Dan,
The first reaction is to try to save as many people's lives as possible, given the resources at hand. To frame that as "stealing" requires a peculiarly abstract mindset.
As far as the intellectual property rights are concerned, I am not absolutist, but you can't just ignore them. As far as the resources at hand, you can reallocate resources, based on priorities, or as I said increase taxes of US citizens to "save lives" of people in Brazil and other foreign countries.
If this is such a priority, the local governments can stop building roads, fire their military, stop paying pensions or whatever it takes.
Or are you a fan of Swift's "modest proposal"? Actually, I guess not, the people Swift was satirizing shared your respect for "private property" over human life, I'm sure.
When I saw Swift and fan, my first reaction was this: swiftnets.com a site I came across reading about Athlon cooling solutions.
To answer your question, I have no idea who or what this Swift is about or his proposal.
As far as private property vs. human life, all sides talk about sanctity of human life, but in reality, it is a compromise. It costs billions to treat terminally ill, and if you doubled or tripled the amount (by confiscating private property), you could "yield" more man days of life, by keeping people in vegetable state alive, but I don't think it is a good way to spend "resources at hand".
Joe |
