Citation? I found nothing when reviewing to indicate that any omake affected that event's actions. Somewhat related comments:
On the first page:
Sharing The Same Tears Bonus to Kaori's situation (Helped mitigate death to kidnapping)
I consider the poachers to be of a significantly higher tier. The kidnappers were a bunch of newbies who grabbed one girl in an attempt to avoid starving. The poachers were a team of specialists who threatened the stability of the entire organization.
Theft has always been considered a lower tier of violence than kidnapping. Theft through deceit and avoiding direct confrontation has always been considered a lower tier of violence than mugging.
The kidnappers were directly threatening Kaori's life. Pay up, or the girl gets it. Most moral systems consider that a greater evil than an act that indirectly makes things more dangerous and threatens lives of others that way.
Their demand was effectively one cube per month (two cubes total, but one was what you'd be spending on Kaori anyway). Whether it was reasonable to negotiate with them is one thing, and whether it was reasonable to give them their demand is another, but the demand itself was in no way excessive or unreasonable; it was only and exactly as much as they needed to live. Only asking for that much also implied that they'd still hunt the other three cubes they needed on their own (which was more than Kaori appeared to be doing, from their perspective).
ANY DEMAND WAS UNREASONABLE. I don't care if they asked for a penny.
I'm hungry, is it then reasonable for me to go kidnap someone's sister and demand a burger? Oh, I only asked for a burger and not a million dollars, so that makes it okay? My demand was reasonable?
Their need is
irrelevant to the moral question. Our wealth level is irrelevant to the moral question. The question is first whether they had any right to claim our harvest. Did we harvest in their territory? No. Did we reduce their harvest some how? No. What right did they have to the fruit of our labor? None.
Thus they fail on the first question. They are in the wrong. They tried to claim the property of another person wholly unconnected with them. Not just the territory, but the product of our labor. Essentially they tried to force us into slavery, where we would labor to produce food for them, not because they provide us goods in trade, but because if we don't they will kill our friend. That makes them the villains. No further moral analysis required.
The second question (if they did have a claim to our harvest) would have been if their actions to obtain their where proportionate to the situation and claim. The answer here is still no, because their action was not to contact us and tell us they had a claim against us, but to kidnap a member and threaten to hurt them if we don't pay up.
Or more pertinent to their case, did they ever contact us and beg for help and then we turned them down? Nope, they decided that the correct response to starvation was kidnapping, not begging.
The actions of Naru's group were immoral. Period.
Compare this to our response:
We agree to the payment, ambush them, retrieve our member, and then free them on the condition that they forfeit their territory.
Since there is no over arching magical girl organization, questions of authority do not come into play. Looking at the above it actually a rough justice. Criminals have no right to expect honesty, police officers are explicitly allowed to use deception to capture criminals. We secured our member, and then penalized them by taking their property as they had intended to take ours.
Turn that point of view around. Is there any point in negotiating with a group whose first resort is violence and threat of death? Who explicitly advocates negotiating in bad faith? If you were Naru, would you not say that anything bad that happens to us is something we 'deserve'?
It is not bad faith. The law explicitly says that if someone is making a credible threat to coerce you into an action, then you are not bound by agreements or contracts made, and you are entitled to use deceit. The bad faith is
explicitly attributed to the person making the extortion.
Frankly your insistence that deceiving kidnappers is acting in bad faith is bizarre and contrary to all Western law and tradition.
Furthermore, our first resort is not violence. Our attackers are the ones that have resorted to violence first. When we had a grief cube shortage did we go out and rob other girls? Did we kidnap others?
Eye for an eye diplomacy leaves everyone blind. If no one is interested in solving the root of the problem — the source of the conflict, not just the superficial appearances — then yes, it leads down the path you mention. But that goes for both sides. And if no one is willing to put a stop to it, to put aside their egos and find a way to fix the problem permanently, then it will never end.
This is not ego. This is reality. The root of the problem is that our enemy believes they can extort resources from us through violence at low cost. We must ensure that they reassess and decide that the cost is actually very high, so that they will not do it again. Otherwise they will keep on doing this.
That means we must hurt them. If we don't we might as well surrender and let them enslave us.
That's reality. I know, because I had to fight a lot when I was a kid. I was small, so other boys would target me for physical assaults. I fought them, lost, but made them realize that fighting me would not be low cost, so they never bothered me again. Then we'd move, I'd attend a new school and I had to fight all over again, so that the other boys would learn that I was more dangerous than my appearnce.
Perhaps in some moral systems. I personally disagree, and find such easy justification a sign of corruption. The bar for justifying killing someone should be very high, else it will be constantly abused.
They just stole someone's soul. If that's not worth killing over, then what is?
This seems like foolishness. There will always be someone with a bigger weapon, and if you constantly up the ante against everyone, someone is going to find you to be too much trouble to deal with, and bring a big enough gun that you don't get up again.
If we up the ante, we're saying that Mariko and Sora's lives aren't worth anything, because their lives are forfeit the instant it's clear that the negotiations will never go anywhere. Suggesting that we could steal their soul gems as some sort of leverage to get the original soul gems back (like they're going to trade with the people who just showed that they will only ever respect someone with a bigger stick?) sounds like foolish wishfulness.
They are the ones that only respect violence. They have proven it because they only use violence.
Basic game theory suggests Carinthium's amoralism. Advanced game theory says amoralism is a crock.
No. I am not advocating amoralism. I am advocating justice, which is harsh and brutal. You reap what you sow. Tit for tat.
That is the core of all morality.
Which advanced game theory clearly supports. Nothing beats tit for tat. Nothing. Oh, a year ago or so someone discovered that in a very specific circumstance, tit for tat could be beaten by a slightly refined tit for tat with forgiveness. The fact remains though that tit for tat is what works. It's what works according to game theory. It's what works according to real life history.
In fact it is our enemy that is favoring amoralism. Nothing they are doing suggests any morality. Nor did Naru demonstrate morality. They both demonstrate an amoral belief that might makes right.
I'm not trying to be rude here. Basic game theory definitely supports pure amoralism, and Carinthium's philosophical beliefs held true to that (though not based on game theory per se). It's just that most people won't recognize the full extent of what that means without an example, and more advanced game theory isn't easy to provide an example for.
You've redefined what amoralism is and are calling moral positions amoral, and amoral positions moral. That does not improve your argument.
basic game theory rally does point toward a pretty much total lack of morals.
No it doesn't. It points towards tit for tat. If you are nice to me, I will be nice to you, if you hurt me, I will punish you.
It's the foundation of the western moral code. Eye for an eye. Which by the way was a radical improvement over other moral systems of the time which were death for an eye, unless you have power or know the right people.
Though also attempts to wield the bigger stick in this situation aren't likely to work well. Also surprises me how people are going for that style of diplomacy considering they've been playing the true good route so far.
We are playing the true good route. The true good route response to kidnapping is to fight the kidnappers and win.
Sounds like this is a powerful group though, which means Sora and Mariko are probably as good as dead.
We cannot just negotiate. If we do so it will only invite further kidnappings and more demands. If the enemy is too strong to defeat completely then we must find their weakness and hurt them as much as possible. That will be a warning to them that we will be no easy meat and they need to look elsewhere. If they are truly rational, then they will not even kill Mariko and Sora as that would waste their leverage.
After we hurt them we might be able to negotiate. Hit them hard and then contact them to see about a truce. Tit for tat with forgiveness.
But until we hurt them it's pointless. Until then we have no leverage of our own.
