>The majority of society would say it is your ethical duty to help a person in such a circumstance, even at moderate inconvenience to yourself.
A stranger man knocks on the door of a single mother with a young daughter (yes, I am piggy backing on stereotypical social norms). Does she have an ethical duty to put both herself and her child at potentially great risk (which is probably largely overblown by 24 hours news and crime based TV shows)?
>but in general, most people would frown on your choice of a fancier car or a European vacation over someone else's life, in this kind of local, specific scenario.
The difficulty is when they enjoyed their European vacation in the past while you saved up for yours now.
Or to put in a more generalized term, the ethical obligation to share wealth even with those who are themselves responsible for not having wealth encourages one to never save up wealth to begin with (not in an all or none sense, but as a pressure which can be increased or decreased).
It's funny that you mentioned the first scenario because that one of the exact reasons why government emergency services exist; you still bear the cost but your physical safety is much more likely to be assured.
So sometimes we find that bearing the full cost, including the cost to safety, to be too great but we find a solution with a different cost (maybe not always lower as there are multiple dimensions of cost) that we are willing to enforce on people.
But even given emergency services, there are still limits where they are unable to provide help. And in those cases, while we are free to judge a person regardless of what they choose, we do not force them to render aid.
A stranger man knocks on the door of a single mother with a young daughter (yes, I am piggy backing on stereotypical social norms). Does she have an ethical duty to put both herself and her child at potentially great risk (which is probably largely overblown by 24 hours news and crime based TV shows)?
>but in general, most people would frown on your choice of a fancier car or a European vacation over someone else's life, in this kind of local, specific scenario.
The difficulty is when they enjoyed their European vacation in the past while you saved up for yours now.
Or to put in a more generalized term, the ethical obligation to share wealth even with those who are themselves responsible for not having wealth encourages one to never save up wealth to begin with (not in an all or none sense, but as a pressure which can be increased or decreased).
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