Until the end of this Youtube video the question was… Are you willing to push a button that will cause someone’s death and grant you ten million dollars.
Something I thought of whilst watching it (until the twist at the end) was; If I were the person who would die, for giving someone ten million dollars in exchange for my life, would I say
“Push the button”
Or
“Please don’t push the button”
I would be tempted to say push it. Ten million can make for a pleasurable life for a good many years. I might feel good about dying knowing that by doing so I have improved the quality of another person’s life. And moreso if they were allowed to know that I was happy to die for them to get ten million dollars
I don’t think the guilt of knowing someone died to give me $10M would allow me to enjoy said $10M (unless we’re talking inheritance of the normal sort, of course.) And no amount of money is enough for me to allow someone else to die, or push a button to kill them.
The episode involved a mysterious stranger presenting, as I recall, a couple with a button, covered with a clear plastic shield. If they push the button, they get a wad of cash (was it $100K?), but someone they don’t know will die. The couple frets a long time, even going to far as to open the bottom of the button’s box to discover the button’s not even connected to anything. Eventually, they press the button. Shortly thereafter, the stranger returns with their money.
Finale:The couple asks, “What happens to the button?” He answers, “The button will be taken back, reset…and given to someone you don’t know.” The implication being that they are next on the chopping block, and their lives depend on the next stranger being unwilling to push the button.
Maybe this is absurdly obvious, and maybe I’m being very boring for posting this, but, AFAICT, the moral value of not pushing the button is a lot less clear than the makers of the film seem to believe.
If you push the button, someone dies. You get $10M of blood money. We all know that killing someone else for your own personal financial well-being is wrong (assuming, of course, that your financial well-being is good enough that you won’t die for the lack of improving it.) Here’s the thing, though–how many people, who would have died otherwise, would that $10M save? Think of all the people who die for lack of clean water, or adequate nutrition, or a $10.00 vaccine.
How many lives could that $10M buy? Could you possibly have a net gain of, say, 10,000 lives saved from the money, in exchange for the one life you take to get the cash? Maybe pushing the button and directly handing the briefcase over to the Red Cross is the right thing to do.
The Twilight Zone episode was Button, Button, based on a short story written by Richard Matheson. In it a couple are in severe financial straits. Two hundred kilobucks will certainly solve their financial problems. The wife wants to push the button. She says that the victim might be someone who would be better off dead. The husband counters that the victim may just as well be an innocent person with everything to live for. He throws the box in the trash.
When he comes home from work he finds his wife sitting before the button. She tells him she’d pushed it. That night or the next day the Well Dressed Man who brought the box shows up with the money. As has been said upthread, the wife asks who will get the box next. ‘I assure you it will be someone you don’t know’ is the answer.
I’ve watched the video, and at first it does seem to be a rip-off of Button, Button. The director claims never to have heard of it. Given that he’s in Australia, I suppose it’s possible that he’d never seen the American television episode. Upon seeing the ending, I think I can give him the benefit of the doubt. The ending is different from Button, Button and the idea is, as he says, an old one. I’m reminded of a short story by Leo Tolstoy:
I’d like to think that I’ve done an act of kindness or two in my life and I would not wind up like the woman with the onion. As for the black button, I would not press it under the terms laid out. If I were to be an assassin, I’d want to know my target.
