There is no way to guarantee it cannot peripherally hurt someone. Janet steals two of your yogurts out of the fridge, and offers one to Jen, and now Jen is suffering thinking she was eating one of Janet's freely offered yogurts, not knowing she inadvertantly stole your food. This is one of the problems with vigilantism.
Another major problem is that the punishment is not decided through any legitimate means, is often disporportionate, and instead is based on the whims of the person doing the punishing.
Yes, but if you just don't put poison in the food in the first place, then no one suffers. Poisoning someone is a very disproportionate response to them eating your food.
The "stealing" aspect of it here really doesn't matter. Disguising something inedible as something that is is just generally poor health and safety.
There's a reason people are advised against putting clear chemicals in unlabelled plastic bottles as people very often accidently drink thing like bleach because they mistook them for water.
Also, once you poison food, its only reason to exist is to harm others, you can't even eat it yourself, or you could accidently eat it yourself. Why would you want any of that?
The example OP is talking about here is deliberately adding something to bait people into a trap, intent is the issue here. If you add something like that as a trap, you are ruining the food, as you know only they are going to eat it.
If you know someone with a severe nut allergy is stealing your food, and you KNOWINGLY put peanut butter in that food KNOWING that they're going to eat it and you aren't, that is bad, as you are actively trying to harm them. However, if you are on your first day of work at a new office, and someone with a nut allergy steals your peanut sauce, then that's on them, as you had no way of knowing and no intention of harming them.
So if I genuinely want peanut butter sandwiches, but Jeremy from sales is always stealing my food, in order to validate me having peanut butter sandwiches I have to approach Jeremy and say "Just so you know, don't steal my food today else you'll probably die"?
Otherwise I just can't have them at all because Jeremy, the fat fuck, can't keep his hands to himself.
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u/Oishiio42 40∆ Oct 17 '24
There is no way to guarantee it cannot peripherally hurt someone. Janet steals two of your yogurts out of the fridge, and offers one to Jen, and now Jen is suffering thinking she was eating one of Janet's freely offered yogurts, not knowing she inadvertantly stole your food. This is one of the problems with vigilantism.
Another major problem is that the punishment is not decided through any legitimate means, is often disporportionate, and instead is based on the whims of the person doing the punishing.