The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics
blog.jaibot.com
blog.jaibot.com
I'll have the temerity to add something to her advice. Help that person anonymously if you can; it's not about you, it's about her or him. The only reason to break anonymity is if it will help to set a positive example of generosity for others. Breaking anonymity will always burn up your social capital by opening you up to public criticism of this "Copenhagen" variety.
The Gates Foundation is a prominent example. They sometimes take heat for the work they choose to do. Nevertheless, they serve as a fine example of willingness to help.
You want to do some good and you're busy? Tell your bank to send a monthly payment to a local feeding program. Be a reliable source of support for them, and trust them to do the right thing. And don't brag about it.
The myth that sprung up around her has isolated her from criticism because of this principle: "Well you've done nothing, but she did something, therefore, because whatever she did is automatically preferable."
The general rule about "improving things a little is better than doing nothing" would philosophically require you to take a much broader view of the improvements you think you do and see if they affect other things causally. If you do that you quickly run into problems and things become much more complex. Yet thats what you do when you look at ethics.
For instance:
"Now instead of having no taxis at all, people can choose between an expensive taxi or no taxi at all – a marginal improvement. Needless to say, Uber has been repeatedly lambasted for doing something instead of leaving the even-worse status quo the way it was."
From the perspective of those who can afford surge pricing this is an improvement not for those who cant.
Uber is planning on making cars automated, thats great for the consumer but not for those driver who suddenly find themselves out of jobs. People who helped pay for ubers automation of their fleet.
The more correct "interpretation" is to not call it ethical or non-ethical. It's both correct and not correct.
In other words from an ethical point of view and to stay in the quantum theoretical jargon — it's not been observed.
I've never actually seen anyone make that argument - instead, they simply make the Copenhagen critique described in the article. If you know of someone making it, could you link to them?
He's the kind of guy who even includes (hints of) a sample calculation showing how the random distribution of a smaller number of taxis can lead to an objectively better outcome - it all depends on what your assumptions about people's utility functions are and what your objective function is.
He also argues why it is in many people's self-interest to argue against surge pricing (a point which is, admittedly, much more obvious: many people prefer a low chance of getting an affordable taxi over a zero chance of getting a taxi they cannot afford).
Here's a link to the last post in the series: http://mattbruenig.com/2014/12/28/uber-surge-prices-part-iii...
The problem with argument's like Bruenig's is that they double as fully-general counterarguments against the entire concept of a price system, and in favor of strict price controls. You could make his exact points against e.g. allowing some foods to be priced more than others, with the same points about "the poor value the food more, it would go to a random population rather than just the rich", etc.
There is too much wrong with that argument to point to any one thing, but suffice to say, even the most pro-poor nations reject it.
That's why every sane nutrition policy is more like "tax people, give the poor money to buy food" rather than "all food [appropriately quantified and defined] should be cheap enough for the poor to subsist on, and if you want to sell any food at all, you must sell it at that rate".
If you think that Bruenig is arguing for price controls without any qualifiers, you read the article wrong. He is arguing for equality, because equality is a necessary precondition if you actually want to get the full benefits of a price system (among other reasons). I have yet to see a convincing counterargument to that point.
You may have been misled by the part about the theory of the second best (which is a common point in economics): since the best solution (eliminating inequality) is off the table for political reasons, you have to turn to second-best solutions. Under certain circumstances, that can mean price controls.
But yes, the best solution is to eliminate (or at least reduce, as a first step) inequality. For example, taxing the rich and giving to the poor, as you point out yourself (which is where we're back at you agreeing with Bruenig ;-)).
And I never said (nor was given reason to think that) the best solution is to eliminate inequality, so I don't see how I'm agreeing with that. And I take that seriously because I mine every article for information that would force me to switch to a worldmodel with more explanatory power; this one (like most clumsy attempts to prove the pointlessness of prices) fails at that.
Taxing the rich for foodstamps is not eliminating inequality, and is not rightly regarded as a "first step" towards a policy that does; only a tiny fraction of foodstamp advocates want anything like the radical equality required for his model of this problem to apply.
Again - can you link to an Uber critic arguing that random allocation of scarce taxi rides is better than market allocation of plentiful ones?
In this case, the "different view" in question is a less local one (look not only at the effects on people directly involved, but also at the knock-on effects on others around them). I think there are many "Copenhagen" cases in which one could make similar points. E.g., consider laws that stop employers treating employees "badly" -- minimum wages, no making people work while heavily pregnant, etc. One can argue (as the author of the OP does) that these end up hurting workers because employers will prefer not to employ them rather than to employ them on less favourable terms. (Or, on the flip side, that "exploitative" employers are actually helping their employees because hey, otherwise they'd have no job.) But it's at least credible that when you have such laws, employers everywhere end up treating their workers a little better while more or less the same amount of work still gets done, leaving lots of vulnerable people better off overall. (And it's notable that it's at any rate far from clear that creating or increasing a minimum wage actually reduces employment overall, Econ 101 notwithstanding.)
The ideas being criticized by the OP may have more merit than they look like, even if most of the people espousing those ideas don't know quite why.
However as I started out saying. My point isn't to say that one thing is better than another, just that you can't talk about ethics the way the essay tries to.
