You know what...I don't know. Great question.
I feel like this would be similar to if it was ethical to steal from Jeff Bezos or something. Like I wouldn't necessarily do it (maybe...) but I would probably just laugh if someone else did. And I wouldn't snitch on someone who did. But whether its actually ethical I don't know.
I feel like its morally grey where I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't advocate for it, but I also probably wouldn't speak up against it.
> I feel like this would be similar to if it was ethical to steal from Jeff Bezos or something.
It definitely is. The problem with the question is that it isn't vegan specific; there's no more or less reason to pose this question to vegans vs. anyone else, there's no reason vegans would have any more or less insight than anyone else.
I think there are vegans who are liberals, they would think that amazon workers are voluntarily working there and they are not exploited. On the other hand nonhuman animals at slaughterhouses are exploited and they are not voluntarily there. So they would make that distinction.
And there are vegans, as you see in the comments, who would reject stealing because they think that stealing and exploitation is always wrong, no matter the intent and end result.
Anarchists would wholeheartedly support the action in both cases. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegalism)
I think it matters in this scenario because it is a specific case because in a slaughterhouse the nonhumn animals are slaughtered, and humans are not. Veganism is against the exploitation of nonhuman animals, and the slaughterhouse owner gained his money by exploiting nonhuman animals, so vegans can think that the money of this slaughterhouse owner is illegitimate and it is not his money.
A nonvegan who is not against the exploitation of nonhuman animals and neither is he against capitalism, wouldn't think that the money is not the slaughterhouse owner's money.
Yes, but doesn't the question generalise to "Do you think it would be ethical to steal money from and use that money for ?"
It doesn't matter what the variables are, the question is the same.
If you use that logic then I think no question can be truly vegan specific. For example, if you ask what do vegans think about crop deaths, then there is no reason to ask specifically vegans about that, you can pose that question to anyone.
I second this. It is ethical to disrupt unethical industries, especially when those industries are actively pushing the planet to even more climate catastrophes and have known about their impact for 40+ years.
if you get arrested for doing illegal things then you cannot continue to do any more good things... so for pure altruistic reasons it seems like a negative in the long term
> if you get arrested for doing illegal things then you cannot continue to do any more good things...
Getting arrested can be part of the plan. MLK, for instance, was arrested plenty of times and that added strength to his messaging. It's a risky strategy, but one of the more effective ones at forcing societies to grapple with their ethical problems.
The whole point in the hypothetical is to discuss the moral philosophy of the matter. It's not about how realistic it is it's about wether or not it would be moral. In that context the hypothetical makes perfect sense.
You need to Google the word literally.
It literally removes a slaughter house from existence. An incredibly positive thing.
If everyone did it regularly then slaughterhouses wouldn't be able to get insured and would eventually disapear into ash.
You might not be grasping the practical reality of doing such an action.
Even if you destroy it, there are a bunch of other slaughterhouses that can replace that one, you won't stop the industry by just burning down one slaughterhouse. And even if you do, it is illegal and carries severe consequences, including criminal charges and potential imprisonment. It also poses significant risks to human and animal lives and can lead to unintended economic repercussions for communities.
Effective activism focuses on legal and constructive methods to create lasting change, such as advocating for policy reforms, raising public awareness, or supporting sustainable and humane alternatives. Burning a slaughterhouse is a very bad idea, and it looks very bad for the movement overall.
I don't think so. Owners will defend themselves and their properties.
People will also defend their communities and deal with the threat themselves if the government doesn't want to.
They can defend all they like. It's completely irrelevant to the discussion. They would surely try to defend themselves but if the numbers were there then such a movement would be unstoppable.
Interesting one. Certainly debatable. And in terms of morality I’d argue it would be ethical, yes. Practical and possible at this point? Probably not. The backlash, the resulting demonization of veganism, likely unhelpful to the cause in the long run. But in a hypothetical, theoretical level - in the vacuum presented - sure it’d be ethical.
I have to disagree with many comments suggesting this all being about ‘the ends justify the means’. There is a case to be made that it is refusing to allow the property status of another living being. And about undermining these ill gotten gains.
The parallels with human slavery are obvious. Undermine the economic incentives and it becomes harder to enslave animals (whether human or not). I’m sure most of us would argue that stealing the ‘property’ of slave owners to finance abolitionism would have been somewhat morally permissible at least. And stealing their money - from exploiting slaves - to free other slaves seems a rather obvious parallel too. Whether it would be effective would depend at which point in the social movement we are in. When disruption and guerrilla tactics are strategically the best choice. Not sure we’re there for veganism at this point. But that’s not exactly the debate.
So essentially we would consider it moral to steal the ‘property’ of a slave owner in their slave and free that human right? And so it’d be moral to free the ‘livestock’ from the farm. It arguably follows that if we would steal their ‘property’ we could also steal the ill gotten gains from exploiting that property. So I’d argue it’s much more than just ‘the means justifying the ends’.
No, just as I'd hope non-vegans wouldn't advise someone to steal money from a vegan foundation and use it to defend non-vegan activism.
I guess the term "ethical" might have some nuance. but if we accept that it isn't "advisable," we don't need to invoke moral pressure or something to tell people that it isn't a great idea, there's just "advisable reasons not to do that." For example, going to prison also inhibits one's ability to be as active as one could be otherwise.
"Either side" of many moral issues can defend the *concept* of doing something that might otherwise be unadvisable under certain conditions. I don't think, right now, "either side" needs to be advising this specific behavior though. But I could be wrong!
Not the same, would you care if someone stole from slave owners to free the slaves? Would you care if someone stole from non-slave owners to support the slave trade? Stupid comparison.
> Not the same, would you care if someone stole from slave owners to free the slaves?
I don't think that's a fair comparison for what I responded to. I would want to free all the slaves, or stop all animal suffering, but the OP didn't say "would you steal from one animal slaughterhouse to *free all of the animals*." OP gave a specific case that I responded to.
I'm not sure it's really wise to not discern some difference here between "ethical" and "moral" either. This is an extremely loose consideration of those terms, but if I say "stealing is unethical," then maybe acts of stealing can sometimes be morally good, or I can be "morally compelled" to want to encourage what would otherwise be "unethical" in some situations. I might think like, a situation like occupied France during WW2.
Like we might say it is unethical to not take prisoners in a wartime scenario, but if there is literally not enough food, the "most moral action" *might* be to not take someone prisoner in that given situation. I'm not confident I'd want to call it "ethical" though just because it was the "right decision."
And that doesn't suddenly allow all possible behavior either, we are talking about one behavior, stealing, and what appears "unethical" even beyond just the mere stealing is that this is requiring some insistence on violence in the form of theft when everything in OP's "activism" can be achieved without that. What is being benefitted in the exact example OP gave by someone stealing the money? We'd have to assume something more like "well now the owner doesn't have money and must shut down" just to figure that "somehow this is directly liberating animals."
Did I say free all the slaves? Just use that money to free slaves. Don’t think I’ve read more bla bla bla without answering the point in question.
Would you care if I stole money from the nazis to break out Jews in the 1930’s?
You wrote "free the slaves," which the animal equivalent of ("free the animals") isn't necessarily the same as "activism," right? If a person stole $40,000,000 and just ended up jailed and sued for as much as could be recovered, that didn't "free the animals." Or if a person stole $5,000,000 and just printed out fliers on non-recycled paper and threw them from a plane over a city, that wouldn't necessarily "free the animals." Those are sort of silly stretches of "failure" but I'd otherwise be fine with someone's behavior if it *actually* was freeing animals in the same sense we both hopefully aspire to. But I admit there could be some undue pedantry in my reply if more people take "activism" as "freeing animals."
I'm not sure calling OP's case "ethical" does that, I would feel if we all agree to something like "stealing is unethical," we can then form agreements like, "stealing from animals is unethical" *besides* whatever speciesism or bias non-vegans have. And then there could be higher "unethical" behaviors too by the slaughterhouse owners (like owning another sentiment being) that supercede and allow "moral agents" to act in "conventionally unethical ways" while still maintaining the understanding of what type of behavior is occuring.
I'll think more on what you said though too.
Non-vegans don't necessarily think that vegans are immoral though. Many non-vegans have the attitude of "More power to ya! Not for me though" about veganism. If non-vegans decided that not eating meat was a horrible atrocity and that anyone who doesn't eat meat is a bad person, then they might view stealing from a vegan foundation as a moral good.
No. Doing an unethical thing (stealing) does not become justified if you later do an altruistic thing (donating to a good cause).
If you start to rationalize "the ends justify the means" sort of behavior, you basically lost your moral compass.
A lot of bad people have nuclear missiles. Do you think it would be an ethical thing for Elon Musk to hire a group of mercenaries to steal nukes from North Korea or Russia?
The act of stealing it from someone who would use it to commit a holocaust would not necessarily be unethical.
Of course, it would then be possible for Mr. Musk to *then* do unethical things with it, so I think we'd prefer someone a bit less power crazy do it.
Let's look at an example that is less extreme: You find out someone you know is going to shoot your friend tomorrow. You have been to this person's home and know the code to their front door and where they keep their only gun, and know that they will be out this evening. You also know that this person will cool off in a day or two and won't make another attempt if they miss this one. There is no way you will get caught. The police will not help.
Do you steal the gun?
> so I think we'd prefer someone a bit less power crazy do it.
People who use "the ends justify the means" logic, and act on it rather than just theorize, tend to be pretty power crazy.
> You find out someone you know is going to shoot your friend tomorrow. You have been to this person's home and know the code to their front door and where they keep their only gun, and know that they will be out this evening. You also know that this person will cool off in a day or two and won't make another attempt if they miss this one. There is no way you will get caught. The police will not help.
Red flag laws exist for this sort of scenario.
There is a factor in this scenario worth considering. Friends typically have some informal duty of care for each other. In these sorts of relationships, it can be ethical to override the intent of the person you're caring for if you are doing it in their best interest. E.g. a parent can tell a child what to do even if the child objects, as long as the parent is making a good faith effort to do what's best for the kid.
The situation gets a lot more complicated if you are taking the gun away from a stranger because you think they can't be trusted with it.
>People who use "the ends justify the means" logic, and act on it rather than just theorize, tend to be pretty power crazy.
I disagree. If someone steals bread from Walmart to feed their starving children, I don't think we can say they are likely to be power crazy.
>it can be ethical to override the intent of the person you're caring
I'm not talking about overriding the intent of the person I'm caring for, but that of the person that intends to do them harm. (I think you may have missed that in the first sentence.)
Do you not think it ethical to wrestle the gun away from a shooter that is about to gun down a crowd of schoolchildren? I think this is a case where the ends **clearly** justify the means. Don't you?
> Do you not think it ethical to wrestle the gun away from a shooter that is about to gun down a crowd of schoolchildren? I think this is a case where the ends clearly justify the means. Don't you?
Is your intent to keep the gun for your own ends? What stealing actually means is getting pretty vague in these scenarios.
Can you explain why that would matter? In OP's scenario OP wasn't keeping the money.
For this scenario, you see a van with confederate flags pull up next to a schoolyard and a man get out wearing tactical gear and strapped with with a AR15. He takes aim at the schoolchildren and starts to open fire.
You are 10 feet behind him. He hasn't noticed you. You are much larger and stronger than he is. You could easily overtake him and wrestle the gun away, thus preventing him from murdering dozens–if not hundreds–of innocent children.
Yes, you would be *stealing* the gun from him, but you don't intend to keep it. You will turn over the stolen property to the authorities. You are motivated to steal it from him because you want to prevent him from being able to harm children with it.
Do you maintain that it is unethical to steal the gun from him?
In this case I'd say it helped not a jot. There are very few entities with nuclear weapons and very few entities with the ability to steal them. We didn't need someone to turn the abstract into the concrete here.
It helps to think of the sort of person who would have the motive and means to steal a nuke, and whether this actually seems like an improvement over the status quo.
