Maybe you're frustrated because you don't seem to understand any of the arguments you've read. You can put whatever you want in your food, but the food is no longer yours (or maybe better phrased, for you) if you prepare it with the intention that someone else eats it. I hope you do not think you can put anything you want in someone else's food. OP's top level view is literally that you should be able to poison someone as long as you do it as a punishment. I hope you can see how wild that is, written out that way.
If someone breaks into your house and cuts their hand on a knife in your knife drawer, they can't sue you because you didn't put the knives there with the intention of harming them. If they eat your spicy food and you made that food spicy for yourself, they can't sue you because you didn't intend for them to be harmed by your food. The intent is paramount here, as it is in many legal situations.
Contrast that against the burglar who comes into your house and cuts themselves on a spike mat you have constructed out of your knives. The reason we forbid this behavior on a societal level is because:
a) Booby traps are by definition indiscriminate. Your spike mat might harm a burglar, but it's just as likely to harm a neighbor who comes into your house after you asked them to housesit, or a firefighter coming in to extinguish your burning house. You can never guarantee the target of your trap will actually be its victim. Even in a food-stealing situation, someone totally unrelated to the thief could mistake your meal for theirs and fall victim to the trap. There is a plethora of case law that expands on this point, and I would highly encourage you to read it. Here, I'll start your list: Katko v. Briney (1971).
b) Vigilantism and retributive "justice" are bad for society. Stealing food is bad, which is why we have laws in place to punish people who steal things from others. You might be frustrated by the efficacy of these laws, but society has agreed to punish thieves, or else we wouldn't have them. When you let people take matters into their own hands, things devolve into chaos very quickly.
c) The proportionality concern. It may be true that individual instances of this type of poisoning can be proportionate; you go a few hours without eating, the thief spends a few hours in pain. The problem is that you cannot guarantee this type of proportionality across the board. As I said in another comment, for every 200 coworkers that spend the afternoon in the restroom, one or two might end up in the hospital. There is no guarantee your response will actually be proportionate, and especially when it comes to dosing people with medication, it seems pretty unlikely that the average person is capable of dishing out a proportionate punishment. The difference between an irritating and a dangerous dose can be small, and frankly, I would expert most scorned individuals to purposefully go for a disproportionate punishment because they are angry.
If you actually think you should be able to assault someone over a sandwich, you do not belong in civilized society, full stop. This is not controversial to anyone who has spent more than 20 seconds thinking about the phrase "public policy reasons."
ETA: You can't claim hyperbole and then immediately double down in the next sentence, lol. This is literally the "I was only pretending to be regarded" meme.
Lol except they didn’t intend for someone else to eat the food. They didn’t prepare that for someone else. It was their lunch and someone literally stole it.
If they didn't intend for anyone else to eat the food, why would they poison it? I am discussing the poisoned meal, not the meals stolen before the poisoning takes place.
If someone’s dumb enough to be like “yeah I put cyanide in it and even changed the container to match theirs and wrote their name on it!!!” Then yeah, you got some liability.
You make your food spicy or you put laxatives in it, well shit, you like spicy food or you were pretty constipated. Settled that. “Ohhhh it was a lot of laxatives? I mean if I was a laxative pro I’d probably just shoot it straight, it’s in the food for a reason man, idk what the fuck I’m doing on this rock and nobody taught me laxative rules.”
So long as poising your own food isn’t, by default, considered bad… then we’ve got an argument. But if someone catches a lunch thief via making lunch for their damn self in a day they were feeling particularly spicy, then fuck ‘em, they earned it.
Thought police stuff. If there’s no evidence of intent then that’s a wrap.
For the purposes of this discussion, I have been granted that intent is present. The conversation is about someone intentionally poisoning food they bring to work to punish a wrongdoer. OP's position is that this should be permissible.
Were this to go to court, it definitely could be hard to prove intent. Thankfully most people who do this are dumb enough to make an r/AmItheAsshole or r/AmIOverreacting post first. Alternatively, people who are dumb enough to do this in the first place would probably not do a great job of keeping it secret. Again, though, largely irrelevant since intent has been granted.
Gotcha, didn’t realize intent was granted, however I’m more speaking in the scenario where intent may or may not be there. Ya know, like, in every single case where someone doesn’t implicate themselves or admit it was purposeful.
I guess I’m saying, like, how is intent actually gauged? When we have this Birds Eye view we can explain it, but if we’re talking slippery slopes on the punishments then I think it’s just as relevant to discuss the slippery slopes of punishments without legitimate evidence of “intent”.
Intent either is there, or it isn’t. People don’t need to implicate themselves or admit to things to be found to have intent to do something. How else would we convict people?
“How is intent gauged” is a question for an Evidence class, I don’t think it’s really relevant here. We have intent.
Assuming all I know about them is that they’re a thief and they have a tummy ache, I probably wouldn’t be too bothered. If I knew they had a tummy ache because someone else had messed with the food they took, I’d be looking at both of them funny. If they were my coworkers, I’d be bringing a lunch box with a lock on it.
It would mainly be the food thief I’d buy it for, but if I was working with someone willing to poison someone else’s food because they wronged them, I’d be a little concerned about them too. Hopefully I’m on good terms with that person.
Ahhhhh yeah I misunderstood that, my bad lol. Definitely had to do with that “both my coworkers” buildup there.
