easy to say that. Not so easy to take responsibility for those views and compensate the victim which is often forced to work several months to cover the damage, may lose their job or their life is otherwise negatively affected. "Let's not harm the thief but force the victim to cover the damages" is what it comes down to and imo it's a very immoral stance.
joquarky 17d ago
I'm not so sure about the accuracy of that heuristic. I have weeds in my yard that are more useful than most of the fancy primates that occupy Congress.

My comment may sound cliché, but I genuinely believe this, no material possession is worth more than a human life. A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot.

Geonode 18d ago

The thief shouldn't value something more than his life then.

rationalist 17d ago
More specifically: The thief valued the gain of the crime more than the risk of the crime.

bryanlarsen 18d ago

That's not cliché; Texas is the only state that applies stand-your-ground to crimes against property alone.

giardini 17d ago
bryanlarsen says "Texas is the only state that applies stand-your-ground to crimes against property alone." Not true.
- bryanlarsen 17d ago
  Not true in which direction? If another state allows it, which one? Lots of states apply stand-your-ground against robbery, but robbery is a threat to a person, not just property.

GaryBluto 18d ago

Nobody is forcing people to risk their lives to infringe on other people's rights. Whenever I see a news article about a criminal killed in the act, I never think "I wish they were alive.", I think "I wish they never went down that path in the first place that lead to that scenario."

carlob 18d ago
> Nobody is forcing people to risk their lives to infringe on other people's rights. Except poverty, ignorance, hunger, addiction, untreated mental illness...
- GaryBluto 17d ago
  Those people are still in control of their actions, with the exception of those with untreated mental illnesses who are even more likely to be a danger to you and others if apprehended.
- giardini 17d ago
  Hey there, Otto! Otto's "I blame Society" speech from the movie Repo Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3b5Q7b8YXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3b5Q7b8YXo

huimang 18d ago

> A catalytic converter can be replaced, a life cannot. So don't go around stealing catalytic converters. Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home. And on the "replacing" part- on whose dime? What if someone's only means of transportation is affected, and they lose wages or outright lose their job? Are you going to pay for it? Of course not. No, a better reason to not allow shooting of common thieves is that you don't want ordinary people shooting randomly at each other. The government / police should be able to handle this, but they either don't care or are incompetent. Which leaves the ordinary upstanding citizen stuck between a rock and a hard place. The Man extracts taxes from their earnings, and thieves who ruin lives get a slap on the wrist because "lives are oh precious".

qlte 18d ago
> Same deal with states with "stand your ground laws". It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home. Florida road rage incident leaves 2 girls shot after fathers' stand-your-ground gunfight https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/florida-road-rage-incident-girls-shot-georgia-father-charged https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/florida-road-rage-incident-...
- huimang 18d ago
  I was referring to homes. This situation likely could've been avoided by not engaging in recklessly stupid behavior like road rage and escalating the situation (with one's family present, to boot). Also, a news article of some random altercation doesn't change anything about what I said: It's simply impossible to be shot (or clubbed, or beaten up, or whatever) by someone in their home for invading, if you never invade people's homes in the first place. So don't do that. And don't steal catalytic converters either.
  - ElProlactin 18d ago
    In your original comment, you stated: > It's astonishingly easy to not get shot: don't invade someone's home. The clear, plain-English implication of what you're suggesting is: your risk of getting shot (in the US) is, to a large extent, directly correlated to your invasion of other people's homes. Except that there's no evidence to support this. According to FBI data from 2015-2019, the ratio of criminal gun homicides to justifiable homicides (as in self-defense) was 34:1. Over 10,000 innocent people are killed by guns every year in the US, including more than 1,000 young people. This excludes suicides, which itself is a number that you'd probably be wise to pay attention to.

rayiner 18d ago

You’re removing context by referring to a generic “human life” as if we don’t have more information than that.

deleted 18d ago

[deleted]

AlexandrB 18d ago

This sounds great in theory, and I used to agree, but: a. There's no guarantee against escalation, a property crime turns into a violent crime very easily. b. Property crime can have a deep psychological impact on the victim - something the perpetrator demonstrably gives zero fucks about. c. The police and justice system in 2026 don't care about prosecuting property crime. Having no recourse at all if you're being robbed (a common situation when defending your own property is effectively illegal because of the risk to the perpetrator) is grossly unfair.

budman1 18d ago

If I kill you over a $2K catalytic converter, my sanity is gone. I could never sleep at night without thinking about what I have done.' A life is worth a lot more than $2k for my sanity.

honeycrispy 18d ago
It's not just $2k lost here. There's a lot to be said about the immeasurable value of a high-trust society. As another commenter said: It's incredibly easy to not get shot; don't burglarize someone's home the same way you wouldn't jump in front of a moving train.
- rossy 18d ago
  Holding the threat of death over people isn't the way to a "high-trust society." Maybe you think it's the way to something similar, but you have to give up the word "trust" because it doesn't apply here. If the only reason I think a man isn't going to rob me is because I will shoot him if he does, I don't trust that man. A society which only has low crime because everyone is able to use lethal force to defend themselves and their property isn't one I would call higher "trust" than one that maintains the same crime levels without that threat.
  - s1artibartfast 18d ago
    I think that is the wrong way to think about it. The end state is you can trust others because nobody even wants to or considers it. Punishing violators is being proposed as how to build the norm that no one wants to steal.
    - mlrtime 18d ago
      Correct, the "No object is worth someone's life" is easy to say. However if you want a high trust society, it needs property rights. That only comes through enforcement of some sort.
  - ipsod 16d ago

kashkhan 18d ago

its not about the money. its about the threat to your life. A mugger may be stealing $50 in your wallet, but the crime is the threat to your life.

Eueudhsbsj32 18d ago

The life of most of the people who steal catalytic converters is not worth much.

mannanj 18d ago

this is so untrue, gullible and naive. so if I steal your home, your car, your food, your water, and everything material, and you end up starving and dead or stranded on the side of a ride in a desert where no ones coming to help you - are you are saying that is ok since that stuff can be replaced? You absolutely can cause death to a human and take a human life through material theft.

arjie 18d ago

Ah, but that’s not the choice. The choice is whether there exist probability p, life L, and material possession m such that the possession is worth more than p times L. The conclusion that there is no such triad seems clearly absurd since we allow people to build things for us the construction of which offers them a non-zero chance of death. It is reasonable to say that a precise frontier is not describable because of Sorites but to say no triad exists implies that you only participate in an economy consisting exclusively of zero risk behaviour[0] That seems improbable. Once we’ve dealt with that, perhaps we may be able to conclude that catalytic converters exist on one side of the frontier or on the other side or perhaps we might say that they lie along the Sorites boundary. 0: we are not unreasonable. We might even choose to consider imperfect information about the risk, the risk being at a Pareto optimum, the risk being at optimum against counterfactual, etc.

carlob 18d ago
A great example of this triad is driving a car: many people choose to do so every day and a small but not insignificant fraction of them will die because of it.

none2585 18d ago

Life is pretty easy to make actually

jdhendrickson 18d ago

No, your comment sounds incredibly privileged and naive.

bluecalm 18d ago

It's easy to say that. Not so easy to take responsibility for those views and compensate the victim which is often forced to work several months to cover the damage, may lose their job or their life is otherwise negatively affected. "Let's not harm the thief but force the victim to cover the damages" is what it comes down to and imo it's a very immoral stance.

joquarky 17d ago

I'm not so sure about the accuracy of that heuristic. I have weeds in my yard that are more useful than most of the fancy primates that occupy Congress.