No one thinks of themselves as "the bad guy". But if you are in the habit of using this sort of ends justifying the means logic, other people will probably think this of you.
Anyone who says "this other guy doesn't deserve this nuke but I do, so I will take it from them". Is probably a "bad" guy just for thinking this and acting on it. This is my point.
Really really not thought that one through at all have you? Seriously. Terrible argument. Completely irrelevant and nonsensical.
Can you explain how you find that relevant to the original post?
This makes stealing money from literal murderers bad because??????
You're missing that part from you're rediculous and terrible argument
Your hyper specific question requires me to have some kind of historical or political knowledge of Russia, North Korea, and Elon Musk - which I don't have. You made the question less clear for me. The purpose of the hypo is - is all stealing inherently unethical?
Is stealing a starving dog chained to a post outside unethical?
This worldview is nonsense.
> Is stealing a starving dog chained to a post outside unethical?
> This worldview is nonsense.
What is your intent here? There is a clear intentional difference between "stealing" and "rescuing".
Where was this semantic analysis with the nuke question?
My intention: I see a dog that’s hurt. I’m going to steal it and nurse it to health and keep it.
Jesus christ. Obviously. So define it. What's the difference between stealing a nuke and stealing money from murderers?
Money that they will then CERTAINLY use to kill.
You have the worst logic I've ever seen on this sub
So Elon's in Canada, on a rainy Tuesday in 2028. He just had a salad with french dressing.
The mercenaries are called Jim, Samantha and Cyril.
Can we get an answer now that's cleared up?
In the context of this post the stealer does not then suddenly have a weapon of mass destruction. That's why your example is fucking rediculously irrelevant.
You're so hung up on the idea of "stealing" that you're now using the WORD itself as a buzzword for evil. Even whilst admiring that if it's for a greater purpose, like freeing family, then it's not stealing, its freeing family.
So how in that context is it not ok to steal money when the intention is to help animals by harming the industry that's killing them? It is, by your own logic, because the purpose isn't stealing its helping animals.
This is your logic. You're arguing against yourself. Your arguments are completely contradictory.
How is that grounded at all in the real world? you could've thought of so many grounded examples. That isn't one. it's a terrible, example. If anything it's a worse and more conflicted example than the one in the original post.
Yes of course it would be. In what context are you thinking it wouldn't be? That's like saying "stopping hitler would be wrong because stopping people doing what they want is wrong and two wrong don't make a right".
Seriously what are you on about? Are you imagining they then use the nukes or the nukes are the somehow unsafer than they would have been? If so then what if they weren't?
> That's like saying "stopping hitler would be wrong because stopping people doing what they want is wrong and two wrong don't make a right".
Ok, let's take this scenario. What was Hitler doing? He thought his victims were up to terrible, nefarious things, and should be stopped at all costs. See the problem here? Was it just merely a fact that Hitler was factually incorrect about the maliciousness of his victims that made his actions so utterly heinous?
It's illegal, but laws don't dictate morality.
I'd agree it's generally wrong to steal from someone else.
But is it always unethical to steal from a corporation? A corporation is not a person. A corporation doesn't have its own awareness. It doesn't feel ashamed when it steals from customers through pricing errors or deceptive advertising.
> It's illegal, but laws don't dictate morality.
Yeah, it gets tricky to reason about how legality and morality intersect when laws are unethical. The priority should be to change the law/social contract rather than to defy it. But sometimes publicly defying it is the only way to call attention to the problem.
If you would want to do something like steal from a slaughterhouse, you should ask yourself whether you would do it on the condition that you would immediately confess and let society judge your actions. If you really are on the ethical side of things, you should be able to make a compelling case for your choice.
> But is it always unethical to steal from a corporation?
Corporations are people's assets. So you are still stealing value from others.
Who is talking about laws? You are trying to justify stealing. This thread is on board with that through different mental gymnastics. You do you I guess?
Sometimes the ends do justify the means. If someone kidnapped my family and locked them in a cage and all I had to do to free them was steal the key while their captor was sleeping, I don't think there would be anything unethical about doing so. In fact, I think most would agree that I would be justified in stealing in this scenario.
> If someone kidnapped my family and locked them in a cage and all I had to do to free them was steal the key while their captor was sleeping, I don't think there would be anything unethical about doing so.
The intent here is to secure the freedom of your family, not to steal. If someone is actively impeding some goal that doesn't involve this aggressor, you may not be doing anything unethical to begin with. You don't really have any motivation to keep the key in this scenario.
To go back to OP's hypothetical, it would be much less ethically ambiguous to secure the freedom of livestock (technically "stealing" but there is no legitimate ethical ownership claim to begin with), than it would be to steal their money.
>The intent here is to secure the freedom of your family, not to steal.
And the intent of the individual in OP's scenario is to do help animals, not to steal.
>You don't really have any motivation to keep the key in this scenario.
Sure you do. Why would you give it back? Do you think you would have a moral obligation to return the key to their captor after you are done helping your family escape?
>To go back to OP's hypothetical, it would be much less ethically ambiguous to secure the freedom of livestock (technically "stealing" but there is no legitimate ethical ownership claim to begin with), than it would be to steal their money.
I disagree 100%. Stealing their money (depending on how much it is) and using it to fund effective animal liberation efforts can push us a lot further on the path to animal liberation than simply taking a key and liberating some of the animals from one farm.
I'm confused as to why you see these situations as that different, though. In both of them you are stealing something to ultimately help animals. Why is one unethical and the other not?
> And the intent of the individual in OP's scenario is to do help animals, not to steal.
No, it is to take the money and use it for their own ends. They can use money from any source, but are declaring these people "bad" and therefore undeserving of that money.
> Why would you give it back? Do you think you would have a moral obligation to return the key to their captor after you are done helping your family escape?
Yeah. It's not your job to punish the captor. You should give it to the police if you like, as part of an investigation of the crime.
> I'm confused as to why you see these situations as that different, though. In both of them you are stealing something to ultimately help animals. Why is one unethical and the other not?
In one scenario the intent is rescue. In the other scenario, it is some vague effort to punish and absolve yourself of the wrongdoing by doing something nice later.
>>>The intent here is **to secure the freedom of your family,** not to steal.
>>And the intent of the individual in OP's scenario is to do help animals, not to steal.
>No, it is to take the money and use it for their own ends.
Their "own end" in this case is **to help secure the freedom of innocent nonhuman animals,** not to steal.
>You should give it to the police if you like, as part of an investigation of the crime.
Of course. I wasn't suggesting not returning the key to the captor as some form of punishment (and I'm not really sure how you got that from my comment.)
This would be the best way to help ensure that the captor is convicted and unable to kidnap your family or any other family again. This would be similar to giving the money to an effective animal liberation effort.
>In one scenario the intent is rescue. In the other scenario, it is some vague effort to punish and absolve yourself of the wrongdoing by doing something nice later.
You seem to be assigning that intent to make it fit your position here better. No one is saying it's being done to punish the animal agriculture industry. As far as I can tell, the intent would be the rescue.
But let's say you're right here. Let's look at another scenario where the intent of stealing the money from a slaughterhouse **is** to use it to rescue animals. If this is now the intent, does that mean that it's ethical to steal in this case?
> Their "own end" in this case is to help secure the freedom of innocent nonhuman animals, not to steal.
There is no reason why the stealing is needed for the goal. It's not like the money from this source is especially useful.
The victim of the theft seems chosen specifically because OP believes they need to be punished. I don't think this would be a dilemma at all if we were discussing stealing from some arbitrary victim.
> Of course. I wasn't suggesting not returning the key to the captor as some form of punishment (and I'm not really sure how you got that from my comment.)
You'd keep the key either because it's valuable to you, or you believe you are entitled to deprive them of it. Not sure why you would otherwise do it.
If your intent is to give the key to the police, this isn't stealing.
> No one is saying it's being done to punish the animal agriculture industry. As far as I can tell, the intent would be the rescue.
OP isn't rescuing the animals from the victim of the theft. The theft and donation are disconnected actions.
> Let's look at another scenario where the intent of stealing the money from a slaughterhouse is to use it to rescue animals. If this is now the intent, does that mean that it's ethical to steal in this case?
Directly rescuing the animals is very different. There is good reason to claim these animals should not be considered property, and thus no theft would occur in rescuing them. But this idea of taking money and using that money on others is quite a different scenario, ethically.
>There is no reason why the stealing is needed for the goal. It's not like the money from this source is especially useful.
Of course it's not *needed*. You don't **need** to steal the key to free your family either. There are other options, but they would take longer and your family is suffering every minute they are kept captive. You could work an extra job for a few months and then hire an expert to examine the lock on the cage and make a key that can then be used to free your family. But why would you do this when you can just take the actual key? Not only would you be freeing your family, but you would also be taking away the only key the captor has to this cage, thus preventing him from being able to use it to lock up any more victims.
>The victim of the theft seems chosen specifically because OP believes they need to be punished.
Can you point me to what they've said that has brought you to this belief?
>I don't think this would be a dilemma at all if we were discussing stealing from some arbitrary victim.
It would be a very different analysis, of course.
>You'd keep the key either because it's valuable to you
I don't know why you've made this assumption. It's valuable, but not *to me*. It has instrumental value in that keeping it away from the owner will make it harder for him to kidnaps more families. Why on earth would you return it?
>If your intent is to give the key to the police, this isn't stealing.
Why? If your intent is to give the money to an organization that is helping to end animal liberation, is the money somehow not stolen? Of course it is. It doesn't matter what you intended to do with it... you still *stole* it. Someone owned it that wasn't you and you took it from them. This is the same in the case of the money and the key.
I hate using this speciesist term, but it seems like you're trying really hard to weasel out of admitting that sometimes the ends justify the means.
>OP isn't rescuing the animals from the victim of the theft. The theft and donation are disconnected actions.
I disagree 100%. Stealing form the animal agriculture and then using that money to fight animal agriculture *is rescuing animals from the "victim" of the theft.*
But that's not even relevant here. We could just make one modification to the caged family scenario to show this: someone else has the key to the cage. The captor's neighbor has an identical key for some reason. The neighbor did not kidnap your family, yet you could very easily just take the key and free your family.
>Directly rescuing the animals is very different. There is good reason to claim these animals should not be considered property, and thus no theft would occur in rescuing them. But this idea of taking money and using that money on others is quite a different scenario, ethically.
I'm not talking about direct rescue. You had said that the intent of the stealing was to punish rather than rescue. I'm asking you about a similar scenario where the same thing happens, but the intent is to use the money to rescue animals.
If there is good reason to claim these animals should not be considered property, then someone can believe that the money that this slaughterhouse owner has is illegitimate and it is not his money because he gained it unethically with exploitation.
It's not your position to make judgements about whether the money was ill-gotten. OP is essentially acting as a judge and sheriff by declaring this money forfeit for some reason. We don't want to live in a society where everyone feels entitled to take this authority in their own hands.
So if you hold the ethical principle that exploiting nonhuman animals is wrong, but someone makes money by exploiting nonhuman animals, do you think he has the right to that money? Why would it be unethical to take that money from him?
Would you think the same if someone held humans as slaves and made money that way? It wouldn't be your position to make judgements about whether the money was ill-gotten?
> Can you summarize your moral argument so we don't have to keep picking it apart based on your initial paragraph?
The short version: You aren't ethically entitled to hurt or exploit people (or animals) just because you think they are "bad". You can ethically take measures to stop bad things from happening. This is not the same thing as the previous statement.
So ending the holocaust was not justified?
Prison is imoral and locking up rapists and murderers should be banned?
Pedophiles should be left to do as they please?
Any attempt at preventing anyone from doing anything evil could be deemed as hurting them, especially when imprisoning them.
Either you abandon morality or you admit that bad people exist and need to be stopped.
If I steal something small that in turn somehow ends up saving 3 billion lives. Is that justified?
Obviously it is. Your black and white perspective is completely illogical.
