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.
So by that logic I could advertise coffee beans as handpicked by child slaves and you could buy my product completely guilt-free? I don’t think it’s functionally any different from arguing you aren’t a murderer simply because you’ve hired a hit man. Maybe you didn’t directly do the bad thing but you’ve paid someone to do the bad thing on you behalf. At a certain point isn’t financially supporting the bad-actor tantamount to supporting the bad action?
I think it is fundamentally immoral to force someone to take part in a transaction that they don't want to, just because the law forces them to do it. You wouldn't point a gun at them and make them do business with you, why do you want someone else to do it.
I fully agree. But still it makes a difference from a moral analysis point of view, because my aim is to condemn the buyer, and don't judge the seller.
So now you have to convince me that buying the right to beat someone to death is a morally justifiable action. It is not sufficient for you to judge selling as justifiable to make your point. I actually agree that selling is morally justifiable, and would never vote to make this a punishable offense.
While the OP might not have intended it this way, that's also a formula for perpetuating any 'difficult circumstances' that happen to be profitable for others.
A simple example which was in the news this week due to a Supreme court case: crack sentencing disparities. You made a bad life choice and sold 50 grams of cocaine and got caught, you might go away for 2 years and then turn your life around. But if you sold 5 grams of crack and got caught, you were probably going away for 20 years. The penalties for crack were literally 100 times higher.
Now, consuming crack is really bad for you, but consider the situation of some kid without much life experience that is tempted into making a quick buck. Depending on where they happen to be and what's in front of them, the same failure of morality/judgment would have staggeringly different consequences.
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'm surprised by how few people on HN feel contracts have a moral obligation aspect to them, but once you believe there is no morality in a legal contract, then a whole lot of things become permissible, specifically related to pirating and other kinds of legal trespasses.
Do you believe in individual responsibility, then? That is, if I, your friend, promise to give you a ride to the store and then don't follow through, am I morally culpable?
Whether it makes sense isn't the issue. The question is whether it's morally right.
For the safety of myself and my family, it probably makes sense for me to shoot anyone who comes near my house (at least in the short term - but I think your logic also only works in the short term, as current world affairs shows). But I think we'll all agree that I shouldn't do this.
To ensure my own lifestyle I should also cheat on my taxes, sneak items out of the grocery store in the bottom of my cart, take credit for other people's ideas at work, and plenty of other things for which the chances of, or cost of, getting caught is low. Nevertheless, these are things that I ought not to do.
Let's take another example, even more extreme. Suppose I run a pawn shop. Somebody comes in looking to sell goods that I know are stolen. I buy them from him. This contract is entered by both of us consensually and without coercion. It is also entirely immoral.
People are social creatures. Trying to ignore that and treat everybody as isolated individuals ignores those.
If somebody told me "hey, I'm going to buy a gun and murder someone - would you like to buy my new album?" I would certainly say no. I don't see why it's any different when the consequences are abstracted a little.
No, I can't save the world on my own, and nor can anyone. I've done a good many things which have directly and indirectly resulted in harm towards others, because I need to in order to survive in today's society. But that's not the point - the point is to build an ethical framework in which we can aim towards intentionally enabling less harm, even if we can't ensure no harm.
If you do business with me, and you're an asshole, your moral defense can be that you didn't know you were being an asshole. I'd personally give you the benefit of the doubt. Of course the next time you do the same thing it'll be clear.
>But the question of whether his actions were in accordance with the “rules of the game” has very little bearing on whether they are repugnant.
If you break an explicit rule or request, then it's clear that you knew you were being an asshole, doing things other people don't want. When that rule is not explicit, it's hard to say if you knew you were being an asshole. The rules weren't explicit, and could have very easily specified not to scrape.
If Sam took advantage of anyone it would have been naive experiment participants who donated money under the false assumption it would be used for a specific purpose. But even then, Sam's actions could be interpreted as Robin Hood-esque by some.
There is NO DOUBT, from the view point of the supposed victims that Sam's actions are repugnant because they go against what they wished, but so did the people who Robin Hood robbed from I bet. However, from a more global perspective, who's to say they're repugnant? Assume some of that Stark Card money actually reached some unfortunate children in the third world and made their lives slightly better... Would a non-victim really believe that to be a worse appropriation of that money than buying coffee for some first-world person (assuming the money actually reached those kids)? Many would argue that is a better use of the money, regardless of what the original experiment participants expected the money to be used for, because the experiment participants wrongly assumed in the first place.
The problem is this a preposterous example, but let’s say we’re targeting kleptomaniacs. Is it immoral to target them, despite their propensity? I don’t see how.
Since I clearly need to spell this out. What is appropriate is clearly subjective, I was taking it to the extreme in order to make a point. But I'll reiterate the same question. Why would you not disregard political or religious outlooks, or even crimes for that matter, when buying(i.e. giving money for) "stuff" from "vendor"?
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.
We can’t force anything, but profiting from it is another story which contains a moral dimension regardless of your ideological stance. There is no legal responsibility, but morals are sticky. For what it’s worth though, I appreciate your demonstration of the rationalization I mentioned in my first comment.
So if someone held a gun to your head and demanded that you kill someone, and you pulled the trigger, then you're doing something morally wrong? I feel like my sense of morals at least allows for doing something morally wrong if you're being forced to do it.
"whenever something is morally allowed for an individual, the moral system must ensure that the individual actually can do it"
More like "whenever one of an inherently-coupled pair of actions is morally allowed, the other of those actions is morally allowed". A moral system which allows one and not the other is self-contradictory.
In this case, a moral system which permits the right to sell a life but denies the right to buy a life self-contradicts; unless you believe that it's moral to trick someone into committing an immoral act (I do not), any attempt to exercise the right to sell one's own life would be inherently immoral because of the impossibility of doing so without causing someone else to perform an immoral act. The only way for the sale of one's own life to be moral is for the corresponding purchase to also be moral.
"we end up with a moral dilemma"
Only if you insist that buying is wrong while also insisting that selling is not wrong. When both are right or both are wrong, then there is no such self-contradiction.
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.
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