Previously on hubski, minimum_wage said "I'm pretty enraged by conditional assistance anyway." Jai's response would be, naturally -- making assisting the poor profitable is the best way to get more people to do it.
Later, I said:
- You are all generally right that being vegan is almost impossible for someone who is poor, but even if the language said "vegetarian," I suspect you would still disagree on principle. That's what I'm trying to understand.
Time to test that hypothesis.
What I'm getting is that it is like avoiding eye contact with beggars, so that by avoiding them, you don't feel bad about not giving them money, but not do you lose out on that money. You ignore the problem. It makes sense. I've always figured ethics are situational, and this helps explain why situations differ. I can understand where minimum_wage is coming from, it always bothers me to see companies offering to donate to charity if you send them a picture or something. But I don't see how this tests your hypothesis so much as brings it up again.
Many of these examples are much 'softer' instances of so-called rationalist ethics. Forcing people to eat vegan for a month is an edge case; I would assume giving homeless people some money to work at SXSW is far more benign. But according to the principle of the act, I wonder if those hubskiers who participated in the last discussion still see it as cruelty rather than effective altruism.But I don't see how this tests your hypothesis so much as brings it up again.
I think much of the last discussion hinged on how unrealistic the PETA goal was. It's pretty clear that humans need realistic and attainable goals if they're to accomplish something. Dangling an unrealistic carrot in front of a poor person is cruel. Your SXSW example is basically offering someone a job. I don't think many would have a problem with it. If they had offered to have 16 year old middle class kids to walk around with wifi and gather donations, would it be wrong?
Well, they paid them two or three dollars an hour. This is better than zero and worse than minimum wage. So I'm not sure how that would work, legally. In any case, it made people angry. (As an aside, one of the water bills in question from the PETA discussion was quoted at $145. For one month. It is entirely feasible for a family of two (and maybe a kid) to eat vegan on that amount. The contract they offered wasn't for everyone, but it was workable under specific circumstances.)Your SXSW example is basically offering someone a job. I don't think many would have a problem with it. If they had offered to have 16 year old middle class kids to walk around with wifi and gather donations, would it be wrong?
They paid them like they were servers/waiters and allowed them to keep their tips. would you like some free wifi? I work for tips. -easy peasy If people were enraged by the business model they should be enraged about waiters and waitresses across the country too.
Well, I reject this interpretation. One's involvement in a problem isn't binary. One person may be more responsible than another. Factors like the nature and cost of the problem, the ratio of the cost to an agent versus the benefit of rectifying the problem, and the distribution of opportunity to contribute to rectifying the problem all matter. In other words, the problem where one person has an opportunity to save a drowning child's life is not the same as the problem where 3.5 hundred million people have the opportunity to end hunger in Africa. Spasmodic reductionist that I am, I agree with the premise that observing a problem involves a person in the problem. I just don't agree that involves all people equally.