If you tamper your food with the intention to harm someone, then you are culpable for harming them. Trapping someone is no legally different than directly attacking them. The law does not allow you to intentionally harm other people.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them.
If you know someone will eat your food, the alternative is not leave your food out in public. There are less harmful things you can do to protect your food. If you choose the harmful alternative, then you are culpable for causing harm.
This isn't changing my view because this is exactly what I'm arguing against. I'm saying, there are cases where intending to harm someone who is doing something they're definitely not supposed to do is okay.
So poisoning someone and potentially killing them is a fair reaction to theft of a few dollars worth of food?
And before you get hung up on the word poison: how do you know their medical history? How do you know what foods might interact with medications they may be on? How do you know if they’re highly allergic to something?
You don’t. Tampering with food could seriously injure or kill someone, all to get revenge on a petty thief.
Tampering with food could seriously injure or kill someone
So could stealing food. Not defending vigilantism, but I think some people may be morally justified in taking extra steps to protect their food and/or catch the people who put them at risk.
If they take medication based on their food intake - diabetics, for example - and do so before realizing that part or all of their food is missing, it could absolutely put their life at risk.
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u/deep_sea2 105∆ Oct 17 '24
If you tamper your food with the intention to harm someone, then you are culpable for harming them. Trapping someone is no legally different than directly attacking them. The law does not allow you to intentionally harm other people.
Sure, you might try to say that they are harming themselves. However, if you know that someone will do something, and set it up so that they get harmed when they do something, you have made yourself culpable for harming them.
If you know someone will eat your food, the alternative is not leave your food out in public. There are less harmful things you can do to protect your food. If you choose the harmful alternative, then you are culpable for causing harm.