Er, the problem is that he failed to do so, because he provided one supporting example, and that supporting example was shown to be inapplicable (i.e. there is nothing at all unethical about avoiding marriage if you don’t wish to be constrained by monogamy).
Following up on this a bit, I think I know why so many people (myself incuded) find the premise behind the OP to be so irritating.
The concept of “an implicit social contract” has been constantly abused by control freaks and the political hacks who pander to them, to the point where decent people who just want to be left in peace are sick and tired of such appeals. Even people who advocate truly voluntary and reasonable* cooperation get angrily tuned out as a result.
*That said, I still don’t consider the position of the OP to be reasonable, though I accept ZD’s statement that it is intended to be voluntary at face value.
Captialism is great, but it doesn’t address everything. Captialism is the best way to redistribute wealth we’ve come up with, but it isn’t necessarily equitable. Its bad at factoring in social costs. It works when the exchange is voluntary - which isn’t always the case. Children mining diamonds or political prisioners working in factories in China aren’t making a voluntary exchange of labor for wages. Its “best for society” and productivity, but its not necessarily the best situation for an individual. Managers often manage firms to their own personal short term benefit, which can have bad long term economic consequences for the stakeholders in the firm (see the pit thread on Poloroid, the Enron debaucle). The question is, are we obligated to help those who capitalism leaves behind or where the weaknesses of capitalism don’t address the social costs? Or those who capitalism doesn’t yet work for? What good does buying a TV made in China do for a child in the Dominican Republic that hasn’t been vaccinated against measles?
I think people are misinterpreting what I said. I’m not a libertarian, and would welcome national health insurance. (Insurance which some of the sales tax I pay on the TV might go to fund.) I’m simply saying that the purchase of luxury goods does indeed help people–the people who make, distribute, and sell luxury goods. Anyone who’s ever sold luxury goods is grateful for their customers. If you wait tables in a restaurant or tend bar your entire income is based on people spending their money in a “selfish” manner.
Buying a luxury good isn’t something to pat yourself on the back over. But it’s not something to feel terrible about either. It’s something humans do, and shouldn’t feel so bad about.
No but it doesn’t give us license to simply hand-wave the ethical argument aside either. If we were sitting around discussing ethically which economic system produces the best result we would probably end on capitalism but we are not discussing that. If we agree that there is an obligation to help the poor before buying luxuries you can’t simply hand-wave that aside by saying no one will follow it. For example if we say its unethical to steal from a charity you can’t simply waive that aside by saying you wouldn’t volunteer unless you could steal.
The argument was that you have an ethical obligation to maintain faithful in a monogamous relationship not that you have to enter one. You have an ethical obligation but no one is forcing you to remain faithful its a completely voluntary choice. If that example doesn’t sway you take the obligation not to lie. No one can force you to tell the truth and your compliance is completely voluntary but you still have the obligation not to lie.
There is an ethical obligation to be honest and respectful of your partners outside marriage, though. i.e. its not ethical to let someone believe you are in the relationship with marriage as a possible expected outcome if you have no intention of marrying. Its not ethical to imply you are sleeping with one person when you are sleeping with four. It isn’t ethical to not disclose herpes, or to imply to your partner that you are using birth control pills when you aren’t.
OK. IMHO, this is the most coherent and comprehensive version of the macro-economic argument yet offered. Since the macro-economic argument also seems to be the one most supported by those that believe that luxury spending is perfectly ethical, I will try to address it as charitably as possible.
The argument: supporting an ethical system which frowns upon luxury items will undermine the economy, which will cause more net bad than good. Right? (I’ll concede that this is a utilitarianist phrasing, but I don’t really think you guys are arguing from virtue ethics).
- We have to ask ourselves whether or not this a valid way to evaluate an ethical system. Can we judge an ethical system on its effects? Or must we judge it solely on its own merits (logic, moral intuition, etc.). I think this is, in part, what Treis has been arguing. I’m not sure about this point, but I think its worthy of debate.
2)This argument also assumes that the best way to evaluate whether or not an economic decision is moral is to assume that everyone does it. This leads to some perverse conclusions – I cannot take a summer vacation because if everyone did it the economy would collapse. It is immoral to buy a macintosh computer because if everyone did that, the much larger PC industry would collapse, etc. Not to mention that since you’re arguing from a “what would actually happen in the real world” perspective, it doesn’t make much sense to assume that everyone would actually give up luxury items.
