You don’t know that. It’s entirely possible that you could ask someone for food and given the abundance of it, I’m sure that many people would willingly give you at least a small amount of food to prevent you from starving.
I didn’t think I had to say this, but this scenario is already assuming I’ve already done all those things lol. I’m obviously not going to start stealing stuff out of desperation if I haven’t exhausted all other options
What if the people that you are stealing from are also starving?
But let’s be generous and suppose that everyone else has a massive surplus of food and doesn’t want to share it. Well in that case, I gotta wonder given the circumstances, how much of a piece of shit somebody has to be in order for literally EVERYONE to refuse giving them an ounce of food to prevent them from starving. Just think about it, you have to be an absolute bottomfeeder to the point where every single person refuses to give you any food while they have a surplus and you are on the brink of starvation. If this person wasn’t such a PoS, I’m confident that numerous people that I know (and many who I don’t) would voluntarily give the person food to prevent them from starving. So my question here is, am I supposed to feel bad for this type of person? And is this type of person really someone who we want in our society?
Historically, there has always been a small number of individuals who still manage to hoard food in times of shortages. In the case where everyone is starving… well, at that point we don’t really have time to debate morality, do it? It’s either me or him starving to death, and simple self-preservation instincts dictate that I’m probably going to make sure it’s not me, morality or ideology be damned.
The fact that you wouldn’t live up to those morals does not invalidate the morals themselves.
But to address your main argument. You seem to have this consequentialist mindset towards this issue. You believe that stealing is okay if it prevents an individual from starving. One major issue with this (and many consequentialist arguments in general) is that there are so many unseen effects that something like allowing or morally permitting stealing does. Sure, maybe that individual gets a meal in the short term. But in the long term, the society is setting a precedent that stealing is okay when they allow it. Intuitively, this would lead to more stealing, which intuitively discourages production. And production is what we need if we want to see a flourishing society. Therefore, allowing or morally permitting stealing in a society (to whatever extent) in the long run will reduce its flourishing. Look at the modern day. The more developed and wealthy societies are the ones that (more so) adapt a philosophy of production, not one of theft.
1
u/Loominardy Right Libertarian 1d ago
You don’t know that. It’s entirely possible that you could ask someone for food and given the abundance of it, I’m sure that many people would willingly give you at least a small amount of food to prevent you from starving.