Cherry picking your "control groups" isn't how ethical discussions are being done. Instead pick the dilemma and then see how different solutions situations deal with it.
Anybody talking about equality from a socialist standpoint, would implicitly accept this kind of argument, even if they haven't thought this idea of random distribution explicitly.
2) Providing privileged access to transporation to people with more wealth gives them an unfair advantage over other citizens.
3) Random allocation of 100 cabs is better than market allocation of 150.
Actually, come to think of it, the same is what happens with things like university placements in a lot of Western European countries. The richer don't buy their way in -- they are distrubuted randomnly among those with the qualifications.
(2) What does "unfair" mean?
(3) Random allocation of N cabs is better than market allocation of M > N. How do find an (N,M) for which the statement is false? Is a market allocation of 100 cabs worse than a random allocation of 0 cabs?
Actually making the moral argument is harder than just spouting applause points like "equality FTW".
2) Unfair in this example means that something beneficial is given to some citizens over others just because they have more money -- as opposed to alternatives like: because they've benefited their society more, because they have equal rights as any other, or because of an actual merit.
3) "Is a market allocation of 100 cabs worse than a random allocation of 0 cabs?"
Yes, because the latter case doesn't promote inequality, further privileging those that already have money.
This "market allocation of 100 cabs" doesn't help at all anybody without the necessary cutoff amount. So essentially your question is: is it better to have a service cattering to just the top 100 richer people of a city, or to not have it at all.
If it was something inconsequential, like manicure, that would may be OK.
Something like cab service OTOH puts poor oeople in a further disadvantage. E.g. going to a job interview, one of the rich cab riders can get faster and more relaxed than the poor public transport/walking guy.
Also not having access to a cab might even give a motive to those 100 with more money and power to fix public transport to be better.
2) Does this apply to all goods? Are you simply advocating communism here?
3) I'm glad you acknowledge that you'd rather have us all be equally poor than have some be richer than others. This is probably another reason we disagree - I don't view other people having more than me as an intrinsically bad thing.
I guess the difference between our moral axioms is clear. I prefer the US model - high inequality but everyone is rich. You seem to prefer the India model - dire poverty but virtually everyone is equally poor.
This is apparently why we disagree. Good to know it's due simply to different moral axioms rather than some error in reasoning.
2) Why, is there a problem with that? First of, all communism is not necessarily stalinist communism the kind that prevailed in the 20th century. In fact such "communal" ideas go millenia before even Marx.
Second, a society with renewable power, advanced automation, and they kind of resources we have, or will soon have, will inevitably need some form of "communism". Most sci-fi depictions of society, even Star Trek at times, are quite near that.
>I guess the difference between our moral axioms is clear. I prefer the US model - high inequality but everyone is rich. You seem to prefer the India model - dire poverty but virtually everyone is equally poor.
Actually India follows more or less the US model -- they just are behind, as a developing country. There are super rich, a middle class (increasing) and super poor.
And if you think that in the US there's "high inequality but everyone is rich" you've probably never set foot outside of a middle class/upper middle class echo chamber. From SD, MS, NM, AZ, AL, to the thousands of homeless in NY, Chicago, SF, etc, the trailer poor, the ghettos, etc. That's not some outliers.
As for me, I prefer the model of the US in the 50s and 60s. Less super-rich, everybody can make a living, less super poor, much decreased inequality and more protections. And I don't mind having "socialist" niceties like cheap education (like college tuition used to be), municipal fiber and wifi, and such.
Large parts of the US are like backwaters when it comes to health, quality of life, public transport, internet acccess speeds and such things compared to some Western European countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...
The US is extremely rich. We have close to 100% penetration of flush toilets, clean water, 24/7 power, etc. 75% of our (relative) "poor" have a car, 70% live in a house with 2 rooms/person, and 45% own that home. In most of the world the word for that is "rich".
http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/h150-07.pdf
Compare to overall numbers in India, or if you can find them, to various communist nations.
Hopefully India will get to the US model, they are certainly taking many positive steps. I'm bullish. But they aren't remotely there yet. Basically the entire country lives in what would be called deep extreme poverty (e.g. probably the bottom 1%) in the US.
I also wouldn't want to go back to the poverty of the US 50's and 60's. I think everyone deserves a flush toilet (as in our modern "some people are richer than others" world), not just the top 80-90% (back when we were more "equal").
Again the problem as with the article we are debating starts when you try to isolate the argument by creating your own control groups.
For services such as taxis or health care, the currency merely shifts to personal clout and time.
Money buys both of those things anyway.
Those who can't afford it are at the same position, their status hasn't changed. Without it, nobody can use the taxis, with it, rich can use taxis, non-rich still can't. Surge pricing is strictly an improvement.
Another example: I provide food for a standard price. That price is determined by the weather. I can't control the weather, so I can't control the price. If the weather is poor, it affects production, the price goes up. I still guarantee to provide the food, yet less people can afford it. It would be strictly worse to stop production of food in case of poor weather.
I never even said that. I said you assumed the number of drivers stays the same, the argument you haven't addressed at all.
Before anyone had a chance. Now only those who can afford have a chance.
Thats the primary difference.
