| "You wouldn't be poor, if you worked hard enough to earn more money." "You wouldn't be fat, if you ate a reasonable amount of healthy foods instead of calorie-rich junk." "You wouldn't be a criminal, if you had enough moral fiber to obey the law." I think you are intentionally ignoring a lot of circumstantial factors that have been scrubbed from the strawman hypotheticals. I believe the canonical example for rating someone on a scale of morality is as follows: Jack's child is very sick, and may die. The doctor gave him a prescription for a drug that would cure his child in one dose, but when he took it to the pharmacist, he found that they had some in stock, but that single dose cost more than he has ever saved at one time, and even if he could get a loan big enough to buy it, he would never be able to pay off the debt. Jack did notice some holes in the pharmacy's security, though. Should he break in to steal the drug, to save his child? Why? There are a lot of ways to answer the why, for the question as posed. We are also adding some additional questions. When Jack is caught, how severely should he be punished? Does the reasoning behind the situation change if the police operate the pharmacy as a front, and intentionally inflate the price of life-saving drugs and weaken security, in order to more easily catch people who might rob pharmacies, if allowed the opportunity? |