Luxury Yacht Company Offers Pirate-Hunting Cruises

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Aramike

I don't understand how you cannot understand my reasoning considering that you summarized it perfectly.

I don't see how you get from stage 1. to stage 3. Your conclusion can
not be logically deduced from stage 1. alone.

Your (unspoken) stage 2. might be:

1a. The deathrow inmate isn't in the process of committing a crime
2a. It is wrong to kill people who aren't in the process of committing a crime.
3a. Therefore I object to the sale of the chance to carry out state
executions.

but that makes it an argument against the death penalty altogether and
I assume that is not your intention. (Can you confirm that you are
pro-death penalty?)

You could get round it by saying something like:

1b. The deathrow inmate isn't in the process of committing a crime
2b. It is wrong to pay to kill people who aren't in the process of
committing a crime.
3b. Therefore I object to the sale of the chance to carry out state
executions.

but in this case it isn't clear why 2b. is true and not 2a.; you are obliged
to explain/justify 2b. without justifying 2a. or leave it as an arbitrary
premise.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Letum

I don't see how you get from stage 1. to stage 3. Your conclusion can
not be logically deduced from stage 1. alone.

Your (unspoken) stage 2. might be:

1a. The deathrow inmate isn't in the process of committing a crime
2a. It is wrong to kill people who aren't in the process of committing a crime.
3a. Therefore I object to the sale of the chance to carry out state
executions.

but that makes it an argument against the death penalty altogether and
I assume that is not your intention. (Can you confirm that you are
pro-death penalty?)

You could get round it by saying something like:

1b. The deathrow inmate isn't in the process of committing a crime
2b. It is wrong to pay to kill people who aren't in the process of
committing a crime.
3b. Therefore I object to the sale of the chance to carry out state
executions.

but in this case it isn't clear why 2b. is true and not 2a.; you are obliged
to explain/justify 2b. without justifying 2a. or leave it as an arbitrary
premise.

Okay, now I get where you're coming from, so let me rephrase.

It is wrong to pay to kill someone, unless you are killing someone who is ATTACKING you of their own volition.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Aramike

Okay, now I get where you're coming from, so let me rephrase.

It is wrong to pay to kill someone, unless you are killing someone who is ATTACKING you of their own volition.

OK, then you must explain why it is wrong to pay to kill someone who isn't
attacking you, but not wrong to be paid to kill someone who isn't attacking
you.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Letum

OK, then you must explain why it is wrong to pay to kill someone who isn't
attacking you, but not wrong to be paid to kill someone who isn't attacking
you.

Nonsense, he must not, because these are not the options.

Paying people to kill those attacking our assets and people, and letting people pay to kill those attacking our assets (and people) - that are the two options here.

[Letum]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Nonsense, he must not, because these are not the options.

Paying people to kill those attacking our assets and people, and letting people pay to kill those attacking our assets (and people) - that are the two options here.

I don't know how closely you have been following the discussion. My self
and Aramike where contrasting the sale of the chance to carry out state
executions with the sale of the chance to kill pirates.

Aramike thinks that the former is a bad thing to do and the latter is a good
thing to do because "It is wrong to pay to kill someone, unless you are
killing someone who is ATTACKING you of their own volition."
However, he (presumably) simultaneously thinks that it is not wrong to
be paid to kill someone who isn't attacking you because if he did not, he
would not be able to support the death sentence at all.

That is why there is an obligation for him to explain why it is wrong to
pay to kill someone who isn't attacking you (i.e. it is wrong to pay for
the chance to carry out state executions), but not wrong to be paid to
kill someone who isn't attacking you (i.e. it is not wrong to be employed
as a state executioner).

Unless, of course, he bites the bullet of leaving it as an arbitrary distinction.

[Skybird]

You are too much in philosophers heaven, and to little in earthly reality. There is no abstractness in the situation - as long as you do not invest sentimentalism into it. You said I am a moral void. You got it wrong in your conceptions, for I am not even that. And while you are doing abstract mind gymnastics, I point finger at an unpleasant reality: that your "investements for anti-piracy-fonds" would add cash to the warlords in place, ignores that the West already has capitulated in one Somali engagement in the 90s, and that despite all your philosophising you have nothing, absolutely nothing to offer in realistic answers on how to tackle pirates. Bloodtourism I did not defend on a moral basis. I said that while everything else has failed, mostly due to western weakness, one could make pragmatic use of it. That does not enoble it, nor does it declare it holy. Bloodtourism would deliver several messages to pirate villages. First, pirates would not return home. Second, they would learn that they are so low now that even tourists may hunt them for fun. Third, it makes piracy a business of more uncalculatable risks for pirates. Fourth, it reduces numbers of pirates. Fifth, states must not even accept responsibility for them if they get into trouble, for they voluntarily saught war action, and if it happens to kill them, so what - nobody forced them to pay for and go oin that trip. So if there are idiots willing to pay money for going on such a trip, let them (you may even call them immoral, if you like) - we can lose nothing from their decision, but eventually win something from it.

As long as we accept the existence of private mercenary companies, I see no moral argument against bloodtourism as well. Mercenaries will not like it, but I insist on both being essentially the same. Just that the one gets payed - while the others pays. The better for some of us.

While the West accepts to not act with determination over claimed moral arguments, he nevertheless by his inactivity accepts an industry based on violance and blackmailing to foster, he accepts by his inactivity the financial funding of barbaric militias engaged in civil wars, he accepts by his inactivity the growing of a militant criminal network to whom private enterprise, and shipcrews terrorised for weeks and months, must fall victim (always with the risk of being killed), he accepts by his inactivity the robbing of free enterprise - all that on the basis of moral scruples by the West.

I give not even what I leave in the toilet for this kind of "moral", for it is highly hypocritical, absolutely inhumane and ignorrant to reality and fate of the victims and their families at home, and simply cowardish, and weak. Weakness never is morally valuable - it simply is weakness, and meaning it well does not chnage that a bit: even if you mean it well, you have to be strong to reach something. Strength and determination is only immoral where one does not see and accept the responsibility that comes with being strong and determined. but the way the West reacts to the problem right now: what kind of superior, glorious "morals" should that be?

Scorn, mockery and disgust from me for that.

[Letum]

SB:
I can't make any moral argument with some who claims to be "not even
that [a moral void]".

I can't make any rational argument with someone who claims rational
arguments are "abstract mind gymnastics".

The only open doors to your mind appear to be those of utter pragmatism
and your mysticism; neither of which I have any inclination of appealing to.