It is a matter of integrity. The harm is not to the casino, but to you, because you are lessened by allowing it to happen.
Do the right thing, even when you do not gain. Be an example.
The last time I received noticeably too much money as change, I donated the “extra” to A Worthy Charity. I figured that was the best compromise and that way the money was going to do some good for someone in need.
It’s things like this that made me decide that something can be wrong even if it doesn’t hurt anyone.
I agree with coffeecat. I’m not sure why the OP stipulates that it is less harmful than accepting too much change from a cashier, I think that’s a good analogy; however in my view, the extent of the harm done is irrelevent.
You were given the money accidentally. It’s not yours. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t win it, and you don’t deserve it. The casino earned it (from players) and is the rightful owner. Give it back.
Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I don’t even see a dilemma here. It’s black and white. Give it back.
The amount of financial harm may be proportional, but not the amount of “moral” harm.
There isn’t some sort of relationship–linear or otherwise–between how much you steal and how immoral the act is.
Any given act may have a variety of factors to be considered in determining whether or not it is morally justifiable in the first place (perhaps I am stealing medicine because my captor has deprived me of it…) but in an instance like the OP’s, if it’s immoral to steal 10,000 dollars in excess change, it’s equally immoral to steal 10.
Practical repercussions of larger thefts may be greater, but this is a reflection of cost-benefit relationships and not moral differences.
I couldn’t disagree more. The heinousness of the transgression is in direct proportion to the harm it causes. It is always wrong, but it is certainly more wrong to steal the food out of someone’s mouth, than to steal a tenner from someone who will never even notice its absence. That’s like saying that shooting one person is just as bad as ethnically cleansing an entire country.
Though I could be misinterpreting, this strikes me as a nonstandard view. Are you suggesting that the differences in penalty between grand and petty theft, though determined by dollar figure, are based strictly on a cost-benefit analysis? Could you walk us through it?
It also seems to imply that you are strongly in favor of mandatory sentences and the removal of judicial discretion. That is, Defendant A, guilty of robbing a large amount of money from a charity and Defendant B, guilty of taking a quarter out of the till to avoid a parking ticket (both clearly stealing) should receive the same sentence. Given the likely impact on crime rates of such (seemingly, to me) draconian rules, I’m having a hard time understanding how a C/B/A wouldn’t favor such treatment.
Again, for those who like to state it in the beginning of your post, it is clearly a form of theft, there’s no need to argue that it is. Of course, responding to another’s claim that it isn’t really theft for reasons A, B, and C makes sense, and of course you’re free to post whatever you want, but by and large it’s like preaching to the choir. I’m hoping to explore something a bit different than whether or not it’s theft in the first place.
As for the difference (to me) between this and taking something tangible or keeping overpayment from a store that has tangible inventory, I think that is where the difference rests. Again, though, I’m talking about relative moral transgressions in a very fine detail, not whether one is and one isn’t a wrong.
There’s also somethign to the nature of a casino, where the “normal” scenario isn’t one of a person making one bet and walking away, but having played for hours already (per the hypo), and by implication it’s not such a large overage to motivate immediate walking away. As Mrs. Dvl and I refer to it, we’re renting a craps table for a while, not gambling. The likely outcome of it all is that you keep playing longer, not that your income goes up. Assuming that you have other monies to play with, the distinction between the ten dollar overage and your original ten bucks somewhat fades and becomes fungible.
In other words, if you end up with winnings, tracing those winnings to a particular bet is akin to the gambler’s superstition of “my card” or “same dice.” While possibly traceble to a particular chip/coin in a slot machine, the bet would have been placed regardless.
Of course, if you end up down (bust or just to your lower limit of loss for the day), then the casino ends up with its chips back, the only harm is you stayed on the table for one or two bets (depending on the amount of overage) longer then otherwise. Oh, and possibly an extra comped drink or two, but that assumes you had an extraordinary run of the dice (craps) or something else that would last a long time based on one or two bets.
