Government-enforced morality

[Daisy]

Why do you include the word "necessarily?"

Because when this old lady made a left into our Miata, it was because she didn't see us behind the truck and forgot to look again. I felt sorry for her, but we were happy to be compensated by her insurance.

But when some jerk knocked the rear of my car so hard it spun around and then yelled at me that I hit his car before zooming off, I would have been happy to had his car damaged for revenge.

I said "necessarily" because I know sometimes I have vengeful thoughts, although I try not to.

Anyway, you want the offender to pay for it, no matter what means he/she has to pay for it, while not necessarily wanting his/her car also to be wrecked.

No, I want to be compensated, made right, but I doesn't really matter to me if it is the offender or the insurance company that pays - or even the victim's compensation board.

This type of revenge has become the more common type because the avenger gets something useful or valuable from the avengee, instead of a bloody eyeball to bounce around. Regardless, you have admitted you want equal to or greater than the value of your loss-- it's payback time!

No, I did not admit to wanting greater than the value of my loss - you seem to be reading your own feelings into my statements. It is not payback time; it's getting on with my life.

Incidentally, if someone attacked you and plunged a sharp instrument into your eye, causing you to lose sight in that eye, and you defended yourself by taking away that sharp instrument and stabbing the attacker, who died [though you did not intend that], would you ask for a transplant of that person's eyeball-- a medically possible operation now-- in order to have the sight that was cost by the same person? It certainly seems as reasonable as wanting 'compensation' for your wrecked car.

That scenario is not an eye for an eye but a life and an eye for an eye.

Would I want the dead man's eye? I honestly don't know.

Suppose he weren't dead - would you want the court to compel him to give you his eye in order to restore your sight? That would be an eye for an eye.