How is any luxury spending ethical?

Great Debates
61

I said in the past 20 years. Damn near all the antibiotics for TB were developed in the 1940s.

That wasn’t my arguement. My argument was that antibiotics wouldn’t exist in the first place if it weren’t for luxuries and man’s desire to live a happy life. I go to work to develop drugs because I want to earn a living to support my family and, yes, buy all of us a trip to Jamaica if I feel like it. Take away my money for the trip to Jamaica by forcing me to give it directly to a sick individual (rather than allowing me to develop drugs) and guess what. I’m not going to develop any drugs. Why should I? I’m going to sit on my butt happily not developing drugs. So that sick guy in the third world nation now has some money and now no one has any drugs at all.

I really do respect your idealism, and I mean that sincerely, not condescendingly. I got into science in the first place because of this sort of idealism. Then, somewhere along the lines, these damn educational loan officers and credit card companies wanted their money back. Plus, it turns out, if I want to live somewhere, I have to pay for it. If I want a car to go to work, I have to buy it. And, you know what, as long as I’m buying a house, I’d like it to be a nice house. Why not? I worked hard for it. I justify my luxuries (and believe me, I ain’t livin’ the high life) by saying that it makes me happy. And, happy fiveyearlurker is a productive fiveyearlurker.

Do you mind if I ask your general age Zhao Daoli?

62

Well, you’re productive when you’re workin’ and not lurkin’.
Anyway, the OP needs 500ccs of Atlas Shrugged, stat!

63

Frankly I won’t work unless I get luxuries doesn’t strike me as a particularly good ethical argument. I seriously doubt that anyone who is arguing that luxury spending is unethical is going to approve of someone sitting around all day instead of working to help people.

64

My HO is that buying such things allows for the greater good. Yes you old give your money to a bum and get a tax exemption for it, but you could also use it to buy a ____, and pay sales tax, which will help a owner employ people, who pay taxes, along with the employees who pays tax on income and what they spend it on.

So in one case you can have a bunch of intoxicated bums, OTHO you can have many middle class people gainfully employed along with a few rich people, Who pay taxes, some of which go to social programs for medical programs for the bums.

Also there is the issue of what is the point of working if you can’t buy a Hummer.

65

I don’t understand. Everyone here will work, to ensure their own survival and that of their immediate family (or so I’ve been led to believe). Denied additional rewards that bring us pleasure (i.e. “luxuries”), though, no-one has an incentive to work particularly hard, or seek higher education so we can think up more efficient ways to work (the discovery of which, if shared with the community, brings increased efficiency to everyone).

66

Of course there are incentives to work other than pay. However, that doesn’t mean that pay isn’t an extremely important and neccessary incentive. Companies don’t pay high salaries because they enjoy it. They do so because it’s neccessary. Idealism and personal satisfaction can give you a certain amount of motivation, but when you’re putting in your 60th hour in a week cranking out that spreadsheet while the weather is gorgeous, it’s sometimes only the money that keeps you from chucking it all to go tend bar in Cancun.

Sure we have a moral obligation to help those less fortunate. But where we draw the line at “needless luxury” is different for everyone. Suppose I can spend $1000 on an item, but I decide to spend $500 and donate the rest. You can afford to spend $500 yet you decide to spend only $400 and donate the rest. Who is being more ethical? The item I bought was more extravagent, yet I donated a much higher percentage than you did. Or suppose we make the same salary and donate the same amount to charity. However, I decide I really want a strand of pearls, so I decide to cut back in areas other than my charitable contributions. Am I less ethical than you because I bought the pearls?

There are selfish people who spend every dime on improving their own status and don’t give two bits to those less fortunate. There are also people who struggle to make ends meet yet still find money in their budget to help out. Many of us fall somewhere in between. However, buying luxury items in and of itself doesn’t make someone unethical or selfish.

67

If the argument is that ethically speaking you have an obligation to give to the poor then I don’t think a valid counter argument is that I won’t work without incentives. Ethically speaking you ought to help others when you can whether it be saving a drowning child or running DNA sequences in a lab. If the outcome of an action is good you taking that action shouldn’t hinge on a direct or lack thereof benefit to you.

68

Zhao Daoli, thank you for this thread. You’re asking a question I’ve struggled with for most of my thinking life, and I do mean struggle; I believe that from an ethical standpoint, spending on luxury while others do without the necessities is indefensible. And yet, like most other people with the means to do so, I still spend selfishly on myself, and more often than not I enjoy it.

