Topics Ethics

Question Legal status aside, is a person who steals $1,000 from a very rich person acting just as unethically as a person who steals $1,000 from a poor person?

Accepted:
April 14, 2011

Comments

Very interesting! Maybe not. If both cases involved equal malice and hate or the money was extracted with the same amount of violence, we might think both thieves are equally worthy of blame. Obviously the first thief has done more damage because a rich person is less vulnerable to extreme poverty and the second thief has perhaps doomed the poor person to complete destruction, and so we might naturally think that the first thief is less cruel than the second, but I don't think this is necessarily the case. In some cases we might even reverse this judgment. Imagine that thief who steals from the poor person has no other means of getting money that will rescue his or her family who will die unless they use the funds for medicine (imagine there are no rich people around and EVERYONE is poor), whereas the thief going after a rich person is doing it for a thrill or to buy a ticket to a pretentious play.

Question Legal status aside, is a person who steals $1,000 from a very rich person acting just as unethically as a person who steals $1,000 from a poor person? Accepted:April 14, 2011

Question Legal status aside, is a person who steals $1,000 from a very rich person acting just as unethically as a person who steals $1,000 from a poor person?

Accepted:
April 14, 2011