Let me simplify it for you with a realistic example: Without surge pricing, nobody gets to drive, because the weather is so poor. With surge pricing some daring drivers will take some passengers. Strict improvement, because some people got to drive. without: p == 0 with: p > 0
What is the primary difference here? People drove. It surge pricing moral in this case? Yes, because the number of drivers on the road increased compared to non-surge pricing.
Also, when a woman becomes pregnant Markhor will fire her so as not to "exploit" her, thereby making it necessary for her to work unreasonable hours for lower pay in a more unsafe workplace.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057973
I doubt the founders of Markhor are unaware of this, they are just coldheartedly appealing to the Copenhagen ethical theories of their customers.
If you want to debate abstract ethics, fine, but if you bring up factual people you should have some factual evidence. Those comments aren't evidence of firing anybody for being pregnant—they're evidence of how easy it is to get embroiled in the gotcha thread du jour on an internet message board. I seem to recall that you like the Principle of Charity; it's pretty straightforward to come up with a more charitable interpretation of what happened there.
(Edit: lest anyone wonders, I don't know the Markhor founders and yes I would defend anyone the same way if they were being treated unfairly on HN.)
I interpreted "I personally would love...Unfortunately..." and "Perhaps at some point...we would be able to...see if it needs to be changed for some women" as implying the policy is that pregnant women can't work for them right now, but maybe in the future this could change.
To be clear why I'm confused, myself and others interpreted her statements as meaning pregnant women can't work there and explicitly asked about this. I didn't read anyplace where she said "no, pregnant women actually can work for us, techcrunch is wrong and your shoe might be made by a pregnant woman" in response.
I'll take your word that I'm brainfarting and pregnant women are actually allowed to work for Markhor after all. I'm still not seeing how that follows from the comment thread, but if that is the case I offer my apologies.
Also, I wouldn't read into the pregnant woman comment too much. Pakistan is a very different world -- and there is a legitimate concern of pregnant women doing this kind of work. Most "mochies" (folks who work on shoes) do this stuff sitting down on the floor (despite the pic of a guy working on a table on techcrunch article), I cannot think in any way that that is good for a pregnant woman. The Markhor dude messed up in explaining what he was getting at, I think his motives are good, it's probably a language/culture barrier at fault here. That said, the other thing is that there are basically no women mochies in Pakistan. That's just a matter of fact, so uh, women getting fired are not even a concern to begin with. :)
tldr: this ain't the company to get your pitchforks ready for -- facebook et al. are a better bet.
Many of the examples listed in the article under discussion here give people the impression that exploitation is going on. And the broader point that is often ignored by self-proclaimed rational folks is that changing our society to accept arrangements that look like exploitation (even if they technically aren't) may itself cause damage, by increasing the acceptance of arrangements that are actually exploitation.
Of course, that effect is basically impossible to measure, and self-proclaimed rational folks tend to ignore the hard-to-measure.
Basically, there are underlying reasons for people to have Copenhagen-like reactions, even if they themselves are unable to articulate them.
Do you have another source for that? Your link doesn't appear to imply what you claim.
> And of course they'll be welcome to make shoes for us if they want to, since the conditions of such work will be much better.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10058119
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10058171
Do you believe I'm misinterpreting him, and that pregnant women are actually allowed to work for Markhor?
Sidra is a she, and yes of course you're misinterpreting her.
If you have outside evidence, I'm all for it. But your claim that the company will fire any woman who becomes pregnant isn't backed up by that thread.
*Edited for correct pronouns.
How about they give her maternity leave and such? Like they would do for their non-shoe-making executives...
You and I have simply never touched or interacted with her, so according to the Copenhagen theory of ethics we get a moral pass.
My perspective: Markhor should follow whatever ethics appeals to their donators, as to maximize their revenue. If that indirectly causes women to be exploited, that's a shame and we should all write terrible articles about it, but until the general consensus changes that's just what they have to do.
edit: a bit too aggressive
Because I'm not making money off of her.
>Near as I can tell, you, me and Markhor are all in the same moral boat - none of us are paying for this hypothetical woman to sit at home enjoying pregnancy.
Only, one of us has used the $x an hour work of that woman up to that point, to make $xxx products that they sell.
Ok, you are pretty explicitly appealing to the Copenhagen theory of ethics. Good to have that out in the open.
Since I'm more utilitarian and I don't take Copenhagen as my moral axiom, we'll obviously disagree. Now we understand why.
I don't appeal to any such BS. The so called "Copenhagen theory of ethics" is an ill-thought neologism of the writer of the blog post, and lacks several metric tons of nuances and considerations.
The basic premise -- that a third-party has the same "moral obligation" to pay her maternity leave as the person who employeed her, made money of her (the total balanace was positive on THEIR side, not hers) and fired her when she become pregnant, is absurd.
Not only that, but protections against firing an employee that became pregnant are an accepted part of the legal and moral obligations of an employee, enforced by law in most developed countries.
If anything the burden of proof is on the author of TFA to counter the thinking of all those legislators.
I would also like to know how a deal like "I'll give you food everyday for having sex with you" to a poor woman who hates the idea, but is starving and thus accepts it, is any different than the situations lauded by the author of TFA article.
After all the woman is better off, right? She would be starving or even dead from hunger. And she accepted the deal by her own volition.
"The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more."
To summarize your post: I subscribe to the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics, but don't call it that!