3)The argument above isn’t about the luxury industry having a downturn per se, it is about the effect of not having luxuries to strive for. (Since, as Genghis and others have pointed out, money given to charity stays in the economy. It goes to purchase goods and services just like a luxury item. Also, helping people recover from disease is good for the economy too, maybe even net better for the economy than the purchase of luxury items).
So we can pare down the original argument to: if people felt ethically compelled to give to charity instead of buying luxury items, then they would lose all motivation to strive, and the economy as a whole would collapse (or have such a significant downturn as to outweigh the benefit of saving millions of lives).
Three quick points on this (sorry about the numbers and letters):
A) It would take a very serious collapse of the western world's economy to outweigh the saving of millions of lives.
B) Even in historical examples, like Soviet Russia, a significant percentage of people still worked for the other motivations that work provides.
C) Even for those of you that believe that people are only motivated by the collection of material objects, there would still be plenty of material objects to chase after (just fewer, unless you can prove that there is a slippery slope from a $100,000 car to a nice pair of new pumas.)This argument is semi-correct IMO and I’ll explain why.
I feel that if you did indeed divide the wealth of the world equally and redistribute, the wealthy would stay wealthy and the poor would stay poor.
All the money would eventually migrate (for the most part) back into the hands of the already rich. Some people can deal with having money, others can’t.
It is probably the ratio of spending on luxuries though. I can see how buying a plasma TV instead of updating computers that still work in a school is not controversial, but when you reach the level where people spend billions on luxuries like sneakers they hardly wear or $120k luxury cars (to one up the people who drive $50k luxury cars) while millions suffer from easily preventable diseases that is not the same thing. As I posted earlier, the UN said 0.7% of GDP (roughly 3% of tax money) would largely eliminate world poverty and that is not really going to bankrupt anyone or prevent most people from obtaining plasma TVs or luxury autos. Its not a question of absoluetly no luxuries (to me at least) its a question of almost absolutely no concern for human welfare for those in different geographic and national areas instead of luxuries. You can fight world poverty and still buy plasma TVs at the same time.
I honestly can’t tell whether this post is satire or not. Please tell me whether you’re serious before I get a big fat “whoosh” stamped on my head for pitting this ridiculous piece of arrogance.
Ahh you see but I do give some of my income to support charitable causes. It says so right there on my paystub. Everyone working above-the-table in the United States does.
The flaw I see in the reasoning of the OP is one that’s been pointed out before: It’s not that people are refusing to pay the 10 bucks to cure someone with TB. Lord knows if I knew someone with TB who couldn’t afford the drugs, I’d be sure to hand them a 20 - a cure and some lunch on me! The problem is that people who are dying of inexpensively curative diseases are doing so in large part in circumstances where a lack of fundage IS NOT THE PROBLEM. Providing more fundage won’t cure the ill. What would be the ethical justification for providing money I’m fairly certain will not actually produce the desired effect? That’s just wasting money.
As for requiring an ethical justification for purchasing luxury items, I don’t require one. If I did nothing to help people less fortunate than myself, THEN I might require a justification for spending all of my non-essential funds on toys for myself. However, this is not the case. I do actually do a number of things to help alleviate the suffering of others. Even above and beyond my requisite contribution via my reportable income.
I only require an ethical justification for behavior that is arguably wrong. I haven’t seen an creditble argument that purchasing a good pair of shoes - or a paperback I really want to read - or a TV is an inherently wrong action. It’s possible the money could theoretically be spent to alleviate some human suffering somewhere, but I have no guarantee of that. Not only that, I’m using the money to increase my OWN satisfaction and happiness. My decision not to use all my disposable income to help others isn’t a failing on my part. I am not a bad person because I wanted (and recently purchased) the luxury item of airplane tickets for two to Alaska for myself and my SO.
The ethical good for me, in my view, is to refrain from harm, both harm in commission and harm in omisson. That includes harm to me and mine by either commission or omission. The doctor who fails to treat a patient dying in front of them harms by omission - in a clear and concrete fashion. While I’m happy to concede that failing to contribute any money to charities who endeavor to help the needy is a harm by omission, the proposition that failing to contribute ALL my disposable income to them is an even bigger harm by omission takes a sharp turn down the infamous slippery slope. Particularly, as in this case, when I cannot be certain my contribution is actually being helpful in the alleviation of suffering. Other people have a legitimate claim on my disposable income. I have a duty to myself to ensure my own happiness. I also have a duty to those who must interact with me to ensure my own happiness (unhappiness is contagious). This doesn’t mean I should blow all my spare cash on a 42 inch plasma and ignore the plight of millions of suffering people (even ones far away), but it DOES mean that if I can afford a plasma screen and to give some to charity, I don’t have an ethical responsibility to refrain from the plasma screen so as to give the charity MORE.
