On one hand she's a crook. On the other hand she scammed Ruper Murdoch, Kissinger, the DeVos family and a bunch of other ghouls that deserve to be robbed.
I guess in the end there we're more innocent victims than ghouls taken to the cleaners.
Then hold him accountable for any crimes he has committed. No amount of stealing money from fraudulent investments is going to solve or help convict him of war crimes.
how does that address the point that committing crimes against bad people is still bad? if you start to make exceptions for people you don't like you're just flushing the whole Enlightenment "let's stop persecuting Protestants/Catholics when they're not in power" thing down the toilet.
You don't think anyone should ever steal? What about a partisan group opposing an occupation? Is it allowable to steal weapons from the aggressor's depot, or must they remain moral? At what point is stealing permissible?
The situations you are describing are essentially war time or marshal law style events. Under those circumstances almost all laws are either suspended or unable to be enforced and essentially the fabric of society is already severed.
The same "arguments" could be made by replacing the word "steal" with "murder" and I would still have the same position and principles, because I also do not condone murder even if the person being murdered is someone I despise.
I think in all contexts stealing is wrong, it's just in some contexts stealing being wrong doesn't matter because the alternative of dying makes it a moot point.
> What about a partisan group opposing an occupation?
This was answered as essentially war-time activity. It's still wrong to steal from someone, but again the alternative of being killed makes it a moot point.
> At what point is stealing permissible?
Stealing is still wrong, it's just that it can obviously exist in scenarios that are so wrong for other reasons that the stealing is the least of concern.
She took money from some despicable characters. She let people in her care suffer "to reach God" but had the best medical care for herself, when she fell sick. Her organization did not keep good records of financial transactions or pay correct taxes. That is just what I can remember. You can Google, lots of good sources are around.
She is not a person to look up to. Organized religion disappoints, 99 times out of 100
She defrauded people who would go to court and claim fraud laws are unconstitutional restrictions on speech if it served their purpose. They’re opportunists who will spin whatever tune empowers them.
Murdoch and co’s only life skill is being rich which mesmerizes those who think fiat economics and American civic life are divine mandates of a higher power even if they don’t belong to a traditional religion.
Okay. Mother Teresa was (according to some) a nasty, torturing bitch. Fair enough.
I actually selected her as an example because off the cuff I couldn't think of someone else that some significant proportion of folks here on HN wouldn't say exactly that about. I guess I shouldn't have used a real person as an example. Lesson learned. N.B.: I am an atheist and find the Catholic Church (not specific Catholic adherents, I judge individuals based on their individual behavior) to be, in the main, a bad thing.
My point wasn't to glorify Mother Teresa (or anyone else). Rather, I was pointing out that it wouldn't have mattered who Theranos' investors were, Holmes would have defrauded them too.
Perhaps a better example would have been an attorney who works 60 hours a week at their day job doing pro-bono cases and litigating malicious/unfair prosecutions of innocent people, then funds and runs a soup kitchen/food pantry for the hungry another 40 hours a week. Is that better?
I'm sure some segment of the folks here will decry even that person too, as a rabble-rouser trying to destroy civilization through wealth redistribution (one bowl of soup and a piece of bread at a time) and questioning the authority of the police and prosecutors.
Who are, of course, the salt of the earth and only do what they do for the best of reasons (cf. The Innocence Project, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, The Central Park Five, etc., etc,. etc.) /s
So I'll make the point again without the distraction (causing folks to ignore my point -- apologies for sending you down the Mother Teresa rat hole?) of an actual, flawed, human being:
Holmes would almost certainly have defrauded any investors, regardless of your (the general 'you' here) opinion of the value of that particular persons' moral/ethical bona fides.
I guess in the end there we're more innocent victims than ghouls taken to the cleaners.