I have no moral objection to prostitution. I also have no moral objection to "I'll give you money everyday for cleaning my house" to a poor person who hates cleaning.
Do you have moral objections to anything, then, or do you think that as the necessary money have been exchanged everything is OK?
Also do you think that "voluntary agreement" means the same for everybody in every financial situation?
Also, I think it's best to pick a different example than prostitution because of the importance of cultural factors there. Instead, what if I offer $20 to a poor person to let me slap them hard in the face? That might be a good deal for them, but I'm still a jerk for doing it. The problem though isn't that the transaction is exploitative. It's that it's wasteful. Why did the poor person need to endure the slap? What was the point?
Transactions are never arbitrary. They're an action taken by individuals based on their interests, and their interests are determined by their values, and their values are often shaped -- at least to some degree -- by communal values.
> but this basic price determination mechanism is great when it works
How do you know when it works? Obviously, there is difference of opinion in determining what "works" means.
> Instead, what if I offer $20 to a poor person to let me slap them hard in the face? That might be a good deal for them, but I'm still a jerk for doing it. The problem though isn't that the transaction is exploitative. It's that it's wasteful.
OK, that's a classic.
It was positive on both of their sides. They made money from the fruits of her labor, and she made money from the money that they gave her in exchange.
Employment is positive sum. Just because one party benefits from a transaction, doesn't mean someone else lost out.
Obviously improving things even a little is better than not improving them at all. People just disagree whether what the author sees as a clear improvement is in fact so -- that's why you and the GP disagree.
Also, a nuanced ethical view may support a an action that improves things while at the same time note (and accept as the lesser evil) an ethical problem with it. No one says that any desired (or "good") action must be ethically perfect. Even moralists know how to compromise sometimes, even though they do so with protest. Seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to me.
> Since I'm more utilitarian and I don't take Copenhagen as my moral axiom
You and the article's author seem to subscribe to what ethicists call the "non-worseness claim". I found a discussion of this claim here: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4
That's by definition the Copenhagen interpretation of ethics.
If you want to make a different argument that does not depend on the Copenhagen interpretation, go for it. The fact that you can make a different argument doesn't mean that others (e.g. coldtea) aren't using Copenhagen.
The author states his definition as "the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it." No one subscribes to that ethics, hence it's not a thing (anywhere outside's the author's distorted view of others, that is).
OTOH, saying that the level of your responsibility for another individual may correlate with the benefit they give you (e.g. you make a profit) seems like a reasonable thing. It seems quite reasonable to believe that our responsibility towards the other may increase if 1/ we somehow contributed to their misfortune, 2/ if we somehow benefit from it, or 3/ if we benefit from them in any way at all. Each of these may of course increase the responsibility by different amounts.
Points 2 and 3 seem like a natural conclusion of the ideal of fairness and reciprocity. Your contribution to the good of others should be commensurate with their contribution to yours.
> Coldtea explicitly said he's not responsible for the pregnant woman "because I'm not making money off of her", implying that if he were to observe/interact with her he would be responsible.
No, that's what you explicitly said when you tried hard to not understand other people's arguments. coldtea said no such thing. coldtea said that they wouldn't pay for the woman's maternity leave, not that their responsibility towards her is nil. coldtea's level of responsibility simply does not reach the point of owing her maternity leave.
Coldtea: "Only, one of us [the employer] has used the $x an hour work of that woman up to that point..."
If you want to argue that coldtea isn't making a moral argument as to why he isn't responsible, be my guest. I don't think my interpretation is unreasonable.
It seems quite reasonable to believe that our responsibility towards the other may increase if 1/ we somehow contributed to their misfortune, 2/ if we somehow benefit from it, or 3/ if we benefit from them in any way at all.
(2) and (3) are exactly what the author is calling the Copenhagen Interpretation. I thought this wasn't a thing?
That is not the case. Let me state it clearly. He says:
interaction => blame
profit => increased responsibility
The author's view is known as the non-worseness claim, which is often described by those who are more generous towards it as "free floating evil". Those who are less generous, view it in worse ways, of course.
BTW, the criticism of homeless experiment does seem stupid, but I don't know the details. Also, the critic may not have actually made a moral argument (even if he tried to frame it as such). For all I know he's a politician who opposes the mayor and would use any argument at all against him, even if he doesn't really believe it.
But you're just rewording it with synonyms in hopes of avoiding the application of the Copenhagen Interpretation to your/coldtea's post.
"interaction" == "profit"
"blame" == "increased responsibility"
Whether we use other synonyms such as "profit", "economic gains", "saving time", "outsourcing tedious work", etc, it doesn't matter.
Likewise, using synonyms such as "blame", "responsibility", "burden", "cross to bear", "moral debt", etc, doesn't change the interpretation.
Not true: in all the examples given, the critics never articlulate a mechanism for how that could be true. I know because I look for this every time such a scenario comes up.
You seem to be making the mistake of thinking that "because a good argument exists, that must be what these critics really mean"; that because there's academic literature on optimal tariffs, that's what's grounding the protectionists who complain about "takin' our jobs". But the people referred to in the post don't articulate how eg Uber surge pricing made things worse, only that "hey they're visible and related to suffering". If and when people cite how Uber surge pricing reduces service, Uber supporters are more than willing to have that discussion!