Granted, if the casino is so crowded that you kept someone else from playing and losing their money in the same time and making up the extra, that is something. But keeping such outliers aside, my suggestion that the nature of the casino is different than one with a tangible inventory or other direct cost is based on no traceable harm to the casino.
By that logic, telling someone a lie is equally as immoral as the genocide of a million people. Sorry, I don’t buy that. Just because two things fit into the same category doesn’t mean that they occupy the same space in that category.
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I think it’s wrong and I won’t do it. (I have given back excess change in a shop).
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I think that the OP’s use of ‘ethical pedant’ shows he expects to be criticised and doesn’t want to be. Why is behaving well ‘pedantic’?
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I don’t think the amount matters. Not because all such actions are equally reprehensible, but because it makes it easier for you to justify doing it again. And again.
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It makes me feel good to be a good person. It helps me set an example as a teacher, for example.
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I think it’s stealing. You know the money isn’t yours.
Well yes it’s wrong, that was stipulated in the OP and repeated in later posts. The actual on/off black/white nature of the transgression has never been at issue in the thread (or at least I tried to avoid it).
That you’ve given back excess change in a shop is laudable, and similar past actions were also alluded to in the OP. Such was intentionally brought up to distinguish the initial hypothetical from past threads (in GD, the Pit, etc.) that covered getting too much change.
From the OP:
I do, however, like reading your posts, and recognize the possibility that an argument could be made that renders the two acts (as well as a third of, say, breaking into a bank to empty the vault or a cashier telling a blind man that he only gave a ten instead of the fifty he actually did) equivalent. If you’d care to spell out why you find no distinction between them, I would appreciate it.
No, this is why I posted in GD rather than IMHO. First, it’s a complete hypothetical, one in which I have no control over realizing.
Second, it’s not asking about how to behave. It’s asking (or attempting to ask) questions about ethics that require nuance and a penchant for pedantry to explore. Yes, on the surface it’s easy to call things black or white and move on to the next question. However, defining, delineating, and playing with concepts of moral harm (or moral credit, for that matter) is a vast subject, albeit somewhat pedantic: what is moral harm, and how does it differ from one act to another when those acts are in the same family of ethical transgressions?
If this hypothetical is not to your liking, I have no attachment to it — feel free to suggest another one. That is, construct a situation in which there is a clear moral wrong but one that is minimal to the point of negligibility. If you can’t, why not? (I don’t mean that as a challenge; as in why are you incapable, I mean why is it impossible for anyone to devise such a situation.) If you can, how does it reflect on the second order question; If something causes negligible moral harm, how can it be said to be morally wrong in the first place?
Oh, and third, I posted in GD because one of my majors back in the day was philosophy. Not that I have any answers, can speak with any authority on squat, or am adept at analysis — just that I enjoy thinking about these things and reading your posts.
Amount aside then, what makes one act more reprehensible than another?
Does this mean that you base morality on what feels good? That if someone honestly felt as if it was not a wrong action, then they are a good person? But what if two people’s moral intuition conflicts? Does that mean that one of them is intrinsically bad? If ethics are purely subjective, how would you reconcile two party’s conflicting notions?
See #1.
I don’t know what it says about about me but I’ve done both. As an absolute I’d say it was stealing. I think like most people it depends on too many variables to say absolutely yes or no EVERY time. Everything is always a matter of degree, I wouldn’t necessarily feel good about but I wouldn’t be dwelling on it an hour later either.
Now that’s it’s generally agreed that it’s wrong (and I agree), at what point is the amount so negligible that it doesn’t raise eyebrows. How about a penny? Is a penny worth returning? Maybe in this case since it’s a counting kind of thing. My problem is whatever cut off you decide is OK, then there’s always the slippery slope to more.
But how about in an office situation. I think we all agree that the office supplies belong to the company. Is it OK to use a piece of paper to write a personal note? Use the copier for personal use (how many copies is the limit)? Take home pens? Take home reams of paper?
I’ve seen people take $20K computers after getting laid off. I’m not sure of their rationale, but I expect it’s a variant of the sheet of paper rationale.