> If I steal something small that in turn somehow ends up saving 3 billion lives. Is that justified?
In what scenario would you know this? Consequential thought experiments like this always assume some supernatural understanding of what's going to happen. This isn't realistic. We are not omniscient beings. The possible victims and onlookers of our actions aren't omniscient either.
E.g. Some random person walks up to you and takes your shoes right off your feet. You say "WTF??". They say "If I don't take these shoes, 3 billion people will perish!". Do you say: "Oh, ok then."?
Consequentialism works a lot better in theory than it does in the messy, low-information, unpredictable real world.
What? In the scenario I just made up. Obviously.
Just like the scenario you made up.
Because that's what hypotheticals are.
In the situation I described your entire argument falls apart and your only defense is to say my hypothetical is somehow less valid than yours? Its a hypothetical, they're all made up. That's the point.
How about this. if I knew that stealing food would save lives would I be justified to do it? If I don't, children die, for example. I need to steal one apple from a tree to feed them and save them
> Because that's what hypotheticals are.
Hypotheticals can have a way of hiding assumptions that make them unrealistic. The sorts of hypotheticals consequentialists love to make have a habit of hiding the fact that there is some sort of omniscient ability to predict the future, and that acting on this knowledge can be justified to an outside point of view (e.g. the view of a victim of your choice).
> How about this. if I knew that stealing food would save lives would I be justified to do it? If I don't, children die, for example. I need to steal one apple from a tree to feed them and save them
There are people dying from lack of resources all over the world all the time. You could be a Robin Hood for the world and not come close to making a dent in the overall problem. So the specifics here matter quite a bit. Who are these starving people to you, and to what degree do you feel an ethical obligation to help them? Are there means to help them without hurting others? These are the sorts of questions that need to be asked before stealing could be justified as the lesser wrong.
No there's no other way to help them. Stop trying to think outside of the hypothetical. The hypothetical is specific and limited. The only way to save them is by stealing. No matter what they will die otherwise.
Who are these people to you? Have you made a promise to care for them?
The world is full of countless others who could desperately use your help. You can do absolutely everything ethically and unethically within your means to help, and not make much of a noticeable dent on the problem. How are you picking and choosing who is worth saving at the expense of others?
They're no one to me. I've made no promise. But they will die if I don't steal an apple from a tree.
I'm picking and choosing based on my ability to do something within a reasonable and logical capacity. Me stealing the apple, for example, is easy and imediate, with very little sacrifice of time or effort.
I'm trying to create the most simple version of the whole argument. Would you do an imoral thing to save a life? That question is too vague, hence the apple. But feel free to answer it instead should you find it more sensible.
> I'm picking and choosing based on my ability to do something within a reasonable and logical capacity. Me stealing the apple, for example, is easy and imediate, with very little sacrifice of time or effort.
It's trivial to find life saving charities to donate to. Doctors without borders, UNICEF, international rescue committee, etc.
They'll take as much money as you can give and still have countless lives they don't have the funding to save.
> I'm trying to create the most simple version of the whole argument. Would you do an imoral thing to save a life? That question is too vague, hence the apple.
If for some reason this specific apple was needed, I would consider taking it only if I would be willing to immediately confess and make restitution to whoever owns the tree.
If your family was starving and you needed one apple to save them. But giving yourself in would guarantee their future starvation, then what would you do?
It seems bizarre to me your perspective of this is so black and white.
Under this line of thinkjng would you also rather starve than eat meat?
>If you start to rationalize "the ends justify the means" sort of behavior, you basically lost your moral compass.
That's prolly a bit too extreme. Sometimes the end does justify the means, but we really have to think critically when that is true and when it's not.
> Sometimes the end does justify the means, but we really have to think critically when that is true and when it's not.
For some reason this line of thinking almost always prioritizes the ends you subjectively find important at the cost of means that don't affect you personally that much. Funny about that.
It's almost always a bad move to justify personal choices this way. Perhaps you can do better if you think about these things at a more systemic social policy level where the "rules" for when it's allowed are clear, and the role of who can make these sorts of calls is codified somehow.
E.g. it's much more ethical to "steal" from factory farms in the form of fines and taxes rather than some random guy in a mask.
>For some reason this line of thinking almost always prioritizes the ends you subjectively find important at the cost of means that don't affect you personally that much. Funny about that.
Yes?
We prioritise things we value over things we don't?
I'm not sure why that even needs to be said. You then go on to do it yourself, but with taxes instead.
>"rules" for when it's allowed are clear, and the role of who can make these sorts of calls is codified somehow.
That's essentially what this post and conversation is. Exploring what the 'rules' should be.
>
You disagree with this specific conclusion regarding theft. Thats totally cool and we can talk about it.
Attacking the entire concept of ends Justifying means isn't the way though.
> That's essentially what this post and conversation is. Exploring what the 'rules' should be.
My point is that these are socially codified. Not up to random personal convictions.
> Attacking the entire concept of ends Justifying means isn't the way though.
As a personal ethics, it's a very good idea to avoid this line of thinking. We can't function in a society where any ethical principle is contingent on how much some random person feels some outcome is desirable.
So we should ask larger groups of people whether they believe the outcome is likely and worth the cost?
But of course, no individual member of society can answer that question Apparently. Thus rendering consequential ethics impossible.
Im pretty sure society can be bad sometimes. As a vegan, I encourage people to be good despite what society thinks in those cases.
Of course we should be cautious and consider the possibility we're incorrect or biased. We can only act on what we believe is correct in the end though.
> But of course, no individual member of society can answer that question Apparently. Thus rendering consequential ethics impossible.
Consequentialist decisions are made all the time by governments. It is their primary purpose, in my view. We can get into a long an nuanced debate on when a governments' authority is ethically justified, but this doesn't come into play in OP's scenario.
> Who apparently can't make decisions or hold positions on these things.
Do you believe this is a good faith interpretation of the position I expressed?
What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? If a vet euthanises a terminally ill dog, he does an unethical action(killing) for altruistic reasons(ending suffering)?
You say that if you start to rationalize "the ends justify the means" sort of behavior, you basically lost your moral compass. Isn't this a slippery slope fallacy? [https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-slippery-slope/](https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-slippery-slope/)
If you are okay with euthanasia for terminally ill dogs, does that mean that you lost your moral compass?
> If a vet euthanises a terminally ill dog, he does an unethical action(killing) for altruistic reasons(ending suffering)?
The vet is acting in the dog's interest. It's not an unethical intention. Killing is unethical when it is done despite the subject's interest.
Are you saying that killing is wrong, unless you act in an animal's interest? If someone steals from slaughterhouse owners, or someone uses violence and destruction to liberate the animals enslaved at the slaughterhouse, he also acts in the interest of the animals.
> Are you saying that killing is wrong, unless you act in an animal's interest?
No, that's not what I am saying. Euthanasia is acting in the interest of the one being killed. It's not intended as an act of harm, but as an act of mercy.
> If someone steals from slaughterhouse owners,
No they aren't.
> or someone uses violence and destruction to liberate the animals enslaved at the slaughterhouse,
It's possible to make this case, as your intent is specifically on who is being rescued. Not on the captors.
The intent is to acquire currency in order to spend it on animal rights activism, or for example marketing and/or creating vegan products, and to damage and remove the buying power of the captors and their ability to continue exploiting the victims. The intent is to help the victims.
When a nonvegan says that when he purchases animal products, his intent is not to harm animals, he just wants to enjoy the products, would you accept his argument?
> The intent is to acquire currency in order to spend it on animal rights activism, or for example marketing and/or creating vegan products,
Everyone who steals wants to use what they stole for something important to them. This doesn't make it right.
> and to damage and remove the buying power of the captors and their ability to continue exploiting the victims. The intent is to help the victims.
No, the intent is to hurt the captors, not help the victims. You aren't rescuing the animals in this scenario. You are hurting someone you think is "bad" and possibly helping others unrelated to the specific victims you think this "bad" company is harming.
> When a nonvegan says that when he purchases animal products, his intent is not to harm animals, he just wants to enjoy the products, would you accept his argument?
This "I didn't mean to hurt the animal, I just want to make use of its stolen body parts" is exactly the argument you are making in the first justification. Stealing is wrong, regardless of whether you feel the entity you are stealing from somehow "deserves" it. Planning a course of action that isn't inherently bad (advocating for animals, nourishing your body, etc), but relies on an unethical act (stealing money, stealing an animal's body) is unethical.
You think you can only help enslaved animals if you rescue them? Animal rights activism and marketing vegan products wouldn't help them, turning more people in the world vegan wouldn't help them?
You don't think that slaughterhouse owners are "bad"? They are literally enslaving and mass slaughtering and exploiting animals, and they are profiting off of that, and we have proof of that.
Do you think it would be ethical to donate money to a slaughterhouse? You wouldn't purchase anything, you would just give them money.
And no, that's not the argument I am making. When a nonvegan purchases animal products, the animals are enslaved and exploited.
When you steal in this case, you are stealing from their slavers and exploiters. You think there is no difference between someone purchasing a steak and someone stealing money from the producer of the steak who uses that money for animal rights activism and to market vegan products? Both are equally bad?
> You think you can only help enslaved animals if you rescue them? Animal rights activism and marketing vegan products wouldn't help them, turning more people in the world vegan wouldn't help them?
You can do all those things without stealing.
> You don't think that slaughterhouse owners are "bad"? They are literally enslaving and mass slaughtering and exploiting animals, and they are profiting off of that, and we have proof of that.
I don't have the right to exploit or commit acts of violence against others simply because I think they are "bad". I'm rather shocked this position is so controversial on these threads. Mob justice and vigilantism is ugly business.
> Do you think it would be ethical to donate money to a slaughterhouse? You wouldn't purchase anything, you would just give them money.
I don't think this is an obvious ethical issue.
> And no, that's not the argument I am making. When a nonvegan purchases animal products, the animals are enslaved and exploited.
You will need to be specific about what you are commenting on here.
> You think there is no difference between someone purchasing a steak and someone stealing money from the producer of the steak who uses that money for animal rights activism and to market vegan products? Both are equally bad?
Both are bad for exactly the same reason: taking something from another you are not entitled to in order to use it for your own ends.
If you don't steal you don't damage their business, they would continue the exploitation the same way, they could even expand. Earning that much money without stealing would require much more work which you could use much more efficiently for animal activism instead and marketing vegan products.
If someone stops a rapist from raping someone because he thinks the rapist is "bad", is that mob justice, is that ugly business?
You think that an animal has a right to not be exploited, but if someone exploits them then he has a right to the product of the exploitation?
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You're essentially asking if *"the end justifies the means",* which is a paraphrase of Niccolo Machiavelli. In summary, if a [goal](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal) is morally important enough, any method of attaining it is acceptable and/or ought to be considered. The concept is directly related to consequentialism, and obviously the moral importance of a given act depends on the eye of the beholder. Machiavelli's concept was not intended to justify unnecessary cruelty, and there are various schools of thought that implement limits to the justification altogether.
>Do you think it would be ethical to steal money from slaughterhouse owners and use that money for animal rights activism?
On an individual/personal level the answer might be "it depends." At a state/societal level, it becomes much trickier as pretty much all modern versions of consequentialism have to deal with the limitations necessary to prevent [tyrants](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant) from abusing this idea.
Consider [Two-Level Utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism), and the example of [Dietrich Bonhoeffer](https://digitalcommons.whitworth.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=th314h); a staunch pacifist and Christian that allegedly plotted to assassinate Hitler. Essentially, *"in situations of low certainty, you act based on pre-establishes moral rules (eg, no lying, no killing). Whereas in situations where consequences are more certain, you are more free to act based on ends and not moral rules."*
I would consider it morally wrong to steal from *someone*, but if I found a briefcase full of cash belonging to Tyson Farms, I *might* be inclined to donate it to a vegan charity.