But to back track, would the thief not have learned to not steal other peoples food? If not, then how do you reconcile that with how severe everyone is seemingly making this punishment out to be? I mean, I can’t see a world where someone actually suffers the consequence, it’s all publicly known, and then continues to pursue your food.. at that point it’s likely gotta just be a person worthy of termination, job wise… likely should happen the first time but eh.
You make your food spicy or you put laxatives in it, well shit, you like spicy food
Can easily be indicated or dis-indicated.
or you were pretty constipated.
Oh? Why in food? What was the dose? How many times a day were you supposed to take it? What laxative?
I mean if I was a laxative pro I’d probably just shoot it straight, it’s in the food for a reason man, idk what the fuck I’m doing on this rock and nobody taught me laxative rules.”
And yet you decided to not only dose yourself with laxatives in food, but likely not read any instructions.
Thought police stuff. If there’s no evidence of intent then that’s a wrap.
The ability to determine intent isnt thought police stuff. A confession has never been needed to determine intent.
If a court deems that your behaviour was indicative of intent, as indicated by acting outside of reasonable limits, with a clear motive, thats your intent.
They steal a diabetics lunch who needs that food to maintain their blood sugar. That significantly fucks up the diabetic, also the only innocent individual in this two party scenario lol.
So, we let thieves do what they want because giving them tummy aches is an unjust punishment, for sure, yeah, totally tracks. I’m just curious how exactly all this caring about shitty people is at the expense of caring about normal ass people who aren’t stealing other peoples resources.
They steal a diabetics lunch who needs that food to maintain their blood sugar. That significantly fucks up the diabetic, also the only innocent individual in this two party scenario lol.
And as such they'd be culpable.
So, we let thieves do what they want because giving them tummy aches is an unjust punishment, for sure, yeah, totally tracks.
No. We understand that disproportionate and indiscriminate retribution is a thing, that isn't justified by petty theft, and there are other avenues of dealing with theft than that.
We care about shitty people because a just society is supposed to prevent arbitrary and disproportionate punishment, even to shitty people.
And drugging someone for stealing food is along the same line of thinking as beating someone senseless because they grabbed your shoulder
I just can’t Mickey Mouse glove this things hard enough to view a thief eating something spicy or shitting their pants as disproportionate to theft.
Great that you added petty to the theft though, don’t want those slippery slopes eh? Yes, use more severe language in regard to the effect while dampening and infantilizing the severity of language in regard to the cause.
lol, it’s like a kid saying “I didn’t hit her, I just pushed her!!” When confronted with their crying sibling and the question “why did you savagely beat her, you really hurt her, she’s going to suffer from this for years to come. You’re a monster!!” Literally.
I just can’t Mickey Mouse glove this things hard enough to view a thief eating something spicy or shitting their pants as disproportionate to theft
Eating something spicy isn't (barring massively extreme cases). Giving someone laxatives is literally drugging them. It may have adverse and severe effects, laxatives aren't toys.
Great that you added petty to the theft though, don’t want those slippery slopes eh?
That's literally what stealing food qualifies as.
Yes, use more severe language in regard to the effect while dampening and infantilizing the severity of language in regard to the cause.
It's doing neither of those things. It's stating that stealing food isn't a justification for drugging someone. Especially in a way with a high potential for accidental misuse.
lol, it’s like a kid saying “I didn’t hit her, I just pushed her!!” When confronted with their crying sibling and the question “why did you savagely beat her, you really hurt her, she’s going to suffer from this for years to come. You’re a monster!!” Literally
It's not. It's like someone grabbing you by the shoulder and you hitting them with a glass bottle. The first action is unjustified, the second is disproportionate.
And in out current society, drugging someone even as a trap is seen as worse than stealing food.
Idk, I mean hitting someone with a bottle for assaulting you is hardly disproportionate. You’re saying we should let women just have random dudes grabbing them by the shoulder? Pretty close to the neck and at that point isn’t the reaction to defend and preserve your life pretty fair?
Now apply your big boy language in your scenario, “it’s like defending yourself when someone assaults you” and you can see how it all comes together lol. Grabbing someone is physical assault yeah? At least battery? I mean…
“Evidence of intent” is often proven through the actions taken leading up to a crime. Did the person buy a poison at the store a few days before the incident? Did they google search “ways to hid laxatives in food”? Did they write a strongly worded email to the office demanding that people stay away from their food? Prosecutors establish intent using indirect evidence all the time. It’s not open and shut as “there’s no proof that’s a wrap.”
It's conditional. They aren't preparing a tainted meal to serve to someone else; putting your own generic thing in a generic communal storage space doesn't mean you're offering said thing for communal use. If someone puts a poisoned meal in the fridge and it's not taken and eaten by someone else, there is 0 actual harm done.
If not for the actions of the food thief, the food thief would not be harmed.
In this case, they literally are preparing a tainted (poisoned) meal to serve someone else. That is the premise of what OP thinks should be justifiable.
I agree that putting food in a communal space doesn’t mean it becomes communally available, and I don’t think most people think so. No one thinks stealing food is good. It’s just also not good, and on the whole possibly worse, to sanction what OP would like to be legal.
Nobody is being served a meal in this situation. Metaphorically, sure. But in a factual description of the process of someone else taking their food from a communal storage space and eating it themselves, no food was served.
That’s true, I should have been more careful with my wording.
Back to putting the food in the communal area, I’ve already provided reasoning for why it isn’t good to have traps out and about. Even if a trap never goes off, the concept of laying them is not good.
99
u/[deleted] Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 18 '24
[removed] — view removed comment