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Comment by mrhappyunhappy | Hacker News Reader

I never understood how anyone can take another life. To take away the memories, the experiences, the future potential of another spirit - all for the sake of what? Hate? Money? Power? How can anything be worth more than the only thing that allows one to experience this world? Sad.

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Starvation, poverty, vengeance. Would you willingly let yourself starve to death? Would you willingly watch your kids starve to death? Most crime is done out of desperation, and if you and enough other people around you are desperate enough it becomes normalized behavior in order to survive. You get robbed, so instead of dieing a hobo, you rob somebody else, the problem perpetuates itself because there are so few alternatives available.

"Most crime is done out of desperation"

This is just wrong.

The vast majority of Mexicans don't commit murder, and they are definitely not starving.

Greed, egoism, pettiness, rage, psychopathy, nihilism are more likely reasons.

Starvation need not provoke murder. If I had to choose between watching my child die and murdering another human so he could survive I’d choose the former. There is no life for a life. You only get one, and robbing someone of their life is the greatest injustice that can ever be carried out. I understand that if you grow up in that culture it feels normalized, but that doesn’t make it ok.

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