If the argument only exists in a philosophical article that almost none of the critics have heard of, you can't really say that's driving their critique.
Yet the author chooses to present the situation as a group of people who want nothing other than to make the world a better place, while stupid hordes get in their way. I can assure you that that's not the true state of affairs, either.
Moreover, why is it good to assume that those who disagree with you do so because they're stupid? Maybe they're not, and maybe they accidentally made a good argument. In any case, trying to understand the merits of the arguments would only enrich you. But the author -- who clearly considers himself to be among the smart ones -- never bothers to look up the literature on this very topic (or, at least, he doesn't cite any), namely mutually advantageous exploitation, opting instead to base it on a much simpler philosophical argument, without consideration for the nuanced discussion of this very issue. So we can assume -- as he and you do -- that his position is driven by nothing more than simplistic arguments.
I want to defend the general point though, that "If people are making a general class of error in some context, then that class should be pointed out, even if not everyone in that context makes that error." You're right: some people do go far enough to (dubiously) make a case about how eg surge pricing reduces availability. These arguments are the exception, not the norm, and people should be made aware of the more general, mistaken point.
And for what it's worth, I most certainly do try to find these "they're making it strictly worse than had they not intervened" arguments, but the popular expositions never make them. The fact that "oh, someone else makes arguments somewhere that aren't crappy" is no defense, and it does not improve the debate to let bad arguments linger because you prefer they be equated with better ones (which really just confuses things). If someone makes an error, that error should be corrected, whether or not there's an argument for the same conclusion that doesn't.
You really don't have to go far to find a protectionist argument that's 100% "dey took are jerbs" and 0% "this is not the optimal tariff defined in the literature."
But the author is not making any good arguments in favor of mutually advantageous exploitation either, and there are good ones. He is also guilty of making naive arguments! This very topic has been debated at length by philosophers. Why reduce it to ridiculing the other side while not showing any clear, educated thought on the author's part, either?
> You really don't have to go far to find a protectionist argument that's 100% "dey took are jerbs"
And you really don't have to go far to find arguments like, "we're da job craters!" and "we're making the world a better place, woooo!" (which is the level of arguments the author is making)
People are saying that mutually advantageous exploitation is at least problematic and requires more thoughtfulness. Some, of course, may disagree, but this is a long-standing and interesting debate among philosophers. So, instead of feeling self-righteously and victimised he should 1/ examine reality more closely because perhaps things are not as they appear to him, and 2/ try to understand some of the good arguments against MAE.
That is not at all obvious. It's particularly not obvious when you benefit from the marginal improvement, thereby creating a damn good reason to not improve the problem any more than marginally.
For example, let's say that my live-in boyfriend confesses to me that he's been sleeping with another man. He has, essentially, no other home. Do all of the following people bear equal responsibility to take him in: me, the man with whom he has been sleeping, and you? Based on your comment, are we all in the same moral boat – none of us are paying to take him in?
(Unrelatedly, the phrase "sit at home enjoying pregnancy" may not communicate what you wanted to communicate.)
The really weird thing about the Copenhagen Interpretation is that it imposes an "uncanny valley" of moral virtue. If I ignore a situation and provide 0 help, I'm virtuous. If I help to the tune of K or more, I'm virtuous. But if I provide 0 < R < K help, I'm suddenly a villain. This is just a really weird idea and I can't see any reasonable justification for it.
This sounds like an answer of all three mentioned people having equal obligation. That is, the second boyfriend could ethically claim, "I have no obligation to take you in – after all, literally anyone else with equal capability could do it instead."
If I understand this correctly, then thank you for the clarification.
(I'm not very familiar with the "second boyfriend" relationship, having never actually taken on that role.)
A. You need money to pay someone.
B. That's what taxes are for.
C. Why pay this woman and not another one? One can't pay every pregnant woman one hears about.
Is it a question of "exploitation" or is it a question of it being dangerous to their health? If it is actually dangerous for them, then it would be reasonable, IMHO, to treat this the same as when one of your employee is sick.
Besides the ethical "taking advantage" thing (treating people in need differently that people not in need), which one might agree or disagree it exists, a core problem is that keeping those people in need is exactly what keeps this machine going.
So businesses offering below minimum wage wages to people (e.g. if it's not regulated in their state), would point how these people are better off with those wages than nothing, and that they chose to accept the work because of that.
But the same businesses, the politicians they lobby, and the way the vote and affect the market with their influence, also try to ensure that nothing is changed (legaly, infrastructure etc) to deplete their pool of desperate people. E.g. by advocating against minimum wage and other labor protections.
Hyper efficient scaling does one thing extremely well - inequality.
Offering jobs at less than the minimum wage is also exactly this too - people accepting those jobs are in a better position than if the jobs weren't available, yet many modern free societies have minimum wages.
Selling drugs to addicts falls under this category too, since if they didn't have the drugs easily available, they might do something worse to get them, and clearly they're chosing to buy them so they must be better off having them.
The same applies to your other examples. You and I are currently paying billions of low skill workers exactly $0/hour. Why are we morally blameless, but the person offering $3/hour is a villain?
Should this be banned, too?
It should obviously be.
In fact the army has a long-ass history of setting up recruiting offices and exploting the most poor and desperate with false promises and BS to go do the fighting.