I’m a little surprised by the number of people who seem bent on willfully misreading the question. As I interpret it (and I may be wrong, I’m self-aware enough to acknowledge that possibility!), the question requires a personal, morally-based answer, not a corporate response, an economic treatise or political manifesto. Part of our problem may lie in the fact that most of us haven’t really defined our terms. There are many ethical systems, just as there many political systems and economic theories, and for many people the three are inter-changeable. I derive my ethical stances, for the most part, from the New Testament of the Christian Bible; were I to draw on the same source for my economic philosophy, I’d have no choice but to accept full-bore Communism. But since I don’t believe the Bible was ever intended to be an economics instructional manual, I feel free to disregard it when discussing matters financial, just as I don’t rely on market forces when deciding how best to respond to moral questions.

I don’t think we’re required to adopt a lowest-common-denominator lifestyle in order to care for our neighbors (wherever they may be). I believe that everybody actually does belong to everybody else, and that we are indeed obligated to give a shit about our neighbors – and not just the ones next door. Does that mean I’m going to force someone else to think (or act) the way I do? Nope – that would be politics again, and we’re talking ethics.

There’s no compelling moral defense to the charge of indifference (IMO, as usual). Part of being human is recognizing the mutual dependence we all share, and accepting the corresponding responsibility for one another. Our individual moral codes define for us just where to draw the line between self-preservation and responsibility to the whole, and between what we need and what we want. While “it’s my money” seems a trifle unevolved as a guiding ethical principle, it is a coherent philosophy, I suppose, and gives us one pole for comparison, with perhaps Gandhi representing the other.

In the end, it’s an unanswerable question for most of us. Few of us have the discipline of a Gandhi, so whatever we do will seem inadequate when we really examine our response to the question of need. That’s why I’m glad my moral code affords me the luxury of forgiveness at the end for the inevitable failings I commit along the way!

Thanks again for the thread – it’s an important topic, and you’ve conducted it well.

69

Using the knocked-down straw man as a convenient podium, I’ll point out that the actual argument is that the number of people who will do demanding work if they have a reasonably good chance of material reward in return is mcuh greater than the number of people who will do so otherwise. Yes, there are nonmaterial rewards (which is why the latter doesn’t fall all the way to zero), but experience indicates that they just don’t suffice if we’re talking about society in the aggregate.

I don’t think there’s much ethical merit in advancing a scheme for ameliorating human misery if you know, or reasonably should know, that it won’t work.

70

A few more general points and then some specific rebuttals:

  1. Curing someone of a deadly disease is not analogous to giving a man a fish instead of teaching him to fish. It enables that person to become a productive member of society, not the opposite.

  2. On the incentives argument: I can see how this applies to a system mandating that everyone give a certain amount of money to charities. I don’t understand how it is a critique of an ethical system that calls for voluntary giving. Treis and Genghis have argued this quite well.

  3. As for working definition of morals and ethics, I’m using them interchangeably to mean a system which delineates what actions are right (good) and what actions are wrong (evil). This system applies to every human, regardless of professional associations, societal standards, etc. (unless you’re a moral relativist, but then we have no business discussing ethics with you). But, of course, philosophers have debated even this definition through the ages.

4)As for where to draw the line between luxuries and non-luxuries, again, I don’t really know, where do you think we should draw it (those of you that raised this question)? I’m not really interesting in hammering out a complete and coherent ethics here. But it seems to me that the task of drawing a line somewhere is not impossible.

So you think he only needs a good reason not to help because of his professional code, not because of basic human decency? Or if it’s also the latter, how is this case different from the case of sitting idly by while people whom you could help are dying.

Right. So, obviously this isn’t true if most of the antibiotics we use for tuberculosis were developed in government labs in the 1940’s (where scientists are paid far less than in private industry). Discovery simply does not happen in direct proportion (and is not dependent on) luxuries paid to scientists. Private research labs often have little incentive to discover new antibiotics. Recently, for example, drug companies have been downsizing or even halting their efforts to discover and develop new antibacterials, preferring instead to focus on more lucrative disease areas (erectile dysfunction, long-term treatments, etc.)