Taking for the gospel truth that 10 bucks cures TB and that my 10 dollars will go directly to curing people of TB, last year I cured about 150 people (if all my contributions were directed in that specific fashion, as they are for the purposes of this discussion). If I’d decided to live at the baseline survival level and forego all luxury items, I could probably have managed to cure another 500 or so. I do not feel the need to have an ethical justification for not doing so. I am ethically entitled to enjoy the benefits of my own labor - along with the 150 people who also enjoyed the benefits of my labor (albeit indirectly). The mindset that I should be feeling ethical qualms about the 350 hypothetical people who went without is right on the level of the apocryphal person dying of thirst in the desert who bitches because their savior gave them tap water in stead of Evian. Be joyous I’m helping at all, don’t denigrate the help I did give because it wasn’t “enough” by your standards. There is ALWAYS something more one can do. No matter how much one gives, there will always be more you can do. Beating myself up about not helping my hypothetical 350 is counterproductive. It only makes me miserable. My conscience is clear, serene in the knowledge that I do lend a hand. Just because my hand is insufficient by some people’s lights does not make of no value.
Also, to be blunt, they got something from me. I deserve things for me as well. My family deserves things from me - my SO deserves things from me, my children (when I have them) will deserve things from me. The needy can wait their turn in line, just like everyone else.
/stands back to wait for the cries of “Omg how selfish” to begin.
I didn’t expect this topic to produce such emotional responses, its really very interesting.
Cite?
To the best of my knowledge, neither of these things are true.
How much is enough, in your ethical system?
For some reason I feel like quoting this from earlier:
Remember that we’re not talking about helping Joe Schmoe that decided to drink his life away instead of getting a job.
I too was amazed by this misreading, willful or not, given the usual standards of GD. I don’t remember recently a question about ethics with so much answers completely besides the point. At least for the first part of the thread, it went roughly as follow :
Q : Is it ethical to cheat upon your wife?
A1 : Are you advocating mandatory orgies?
A2 : What about you? Did you cheat on your wife?
A3 : Sex is overrated, anyway…
A4 : Not a very smart idea, because your spouse could find out and it would be ugly.
A5 : Given the human nature, how can you expect me to decline having sex with an attractive woman?
A6 : What does ethical mean?
A7 : Cheating on your wife isn’t a crime under US law.
And so on… I’m not sure why this particular question got a kind of responses that are quite rare in other GD debates about ethics.
Anyway, to answer the OP : no, in my view, there no essential ethical difference between swimming in your pool while your neighbor is dying from thirst and buying a mercedes when people are dying from preventable diseases in Africa (of course, there are differences in what we feel in these two situations).
And yes, in both cases, it’s strongly unethical. We (or at least the overwhelming majority of us) are acting in a grossly immoral way in my opinion.
But then, where do you draw the line? If I gave 10 cents to a beggar, ten years ago, do I still require a justification to spend all my income on luxuries? What if I give 10% of my income each year? What about giving everything exept what I need to pay a cheap rent and some pastas?
Since you’re stating that as long as you give some help, ignoring the plight of the ill or starved people isn’t unethical (contrarily to some posters who stated abruptly that they didn’t have any moral obligation altogether to provide any help), you must have some rough idea about the amount of help which is required for one’s behavior to be considered ethical.
that’strue, but if you use your money instead to buy food for starving people, it will also hep the people who grow, distribute, etc…this food. Plus, it will prevent other people from starving.
So, IMO, this argument isn’t relevant. Whatever your choice, you’re going to provide work and income to someone, be it a diamond-cutter or a wel digger. It doesn’t change anything.
The question is : is it ethical for you to choose to wear a diamond ring rather than contribute in making sure that some strangers will be able to get access to drinkable water?
We could add : is paying people to move vast amount of soil in search for some shiny stones a sensible allocation of limited ressources? But I think it’s another debate.
Possibly I wasn’t clear - if not, my bad. The point was made earlier in this thread that a major problem with combating human suffering is less the AMOUNT of money donated than it is getting food or medication or other aid to the people actually suffering. An infrastructure issue as opposed to a budgetary issue.