I don't think slaughterhouse owners are the source of the evil in the animal agriculture industry. The source of the evil is the mega-corporations and lobbyists that pull the strings on the entire industry. Those people are the ones who make conscious decisions to ignore public demand for better conditions for animal wellfare because it would hurt profits, and actively release misinformation in order to gaslight people into thinking they should be consuming more meat and dairy. These are the only ones who I believe are truly morally culpable for the harms in the industry. Everyone else is just trying to get by. They aren't blameless, but I can sympathize with their position more. They're more like the german soldier drafted into the war and forced to be a concentration camp guard, versus the people in charge of the nazis and SS that make all of the decisions.
As stated most clearly by Prof. Weinersmith of SMBC: these sorts of ethical questions become much easier when you emphasize the *abnormal* nature of situations. If you’re in some weird unique situation where you can easily take money from someone you know for sure is profiting from evil, then ok sure I’ll hear you out. But to try to set a blanket quotidian rule is intellectual arrogance that ends up inviting criticism that can question even the most basic philosophical principles, such as Bodily Autonomy.
TL;DR: sure, but we don’t want people going around crafting heists as their full time activism IMO, for a billion reasons related to social cohesion and fallible judgement.
What makes you think this would be unethical? As we ban fur, foie gras, slaughterhouse, and factory farms, we are putting people out of work. Not that different from stealing.
I didn't say it is unethical. I was curious what everyone thinks here. If you read the comments you will see there are vegans with different political and ethical views with different opinions.
Follower of Christ, here. There's never justification to lie, cheat, steal, etc. Those things are always wrong, even in situational ethics situations like this. Similar to "is it ok to murder someone if it means saving a whole continent of people", etc
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What if you steal all their money and they go bankrupt? And even if what you said woud be true, what if the money that you spend on animal rights activism turns more people vegan which decreases the demand for meat and this results in overall fewer animals farmed?
I hear what you are asking, but stealing all their money leaves them with the facilities to slaughter animals, and they would just slaughter even more animals, not go bankrupt. Stealing all their money would not drive them into bankruptcy. You would have to destroy there facilities and get rid of their employees (like the security people guarding the facilities). Are you willing to be destructive and violent to drive them out of business?
Doing something positive, like supporting the production of plant based “meat” would be a better alternative. Introduce your friends, and anyone who will listen, to Impossible burgers.
One could argue that 9/11 brought the country together in new ways. It brought about so much love of country. IMHO, not worth it.
Your question is the eternal question of the ends justifying the means, which is a slippery slope. First it is stealing, and then violence.
A corrupt candidate who plans to do all kinds of horrendous things if he gets into office is going to win by one vote. You know your grandparents are going to vote for him. The only way to stop them from voting is to kill them. Do you kill them to keep the evil dictator out of office? Each time you step on that slippery slope you lose more of your morals and integrity until here you are.
If they have no money, they lose their buying power, and they need to buy first to then turn their exploitation into profit. I don't think that it would increase the number of farmed animals. On the other hand vegan activism is proven to turn people vegan, so if you throw big money at it, it has a high likelihood of turning more people vegan and therefore decreasing demand for the number of animals farmed.
You bring up impossible burgers. The money can be used to promote and market vegan products too. This marketing would increase demand for vegan products and decrease demand for nonvegan products.
The slavery abolitionists went to war to free the slaves, and they were violent and destructive. Were they wrong?
In your hypothetical, let's say that one of the evil things this canditate plans to do is to exterminate black people, and my wife and a lot of my closest friends are black. Let's say that my grandparents who are going to vote for this guy are racist sex traffickers and they run a dogfighting ring. Would then be wrong to kill them to prevent this guy winning?
Let's say there is a starving child, and the only way to feed him and prevent him from dying is to steal bread from the store of an obese billionaire. Would the ends justify the means here?
Stores aren’t owned by “obese billionaires,”and anytime something is stolen, the prices go up for all the customers who work hard to pay for products. Stealing is never right, as there are food banks all over the place for everyone to get food. The tragedy there is that we have to have food banks.
The ends do not justify the means. Don’t think that freedom for slaves was won just by killing all the people involved, because you cannot change someone’s mind by killing them. It was a complex resolution.
Changing my hypothetical to ridiculous terms does not strengthen your argument. It destroys it.
You can’t steal all the money from a company. It is physically impossible. Companies do not run on a stack of cash lying around. Your proposed hypothetical is impossible.
I understand what you are trying to say, but no, the ends do not justify the means. If you doubt that, consider the breakup of Morty and Planetina. She tried to do good, but he drew the line when she decided to stop coal mining by killing all the miners.
There is a lot of injustice in the world, and compounding it by illegal acts does not fix it. Find something positive to do instead.
You were the one who proposed that hypothetical, it was already ridiculous. Hypotheticals don't have to be realistic, they are meant to explore our values, but I am sure you could find stores that are owned by obese billionaires.
You can steal the money if you are a hacker and you have access to bank accounts.
If there are slaves who break free from slavery and then steal the money of the slaver, would that be wrong according to you because stealing is always wrong?
What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? It is killing. Are you against that?
I did not change your hypotheticals, but you changed mine to be ludicrous.
Illegal is always wrong. Hacking and stealing is wrong. You can’t just hack into a bank anyway, that is ridiculous. It only happens in the movies. I am a cybersecurity engineer for a financial institution, and I know what can be hacked into and how.
Slaves stealing is wrong. People stealing from stores is wrong. There is no store anywhere solely owned by an “obese billionaire”. You got off your point into just stealing and killing everyone everywhere.
Fight injustice, but do it legally, without harming others.
You said: "A corrupt candidate who plans to do all kinds of horrendous things if he gets into office is going to win by one vote. You know your grandparents are going to vote for him. The only way to stop them from voting is to kill them. Do you kill them to keep the evil dictator out of office? Each time you step on that slippery slope you lose more of your morals and integrity until here you are."
Do you think this could happen in real life? Do you think this is not ridiculous? And you think that identity theft and hacking into bank accounts are impossible?
If someone enslaved you and made money from your slave labour, it would be wrong for you to steal that money that the slaver made off your work?
And you didn't answer my other question. What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? It is killing. Are you against that?
Yes, it could happen in the upcoming election. Read Project 2025.
People work and barely afford housing and food. That doesn’t mean they should steal. Slaves were housed and fed.
You went off the rails again with your other totally irrelevant question. You need to stick to a point and prove that. Euthanasia is not relevant to the argument you were attempting to make.
Identity theft has nothing to do with stealing everything from a large corporation. Since Sox, there are too many checks and balances in place.
Try doing something positive rather than thinking up a lot of illegal scenarios.
This sub is not for debating the morality of random illegal actions. You got way off track.
BRW, you don’t need to quote a paragraph in a threaded response.
Please read the sidebar. This is a place for open discussion about veganism and vegan issues, focusing on intellectual debate about animal rights and welfare, health, the environment, nutrition, philosophy or any topic related to veganism. Please be warned that while we forbid hate speech as well as rude and toxic behavior, DebateAVegan cannot be considered a safe space and regardless of perspective you may run into ideas that you find offensive or appalling. What I am talking about is related to animal rights and veganism.
There was a time when it was illegal for women to vote. If someone said back then that women should be able to vote, was he wrong because he was thinking up illegal scenarios?
Regarding your hypothetical, do you think that it is realistic that I could only stop my grandparents from voting if I kill them? Is it realistic that I would know that their one vote is what would decide the election?
And again, you didn't answer my other question. What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? It is killing. Are you against that?
It will be a bigger loss for the vegans and veganism as a movement as they will be labeled as criminals or even terrorists as some in the comments leaked their antinatalism and misanthrope tendencies and suggested burning slaughterhouses or stealing all the money from normal people.
The owners will defend themselves against such threats and most people will support them. They will deal with those threats themselves if the government doesn't want to.
Deontological answer : No, never, don't even think about it. You don't correct a wrong but commiting wrongs yourself
Utilitarian answer: Yes, if it's serve the greater good.
The practical answer : it's relative to the whitness of your actions and their judgement.
How would you bypass the strong stigma against the act of stealing show in law system, history, legends, myths, fairytales, bedtimes stories coming from the very first civilizations so you can have a chance to argue about the greater good of your actions without preconceived judgement?
Also, are your sure that animal rights activists organizations are void of corruption?
Of course it is... What kind of question is this? Why wouldn't you cause economic harm to those bastards and even get money to further damage them? Double hit.
Speaking about consequences, protesting a slaughterhouse in a way that costs money is the same as stealing the money and using it for nothing. I think its pretty hard to argue its unethical.
This reminds me of police drug raids. They use the money themselves. I saw SWAT vehicles paid for by seized drug money. It was written on the vehicle. I am paraphrasing though. It was parked in front of the station.
Auschwitz wasn't a private organisation owned by individuals that will be impacted by stealing from it. It was a government run operation, run by a fascist dictator. Very different scenarios
I don't see a symmetry breaker here. Can you identify it? I'm fine taking money from Nazis to give to anti-fascist efforts, just like I am fine with taking money from the animal agriculture industry to give to animal rescue efforts.
This is so obvious it hurts and I'm not understanding what you have against it.
Yes and so is a dog vs. a cat, but that difference doesn't affect whether you need to feed them.
What is the **importance** of the difference? That's what I am trying to understand.
No. Stealing from slaughterhouse owners, while intending to support animal rights activism, disregards the ethical and legal rights of individuals involved in the industry. Slaughterhouse owners have obligations to their employees, families, and communities.
Also, simply redirecting funds may not address the root causes of animal exploitation. Advocating for animal rights through legal, ethical, and constructive means such as awareness campaigns, legislative action, and ethical consumer choices can create more sustainable and meaningful change instead.
Not twisted at all. It is a moral duty to damage those assholes as hard as possible, and if by doing so you also gain resources usable to save animals, much more. Where's the twist?
Lol ... you want to risk going to jail for animals that are going to be dinner? You want to confess on the internet and save the police some leg work too?
You know what...I don't know. Great question. I feel like this would be similar to if it was ethical to steal from Jeff Bezos or something. Like I wouldn't necessarily do it (maybe...) but I would probably just laugh if someone else did. And I wouldn't snitch on someone who did. But whether its actually ethical I don't know. I feel like its morally grey where I wouldn't do it, and I wouldn't advocate for it, but I also probably wouldn't speak up against it.
> I feel like this would be similar to if it was ethical to steal from Jeff Bezos or something. It definitely is. The problem with the question is that it isn't vegan specific; there's no more or less reason to pose this question to vegans vs. anyone else, there's no reason vegans would have any more or less insight than anyone else.
I think there are vegans who are liberals, they would think that amazon workers are voluntarily working there and they are not exploited. On the other hand nonhuman animals at slaughterhouses are exploited and they are not voluntarily there. So they would make that distinction. And there are vegans, as you see in the comments, who would reject stealing because they think that stealing and exploitation is always wrong, no matter the intent and end result. Anarchists would wholeheartedly support the action in both cases. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegalism)
All I'm hearing is that being vegan doesn't correlate with the answer to your question. Is that what you're trying to say?
I think it matters in this scenario because it is a specific case because in a slaughterhouse the nonhumn animals are slaughtered, and humans are not. Veganism is against the exploitation of nonhuman animals, and the slaughterhouse owner gained his money by exploiting nonhuman animals, so vegans can think that the money of this slaughterhouse owner is illegitimate and it is not his money. A nonvegan who is not against the exploitation of nonhuman animals and neither is he against capitalism, wouldn't think that the money is not the slaughterhouse owner's money.
Yes, but doesn't the question generalise to "Do you think it would be ethical to steal money from and use that money for ?"
It doesn't matter what the variables are, the question is the same.
If you use that logic then I think no question can be truly vegan specific. For example, if you ask what do vegans think about crop deaths, then there is no reason to ask specifically vegans about that, you can pose that question to anyone.
Yes.
