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They may not be suggesting it now, but if you normalise regarding certain people's lives as a less sacred value than property....
A principle which, if carried to its ultimate conclusion, leads to 40-50% of babies dying before their fifth birthday.
Given those grim statistics, I hardly think that Nature is a good guide to right and wrong.
There is a difference between "We're at 200% capacity right now, and getting more resources will take longer than our patients have" versus "We will be over capacity some time in the future, we can get enough resources to save everyone by the time they will be needed, but we don't feel like doing so"; there is also a difference between "prioritising Alice over Bob because Alice has a 90% chance of survival while Bob has a 2% chance" versus "prioritising Alice over Bob because Bob is a member of a group we don't like".
We already do this, for criminals, regularly. That I don’t see any moral difference between active homosexuals and hard drug users on the one hand and criminals on the other is just a difference in what we see as very bad.
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I don't understand why you just put in this complete non-sequitur, especially given that it's also a blatant strawman. What "principle" is being pushed in the quoted part above? It wasn't saying that there was anything particularly desirable about letting nature take its course; the reasoning for taking nature take its course has nothing to do with the naturalistic fallacy, which you seem to be implying was part of my statement. The reason to let nature take its course here is, again, triaging; we have scarce resources that we have to distribute to a limited number of people, and letting nature take its course is the default that's left over.
This, too, is a complete strawman. The comments were pretty specific about the people in question, and describing them as "member of a group we don't like" is simply a lie. They were, to quote, "people [who] will continue to have promiscuous dangerous sex and to use intravenous drugs." The reasoning wasn't spelled out, but based on the previous comment, my inference was that it has to do with the fact that people who continue doing those things both tend to catch and spread diseases regardless of the medical care thrown at them, and so the resources of that care could be spent better elsewhere, ie triage. There's plenty of area for discussion on just what the percentages are and where the threshold should be, but characterizing that as anywhere in the same stratosphere as disliked groups isn't even the Worst Argument in the World, it's, again, just a lie.
I must admit, this reply of yours has me questioning if you're commenting in good faith, or if I'm just being trolled.
The notion that that someone's life matters less if nature wants them dead.
The argument "We don't have enough resources to save everyone" falls flat when made by someone who had the opportunity to get enough resources and chose not to.
The specific group isn't relevant to my argument, because when that lack of compassion is applied, it has a tendency to spread. That was the point Niemöller was trying to make.
Actually, there are anti-retrovirals which will make someone carrying HIV not spread it. However, even if that were not the case, saving a life is good.
Explain to me how my statement implied this. Is the contention here that triage by its very nature, of prioritizing the saving of lives that are more likely to be saved, pushes the principle that someone's life matters less if nature wants them dead? Are you against the very concept of triage?
This, again, just makes me think you're trolling, and I'm wasting my time.
It would. Is the example we're talking about one such case? There's plenty of discussion that could be had about that.
If that's the point, then it's either a vapid one or an awful one. Society has routinely applied lack of compassion to groups without having it spread. Today, we show a lack of compassion to convicted 1st degree murderers with respect to their desire to live outside of a prison (we show them greater than zero compassion, of course, but, also of course, literally zero compassion was never in discussion - again, rounding up those who have promiscuous dangerous sex or use intravenous drugs into death camps was never in discussion), and I disagree with the contention that this means that there's a danger that it would spread. Of course, with a loose enough definition of "spread," you can argue that it would and does, but with such a loose definition, that "spread" is utterly meaningless and not worth considering.
That's a fantastic point you could make for why we should give aid to the people in discussion. That point has literally nothing to do with the argument you made in the above comment relying on the slippery slope argument.
So, again, is your contention that triage just shouldn't be a thing? Literally everyone agrees that saving a life is good. We lack enough resources to save every life all the time, and the discussion here is about prioritization.
I'll also note here that not a single comment I made implies, in any way, that I would be for leaving these people to die. Personally, though I see where hydroacetylene is coming from, I find the notion of just letting these people die to be ethically... questionable at best, monstrous at worst, given the resources I believe we have at hand. But I find your objection to it to be even more detestable than hydroacetylene's comment.
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If you show up with a mob and try to burn my house down, I'll kill you, and I will almost certainly not be prosecuted for doing so. Is this an example of "regarding certain peoples' lives as a less sacred value than property"?
Drivers have an elevated chance of dying or being crippled in car crashes. Wingsuit enthusiasts run a much higher chance of dying or being crippled in wingsuit crashes. We maintain an insurance system for drivers, but do not maintain one for wingsuit enthusiasts. Is this an examples of "regarding certain peoples' lives as a less sacred value than property"?
Do you believe that choices made shouldn't influence apportionment of consequences of those choices?
Handy that we are not restricted to ultimate conclusions, then, and are entirely capable of balancing competing interests.
One of Nature's more useful qualities is that it IS. It provides a default. We can diverge from that default if doing so seems preferable, but that does not give you or anyone else grounds to demand a divergence. You do not get to claim that Nature is unjust in any meaningful sense.
Just so, though I get the impression that we differ on who Alice and Bob are, and to what degree they are culpable for the percentages in the first place.
That would be a case of self-defence; the individual persons in the mob are actively attempting to harm you. However, if your town has 1,000 $FOO, and you know that 990 of them are planning to attack you, but not which ones, you are not justified in declaring $FOO as a group to be guilty, killing all 1,000 of them, and claiming self-defence.
If no $FOO has tried to harm you, letting them die to save a tiny fraction of a percent on your tax bill is also not justifiable.
It's more a matter of seeking an ethical framework less amenable to gerrymandering for the benefit of one's ingroup/harm to one's outgroup.
The interest of "AIDS patients continuing to get the medication they need to live" > the interest of "your tax bill being slightly smaller".
And that default leaves behind piles of skulls. Many of those skulls are alarmingly tiny.
Someone getting medication that keeps them from dying of AIDS is preferable to them dying of AIDS.
And yet I am claiming that.
I would not want the medical system picking over every aspect of my lifestyle to decide whether I am worth saving; therefore I apply the Golden Rule, and oppose the same being done to my neighbour.
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