Saint Zero – only tempted?
I would start with a common definition of morality as being described by the Golden Rule or Kant’s moral imperative, I suppose, take your pick, as acted upon by an ideally rational and empathic person.
And yes, I suppose earning money isn’t strictly in and of itself immoral, but the fact that you earn money in order to spend it, and that no man is an island, leads to it’s immoral nature, because the end result is a universal social contract to which people are forced to consent in order to have a basic “standard of living” (another term I’ll leave hanging undefined for the moment). That social contract is no different than any other which spits out of the machinery of a moral imperative system.
The argument that some have given – that the system is moral because the ends justify the means – is invalid. They set up the strawman that without the forced consent inherent in the system, we’d have total anarchy, no specialization, and no economies of scale – for which they can offer no evidence. So my response, which is accused of being just as much of a strawman – perhaps rightly so – is that, even in mankind’s earliest days without technology or large economies of scale, there was still a division of labor and man survived with much less effort than what is required of the average person in the modern economy. So all we are doing is scaring away crows anyway. They would have me believe it took more effort for a stone age man to live (160 hours to kill a bison perhaps?) but hopefully some expert on the stone age will show up to refute that. I would argue that a free people are more productive that people who inherently aren’t free, and that technology tends to advance faster in less stifled economies.
Not that it matters anyway, because the “ends justify the means” argument for excusing the immorality doesn’t undermine the premise that the system is immoral to begin with.
Gilligan – I suppose the choice between doing what you are told and death doesn’t sound like a very free system, but, it is. But, bear with me. Again, I’m not denying you have to “work” for survival – the question is, are you working too hard and causing others harm? And, is there really slack built into the system which would allow you not ultimately to face that death choice? I have been told that in Egypt, if you quit your job and refuse to work you go to prison. In Red China, well, I shudder to think. In the U.S. though, you can live fairly well.
Now I’m not particularily drawn towards doing what is moral myself anymore. The real slaves are paid off and staid, as the song goes. Some people are convinced, however, that morality is the way to go though, for a variety of reasons, and they should consider what I’m saying.
Oh, so you have a really hard time bending over?