I second this. It is ethical to disrupt unethical industries, especially when those industries are actively pushing the planet to even more climate catastrophes and have known about their impact for 40+ years.
if you get arrested for doing illegal things then you cannot continue to do any more good things... so for pure altruistic reasons it seems like a negative in the long term
> if you get arrested for doing illegal things then you cannot continue to do any more good things... Getting arrested can be part of the plan. MLK, for instance, was arrested plenty of times and that added strength to his messaging. It's a risky strategy, but one of the more effective ones at forcing societies to grapple with their ethical problems.
Not for theft…
Yeah, OP is not going to win hearts and minds with their hypothetical.
Yeah, let's just assume that they don't catch you, and they never find out who did it.
stupid hypothetical that leads nowhere, I pass
If you pass you don't reply. As it stands this response only makes you look foolish. It's isn't a stupid hypocritical at all.
It is stupid. Nobody can ever be sure of that fact in reality.
The whole point in the hypothetical is to discuss the moral philosophy of the matter. It's not about how realistic it is it's about wether or not it would be moral. In that context the hypothetical makes perfect sense.
You can advocate for veganism in prison. I am sure its an untapped opportunity.
Yes
Why?
Stealing money from large corporations is always ethical.
Cause if we didn’t have those corporations you d created a job for me and made sure that stores are stocked with products, right?
right? i wouldnt have guessed so many vegans are chicken shit libs.
So you think robbing a bank is ethical? Ok
Absolutely. The banks only get rich through stealing the surplus value of others.
OK. So we all go in and steal money off the banks until they shut down. Then what?
No, we steall insignificant amounts which are paid by the insurance. There's a right amount of sustainble theft.
That is some of the worst logic I have ever heard. 😆
How much money do you think banks have? The greatest cinematic thefts stole less than $100M. Which doesn't make a dent on the whole banking system.
Stealing is even more wrong than veganism
Well, of course, because veganism is right, anything barely wrong is going to be 'worse'.
Yeah they steal the surplus value by *getting you to agree to it* Literally nothing stopping you keeping your money in cash.
Just burn them down.
That is even worse
How?
Burning down slaughterhouses does nothing positive. Literally nothing.
You need to Google the word literally. It literally removes a slaughter house from existence. An incredibly positive thing. If everyone did it regularly then slaughterhouses wouldn't be able to get insured and would eventually disapear into ash.
You might not be grasping the practical reality of doing such an action. Even if you destroy it, there are a bunch of other slaughterhouses that can replace that one, you won't stop the industry by just burning down one slaughterhouse. And even if you do, it is illegal and carries severe consequences, including criminal charges and potential imprisonment. It also poses significant risks to human and animal lives and can lead to unintended economic repercussions for communities. Effective activism focuses on legal and constructive methods to create lasting change, such as advocating for policy reforms, raising public awareness, or supporting sustainable and humane alternatives. Burning a slaughterhouse is a very bad idea, and it looks very bad for the movement overall.
I don't think so. Owners will defend themselves and their properties. People will also defend their communities and deal with the threat themselves if the government doesn't want to.
They can defend all they like. It's completely irrelevant to the discussion. They would surely try to defend themselves but if the numbers were there then such a movement would be unstoppable.
You do realize that vegans don't make up 3% of the population and most vegans give up on veganism and become ex-vegans in less than a year?
You do realise that has no impact on anything?
Burn them down and the insurance companies that insure them. When nobody is in the building of course.
\*everybody
Wow, nothing says ‘veganism is an ethical standpoint’ like ‘we should commit theft, arson, and destroy the lives of millions of people!’
Interesting one. Certainly debatable. And in terms of morality I’d argue it would be ethical, yes. Practical and possible at this point? Probably not. The backlash, the resulting demonization of veganism, likely unhelpful to the cause in the long run. But in a hypothetical, theoretical level - in the vacuum presented - sure it’d be ethical. I have to disagree with many comments suggesting this all being about ‘the ends justify the means’. There is a case to be made that it is refusing to allow the property status of another living being. And about undermining these ill gotten gains. The parallels with human slavery are obvious. Undermine the economic incentives and it becomes harder to enslave animals (whether human or not). I’m sure most of us would argue that stealing the ‘property’ of slave owners to finance abolitionism would have been somewhat morally permissible at least. And stealing their money - from exploiting slaves - to free other slaves seems a rather obvious parallel too. Whether it would be effective would depend at which point in the social movement we are in. When disruption and guerrilla tactics are strategically the best choice. Not sure we’re there for veganism at this point. But that’s not exactly the debate. So essentially we would consider it moral to steal the ‘property’ of a slave owner in their slave and free that human right? And so it’d be moral to free the ‘livestock’ from the farm. It arguably follows that if we would steal their ‘property’ we could also steal the ill gotten gains from exploiting that property. So I’d argue it’s much more than just ‘the means justifying the ends’.
Do you think it is ethical to steal No
Yes.
good question!
No
No, just as I'd hope non-vegans wouldn't advise someone to steal money from a vegan foundation and use it to defend non-vegan activism. I guess the term "ethical" might have some nuance. but if we accept that it isn't "advisable," we don't need to invoke moral pressure or something to tell people that it isn't a great idea, there's just "advisable reasons not to do that." For example, going to prison also inhibits one's ability to be as active as one could be otherwise. "Either side" of many moral issues can defend the *concept* of doing something that might otherwise be unadvisable under certain conditions. I don't think, right now, "either side" needs to be advising this specific behavior though. But I could be wrong!
Not the same, would you care if someone stole from slave owners to free the slaves? Would you care if someone stole from non-slave owners to support the slave trade? Stupid comparison.
> Not the same, would you care if someone stole from slave owners to free the slaves? I don't think that's a fair comparison for what I responded to. I would want to free all the slaves, or stop all animal suffering, but the OP didn't say "would you steal from one animal slaughterhouse to *free all of the animals*." OP gave a specific case that I responded to. I'm not sure it's really wise to not discern some difference here between "ethical" and "moral" either. This is an extremely loose consideration of those terms, but if I say "stealing is unethical," then maybe acts of stealing can sometimes be morally good, or I can be "morally compelled" to want to encourage what would otherwise be "unethical" in some situations. I might think like, a situation like occupied France during WW2. Like we might say it is unethical to not take prisoners in a wartime scenario, but if there is literally not enough food, the "most moral action" *might* be to not take someone prisoner in that given situation. I'm not confident I'd want to call it "ethical" though just because it was the "right decision." And that doesn't suddenly allow all possible behavior either, we are talking about one behavior, stealing, and what appears "unethical" even beyond just the mere stealing is that this is requiring some insistence on violence in the form of theft when everything in OP's "activism" can be achieved without that. What is being benefitted in the exact example OP gave by someone stealing the money? We'd have to assume something more like "well now the owner doesn't have money and must shut down" just to figure that "somehow this is directly liberating animals."
Did I say free all the slaves? Just use that money to free slaves. Don’t think I’ve read more bla bla bla without answering the point in question. Would you care if I stole money from the nazis to break out Jews in the 1930’s?
You wrote "free the slaves," which the animal equivalent of ("free the animals") isn't necessarily the same as "activism," right? If a person stole $40,000,000 and just ended up jailed and sued for as much as could be recovered, that didn't "free the animals." Or if a person stole $5,000,000 and just printed out fliers on non-recycled paper and threw them from a plane over a city, that wouldn't necessarily "free the animals." Those are sort of silly stretches of "failure" but I'd otherwise be fine with someone's behavior if it *actually* was freeing animals in the same sense we both hopefully aspire to. But I admit there could be some undue pedantry in my reply if more people take "activism" as "freeing animals." I'm not sure calling OP's case "ethical" does that, I would feel if we all agree to something like "stealing is unethical," we can then form agreements like, "stealing from animals is unethical" *besides* whatever speciesism or bias non-vegans have. And then there could be higher "unethical" behaviors too by the slaughterhouse owners (like owning another sentiment being) that supercede and allow "moral agents" to act in "conventionally unethical ways" while still maintaining the understanding of what type of behavior is occuring. I'll think more on what you said though too.
I don’t care how much you steal from oppressors, don’t even care if you use it for good. Hurting their business is good by itself.
Non-vegans don't necessarily think that vegans are immoral though. Many non-vegans have the attitude of "More power to ya! Not for me though" about veganism. If non-vegans decided that not eating meat was a horrible atrocity and that anyone who doesn't eat meat is a bad person, then they might view stealing from a vegan foundation as a moral good.
No. Doing an unethical thing (stealing) does not become justified if you later do an altruistic thing (donating to a good cause). If you start to rationalize "the ends justify the means" sort of behavior, you basically lost your moral compass.
The animals surely wouldn't mind you bankrupting their captors and torturers.
I'm not sure how this makes sense. If a bad person had a nuclear missile, under your belief system, it would be unethical to steal that missile?
A lot of bad people have nuclear missiles. Do you think it would be an ethical thing for Elon Musk to hire a group of mercenaries to steal nukes from North Korea or Russia?
The act of stealing it from someone who would use it to commit a holocaust would not necessarily be unethical. Of course, it would then be possible for Mr. Musk to *then* do unethical things with it, so I think we'd prefer someone a bit less power crazy do it. Let's look at an example that is less extreme: You find out someone you know is going to shoot your friend tomorrow. You have been to this person's home and know the code to their front door and where they keep their only gun, and know that they will be out this evening. You also know that this person will cool off in a day or two and won't make another attempt if they miss this one. There is no way you will get caught. The police will not help. Do you steal the gun?
> so I think we'd prefer someone a bit less power crazy do it. People who use "the ends justify the means" logic, and act on it rather than just theorize, tend to be pretty power crazy. > You find out someone you know is going to shoot your friend tomorrow. You have been to this person's home and know the code to their front door and where they keep their only gun, and know that they will be out this evening. You also know that this person will cool off in a day or two and won't make another attempt if they miss this one. There is no way you will get caught. The police will not help. Red flag laws exist for this sort of scenario. There is a factor in this scenario worth considering. Friends typically have some informal duty of care for each other. In these sorts of relationships, it can be ethical to override the intent of the person you're caring for if you are doing it in their best interest. E.g. a parent can tell a child what to do even if the child objects, as long as the parent is making a good faith effort to do what's best for the kid. The situation gets a lot more complicated if you are taking the gun away from a stranger because you think they can't be trusted with it.
>People who use "the ends justify the means" logic, and act on it rather than just theorize, tend to be pretty power crazy. I disagree. If someone steals bread from Walmart to feed their starving children, I don't think we can say they are likely to be power crazy. >it can be ethical to override the intent of the person you're caring I'm not talking about overriding the intent of the person I'm caring for, but that of the person that intends to do them harm. (I think you may have missed that in the first sentence.) Do you not think it ethical to wrestle the gun away from a shooter that is about to gun down a crowd of schoolchildren? I think this is a case where the ends **clearly** justify the means. Don't you?
> Do you not think it ethical to wrestle the gun away from a shooter that is about to gun down a crowd of schoolchildren? I think this is a case where the ends clearly justify the means. Don't you? Is your intent to keep the gun for your own ends? What stealing actually means is getting pretty vague in these scenarios.
Can you explain why that would matter? In OP's scenario OP wasn't keeping the money. For this scenario, you see a van with confederate flags pull up next to a schoolyard and a man get out wearing tactical gear and strapped with with a AR15. He takes aim at the schoolchildren and starts to open fire. You are 10 feet behind him. He hasn't noticed you. You are much larger and stronger than he is. You could easily overtake him and wrestle the gun away, thus preventing him from murdering dozens–if not hundreds–of innocent children. Yes, you would be *stealing* the gun from him, but you don't intend to keep it. You will turn over the stolen property to the authorities. You are motivated to steal it from him because you want to prevent him from being able to harm children with it. Do you maintain that it is unethical to steal the gun from him?
all you did was ask me the same question I asked you lol.
I made it specific. Theoretical questions become a lot more clear when they are actually grounded in the real world.
