Christmas and drugs...

[becksdad]

Yourself.

[Michael]

I'm intrigued by your use of the word "steal." If I were to take that money, whom would I be stealing from? Who is the owner of this money?

The answer is (legally speaking), nobody owns the money. It is drug proceeds, and therefore will be forfeited to (aka stolen by) the government for their own illicit purposes. Again, whether I take it or not, there is zero chance that my patient is going to leave the hospital with it.

The money belongs to nobody. Finders keepers. He who acts first wins.

whom would I be stealing from?

I'll do my best to answer this as soon as I can.

Although I may be only intermittently online for another little while, I realize that my foolishness probably won't appreciably shrink without being filed down by my friends here, so here's my best shot.

I'd like to think that Dust's challenge represents not so much an inclination upon which he is disposed to act, as an inquiry about why he, and those he'd like to be around, do in fact restrain themselves in such situations. In other words, what follows is not an attempt to dissuade the actual man Dust from fulfilling a desire to enrich himself by forcibly depriving a defenseless dependent of goods possessed; I decline (at this point) to attribute to him self-serving rationalizations designed to justify untrustworthiness. Rather, I accuse him of the benign service of using a device to make us, or at least me, think. So until I find I am missing a spoon after he's been dining at my home, it's the Dust The Construct rather than Dust The Correspondent I address here.

The easiest way to reassure myself of the validity of this respectful premise is to imagine going the real Dust one better: See him and raise him. Replace the crack dealer by some other agent who's acquired assets in a manner the caregiver and/or the lawmakers disapprove. Not a crack-dealer, but a prostitute. Not a prostitute, but a loanshark, a bookie, a sleazy landlord, a Wall Street insider-trader. I'd like to think that as Dust's partner, if I were to rifle through the pockets of a stockbroker on the justification that I knew him to be a white-collar felon, the real Dust would object as strenuously as if I were to appropriate the pocket-change some poseur had saved by flaunting a uniform while off-duty in a coffee-shop. (Actually, that may not be the best example to spotlight Dust's dispassion...)

But with that proviso in place, namely that I refuse to take literally Dust's rhetorical device, I shall try to take on his pointed argument piece by piece as best I can:

The answer is (legally speaking)' date=' nobody owns the money.[/quote']

Legally speaking, the possessor of the money is the presumptive owner, in this case your patient, no matter how much we dislike that state of affairs nor how vividly we imagine some richly deserved conviction and sentencing in a court of law. Felons get to keep and spend their assets until the moment they are frozen or attached by an official act. I'm no expert on law, but our general sense of what distinguishes society from savagery is that no warrant, no injunction, no conviction, no sentencing = no legal transfer of assets, irrespective of how deep may be the pocket of a kangaroo-court magistrate :wink: .

Here's an old advertisement for the alternative: "Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." (Thomas Hobbes, 1651)

I believe you mean it appears to you to be drug proceeds. As promoters of evidence-based medicine, I am sure we are also supporters of evidence-based property-rights, evidence- [or rather proof-] based criminology, evidence-based vocational attribution. In a public elevator I once asked a uniformed officer whether there was a problem in the building, to which he sheepishly grinned and answered that he was not a policeman but rather an actor on lunch-break from filming a television commercial. Your patient might be twin brother to the "well-known drug dealer," who earned this money through brilliant stagecraft. Or he may be a freelance, volly, faux crack-dealer (crack-whacker? crwhacker?) who plays dress-up for thrills, and that money was for a cab home to the suburbs if things got rough. It doesn't matter if these examples seem farfetched; the burden of proof is on the one who intervenes, for personal gain, to alter the status quo over what would be his victim's objections if he were able-bodied rather than infirmly in the care of one sworn to "First, do no harm." My unremarkable point is that rules of evidence, however imperfectly constructed or applied, are more reliable than even the most gifted paramedic's private judgment about matters in which he is not trained, certified, nor licensed. I doubt any of us would prefer to undergo even a public, let alone secret trial before a judge who stands personally to gain from fining a defendant unrepresented by counsel and unprotected by court officers - and an unconscious defendant at that.

Since by "illicit" you must mean "unjust" rather than "illegal," one must ask by what standard of justice you are condemning State confiscation of criminally acquired assets. (If by "illicit" you really mean "illegal," than you need to clarify which element of the government is departing from which other element by violating which statute.) My understanding is that money confiscated from drug dealers is used to pay informants for subsequent stings. It's unclear whether that is the specific "illicitness" that justifies your endorsement of vigilantism, or whether our Robbing Hood is also redistributing income away from highway patrols, parking meters, municipal services such as ems and like illicit purposes. In order to be coherent, selective anarchism needs to specify its targets.

[marcdeo]

I would have no remorse about taking that money - the fact that it is BLOOD money is of no consequence since I would be using it for good reasons, not to buy more drugs/guns and get them on the street. By taking the money I would not in any way be "adding to the problem", and turning the money over to the authorities would not "eliminate" ANY problems, nor would it prevent more from happening.

