A scumbag who is also a "good-hearted person who did a very good deed."

You may have heard about the guy who bought up a Girl Scout's stash of cookies for 540 dollars to get them out of the freezing cold? Seems like a good dude, right? Did you know he also got arrested a few days later for conspiring to bring drugs into the country?

So yeah... good deed getting the kids out of the cold... bad deed trying to import drugs into the country. Karmic balance not quite achieved.

Anyway, what do you think about bad dudes that do good deeds? Would you rather them not do anything at all and just leave society? Or the good deeds they do have value, even though they cause harm by just existing?

When I was a waiter, we had criminal elements come in all the time. Pimps, whores, drug dealers, motorcycle gangs - you name it. They were always polite, great tippers, and paid cash. Maybe this was an example of them doing an offset good deed for all the bad things they did? Who knows. But they made the wait staff very happy.

Of course a good deed has value but they don't function like an "indulgence" would where they cancel out other shit.

Going to the US next month, this whole tipping thing is bizarre...

@THUMPTABLE: Because your country has customs Americans wouldn’t possibly consider bizarre too, right?

Getting more at the incredibly low minimum wages you have.

Makes me wonder if the boxes of girl scout cookies were a part of the drug-smuggling plan.

So he basically made a charitable donation (sorta) and he participates in capitalism?

I believe that people are more complex than "good" or "bad". I've never met someone that structures their character through such binary moral concepts. I believe that people have their own moral spectrum that's highly contingent on context. Even if the justification for doing something seems petty/insignificant (killing someone innocent because of an inner urge), it's still a decision made by their own "basis" of living. That's why people attempt to view serial killers from their perspective rather than imposing societal rules onto their actions.