Another ethical question

[Mr. Harley]

I thought of that Dr. Stranglove, but I wanted to make the point that if it was the other scenario, i.e. breaking you psychologically by presenting you with these false hobson's choices. You've summed up the alternative very well.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Since the perpetrator of these scenarios is obviously a homicidal psychopath isn't it reasonable to assume that he's going to kill everyone, yourself, the other guy and your family, when he's had his fun? If he lets you go you might lead the police to him. If you don't do what he says the other guy may lead the police to him. If your family survives they may go to the police. He has to kill everyone involved. Really your choice makes no difference.

a valid conclusion
consistent with what you know... So I assume you flip a coin and put your descision into the hands of randomness.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
And in this setting and with these doubts you have to make your descision and what would that be and what would be the ethical descision?

You forgot that, even if you kill that other person doesn't mean you can find the key, so you end up dead at any rate. Or if you don't kill the other person and the bomb kills you, there's no telling if your captor is going to kill him too. Or maybe the bomb is strong enough to kill everybody in the room.

As I said, unanswerable...

[Mr. Harley]

Atahualpa - you don't flip a coin with Dr. Strangelove's analysis. Since your actions per se make no direct difference, i.e. you are in a lose-lose situation, and largely powerless, you now have total freedom. Conventional religions show you the moral action, with the consequences in an afterlife, and if you don't belief in one, either Taoism or Existentialism deal with your actions. In virtually every case you do not kill the other person, because the Hobson's choice is artificial, and instead make the moral (or ethical) choice. It also applies in my response to the scenario, from a different angle.

Once you get into the real world, i.e. living in repressive regimes, having a family, etc. it becomes very different. Groups like the Russian mob, a very vicious organized crime ring in the US, will threaten your family, and even viciously kill a relative just to show you they can do it. However, as long as you do what they want, you can largely maintain your old lifestyle. That is where the real conflicts occur, in that messy, grey area we call the real world.

[David Floyd]

As for the original scenario, no, it is not morally justified to commit murder in order to save lives. I take this to an extreme, for example:

If I am told that I must murder 1 innocent person in cold blood, otherwise 100 other innocents will be murdered, it is still immoral for me to commit the one murder. I am not killing the 100 people, nor by killing one person am I saving the 100. The only person or persons with the power to do either is the person or persons trying to manipulate me. They cannot transfer their responsibility onto me in this manner - they and they alone are responsible for their own actions.

Likewise I am responsible only for my own actions - if I murder one person, then I am responsible for that murder, and the circumstances in which I committed murder are irrelevant.

Anyway, I'll address the WW2 hypotheticals:

1) You live in Poland, and are a Catholic. The Nazis are rounding up Jews and putting them in ghettos, where they are starving them. Your choices.

a) Bring food to the outside of the barbed wire, and barter it for family heirlooms, silver and gold. Profiteer, and then after the war make the excuse that you didn't put them there. I can state in that context that is morally repugnant. I have also listened to interviews with Poles who did exactly that, and excuse it to this day.

I don't see what is morally wrong with profiteering. You do not owe the hypothetical Jews anything, nor are you responsible for their condition. Personally speaking, if I was able, I would certainly help them expecting nothing in return, yet on the other hand, I also see nothing wrong with selling food/medicine/whatever.

b) Bring food, and barter it for what will permit you to get more. Be very honest about it, and of course very careful because the Nazis, if they catch you, may not like the fact you are not profiteering. You may not be able to afford the bribe to get yourself out of the tight spot. Now this is something you have done that has some risk, but is a mitzvah, a good work in the eyes of god. A really brilliant person can turn this into a great deed, like Schindler.

I agree.

c) I have a wife and children, and am also caring for my dead brother's family, who died in the German invasion. I am going to ignore it and do nothing, because there is simply too much risk, and I have responsibilities. Now you have your morally ambiguous situation, and one I can empathize with while disagreeing.

I would say this is an amoral choice - you are not morally obliged to stand up for others at the risk of your own life, however, given the opportunity, I would tend to believe that I would do so. What is immoral, though, is to expect others to do so, and to punish them after the fact for not doing so.

d) Become a resistance fighter Interestingly enough, (b) may actually save more lives, especially if you try to sneak out an occasional Jew, than this one does. So who is more heroic?

One is not more heroic than the other - Oscar Schindler was in a position to do far more good than if he became an average resistance fighter, while, say, General Bor-Komorowski (sp?) of the Polish Home Army was not in a position to do what Schindler did. Both were equally heroic.

[David Floyd]

Dr Strangelove,

Really your choice makes no difference.

I'm sorry, but I can't agree. You may be correct in the fact that everyone could end up dead regardless.

However, where the difference comes in is in who is committing murder, you, or the "homicidal maniac". It may not make a difference to the murder victims after the fact, but it will certainly make a difference to me, up to the point where I am killed as well.

[Mr. Harley]

David - my cases of (a) and (b) in Poland and the camps - of which (a) definitely occured, I've listened to the interviews - are very different. The first case sells food for a mark up of hundreds of per cent and makes it's money off the misery and desperation of others. (b) is the case where you see a need, and may make enough profit to cover your time, and costs, but where you are not making huge amounts off the enslavement of others. While they were not enslaved by you, in the first case (a) you are taking advantage of the enslavement, and become an accesory after the fact essentially. (a) is most definitely evil.