The reason I would NOT take it is because there is ALWAYS the possibility that you can get caught, and supporting my family is of TOP priority to me (hard to do when you've been fired) - I dont need to sell drugs to do it, and I dont need drug money to to buy my family nice things. My children can look up to me, and most importantly, I can go to sleep with total self- respect.

It's kind of like the whole PROSTITUTION think- I have no problem with it, it's just not something I would ever engage in (pay for sex). That being said, I don't look down on those men that choose to do so, I simply make my own choice and refuse to frown upon others for making theirs.

However, making money through means that hurt other people (selling guns/hard drugs) is NOT something I condone.

[marcdeo]

As for the example about admitting to "smoking marijuana"..

Lie. there is NO relevance to that question, and it's none of the employers business. It would be UNETHICAL to NOT hire someone for the reason that someone may have smoked some pot years ago, so lying to a question that is ridiculous to begin with in order to support your family is TOTALLY acceptable in my opinion.

[Dustdevil]

As for the example about admitting to "smoking marijuana"..

Lie. there is NO relevance to that question, and it's none of the employers business. It would be UNETHICAL to NOT hire someone for the reason that someone may have smoked some pot years ago, so lying to a question that is ridiculous to begin with in order to support your family is TOTALLY acceptable in my opinion.

So... would it be "unethical" to not hire someone for the reason that someone may have had sex with 5 year old boys some years ago? Robbed a couple of liquor stores? A few DWIs maybe?

[JPINFV]

^

Depends on the offense and depends on a job. Potentally career ending mistakes are made all the time, especially in defense industry jobs (ex: engineer working on a black project [i.e. 'doesn't exist'] accidently brings home a document that hasn't been registered yet with the security officer, but is supposed to be secure [ex. draft]. If you attempt to bring it back to work there is a chance you will be searched on your way in. If you get caught, you'll be fired and possible prosecuted. Alternatively, you can burn it and bury it, and no one else will know the difference. Which option is the ethically right one and which one is the practical solution). To be honest, people need to be able to be hired after they are released for prison. Are there places and jobs that ex-cons shouldn't work? Sure. "Hi, I'm an ex-child molester and I'll be your substitute teacher today," isn't going to go over real well, but if they can't find a job then we might as well sentence most people to life in prison.

[Asysin2leads]

The reason I wouldn't take the money is because its wrong. End of story. Done. Its not my money so I shouldn't take it. This is plain, simple, non-religious old fashioned values that have served me well throughout my life. Its simple and it works. Don't do things that are wrong. Taking money that isn't yours is wrong. I am amused by some of the justifications of those who admit they would, trying to make it seem like what they were doing is somehow different than shoplifting or stealing from the church collection plate. There is no difference. It doesn't belong to you. However, I'll at least commend you on your honesty, most of the people who sat they wouldn't are full of crap.

Most people don't really care about right and wrong, so long as they don't get caught and/or embarrassed and they can justify it so they don't feel bad. Its sad, but its true. We can sit here and debate back and forth what we would do, but given the situation, when no one was looking, or worse, when say it was your group of close knit friends who took the money and then handed you your "cut", most people, including many of the ones posting would take it and not think twice about it.

If your really want to learn about the dim side of human nature and ethics of the common person, read about the Milligram experiment sometime. Basically, after WWII a scientist wanted to learn about the effect of authority on people, and so he set up a device whereby a person believed they were delivering progressively increasing, and possibly lethal, electric shocks to a "subject". Only a select few did not deliver the last and what they believed would be almost certainly fatal shock to the "subject" (actually an actor), despite the "subject's" screams of pain, reporting of a medical condition, complaining about pain in the chest, etc. Ethics are what you do when no one is looking, and unfortunately, human nature is not as rosy as you might think.

[JPINFV]

To answer the origional scenario, I would turn the money in. I used to work as a box office cashier in high school and my first year in college. I'd have, on average, $6-7k in sales (cash, gift certificate, and credit) go though my register. I also helped set up and verify the drops (money is regularly taken out of the cash drawers, counted, verified by another employee, then dropped into a safe till armored transport arrives to transport to the bank). The drops were up to $15k depending on sales volume and time since last drop (sometimes the manager couldn't pull money out of the register as often as they should have. The drops were generally about $5-10k). To be honest, currency (the paper symbol of money) means very little to me because I've seen so much of it that wasn't mine. Never once did I think about stealing from my employer, video cameras or not. If I had a patient with that much money with that condition, I would just seal it in an envelope and document it (out of site, out of mind).

[Dustdevil]

Ah.. but again, you guys are talking about stealing.

What I am talking about is a custody battle between claimants of lost property.

Semantics? Maybe. But semantics is exactly what the forfeiture laws are based upon.

Two can play the semantics game.

[marcdeo]

If you think someone who smoked a joint 10 years ago while at a stones concert (and took a cab home) is comparible to a person who has sex with little boys or endagers the lives of others by getting behind the wheel drunk is the same thing, well, I have no comment - you're entitled to your opinion I guess. :roll:

I dont share that opinion, and neither does the Criminal Code of Canada (or the American legal system)

But since we are talking about opinions here, I think that is an absolutely absurb comparison.