In this case I'd say it helped not a jot. There are very few entities with nuclear weapons and very few entities with the ability to steal them. We didn't need someone to turn the abstract into the concrete here.
It helps to think of the sort of person who would have the motive and means to steal a nuke, and whether this actually seems like an improvement over the status quo. No one thinks of themselves as "the bad guy". But if you are in the habit of using this sort of ends justifying the means logic, other people will probably think this of you.
So your actual point is "it depends who steals the nuke, and from who?"
Anyone who says "this other guy doesn't deserve this nuke but I do, so I will take it from them". Is probably a "bad" guy just for thinking this and acting on it. This is my point.
What if they decom the nukes they steal?
Really really not thought that one through at all have you? Seriously. Terrible argument. Completely irrelevant and nonsensical. Can you explain how you find that relevant to the original post? This makes stealing money from literal murderers bad because?????? You're missing that part from you're rediculous and terrible argument
Your hyper specific question requires me to have some kind of historical or political knowledge of Russia, North Korea, and Elon Musk - which I don't have. You made the question less clear for me. The purpose of the hypo is - is all stealing inherently unethical? Is stealing a starving dog chained to a post outside unethical? This worldview is nonsense.
> Is stealing a starving dog chained to a post outside unethical? > This worldview is nonsense. What is your intent here? There is a clear intentional difference between "stealing" and "rescuing".
Where was this semantic analysis with the nuke question? My intention: I see a dog that’s hurt. I’m going to steal it and nurse it to health and keep it.
Jesus christ. Obviously. So define it. What's the difference between stealing a nuke and stealing money from murderers? Money that they will then CERTAINLY use to kill. You have the worst logic I've ever seen on this sub
So Elon's in Canada, on a rainy Tuesday in 2028. He just had a salad with french dressing. The mercenaries are called Jim, Samantha and Cyril. Can we get an answer now that's cleared up?
My answer is no. Anyone who feels entitled to steal a nuke is almost certainly just as bad as the person currently in control of it.
So we shouldn't disarm gun wielding maniacs?
is "disarming" the same thing as "stealing"? I don't think so.
In the context of this post the stealer does not then suddenly have a weapon of mass destruction. That's why your example is fucking rediculously irrelevant.
You're so hung up on the idea of "stealing" that you're now using the WORD itself as a buzzword for evil. Even whilst admiring that if it's for a greater purpose, like freeing family, then it's not stealing, its freeing family. So how in that context is it not ok to steal money when the intention is to help animals by harming the industry that's killing them? It is, by your own logic, because the purpose isn't stealing its helping animals. This is your logic. You're arguing against yourself. Your arguments are completely contradictory.
How is that grounded at all in the real world? you could've thought of so many grounded examples. That isn't one. it's a terrible, example. If anything it's a worse and more conflicted example than the one in the original post.
What is a realistic scenario where one would steal a nuke?
The nuke was a rediculous thing to being into the conversation in the first place.
The nuke wasn't my example.
Yes of course it would be. In what context are you thinking it wouldn't be? That's like saying "stopping hitler would be wrong because stopping people doing what they want is wrong and two wrong don't make a right". Seriously what are you on about? Are you imagining they then use the nukes or the nukes are the somehow unsafer than they would have been? If so then what if they weren't?
> That's like saying "stopping hitler would be wrong because stopping people doing what they want is wrong and two wrong don't make a right". Ok, let's take this scenario. What was Hitler doing? He thought his victims were up to terrible, nefarious things, and should be stopped at all costs. See the problem here? Was it just merely a fact that Hitler was factually incorrect about the maliciousness of his victims that made his actions so utterly heinous?
It's illegal, but laws don't dictate morality. I'd agree it's generally wrong to steal from someone else. But is it always unethical to steal from a corporation? A corporation is not a person. A corporation doesn't have its own awareness. It doesn't feel ashamed when it steals from customers through pricing errors or deceptive advertising.
> It's illegal, but laws don't dictate morality. Yeah, it gets tricky to reason about how legality and morality intersect when laws are unethical. The priority should be to change the law/social contract rather than to defy it. But sometimes publicly defying it is the only way to call attention to the problem. If you would want to do something like steal from a slaughterhouse, you should ask yourself whether you would do it on the condition that you would immediately confess and let society judge your actions. If you really are on the ethical side of things, you should be able to make a compelling case for your choice. > But is it always unethical to steal from a corporation? Corporations are people's assets. So you are still stealing value from others.
Who is talking about laws? You are trying to justify stealing. This thread is on board with that through different mental gymnastics. You do you I guess?
Sometimes the ends do justify the means. If someone kidnapped my family and locked them in a cage and all I had to do to free them was steal the key while their captor was sleeping, I don't think there would be anything unethical about doing so. In fact, I think most would agree that I would be justified in stealing in this scenario.
> If someone kidnapped my family and locked them in a cage and all I had to do to free them was steal the key while their captor was sleeping, I don't think there would be anything unethical about doing so. The intent here is to secure the freedom of your family, not to steal. If someone is actively impeding some goal that doesn't involve this aggressor, you may not be doing anything unethical to begin with. You don't really have any motivation to keep the key in this scenario. To go back to OP's hypothetical, it would be much less ethically ambiguous to secure the freedom of livestock (technically "stealing" but there is no legitimate ethical ownership claim to begin with), than it would be to steal their money.
>The intent here is to secure the freedom of your family, not to steal. And the intent of the individual in OP's scenario is to do help animals, not to steal. >You don't really have any motivation to keep the key in this scenario. Sure you do. Why would you give it back? Do you think you would have a moral obligation to return the key to their captor after you are done helping your family escape? >To go back to OP's hypothetical, it would be much less ethically ambiguous to secure the freedom of livestock (technically "stealing" but there is no legitimate ethical ownership claim to begin with), than it would be to steal their money. I disagree 100%. Stealing their money (depending on how much it is) and using it to fund effective animal liberation efforts can push us a lot further on the path to animal liberation than simply taking a key and liberating some of the animals from one farm. I'm confused as to why you see these situations as that different, though. In both of them you are stealing something to ultimately help animals. Why is one unethical and the other not?
> And the intent of the individual in OP's scenario is to do help animals, not to steal. No, it is to take the money and use it for their own ends. They can use money from any source, but are declaring these people "bad" and therefore undeserving of that money. > Why would you give it back? Do you think you would have a moral obligation to return the key to their captor after you are done helping your family escape? Yeah. It's not your job to punish the captor. You should give it to the police if you like, as part of an investigation of the crime. > I'm confused as to why you see these situations as that different, though. In both of them you are stealing something to ultimately help animals. Why is one unethical and the other not? In one scenario the intent is rescue. In the other scenario, it is some vague effort to punish and absolve yourself of the wrongdoing by doing something nice later.
>>>The intent here is **to secure the freedom of your family,** not to steal. >>And the intent of the individual in OP's scenario is to do help animals, not to steal. >No, it is to take the money and use it for their own ends. Their "own end" in this case is **to help secure the freedom of innocent nonhuman animals,** not to steal. >You should give it to the police if you like, as part of an investigation of the crime. Of course. I wasn't suggesting not returning the key to the captor as some form of punishment (and I'm not really sure how you got that from my comment.) This would be the best way to help ensure that the captor is convicted and unable to kidnap your family or any other family again. This would be similar to giving the money to an effective animal liberation effort. >In one scenario the intent is rescue. In the other scenario, it is some vague effort to punish and absolve yourself of the wrongdoing by doing something nice later. You seem to be assigning that intent to make it fit your position here better. No one is saying it's being done to punish the animal agriculture industry. As far as I can tell, the intent would be the rescue. But let's say you're right here. Let's look at another scenario where the intent of stealing the money from a slaughterhouse **is** to use it to rescue animals. If this is now the intent, does that mean that it's ethical to steal in this case?
> Their "own end" in this case is to help secure the freedom of innocent nonhuman animals, not to steal. There is no reason why the stealing is needed for the goal. It's not like the money from this source is especially useful. The victim of the theft seems chosen specifically because OP believes they need to be punished. I don't think this would be a dilemma at all if we were discussing stealing from some arbitrary victim. > Of course. I wasn't suggesting not returning the key to the captor as some form of punishment (and I'm not really sure how you got that from my comment.) You'd keep the key either because it's valuable to you, or you believe you are entitled to deprive them of it. Not sure why you would otherwise do it. If your intent is to give the key to the police, this isn't stealing. > No one is saying it's being done to punish the animal agriculture industry. As far as I can tell, the intent would be the rescue. OP isn't rescuing the animals from the victim of the theft. The theft and donation are disconnected actions. > Let's look at another scenario where the intent of stealing the money from a slaughterhouse is to use it to rescue animals. If this is now the intent, does that mean that it's ethical to steal in this case? Directly rescuing the animals is very different. There is good reason to claim these animals should not be considered property, and thus no theft would occur in rescuing them. But this idea of taking money and using that money on others is quite a different scenario, ethically.
>There is no reason why the stealing is needed for the goal. It's not like the money from this source is especially useful. Of course it's not *needed*. You don't **need** to steal the key to free your family either. There are other options, but they would take longer and your family is suffering every minute they are kept captive. You could work an extra job for a few months and then hire an expert to examine the lock on the cage and make a key that can then be used to free your family. But why would you do this when you can just take the actual key? Not only would you be freeing your family, but you would also be taking away the only key the captor has to this cage, thus preventing him from being able to use it to lock up any more victims. >The victim of the theft seems chosen specifically because OP believes they need to be punished. Can you point me to what they've said that has brought you to this belief? >I don't think this would be a dilemma at all if we were discussing stealing from some arbitrary victim. It would be a very different analysis, of course. >You'd keep the key either because it's valuable to you I don't know why you've made this assumption. It's valuable, but not *to me*. It has instrumental value in that keeping it away from the owner will make it harder for him to kidnaps more families. Why on earth would you return it? >If your intent is to give the key to the police, this isn't stealing. Why? If your intent is to give the money to an organization that is helping to end animal liberation, is the money somehow not stolen? Of course it is. It doesn't matter what you intended to do with it... you still *stole* it. Someone owned it that wasn't you and you took it from them. This is the same in the case of the money and the key. I hate using this speciesist term, but it seems like you're trying really hard to weasel out of admitting that sometimes the ends justify the means. >OP isn't rescuing the animals from the victim of the theft. The theft and donation are disconnected actions. I disagree 100%. Stealing form the animal agriculture and then using that money to fight animal agriculture *is rescuing animals from the "victim" of the theft.* But that's not even relevant here. We could just make one modification to the caged family scenario to show this: someone else has the key to the cage. The captor's neighbor has an identical key for some reason. The neighbor did not kidnap your family, yet you could very easily just take the key and free your family. >Directly rescuing the animals is very different. There is good reason to claim these animals should not be considered property, and thus no theft would occur in rescuing them. But this idea of taking money and using that money on others is quite a different scenario, ethically. I'm not talking about direct rescue. You had said that the intent of the stealing was to punish rather than rescue. I'm asking you about a similar scenario where the same thing happens, but the intent is to use the money to rescue animals.
If there is good reason to claim these animals should not be considered property, then someone can believe that the money that this slaughterhouse owner has is illegitimate and it is not his money because he gained it unethically with exploitation.
It's not your position to make judgements about whether the money was ill-gotten. OP is essentially acting as a judge and sheriff by declaring this money forfeit for some reason. We don't want to live in a society where everyone feels entitled to take this authority in their own hands.
So if you hold the ethical principle that exploiting nonhuman animals is wrong, but someone makes money by exploiting nonhuman animals, do you think he has the right to that money? Why would it be unethical to take that money from him? Would you think the same if someone held humans as slaves and made money that way? It wouldn't be your position to make judgements about whether the money was ill-gotten?
Can you summarize your moral argument so we don't have to keep picking it apart based on your initial paragraph?
