He never rationalized immoral behavior, unless you consider climbing Mt Everest immoral.
A lot of people risk their lives every day in their jobs. It's not typically seen as immoral to do this.
I agree markets have failures, and they also shouldn't justify immoral behavior--I really sincerely agree with you on that--but in those cases, that happens because of externalities. In this case the externality is the dead bodies and litter, so a market solution isn't typically bad in this context.
I think "Freakonomics" answers this. If your goal is to get money, and there is no monetary penalty for being "immoral", then of course people are going to be immoral. It's the same reason corporations dump toxic waste -- paying the fines is cheaper than not producing the toxic waste.
I don't think you are understanding that comment correctly. Its not making a moral argument at all. It's making an argument regarding the business outcomes of PE. He's not saying it's good or bad either way. He's saying a simple piece of deductive logic proves it isn't fully correct.
People can be coerced by their circumstances; but that's beside the point.
You can hire someone to murder someone else. Nothing wrong with that transaction in a free market. Similarly, you can be a credit card processor for child pornography - you take your cut, but since you don't do the deed, it's not your problem.
Do you see the problem?
(Hint: morality isn't emerging here. It comes from somewhere else.)
And I have no idea why you mentioned some "other economic system". I didn't. Why? Because I wasn't contrasting economic systems. I was contrasting moral systems.
What you say feels right intuitively, but I can't figure out the logic behind it. Does participating in a marketplace automatically make one partially responsible for the crimes of others who participate in it? That doesn't seem quite right. There's a lot of violence in poor inner city areas, is it morally wrong to own a gun shop in such an area? Are we morally responsible for the actions of the corporations we buy from? What about our nation's foreign policy? To take an extreme example if you sell food to enough people, you know that eventually you'll feed a murderer. But intuitively there's a big difference between selling food and money laundering. I don't know.
The Ross Ulbricht case doesn't really help. Ordering hits is morally wrong whatever the context, so that doesn't help in figuring out whether his other actions were wrong.
Moral hazard? Moral Hazard puts one in the way of making an immoral choice. Surely killing people to take their body parts represents an actual immoral action? I didn't miss a memo or anything?
Interestingly, your sentiments about moral hazards in finance exactly mirror mine regarding obedience to the law.
E.g., if I'm one of the few who pays all of the taxes I'm supposed to, does that just make me a self-righteous chump?
Or is there much point in me properly disposing of household lead, fiberglass insulation, etc. when 99% of other users of the landfill ignore the rules?
Are you trying to say offering people money to remove bodies and trash is immoral? How odd.
>Your argument is basically equivalent to 'trump isn't perfect, but he's a whole lot better than hitler'. While true, it's merely a distraction from the conversation at hand.
All of this ignores the moral aspect of sacrificing human lives at the feet of the economy. And, to be fair, it's totally plausible that said leaders are themselves ignoring the moral aspect. But it does matter when we judge them on the actions they decided to take (or not take).
>We can’t reasonably be making “this type of refusal to do business is okay, but that one is not” based on moral agreements of individuals
I totally disagree, that seems completely reasonable to me. Are we not allowed to say that doing something moral is okay but doing something immoral is not ok?
Intentionally putting others in danger is immoral to many. But morality is subjective. Putting the whole community at net negative risk so you can squeak out personal advantage is perfectly acceptable behavior to some.
"We should continue doing immoral things because there's no way we'll ever convince corporate and governmental power to let us stop doing immoral things" is ... probably not an incorrect argument, but a very sad one.
A lot of people risk their lives every day in their jobs. It's not typically seen as immoral to do this.
I agree markets have failures, and they also shouldn't justify immoral behavior--I really sincerely agree with you on that--but in those cases, that happens because of externalities. In this case the externality is the dead bodies and litter, so a market solution isn't typically bad in this context.
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