Re: _The Windup Girl_

In article <7u5926pgmjiv7gntaqfrvj97tbcpticrb1@xxxxxxx>,
Howard Brazee <howard@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 25 Jun 2010 07:18:02 -0400, Mike Ash <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

People have a right to defend themselves from acts of aggression. People
ALSO have a right to the basic necessities of life. These two
occasionally come into conflict. How do you resolve it? By seeing which
one is greater. If A is starving and B has too much food, then A
stealing from B is the lesser evil, and B defending himself from the
aggression is not the desired result. If A is not starving, and is just
stealing because he wants some variety, that's a different story.

In reality we have cases where B has put his food away so he and his
family can survive the Winter. "Too much food" is pretty
subjective.

That this whole business is subjective is pretty much my point.
Ironclad, simple rules on how to deal with this stuff don't work.

--
Mike Ash
Radio Free Earth
Broadcasting from our climate-controlled studios deep inside the Moon
.

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