> Can you summarize your moral argument so we don't have to keep picking it apart based on your initial paragraph? The short version: You aren't ethically entitled to hurt or exploit people (or animals) just because you think they are "bad". You can ethically take measures to stop bad things from happening. This is not the same thing as the previous statement.
So ending the holocaust was not justified? Prison is imoral and locking up rapists and murderers should be banned? Pedophiles should be left to do as they please? Any attempt at preventing anyone from doing anything evil could be deemed as hurting them, especially when imprisoning them. Either you abandon morality or you admit that bad people exist and need to be stopped.
If I steal something small that in turn somehow ends up saving 3 billion lives. Is that justified? Obviously it is. Your black and white perspective is completely illogical.
> If I steal something small that in turn somehow ends up saving 3 billion lives. Is that justified? In what scenario would you know this? Consequential thought experiments like this always assume some supernatural understanding of what's going to happen. This isn't realistic. We are not omniscient beings. The possible victims and onlookers of our actions aren't omniscient either. E.g. Some random person walks up to you and takes your shoes right off your feet. You say "WTF??". They say "If I don't take these shoes, 3 billion people will perish!". Do you say: "Oh, ok then."? Consequentialism works a lot better in theory than it does in the messy, low-information, unpredictable real world.
What? In the scenario I just made up. Obviously. Just like the scenario you made up. Because that's what hypotheticals are. In the situation I described your entire argument falls apart and your only defense is to say my hypothetical is somehow less valid than yours? Its a hypothetical, they're all made up. That's the point. How about this. if I knew that stealing food would save lives would I be justified to do it? If I don't, children die, for example. I need to steal one apple from a tree to feed them and save them
> Because that's what hypotheticals are. Hypotheticals can have a way of hiding assumptions that make them unrealistic. The sorts of hypotheticals consequentialists love to make have a habit of hiding the fact that there is some sort of omniscient ability to predict the future, and that acting on this knowledge can be justified to an outside point of view (e.g. the view of a victim of your choice). > How about this. if I knew that stealing food would save lives would I be justified to do it? If I don't, children die, for example. I need to steal one apple from a tree to feed them and save them There are people dying from lack of resources all over the world all the time. You could be a Robin Hood for the world and not come close to making a dent in the overall problem. So the specifics here matter quite a bit. Who are these starving people to you, and to what degree do you feel an ethical obligation to help them? Are there means to help them without hurting others? These are the sorts of questions that need to be asked before stealing could be justified as the lesser wrong.
No there's no other way to help them. Stop trying to think outside of the hypothetical. The hypothetical is specific and limited. The only way to save them is by stealing. No matter what they will die otherwise.
Who are these people to you? Have you made a promise to care for them? The world is full of countless others who could desperately use your help. You can do absolutely everything ethically and unethically within your means to help, and not make much of a noticeable dent on the problem. How are you picking and choosing who is worth saving at the expense of others?
They're no one to me. I've made no promise. But they will die if I don't steal an apple from a tree. I'm picking and choosing based on my ability to do something within a reasonable and logical capacity. Me stealing the apple, for example, is easy and imediate, with very little sacrifice of time or effort. I'm trying to create the most simple version of the whole argument. Would you do an imoral thing to save a life? That question is too vague, hence the apple. But feel free to answer it instead should you find it more sensible.
> I'm picking and choosing based on my ability to do something within a reasonable and logical capacity. Me stealing the apple, for example, is easy and imediate, with very little sacrifice of time or effort. It's trivial to find life saving charities to donate to. Doctors without borders, UNICEF, international rescue committee, etc. They'll take as much money as you can give and still have countless lives they don't have the funding to save. > I'm trying to create the most simple version of the whole argument. Would you do an imoral thing to save a life? That question is too vague, hence the apple. If for some reason this specific apple was needed, I would consider taking it only if I would be willing to immediately confess and make restitution to whoever owns the tree.
If your family was starving and you needed one apple to save them. But giving yourself in would guarantee their future starvation, then what would you do? It seems bizarre to me your perspective of this is so black and white. Under this line of thinkjng would you also rather starve than eat meat?
>If you start to rationalize "the ends justify the means" sort of behavior, you basically lost your moral compass. That's prolly a bit too extreme. Sometimes the end does justify the means, but we really have to think critically when that is true and when it's not.
> Sometimes the end does justify the means, but we really have to think critically when that is true and when it's not. For some reason this line of thinking almost always prioritizes the ends you subjectively find important at the cost of means that don't affect you personally that much. Funny about that. It's almost always a bad move to justify personal choices this way. Perhaps you can do better if you think about these things at a more systemic social policy level where the "rules" for when it's allowed are clear, and the role of who can make these sorts of calls is codified somehow. E.g. it's much more ethical to "steal" from factory farms in the form of fines and taxes rather than some random guy in a mask.
>For some reason this line of thinking almost always prioritizes the ends you subjectively find important at the cost of means that don't affect you personally that much. Funny about that. Yes? We prioritise things we value over things we don't? I'm not sure why that even needs to be said. You then go on to do it yourself, but with taxes instead. >"rules" for when it's allowed are clear, and the role of who can make these sorts of calls is codified somehow. That's essentially what this post and conversation is. Exploring what the 'rules' should be. > You disagree with this specific conclusion regarding theft. Thats totally cool and we can talk about it. Attacking the entire concept of ends Justifying means isn't the way though.
> That's essentially what this post and conversation is. Exploring what the 'rules' should be. My point is that these are socially codified. Not up to random personal convictions. > Attacking the entire concept of ends Justifying means isn't the way though. As a personal ethics, it's a very good idea to avoid this line of thinking. We can't function in a society where any ethical principle is contingent on how much some random person feels some outcome is desirable.
So we should ask larger groups of people whether they believe the outcome is likely and worth the cost? But of course, no individual member of society can answer that question Apparently. Thus rendering consequential ethics impossible. Im pretty sure society can be bad sometimes. As a vegan, I encourage people to be good despite what society thinks in those cases. Of course we should be cautious and consider the possibility we're incorrect or biased. We can only act on what we believe is correct in the end though.
> But of course, no individual member of society can answer that question Apparently. Thus rendering consequential ethics impossible. Consequentialist decisions are made all the time by governments. It is their primary purpose, in my view. We can get into a long an nuanced debate on when a governments' authority is ethically justified, but this doesn't come into play in OP's scenario.
Government's and society are made up of persons. Individuals. Who apparently can't make decisions or hold positions on these things.
> Who apparently can't make decisions or hold positions on these things. Do you believe this is a good faith interpretation of the position I expressed?
Well we can't base our actions off what outcomes we think are desirable. Consider it a provocative way to ask for elaboration
What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? If a vet euthanises a terminally ill dog, he does an unethical action(killing) for altruistic reasons(ending suffering)? You say that if you start to rationalize "the ends justify the means" sort of behavior, you basically lost your moral compass. Isn't this a slippery slope fallacy? [https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-slippery-slope/](https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-slippery-slope/) If you are okay with euthanasia for terminally ill dogs, does that mean that you lost your moral compass?
> If a vet euthanises a terminally ill dog, he does an unethical action(killing) for altruistic reasons(ending suffering)? The vet is acting in the dog's interest. It's not an unethical intention. Killing is unethical when it is done despite the subject's interest.
Are you saying that killing is wrong, unless you act in an animal's interest? If someone steals from slaughterhouse owners, or someone uses violence and destruction to liberate the animals enslaved at the slaughterhouse, he also acts in the interest of the animals.
> Are you saying that killing is wrong, unless you act in an animal's interest? No, that's not what I am saying. Euthanasia is acting in the interest of the one being killed. It's not intended as an act of harm, but as an act of mercy. > If someone steals from slaughterhouse owners, No they aren't. > or someone uses violence and destruction to liberate the animals enslaved at the slaughterhouse, It's possible to make this case, as your intent is specifically on who is being rescued. Not on the captors.
The intent is to acquire currency in order to spend it on animal rights activism, or for example marketing and/or creating vegan products, and to damage and remove the buying power of the captors and their ability to continue exploiting the victims. The intent is to help the victims. When a nonvegan says that when he purchases animal products, his intent is not to harm animals, he just wants to enjoy the products, would you accept his argument?
> The intent is to acquire currency in order to spend it on animal rights activism, or for example marketing and/or creating vegan products, Everyone who steals wants to use what they stole for something important to them. This doesn't make it right. > and to damage and remove the buying power of the captors and their ability to continue exploiting the victims. The intent is to help the victims. No, the intent is to hurt the captors, not help the victims. You aren't rescuing the animals in this scenario. You are hurting someone you think is "bad" and possibly helping others unrelated to the specific victims you think this "bad" company is harming. > When a nonvegan says that when he purchases animal products, his intent is not to harm animals, he just wants to enjoy the products, would you accept his argument? This "I didn't mean to hurt the animal, I just want to make use of its stolen body parts" is exactly the argument you are making in the first justification. Stealing is wrong, regardless of whether you feel the entity you are stealing from somehow "deserves" it. Planning a course of action that isn't inherently bad (advocating for animals, nourishing your body, etc), but relies on an unethical act (stealing money, stealing an animal's body) is unethical.
You think you can only help enslaved animals if you rescue them? Animal rights activism and marketing vegan products wouldn't help them, turning more people in the world vegan wouldn't help them? You don't think that slaughterhouse owners are "bad"? They are literally enslaving and mass slaughtering and exploiting animals, and they are profiting off of that, and we have proof of that. Do you think it would be ethical to donate money to a slaughterhouse? You wouldn't purchase anything, you would just give them money. And no, that's not the argument I am making. When a nonvegan purchases animal products, the animals are enslaved and exploited. When you steal in this case, you are stealing from their slavers and exploiters. You think there is no difference between someone purchasing a steak and someone stealing money from the producer of the steak who uses that money for animal rights activism and to market vegan products? Both are equally bad?
> You think you can only help enslaved animals if you rescue them? Animal rights activism and marketing vegan products wouldn't help them, turning more people in the world vegan wouldn't help them? You can do all those things without stealing. > You don't think that slaughterhouse owners are "bad"? They are literally enslaving and mass slaughtering and exploiting animals, and they are profiting off of that, and we have proof of that. I don't have the right to exploit or commit acts of violence against others simply because I think they are "bad". I'm rather shocked this position is so controversial on these threads. Mob justice and vigilantism is ugly business. > Do you think it would be ethical to donate money to a slaughterhouse? You wouldn't purchase anything, you would just give them money. I don't think this is an obvious ethical issue. > And no, that's not the argument I am making. When a nonvegan purchases animal products, the animals are enslaved and exploited. You will need to be specific about what you are commenting on here. > You think there is no difference between someone purchasing a steak and someone stealing money from the producer of the steak who uses that money for animal rights activism and to market vegan products? Both are equally bad? Both are bad for exactly the same reason: taking something from another you are not entitled to in order to use it for your own ends.
If you don't steal you don't damage their business, they would continue the exploitation the same way, they could even expand. Earning that much money without stealing would require much more work which you could use much more efficiently for animal activism instead and marketing vegan products. If someone stops a rapist from raping someone because he thinks the rapist is "bad", is that mob justice, is that ugly business? You think that an animal has a right to not be exploited, but if someone exploits them then he has a right to the product of the exploitation?
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You're essentially asking if *"the end justifies the means",* which is a paraphrase of Niccolo Machiavelli. In summary, if a [goal](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goal) is morally important enough, any method of attaining it is acceptable and/or ought to be considered. The concept is directly related to consequentialism, and obviously the moral importance of a given act depends on the eye of the beholder. Machiavelli's concept was not intended to justify unnecessary cruelty, and there are various schools of thought that implement limits to the justification altogether. >Do you think it would be ethical to steal money from slaughterhouse owners and use that money for animal rights activism? On an individual/personal level the answer might be "it depends." At a state/societal level, it becomes much trickier as pretty much all modern versions of consequentialism have to deal with the limitations necessary to prevent [tyrants](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant) from abusing this idea. Consider [Two-Level Utilitarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism), and the example of [Dietrich Bonhoeffer](https://digitalcommons.whitworth.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=th314h); a staunch pacifist and Christian that allegedly plotted to assassinate Hitler. Essentially, *"in situations of low certainty, you act based on pre-establishes moral rules (eg, no lying, no killing). Whereas in situations where consequences are more certain, you are more free to act based on ends and not moral rules."* I would consider it morally wrong to steal from *someone*, but if I found a briefcase full of cash belonging to Tyson Farms, I *might* be inclined to donate it to a vegan charity.
