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Notes -
This case might be different from the usual 'Is it really ethical to MURDER* someone just for being poor? (*murder: n. not provide $100k worth of state of the art medical treatment to prolong someone's life by a few months)'.
If you haven't put yourself in danger or created a situation where self-defense is justified or ..., nobody else has the right to intentionally or negligently cause your death. If a homeless guy is screaming at someone or throwing hamburger wrappers at someone, you can't take out a gun and shoot them. And you can't choke the homeless guy out and 'accidentally' kill them. (And if you could, that'd be a way to get away with intentionally killing them!).
If this guy was actively physically attacking someone or something similar, restraining the person could be justified, and then the killing would - maybe still be prosecutable (as minor fights happen a lot more than killings, and escalating them to killings can still be bad), but maybe not be. But if the guy was just being disruptive or screaming, the legal system shouldn't (according to today's ethics) allow that to escalate to a killing - it's disproportionate, it takes the 'monopoly over violence' away from the state and its adversarial legal system, etc.
One response is "the state isn't dealing with this guy and he was a danger, so it's good a vigilante dealt with him". Another response is "this guy doesn't contribute to society or his own life, and shouldn't be alive anyway". I'm sympathetic, but generally allowing random killings of people you judge in the moment to be bad has spillover effects outside cleaning out undesirables.
I get you, but these people aren't making a legal argument or an argument based on rule utilitarianism. They are making either a deontological argument or a virtue ethics argument that boils down to "always take it on the chin". Because any response whatsoever contains the possibility of escalation and that might get somebody killed in the end. Curiosly, it completely strips the attacker of agency and places all the responsibility on part of the bullied.
"The wiser head gives in" was the principle I was raised with. It took a lot of beatings for me to realise that the only way to stop a bully is to fight back. There seem to be people who never had to make that experience.
Turning the other cheek might work for sons of gods but it creates terrible incentive structures for everybody else.
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