I’m in my mid-twenties, also paying off college loans, paying for a car, paying rent, etc.
I’m not so naïve as to think that everyone actually acts according to their own ethical code. But I’m still curious about what people’s ethical codes are. What I’m asking about in this thread is whether there are people that think it’s genuinely ethical to ignore the deaths of hundreds of people that could be saved by your actions alone. I mean I have my own rationalizations and justifications, I’m just not all that comfortable with them.

Oh, I went through the Ayn Rand phase. Great fiction. Marginal economics. Humorous-if-not-so-horribly-dangerous-and-influential philosophy. Ayn Rand is to philosophy what Noam Chomsky is to balanced foreign policy analysis.

Which OP are you reading?
Genghis Bob, thanks for the support. You’ve expressed much of what I’ve been trying to get at more eloquently than I could have.

71

Here, I have to fundamentally disagree. To restate my previous point, if the macro analysis of the economics and politics indicates that lots of people taking Action X will not work as advertised, then any ethical benefits of individually taking Action X (on the premise that it will work as advertised) are dubious at best.

72

A slightly different perspective, coming from someone who used to be an ascetic and feel bad about every dollar I spent but who is now more free with her money, and a lot happier: When people are able to buy some of the things they want and do some of the things they want, they are better able to function in society and thus help keep the gears of economy turning. If treating myself to a new book or outfit every now and again is going to make me a happier person (and it does; I’m not a good enough person for the happiness of others to be my sole emotional pick-me-up, though I wish I was), then that is a worthwhile investment, since the joy I derive from the physical objects and the time (why has nobody brought up time yet in this thread? Why should people spend time watching TV or traveling or going out with friends when they could be volunteering at homeless shelters or reading to kids or giving blood?) fuels my desire to keep living and working. Buying ourselves little luxuries every so often (and I am not talking about $500 shoes, though I think there’s no real ethical difference between that and a fifty cent used paperback–it is all stuff we don’t need, stuff above base necessity) allows us to have the sanity to make it through the work week, which in turn gives us the option to turn some or all of that money over to charity. Without these little supports, most people wouldn’t work, not because they wouldn’t have the motivation to go to work, but because they wouldn’t have the motivation to do anything. The life of an ascetic is downright depressing for people who are not “good.”

Now, if you want to get into the reason why living a normal life that includes buying things I don’t need just because I want them is more appealing than living an ascetic monk’s life, that might also be an interesting discussion. I’m not a Randian, I don’t think people only do things to benefit themselves, but I do think we need a certain level of self-benefiting activity to be happy. And I think we have to allow ourselves a modicum of me-time (and by extension money), because if we don’t then most of us not-good normal people are going to crack, and that isn’t good for society.

So I guess the real question is: Why isn’t the health, happiness, and general well-being of other humans enough to fulfill us? Maybe one’s spending habits are directly tied to their empathic responses; those people who are more empathic can better see how their contributions help other people, they can look into the other person’s heart and see change. Other people just see on the material level–they can give a man some medicine, but they can’t read all the ways in which the medicine will impact his life. Even if the man’s life is saved because of the medicine, they don’t see this as being emotionally significant, it’s just “a thing that happens.” Does this make the first person “good” and the second person “bad”? What if this response is based on brain chemistry, not something an individual can change? Heavy stuff.

73

How is that a straw man? It is an accurate summary of fiveyearlurker’s argument:

74

If people generally are convinced that it is unethical to enjoy any luxuries, even if they do not coercively enforce this notion, individuals end up having to choose either financial or psychological motivation, but not both – you can either be a greedheaded Scrooge despised by your peers and perhaps even by yourself, or you can be a generous fellow who just gets by economically but enjoys a good reputation and positive self image. That limitation would seriously cramp the incentives needed to get enough people to do difficult work (not as badly as coercive redistribution of wealth, but I suspect badly enough to inflict serious damage).

75

It depends on what you mean by “won’t work.” If more people gave more to charity, it would ameliorate poverty. You’re saying that people won’t do this. But that isn’t an argument against the ethical system, its an argument for why people aren’t ethical.

For those of you that are approaching this as an economic problem, keep in mind a few things:

  1. Money given to charity stays in the economy. It goes to purchase goods and services just like a luxury item.

  2. Helping people recover from disease is good for the economy too – it means more productive workers, less money spent on inefficient third-world health systems, and less poverty-related expenses in general.

  3. Some of you have the causality backwards. You believe that disease and extreme poverty cannot end until corrupt governments go away. I believe that corrupt governments will retain their grip as long as their is no strong middle class in these countries (and, I think, history is on my side in this one).