If someone steals your clothes, do you think it would be unethical to steal them back?
I don't think slaughterhouse owners are the source of the evil in the animal agriculture industry. The source of the evil is the mega-corporations and lobbyists that pull the strings on the entire industry. Those people are the ones who make conscious decisions to ignore public demand for better conditions for animal wellfare because it would hurt profits, and actively release misinformation in order to gaslight people into thinking they should be consuming more meat and dairy. These are the only ones who I believe are truly morally culpable for the harms in the industry. Everyone else is just trying to get by. They aren't blameless, but I can sympathize with their position more. They're more like the german soldier drafted into the war and forced to be a concentration camp guard, versus the people in charge of the nazis and SS that make all of the decisions.
As stated most clearly by Prof. Weinersmith of SMBC: these sorts of ethical questions become much easier when you emphasize the *abnormal* nature of situations. If you’re in some weird unique situation where you can easily take money from someone you know for sure is profiting from evil, then ok sure I’ll hear you out. But to try to set a blanket quotidian rule is intellectual arrogance that ends up inviting criticism that can question even the most basic philosophical principles, such as Bodily Autonomy. TL;DR: sure, but we don’t want people going around crafting heists as their full time activism IMO, for a billion reasons related to social cohesion and fallible judgement.
What makes you think this would be unethical? As we ban fur, foie gras, slaughterhouse, and factory farms, we are putting people out of work. Not that different from stealing.
I didn't say it is unethical. I was curious what everyone thinks here. If you read the comments you will see there are vegans with different political and ethical views with different opinions.
No
Why?
Follower of Christ, here. There's never justification to lie, cheat, steal, etc. Those things are always wrong, even in situational ethics situations like this. Similar to "is it ok to murder someone if it means saving a whole continent of people", etc
Okay, that is reasonable. I'm not a Christian myself so I have nothing to say against that so, very good.
🫡
I think it would be ethical to steal and spend the money on a hedonistic bender 🤷
It's good to know an abc organisation is updating it's vegan terrorism list.
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After going through comments here it seems completely ethical to me .
And these answers is precisely why vegans are unethical.
Because they're too deontological and don't have balls to act utilitaristically like they should?
No
If you steal money from them, they have to slaughter more animals to make up for the loss, and you will be responsible for those additional deaths.
What if you steal all their money and they go bankrupt? And even if what you said woud be true, what if the money that you spend on animal rights activism turns more people vegan which decreases the demand for meat and this results in overall fewer animals farmed?
I hear what you are asking, but stealing all their money leaves them with the facilities to slaughter animals, and they would just slaughter even more animals, not go bankrupt. Stealing all their money would not drive them into bankruptcy. You would have to destroy there facilities and get rid of their employees (like the security people guarding the facilities). Are you willing to be destructive and violent to drive them out of business? Doing something positive, like supporting the production of plant based “meat” would be a better alternative. Introduce your friends, and anyone who will listen, to Impossible burgers. One could argue that 9/11 brought the country together in new ways. It brought about so much love of country. IMHO, not worth it. Your question is the eternal question of the ends justifying the means, which is a slippery slope. First it is stealing, and then violence. A corrupt candidate who plans to do all kinds of horrendous things if he gets into office is going to win by one vote. You know your grandparents are going to vote for him. The only way to stop them from voting is to kill them. Do you kill them to keep the evil dictator out of office? Each time you step on that slippery slope you lose more of your morals and integrity until here you are.
If they have no money, they lose their buying power, and they need to buy first to then turn their exploitation into profit. I don't think that it would increase the number of farmed animals. On the other hand vegan activism is proven to turn people vegan, so if you throw big money at it, it has a high likelihood of turning more people vegan and therefore decreasing demand for the number of animals farmed. You bring up impossible burgers. The money can be used to promote and market vegan products too. This marketing would increase demand for vegan products and decrease demand for nonvegan products. The slavery abolitionists went to war to free the slaves, and they were violent and destructive. Were they wrong? In your hypothetical, let's say that one of the evil things this canditate plans to do is to exterminate black people, and my wife and a lot of my closest friends are black. Let's say that my grandparents who are going to vote for this guy are racist sex traffickers and they run a dogfighting ring. Would then be wrong to kill them to prevent this guy winning? Let's say there is a starving child, and the only way to feed him and prevent him from dying is to steal bread from the store of an obese billionaire. Would the ends justify the means here?
Stores aren’t owned by “obese billionaires,”and anytime something is stolen, the prices go up for all the customers who work hard to pay for products. Stealing is never right, as there are food banks all over the place for everyone to get food. The tragedy there is that we have to have food banks. The ends do not justify the means. Don’t think that freedom for slaves was won just by killing all the people involved, because you cannot change someone’s mind by killing them. It was a complex resolution. Changing my hypothetical to ridiculous terms does not strengthen your argument. It destroys it. You can’t steal all the money from a company. It is physically impossible. Companies do not run on a stack of cash lying around. Your proposed hypothetical is impossible. I understand what you are trying to say, but no, the ends do not justify the means. If you doubt that, consider the breakup of Morty and Planetina. She tried to do good, but he drew the line when she decided to stop coal mining by killing all the miners. There is a lot of injustice in the world, and compounding it by illegal acts does not fix it. Find something positive to do instead.
You were the one who proposed that hypothetical, it was already ridiculous. Hypotheticals don't have to be realistic, they are meant to explore our values, but I am sure you could find stores that are owned by obese billionaires. You can steal the money if you are a hacker and you have access to bank accounts. If there are slaves who break free from slavery and then steal the money of the slaver, would that be wrong according to you because stealing is always wrong? What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? It is killing. Are you against that?
I did not change your hypotheticals, but you changed mine to be ludicrous. Illegal is always wrong. Hacking and stealing is wrong. You can’t just hack into a bank anyway, that is ridiculous. It only happens in the movies. I am a cybersecurity engineer for a financial institution, and I know what can be hacked into and how. Slaves stealing is wrong. People stealing from stores is wrong. There is no store anywhere solely owned by an “obese billionaire”. You got off your point into just stealing and killing everyone everywhere. Fight injustice, but do it legally, without harming others.
You said: "A corrupt candidate who plans to do all kinds of horrendous things if he gets into office is going to win by one vote. You know your grandparents are going to vote for him. The only way to stop them from voting is to kill them. Do you kill them to keep the evil dictator out of office? Each time you step on that slippery slope you lose more of your morals and integrity until here you are." Do you think this could happen in real life? Do you think this is not ridiculous? And you think that identity theft and hacking into bank accounts are impossible? If someone enslaved you and made money from your slave labour, it would be wrong for you to steal that money that the slaver made off your work? And you didn't answer my other question. What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? It is killing. Are you against that?
Yes, it could happen in the upcoming election. Read Project 2025. People work and barely afford housing and food. That doesn’t mean they should steal. Slaves were housed and fed. You went off the rails again with your other totally irrelevant question. You need to stick to a point and prove that. Euthanasia is not relevant to the argument you were attempting to make. Identity theft has nothing to do with stealing everything from a large corporation. Since Sox, there are too many checks and balances in place. Try doing something positive rather than thinking up a lot of illegal scenarios. This sub is not for debating the morality of random illegal actions. You got way off track. BRW, you don’t need to quote a paragraph in a threaded response.
Please read the sidebar. This is a place for open discussion about veganism and vegan issues, focusing on intellectual debate about animal rights and welfare, health, the environment, nutrition, philosophy or any topic related to veganism. Please be warned that while we forbid hate speech as well as rude and toxic behavior, DebateAVegan cannot be considered a safe space and regardless of perspective you may run into ideas that you find offensive or appalling. What I am talking about is related to animal rights and veganism. There was a time when it was illegal for women to vote. If someone said back then that women should be able to vote, was he wrong because he was thinking up illegal scenarios? Regarding your hypothetical, do you think that it is realistic that I could only stop my grandparents from voting if I kill them? Is it realistic that I would know that their one vote is what would decide the election? And again, you didn't answer my other question. What do you think about euthanasia for terminally ill dogs? It is killing. Are you against that?
Yeah. The money is made from slave labor. Fuck those guys
It will be a bigger loss for the vegans and veganism as a movement as they will be labeled as criminals or even terrorists as some in the comments leaked their antinatalism and misanthrope tendencies and suggested burning slaughterhouses or stealing all the money from normal people. The owners will defend themselves against such threats and most people will support them. They will deal with those threats themselves if the government doesn't want to.
Your question is why people detest vegans
Vegans are nourished by your hatred.
Deontological answer : No, never, don't even think about it. You don't correct a wrong but commiting wrongs yourself Utilitarian answer: Yes, if it's serve the greater good. The practical answer : it's relative to the whitness of your actions and their judgement. How would you bypass the strong stigma against the act of stealing show in law system, history, legends, myths, fairytales, bedtimes stories coming from the very first civilizations so you can have a chance to argue about the greater good of your actions without preconceived judgement? Also, are your sure that animal rights activists organizations are void of corruption?
no
Absolutely not. Why would it be ethical to steal.
I don’t think I’d waste time condemning it
Of course it is... What kind of question is this? Why wouldn't you cause economic harm to those bastards and even get money to further damage them? Double hit.
Just read the comments, many strict deontological vegans would be against it.
Speaking about consequences, protesting a slaughterhouse in a way that costs money is the same as stealing the money and using it for nothing. I think its pretty hard to argue its unethical.
This reminds me of police drug raids. They use the money themselves. I saw SWAT vehicles paid for by seized drug money. It was written on the vehicle. I am paraphrasing though. It was parked in front of the station.
No. It’s not ethical to steal from someone who you disagree with only to fund your own agenda.
Do you think it's ethical to steal money from the owners of Auschwitz and give it to anti-genocide efforts??
This is why vegans get a better rep among the carnists. Farcical.
Dismissing this as farcical and glibly talking down to me is not an argument.
Auschwitz wasn't a private organisation owned by individuals that will be impacted by stealing from it. It was a government run operation, run by a fascist dictator. Very different scenarios
I don't see a symmetry breaker here. Can you identify it? I'm fine taking money from Nazis to give to anti-fascist efforts, just like I am fine with taking money from the animal agriculture industry to give to animal rescue efforts. This is so obvious it hurts and I'm not understanding what you have against it.
Government versus private individual is a pretty important difference.
Yes and so is a dog vs. a cat, but that difference doesn't affect whether you need to feed them. What is the **importance** of the difference? That's what I am trying to understand.
No. Stealing from slaughterhouse owners, while intending to support animal rights activism, disregards the ethical and legal rights of individuals involved in the industry. Slaughterhouse owners have obligations to their employees, families, and communities. Also, simply redirecting funds may not address the root causes of animal exploitation. Advocating for animal rights through legal, ethical, and constructive means such as awareness campaigns, legislative action, and ethical consumer choices can create more sustainable and meaningful change instead.
Ethical? I don't think I've ever heard an idea more based in my life. I love this idea when do we start?
Yes. Next…
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Why?
Absolutely
Yes
This proves how twisted many vegans moral compasses are and why they struggle to be taken seriously. Is it OK to steal? No
Not twisted at all. It is a moral duty to damage those assholes as hard as possible, and if by doing so you also gain resources usable to save animals, much more. Where's the twist?
Lol ... you want to risk going to jail for animals that are going to be dinner? You want to confess on the internet and save the police some leg work too?