[David Floyd]

I understand what you are saying, but consider this: Many of the Poles who were "gouging" the Jews weren't exactly well off themselves - the Germans didn't really like the Poles either, and if you had to live under Hans Frank, whether you were a Jew or a Pole, odds are you weren't doing too well.

I don't mean to seem cold and heartless (I'm a Libertarian though, duh ), but another way of looking at the situation is that the family heirlooms did the Jews in the ghetto no good anyway, and had they not been traded to the Poles for food, would probably have been stolen by the Nazis at some point, or destroyed when the ghetto was liquidated.

Either way, though, I fail to see how trading food to starving people in exchange for valuable family heirlooms qualifies as evil.

[Mr. Harley]

David - it's not trading food - it's the profiteering. How can you decide which is the case? Look at the nature of the market. If it is a captive market, with minimal choice, there is a moral element involved, due to circumstances, you find yourself in the position to exploit that market. This was Theodore Roosevelt's point about the Rail Trusts.

These Poles were not badly off - in case (a). The ones that were being interviewed made substantial amounts of money off the Jews. They could have made profits of 100% and still supplied food on an order of magnitude in larger amounts. It is the falsity of "Free Markets" when one part of the relationship is not free at all. The same thing happened on American Indian Reservations, with profiteering, encouraged by Bureau of Indian Affairs officials, leading to starvation and death.

That is where this kind of "trade" becomes evil. The criteria are fairly simple, and straight-foward. It's often the dichotomy between pure capitalism versus morality. Capitalism, in it's purest sense, sees nothing at all wrong with exploiting a captive market, and in fact sees that as good business practices (unless the captive market explodes due to resentments - see the British Empire for numerous examples). Christianity, to take one example, has one gold standard (or golden rule ) - Love God.... & Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I don't think case (a) qualifies, while case (b) would.

[David Floyd]

But I look at this another way. Did the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto have any moral claim on the property - including food - of the Poles outside the ghetto? Clearly not. While they had a moral claim on their own property, including such property as was stolen by the Germans, that claim hardly transfers to the Poles.

So, if you can accept that the Jews had no moral claim of ownership on the property of the Poles, it's certainly no stretch to say that the Poles had any moral obligation to provide their property, including food, to the Jews, especially not free of charge.

I think we can agree, generally, on what I just said. Your problem seems to be the prices charged for the food. By not providing food at all, the Poles would not be stealing from the Jews. By charging a high prices for the food, the Poles are likewise not stealing. Market economics dictated the price - the Poles certainly took a great personal risk at providing food to the Jews, whether or not they were paid for it, so it had to be worth their while. Furthermore, as I stated, the Poles, while certainly better off than the Jews, were not ALL THAT MUCH better off. Remember who the Governor-General of Poland was (Hans Frank), the organization which was largely in charge of policing Poland (the SS), and the stated policies of the Nazis towards the Poles, and Slavs in general.

When your country is occupied, and you are considered virtually subhuman in relation to the occupiers, and you decide to provide food to those living in a restricted ghetto (meaning no travel in or out, by anyone), you are taking an enormous personal risk, and the expectation of a large amount of compensation certainly doesn't seem unreasonable or immoral.

Like I said, though, my personal choice would (hypothetically) be to do whatever I could to correct an obvoius injustice, but I see no compelling argument for extending my personal choice into a moral imperative to be enforced on everyone else.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I don't see what is morally wrong with profiteering.

The fact that it really isn't a free market transaction. The Jews are under GREAT duress, done by a 3rd party, but duress just the same. A believer in a free market would consider the transaction to be immoral because of this added pressure, making the transaction not really free.

It would kind of be like someone kidnapping you and denying you food or comfort for days and then some other guy coming by, knowing of the position you've been put in, and offering you one meal for all of your worldly possessions. You may indeed say yes, because of what has occured to you, but that transaction was not really free at all.

[David Floyd]

That position, though, opens up two questions:

1)Is it more moral to refuse any help at all, than to offer help and engage in profiteering?

2)If it is not more moral to do so, you must be arguing that it is immoral to do anything OTHER than help, in this situation, the Jews by selling them food at "fair" prices (and you still haven't addressed the issue of compensation for large personal risk, so we don't even have a definition of fair yet). By taking this position, you are claiming that the Jews must have at least SOME moral claim to ownership of the property/food of the Poles - if it is immoral to do nothing, and immoral to profiteer, and the only moral courses of action are either to give food or sell it at some set price, then you must take that position.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Is it more moral to refuse any help at all, than to offer help and engage in profiteering?

Yes... morality is in the intent, not the end. If you refuse to help, you suck, but if you prey on people's misfortune, I consider it worse, EVEN IF by preying, you are helping out a little bit. The result doesn't matter for morality, it's the intent.

Btw, this is different from the means/ends discussion and don't get confused by that, even though I used 'end' in my above paragraph. This is the intent compared to the result, rather than the the end goal compared to the intermediate steps.

[David Floyd]

So, it is more moral to withhold all assistance completely than it is to charge high prices for the same assistance?

That makes little sense, especially given the fact that the gold, silver, heirlooms, etc., were doing the Jews absolutely no good, and would have been stolen or destroyed anyway by the Germans. You can't eat gold, after all - but you can use it to buy food.

And you still haven't answered my point about the definition of "fair price" in the context of the large personal risk taken by the Poles.

[David Floyd]

I expected you to lean more towards 2), though - you surprised me