From Alabama and Mississipi down to Los Angeles, those recruiting offices are choke full of blacks, latinos and "white trash" sent to die (and kill) while privileged white folks enjoy their "patriotism".
By definition slavery isn't voluntary. Not that this changes your argument; servitude is banned internationally for approximately the same reasons as slavery.
> people accepting [less than minimum wage] jobs are in a better position than if the jobs weren't available
This is yet another example of the problem of using "profit" as the primary (or only) metric for human progress.
Are the people given non-livable wages in a more profitable position than if those jobs weren't available? Does the job improve their situation in general? Is the job using using low wages Wallmart-style to offload a portion of their personnel costs on taxpayers by paying such a small amount all employees are expected to always use government services?[1]
It is of vital importance to ask a wide variety of these questions. Using a single metric is p almost always going to give you an incomplete view of the situation.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2014/04/15/report-w...
As for addicts, in a society that didn't outlaw drugs, they wouldn't have much more trouble living a normal life than people who need coffee to function.
Or surge pricing: the net effect is pricing out people with a lower income, while there are other, more fair solutions to the problem.
> In all cases the people involved could simply choose not to take the offer, and be no worse of.
That's the same kind of logic which gets you social advances like zero-hour contracts.
Helping a little (even if you benefit) is better than not helping at all.
However, if this spreads and becomes the "new normal" (eg, zero-hour contracts), this can result in a net diminution of social good compared to alternative outcomes where employers would have offered better terms to their employees. I think that's the issue people have with this kind of "improvement".
If you agree that certain actions can be moral in limited circumstances, you also agree to support the moral logic they're based on, on principle - even if that moral logic does huge harm elsewhere.
It's a superficially clever rhetorical argument, but it's not a very moral one.
If you're a poor person, you don't want to be in situation where PETA are offering to interfere in your life to make a political point - you want to be in a situation where you're not poor in the first place.
There's no point saying that bandaids can stop people bleeding and people who don't want to use them are bad, if you don't address why there are flesh wounds everywhere you look.
Are bandaids better than nothing? They are. But there are still people trying to fix the flesh wounds. Does the author support them, or not?
Yet poverty is improving globally ( http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-red... ). Given that, no one should be faulted for doing what they can to help locally.
> Are bandaids better than nothing? They are. But there are still people trying to fix the flesh wounds. Does the author support them, or not?
It doesn't matter. The author presented an idea that is important in its own right. I don't think there's any moral authority anyone can draw upon to say that he or she needs to do more. Anyone who thinks there is is proving the author's point.
If your house is burning and the fire brigade is too busy to help, and your neighbour Bob comes with a fire extinguisher and a smile on his face, and proposes to give you the fire extinguisher in exchange for your new car, I sure hope there won't be any hard feelings next time Bob drives past your house.
People like Bob are not out there to help others. They're out there to win.
He invented the fire brigade.
He also invented a fire brigade protection racket: if your house was burning he'd offer to buy it at a knock-down once-in-a-lifetime price before putting the fire out.
It was a solution of sorts. But maybe not the best of all possible solutions.
I don't find this argument convincing.
1. I don't believe anyone in this thread has actually raised this objection.
2. If others have raised this objection, I would not believe this is their actual motivation. The (acerbic) discussion in this thread is not traceable to a future possibility of worse terms for employees - it is outrage over moral turpitude.
3. The possibility of a worse future requires strong proof to not choose real benefits now.
A popular misconception is this is unlikely in America, because nobody is suffering that badly. The people that believe this obviously haven't worked in the fast-food or similar low-pay industries recently[1].
[1] https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker-st...
With 25 thousand facing water shutoffs, PETA offered help for up to ten people - technically an improvement on the status quo. But they also inserted their own agenda, diverting attention from Detroit's poverty and unemployment issues to the ethics of using animal products. This is definitely a worse outcome for the remaining 25k - 10 Detroit residents. It's fair to consider PETA's hijacking of the issue as a cost imposed on those affected by it.
No, and only an incredibly uncharitable reading of my comment could suggest otherwise.
What is it about this topic that makes people go crazy? The examples in the article involved: donating to the homeless, paying people's water bills, and taxi pricing. The comments here have brought up slavery, selling drugs to addicts, and avoiding criticism of brutal dictatorships. Please, try to retain a sense of proportion.
It could be argued that outrage over PETA brought more attention to the problems of Detroit. I didn't know about the water shutoff until my Facebook feed was full of PETA hate. But it doesn't matter. People didn't get angry at PETA for "diverting attention." They got angry at PETA because PETA only helped a little bit.
The "more fair" solutions to the problem of surge pricing involve either Uber themselves paying out of pocket, drivers not receiving fair compensation, or neglecting to tackle the problem at all.
Where does it stop? How is that morally different from a $denomination religious charity offering aid conditioned on your family joining the faith? I find that disgusting and manipulative.
And that's not the worst. To take another example, it's like an insurance company offering to lower your costs in exchange for having your driving and dietary habits tracked. It's all voluntary, sure. Except that ten years later, the rest of the market has taken note and it has become mandatory.
> The "more fair" solutions to the problem of surge pricing involve either Uber themselves paying out of pocket, drivers not receiving fair compensation, or neglecting to tackle the problem at all.
