[Floker]

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If we only base our respect of people on how good they are in fulfilling their selfish needs, the successful violent criminal should be on top of our list.

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Makes no sense. If we only respected people based on that criterion, then the person who is most successful at fulfilling those needs would be top of the list. You've given no reasons to believe that people who use violence are most successful at that. And a quick glance at history shows that they're most likely to die as a result of violence, or spend long periods in prison, making them far less likely to succeed at their long term goals.

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As I said it, it doesn't make much sense, true. I should have said that if one criminal is more successful than another, but he uses violence, then that shouldn't be a consideration if we ditched the moral side of the story. Some people have this stupid respect for those people who are simply selfish leeches of society, so if someone is very successful with violent crime, they ought to respect those people too.

I raised this point because I feel like choosing to not respect criminals because they use violence is a feeble attempt to make your position about condoning crime more respectable. A criminal who doesn't use physical violence can inflict pain on his victims (trauma's etc.) so there's nothing more respectable about those people.