76

I hardly think that fiveyearlurker is so egotistical as to suggest that the economy would be significantly damaged because of the effects of his individual (in)action. Rather, he is using himself as an example of a wider phenomenon.

77

I think the “slippery slope to asceticism” argument is a little disingenuous. I’ll concede that we haven’t come onto a good definition of luxury item, but do you really believe that we couldn’t come up with a suitable definition that still allows for things like a car, a house, and a decent pair of shoes once in a while?

Also, you folks arguing that this ethical system leads to asceticism which leads to the collapse of the economy, do you really believe that our entire economic system would grind to a halt if people felt bad about buying pearl earrings and Mercedes? That’s so far outside my own worldview that I have a hard time believing that you really think that.

78

I’ll agree that it is in practicality, but in pure ethical debate it isn’t. If two things have one characteristic in common (in this case, objects that a person doesn’t need for survival but wants anyway), then for all intents and purposes they belong to the same class of objects, and are comparable.

Does that mean I don’t look more askance on someone buying a Mercedes than someone buying an ice cream cone? Of course not. Some “sins” are more forgivable than others but that doesn’t mean they’re not still sins.

79

I don’t think it will be fruitful to debate what constitutes a luxury until we come to some semblance of an agreement on the ethics question.

Lets say that you, your dog and another person are stranded on a desert island somewhere. You have a crateful of lets say PB+J sandwiches and the other person is hungry. I think we can all agree that you should [an ethical obligation to] share the food with the other person before feeding your dog. Lets say that instead of just 2 people on the island there are 5, 2 people with food, their dogs and 3 without food. Certainly I think we can all agree that the two have an ethical obligation to share the food with the other three before feeding their dogs. When we scale this situation up to 2 million people and people start to disagree with the ethical obligation.

Two main arguments have been given for this descrepancy.

  1. Wealth accumulation is necessary for incentive which spurs people to work and a by product of that is an improved life for everyone.

Certainly in practice this has generally be shown to be true. However that is becuase people in general act unethically. Everyone in this thread has at one point violated their ethical code whether it be telling a lie, stealing or failing to assist someone in need. This does not mean that the ethical obligation to provide assistance, not lie or steal are incorrect ethical rules. An argument against an ethical obligation to assist the poor before buying luxuries based on people not following it does not past muster just like an argument that lying is ok becuase people will not tell the truth doesn’t.

  1. Its my money I can spend it however I want.

A person asserting that there is an ethical obligation to assist the poor before spending money on luxuries does not mean they are arguing to force you to. Let me repeat that. An argument that there is an ethical obligation to assist the poor before spending money on luxuries does not mean they are arguing to force you to. Accusations of communist and Robin Hood are unfounded in this debate. Certainly that money is yours and you can spend it how you like however the argument in this thread is that you should.

I still don’t understand how that makes my summary a strawman. Her argument is that I won’t work unless I get luxuries. It doesn’t change the point if you tack on and nearly everyone else is like me.

80

Nope. I’m quite convinced that the world’s economy pretty much revolves around me :slight_smile: .

Seriously, **Zhao **, you can argue that the university labs that produced antibiotics seventy years ago were paid less than current industry scientists. But, until you give me a cite saying that they were not motivated to go to work by the money that they **were ** paid, this is irrelevant. For all you know, these guys could have been living a pretty luxury filled life, and in all likelihood were doing pretty well for themselves. Don’t kid yourself, if you are actually able to get a university scientist position, you aren’t within view of the poverty line. Even more so back then. And fast forward to today’s world which is more relevant to this discussion, drug discovery is pretty much entirely within the private sector because they pay better and can therefore attract better people for drug discovery (not necesarily better scientists, but I digress).

I asked your age, because I seriously see a lot of what I would have thought only a few years ago (late 20s here); I wanted to be an academic, and damn the paycheck. But the fact of the matter is that I **deserve ** a nice house. That’s what keeps me going to work every day, then that’s what is driving my drug discovery. When you see a job posting, the question that the vast majority of applicants will have revolves around salary, so I’m not alone. People are motivated to work by their salary. Since the majority of sane people are not simply hoarding money in a mattress, they are doing this so that they are able to buy the things they need, and occaisionally the luxuries that they want. There’s nothing wrong with that. (I do donate quite a bit of money and time, incidentally).

My ethical balance sheet is pretty clean.