Random assignment would be a fair outcome, where everybody gets paid, and people get a chance of getting a ride.
This sounds like a very naive position ignoring dynamics of power. Indentured labour was also the result of a "voluntary agreement between individuals". See also the working conditions of migrant workers in the Gulf states - again the result of "voluntary agreement between individuals".
> raising prices is the utility-maximizing choice (across riders, drivers, and Uber)
Only across riders who can afford the surge price. It's the utility-minimizing choice for the rest.
It's really not. Without surge pricing, the people who can't afford surge pricing experience significantly worse outcomes as well. Specifically, they end up with very high wait times and cancellation rates, which ends up being a lot worse than the counterfactual world in which they saw the surge pricing and decided to take the subway instead. We have solid evidence for this: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/chris.nosko/research/effects...
There is nothing unavoidable about that.
The only problem I have with such things is when someone agrees to one thing, but winds up with something else. That probably happened at least some of the time with indentured labor.
> It's the utility-minimizing choice for the rest.
You usually can't maximize utility for every single person. Maximizing total utility is the standard, and you haven't explained why we shouldn't do that here. "Won't somebody think of the ~~children~~ poor riders?"
People don't want a chance at a ride, they want a ride. And that desire is the fuel that drives us.
Why do you make the issue into a bizarre dilemma between freedom and fairness?
> People don't want a chance at a ride, they want a ride. And that desire is the fuel that drives us.
What does this have to with anything? Not everybody can have a ride in this situation. The question is only about the system you use to attribute rides.
[1]:http://www.nickkolenda.com/psychological-pricing-strategies/
A) "It would be [more] ethical to offer a better deal."
with
B) "The person offering this deal is ethically worse than those who never interacted at all."
You can endorse A) without endorsing B), and it's B that the author is criticizing (as the CIE).
But the thing is, merely becoming aware of a problem puts some ethical burden to solve it —or at least solve some other, more important problem.
On the other hand, it would be a bit dangerous to vilify people for not doing their best. That tend to cause its own sets of problems, up to and including totalitarianism.
1st person: These people are starving. I will treat them as I would a non-starving person, say pay them $xx/hour which I calculated is enough to build a profitable business.
2nd person: These people are starving. I will pay them the least I can get away with it, after all it's not like they have many options. Sure, I could make a profit even if I paid them 10 times that, but why go there? Fuck them, they should be grateful that they get anything instead of nothing at all.
For me, the 2nd person is a jerk. I wouldn't want them anywhere near my society. Scum of the earth.
And the whole "Copehangen" theory BS wants us to believe that it's either (2) or nothing -- that paying people in need the lower you can (near substinence) is the only thing possible.
There are several shades between (1) and (2), but most proponents of such ideas go for the full-on (2), and then pretend they are some kind of benefactors too.
4th person: These people are starving. I could help them by doing as much as I can afford. Hovewer, most people seem to unconsciously subscribe to CIE, and they will see that as too little help, therefore I'll become an object of hate in the media. It may ruin my business. I'll be pointed at on the street as a bad person. Therefore, I shall ignore the starving people. We have all those social programs that help them, I pay taxes, so it's all cool, right?
If people's thought process was as you portray it, people wouldn't get involved at all or very few would. But the fact that we have so many businesses merely paying these people as LESS as they can (2), proves that the concern of (4) is doesn't exist, or, at least, doesn't deter them.
They do go into business in those areas and they do pay as little as they can get away with -- people's criticism and "hate in the media" be damned.
Besides, if the people portrayed in (4) REALLY wanted to "help them by doing as much as they could afford", then they would be (1).
Copenhagen says (3) is better than (2). The author thinks (2) is better than (3).
(3) doesn't concern a business or a relation between you and those people. It's a total lack of interaction. We always have that, for 99.9999999 of the population of the planet.
Now, when it comes to business, a few do (1). A whole lot businessmen do (2).
The Copenhangen strawman wants us to think that it's either (2) or (3) -- as if (1) is impossible.
(a) The Copenhagen interpretation of ethics, the idea (roughly stated) that people who interact with a problem are more responsible than people who ignore it
(b) The factual question of whether some people subscribe to CIE (or perhaps deny it, but act as though they subscribe to it)
(c) The normative question of whether CIE is "correct".
(d) Factual questions about which of (1), (2) and (3) funge off against each other under which situations
You seem to be making some claims about (d) and then saying (b) is false and (a) is a strawman, but that doesn't follow.
You're saying pretty explicitly that people who do (3) are okay, possibly conditional on not having interacted with starving people; and people who do (2) are bad. If that's not what you think, please say so. If it is, then the thing you're calling a straw man is something you actually subscribe to.
If you think it's relevant, that there's no business relation, then that is pretty much exactly what CIE is. And fine, go ahead and argue, as others in the thread have done, for (c). Argue that yes, it's important that there's no business relation, and that (3) is better than (2).
But right now you're coming across kind of like:
"Stavrians think it's unethical to floom in your garglies."
"That's a strawman. Of course it's unethical to floom in your garglies."
and it's pretty frustrating.
Things like pure charity, selectively helping some people, etc are all fine and few would argue against them. The negative "CIE" reactions the article cites are far from representative of the most common reactions to these things -- they're mostly some media wanting to make a big deal out of a non-story.
