How do you know he’ll shoot you in clear view of dozens of people? How do you know he even has a real gun? How do you know he’s a real cop?
But we’re past the point of the hypothetical. The point was to see how blindly you’ll obey authority – it turns out pretty blindly… even to the point where you’d clearly risk your own life to greater degree rather than not obey authority. You seemed to catch on to this for Vinyl Turnip’s scenario.
It’s good that you’re not in the military – you’d make a terrible, awful soldier/sailor/airman/marine.
I didn’t ask you about the government – what’s your opinion about the action itself? Suppose you don’t know anything about the government, or even if a government exists – is it wrong for a slave to try and escape their master?
The situation is even worse that that. This scenario establishes that Smapti would obey knowing full well that the cop either has no gun or lacks the nerve to fire it (otherwise, he’d simply kill the hobo his own self).
The question of morality, like your moral guideline, exists apart from the existence of governments. “That every person has the right to live their life in the way that makes them happy and which allows them to most effectively utilize their innate talents to the benefit of society” is a decent moral guideline, and offers enough to answer the question about whether it’s right or wrong for a slave to try and escape.
Let’s say you found yourself in some unfortunate place that still had slavery. Just before the armed guards you hired to keep you safe are going to escort you back to the airport for your flight back on a private jet to home and safety, you have the opportunity to surreptitiously disable the locked gate at a slave plantation so that some slaves can escape. Would you disable the lock at no risk to yourself?
No, because I have absolutely no way of knowing that it will be “at no risk to myself”, nor any way of knowing that any slaves that escape as a result of my action will be able to stay escaped instead of just being recaptured and suffering an even worse fate for trying to run.
As to the first part, you’re a coward – the scenario I laid out was as safe to you as it possibly could be. As to the second part – shouldn’t that be up to the slaves? If they want to risk it, shouldn’t that be their choice, and not yours?
Unless your hypothetical is granting me psychic powers, then I have no way of knowing that the authorities in this country won’t tie the escape to me and arrest me between when I break the lock and when I leave their airspace, or that my home country won’t extradite me later.
If I make the decision to enable them to escape, then I’m responsible for what happens to them afterward. As I have explained, responsibility for an action falls on the person who makes the decision that that action should occur.
You have loyal armed guards (who are not locals) who are promised a big fat bonus when you get home safe. The country you’re in has a barely-to-non-functioning security apparatus.
Your home country is not hypothetical. I’m sure you’re well aware that the USA, Canada, and most other countries on earth would not extradite someone for the “crime” of helping to free slaves.
No you’re not. You’re leaving it up to them. They still can choose to stay, or choose to escape. You are granting a choice that they did not have before, but you are not responsible for which choice they make, or for what happens after they make that choice.
Disabling the lock is not making “the decision that the action should occur”. The enslaved people will make that decision for themselves. You’re not telling them to escape or to stay – you’re just disabling the lock so they can choose for themselves.
I’m not aware of that being a specific policy of the US government.
To “leave it up to them” would be to take no action. By breaking the lock I am encouraging them to escape and making myself responsible for the consequences of their actions.
Thus confirming the “idiot” status, if that was ever in doubt. Clarification here. In essence, even if the US has an extradition treaty with a country, the offense must be considered criminal in the US for the US to consider extradition. ‘Freeing slaves’ is not a crime in the US, so it would never be extraditable.
No. Taking no action means they have no choice, because they can’t escape. If you take action and disable the lock, you’re giving them that choice. They still make the decision, and they are still responsible.
So do slaves in Hypothetica never escape on their own? Is it only by the grace of foreign interlopers traipsing through the countryside with heavily armed and loyal mercenaries that they ever glimpse a chance at freedom at all?
Because unless that’s what you’re positing, then they are perfectly capable of deciding to escape without my making myself responsible for their welfare.