Practically speaking, it really isn't different.
The surgeon who kills someone might, if the victim's family is very lucky, be assessed damages of a couple million. An idiot with a cracked server farm can easily cause that much damage on the net.
Ummmm.... I read the entire conversation. I also read your statement in which you couldn't be too mad for too long because money was one of the first forms of "virtualization".
That is not what I said. What I said was that I would not want him, pardon the crude terminology, fucked in the ass.
To that I say, so what? What's that got to do with anything? You get your identity stolen in our world today you are very liable to lose all your real property and your very real reputation and ability to work.
Uh, no. This is an unlikely extreme. People get their identity stolen all the time. It sucks. But it's not like we're seeing an increase in the homeless population, like in the picture you're painting.
You're the one that floated the idea that because money was a form of virtualization you couldn't stay mad for long.
No, I didn't. See above.
That you wanted to see no harm come to someone who had stolen everything from you.
No physical harm. Again, this is something you should have gotten from your mastery of the context of this conversation.
I just asked why.
No, you didn't. You used a few question marks, but you didn't actually ask me anything. You used questions to put words in my mouth and then responded to that. You have not, at any time, seriously asked for clarification of what I meant. Here, I'll use this thread as an example of what you're doing:
"Just because money is a "virtualized" form of wealth identity theft is any less heinous than stealing someone's real wealth?"
So you really think stealing $2,000 from somebody's bank account is as bad as rape? When sex is forced upon somebody, something they value, intimacy that is worth a great deal to them, has been violently ripped away from them. This is something that they would spend any amount of money to erase from their history, thus making it more valuable than $2,000. They would spend their whole lives trying to deal with that, whereas that $2,000 they would make back much sooner in their lives. Just because somebody can give what they have to as many people as they want, doesn't mean there is no value in it.
Obnoxious, isn't it?
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long. -- Howard Kandel