The whole CIE point of view (interaction vs non-interaction) etc confuses things when it comes (as in some examples given) to interactions like employment, etc.
I'd put it as simply as that: If you're the boss of someone, it's NOT OK to be a shitty boss, just because you're "still better than someone not paying them".
That's the argument I see anti-CIE people make ("I can be as bad as I like, as long as the net outcome of my actions to the other is positive"), and I find it morally abhorent.
Yes, you might be more helpful to them than someone not paying them, but you're still a scum for being a shitty boss. Especially if you're being purposefully shitty boss especially because your employee is in need and can't avoid working for you (i.e. scarcity of jobs in the area, he has a criminal record, etc).
This sleight of hand (expanding the subject of good vs bad behavior to non-interaction) mainly serves to divert the responsibility one has to people who interacts with to the general population.
This can be handy for things like the defense of sweatshop child labour: "Hey, I might have kids working for $1/day and make myself a cool $50 million a year from their work, but at least I pay them $1/day. What have you done for them?".
To the most abhorent deals made with desperate people: "I will put a word in with the dictator and save your husband from execution if you let me have sex with your daughter". (Hey, at least the guy saved her husband. What did you do? Besides the daughter begrudgingly agreed to it).
Regarding your other comment:
>You're saying pretty explicitly that people who do (3) are okay, possibly conditional on not having interacted with starving people; and people who do (2) are bad. If that's not what you think, please say so. If it is, then the thing you're calling a straw man is something you actually subscribe to.
Nope, I subscribe to its superset, that includes (1) instead of pretending its all a XOR between (2) and (3), and this (2) is the better option. (1) is the better option. CEI is a strawman because it lacks subtetly and hides the all important (1) alternative.
(2) can be bad independently of what (3) does or doesn't do.
A shitty (abusing, sexist, micro-managing, crappy paying, credit-taking) boss (2) is still a shitty boss, despite the fact that he pays your salary and a random person on the street (3) doesn't.
Yeah, you're better off with a shitty boss than with no boss, because else you'd starve if it was to (3). That doesn't make (3) bad, and it doesn't make your boss any LESS shitty.
Ethics is not just about outcome, it's also, and perhaps mainly, about intent. Which in the long term matters more than outcomes, because it helps shape the future, change policy, etc.
With "utilitarian ethics" we'd still have child labor in the US. And no "safety laws" either, because it's better to be employeed with risks than to force the employer to pay for safety measures and reduce his hiring capacity leading to unemployment. But it turns out if you don't think in "marginal" terms, you can have safety measures and no child labor, and still have a vibrant economy, simply by regulating those options out of the question. Utilitarian ethic proponents more often than not advise us to keep those practices because they're "better than nothing".
The world might be marginally better off by people "paying wages while being shitty bosses", but it's far better by people actually and actively being good bosses.
And by encouraging or praising the first type of behavior we discourage the second. That's what this "CIE" thing is about, seen in it's non strawman form, -- not about the superior morality of not being involved, who nobody really argues for.
No one is pretending this. At least, I'm not, and the author of the article isn't.
You're completely missing the fact that I'm not talking about ethics here. You're arguing pro-CIE, and your arguments are fine, but trying to argue ethics is beside the point. I'm talking about ethical positions, a meta-level up; and I'm saying that you subscribe to CIE while calling CIE a straw man.
I can't see how this can be, since the core of what we are discussing is a supposed "Copenhagen interpretation of ETHICS".
>I'm talking about ethical positions, a meta-level up; and I'm saying that you subscribe to CIE while calling CIE a straw man.
Again, no logical contradiction there.
As I explained I subscribe to CIE+ (a superset).
This means that I can both subscribe to CIE (as it's contained in the superset CIE+) AND find it when discussed alone (without the extra additions) lacking/a strawman.
For a crude example of that, one can logically subscribe to S+ ("men are rapists sometimes") and still view S ("men are rapists") as a strawman.
Talking about ethical positions: some people say this is good and this is bad; other people say...
I still think that what you call a strawman is just something you actually believe, and that you're interpreting it as a much stronger claim than it actually is. But I don't care enough to argue further.
Recognizing that disincentivising marginal improvements in behavior leads to a worse behavior is not claiming only those two behaviors exist. It's just saying that perverse incentives lead to worse outcomes.
Isn't that begging the question? Who proved that it "results in worse behavior"?
I wouldn't have thought of it as begging the question, because it didn't occur to me that the empirical question of what the results are was in dispute! Yes, I suppose if you believe that this sort of Copenhagen-based complaining actually consistently leads people to do (1) rather than (2), rather than mostly resulting in (4), there would be little reason to have a problem with it. As it is, I'm not prepared to argue that empirical question right now, so I'm just going to note that I disagree and and that there's any number of examples of (4) out there.
Next to the comment box on Jai's blog, there is a gentle reminder: "Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?" I'm sure the quality of HN comments could be improved by adding the same message.
I'm obviously committing a logical fallacy, but I think they are as well. Sometimes when you do something, there are negative consequences as well as positive ones. And if you aggressively count the positive ones and ignore the negative ones, you really aren't helping.
One-way street to an even more individualized society where even more teenagers and students can get stressed out.
TL;DR: You can't control everything. Forcing yourself into a mindset where you think you do will be your ruin.