Let’s take your example of people dying from TB. One of the nations with statistically the highest prevalence of TB is Rwanda (http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_series_results.asp?rowID=617), weighing in with an incidence rate of 628 cases per 100,000 people, as compared to the US with an incidence rate of 3 cases per 100,000 people. Other countries with the highest incidence rate bear certain socioeconomic traits in common with Rwanda - internal warfare, lack of infrastructure for distribution, etc. Rwanda (our exemplar) receives some 200 - 300 million dollars per year of aid from foreign governments each year (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2861.htm) a substantial portion coming from the US government. Given that the population of Rwanda is approximately 8.2 million people, that means that they’re getting aid sufficient to pay for 2 - 3 TB cures (at the aforementioned $10 a cure) per person per year. This is NOT counting the amount of aid they receive from NON-governmental relief organizations.
So clearly, the problem in that instance (as well as in a number of similiar, well-documented instances) is one of distribution of resources as opposed to lack of resources.
I’m afraid this is basically and ad hoc inquiry. “Enough” in my ethical system is the amount I feel comfortable giving based on a staggering number of factors - including my budget, income, responsibilities, etc.
It always chaps my ass when people (I’m not tarring you with this brush necessarily, but the implication is there in your OP) feel themselves compelled to question the extent of my charity and generosity - as though it makes me a bad person not to give every spare cent I can wrest out of my budget to others.
I didn’t think we were. Frankly, I don’t draw a difference between Joe Schmoe the unrepentant alcoholic and Bob Virtuous the poverty-stricken soul dying through no fault of his own. In need is in need regardless of how one got there. I’m a little offended you think the quality of my mercy is strained. So to speak.
But the question is extremely relevant, since the issue is precisely : “does it make you a bad person not to give every spare cent…etc…?” And for instance, my opinion is that you’re a bad person, and so am I.
For example, stating " I’ve no moral duty to give anything to anybody" is a clear answer to the OP’s question. “I’ve a moral duty to give everything above such or such level of income that would cover basic neccessities, of life” would be too. But “as long as you give an undetermined something, you’re behaving ethically” isn’t really clear.
Your response implies that you think you do have an ethical duty to help. But you still feel it’s ethical too to indulge in luxuries while there are still people in dire need. It makes your answer ambivalent. Maybe realistic (“whatever make me feel confortable”) but still ambivalent.
Fine; my personal morally-based answer is I view with suspicion anyone who suggest that I shouldn’t spend my money as I choose. It is not unreasonable for me to assume that their next step is to declare that maybe I don’t deserve the money I have, and then I don’t need the money I have, and someone else needs it more.
As for the specific question (how is any luxury spending ethical?), it’s moot. Spending one’s money on luxuries isn’t a matter of ethics, it’s one of freedom.
Absolutely, how dare they question my choice to buy a 50 million dollar yacht while people are starving. And of course anyone who thinks it unethical to spend money on luxuries while people starve is just a communist. A dirty rotten no good evil evil EVIL communist who must be crushed.
And who can argue against freedom.
We seem to have lowered the bar here. The original question was whether it was ethical to spend any money on luxuries when there was suffering somewhere in the world. Later this changed to which is more ethical; buying a Mercedes or curing tuberculosis? The answer to the two questions is not the same.
For the latter question, the answer is obviously that anyone who would buy a Mercedes rather than cure a disease is a complete bastard. He might have the right to spend his money as he wished but it is not the ethical choice.
But the issue does not scale up from the specific to the general, as I have tried to explain in my previous posts, so the former question is not as easily answered. As I have written, the evidence is that humanity as a whole experiences the most progress when some people own an inequitable amount of the currently existing wealth.
Which leaves the issue of what people should do as individuals as opposed to what is best for society. Reverse engineering Kant’s first imperative, I could argue that if it’s ethical for society as a whole to have wealthy people, it’s ethical for individuals within that society to be wealthy.
But I’d prefer to rest my opinion on firmer grounds. So I’ll again point out that by world standards everyone reading this is wealthy. You have far more than the average person. And arguably every possession you own that falls above the average is a luxury - people survive without cars, televisions, computers, telephones, houses, refridgeration, heat, clean water, medicine, indoor plumbing, schools, books, shoes, can openers - so all of these are luxuries to somebody. And if you’re going to own any of them, you’re conceding you’re willing to own luxuries that are denied other people.
So now the question becomes what level of luxury is “too much”. Is owning a new car a luxury while owning a used car is acceptable? Is it okay to have a television as long as you don’t have cable? Is it ethical to buy name brand soda pop instead of the store brand? Send out for pizza but not order any extra toppings? It becomes apparent we’ve moved from ethics to trivia. All of us are buying luxuries everyday. Arguing that our luxuries are acceptable while our neighbour’s are extravagent is arbitrary and subjective.