Originally Posted by
erichsia
Sometimes it seems like people on here feel like they will open the floodgates and unleash a tide of bike thefts upon the world if they agree to even acknowledge a shade of grey where this is concerned. This isn't arithmetic where there is only one right answer and an endless supply of wrong answers.
I've looked at bikes that have been sitting the streets for a couple of months and contemplated giving it, or some components off of it, a better home. I'm pretty sure most of the people that have been so quick to judge on this topic have too. I don't feel bad about thinking such thoughts. Do you? If you don't, then why should you feel bad about acting upon them?
Some people have had good reasons for doing what they did to get convicted and incarcerated. I'm sure you weren't implying this with your statement, but do you really believe that everyone matriculated into the American penal system absolutely belongs there?
thinking of math as binary is basically a misunderstanding of math.
there are tons of meanings latent in everything, until you assign meaning to it. one doesn't mean one until you define it as one. the proofs for this take hundreds of pages in math and are some of the first things they teach you in college as a mathematician(so i'm told).
similarly, if you define stealing as wrong you have to define it as wrong with a ton of qualifications... hundreds of pages of qualifications.
basically, if the damage you do by stealing is less than the damage of the abandonment, it makes logical sense.
but the ethics of the situation are not logic. they are ethics. which means that if the bike's owner locked it up and left it, he's not giving you free license to take his **** any more than he is giving someone free license to stomp it into a mangled twist of wire.
you need to stop justifying your own thoughts of unjust appropriation and start thinking about why it's so irregular to see bikes locked up for long periods of time.
the answer is that even "good" people like you will steal **** when your perceived benefit outweighs your perceived malice.
the only meaning that holds any truth for me or most people including those that interpret the law, is that you are taking something that isn't yours because you think you can use it more than the rightful owner.
i'm guessing the people who stole the components thought the same thing. even if you can only make a few bucks off a seat and some bars and a wheel, those few dollars are way more important than a bike in a city where there's a public transit system and your baby is starving or dying of exposure.
sure everyone has thoughts that "wow that is something i want and i deserve it more/can use it better/should be using it instead of the person who's done XXXXXXX to it"... doesn't make it an ethically defensible position.