First of all, I would be extremely uncomfortable in this situation. It makes me quite uncomfortable to walk past one very poor person on the sidewalk, while I and hundreds of people around me enjoy fresh coffee, wear clean clothes and play with our smartphones. To be surrounded by poverty-induced misery on all sides would make me miserable, if not suicidal. So your suggestion of starting some kind of business and offering people jobs is appealing. Specialization of labor and voluntary exchange have been a powerful force in generating wealth around the world. Let's assume I can figure out some business that can be successful in this environment. Probably I can't offer jobs to everyone around, not at the beginning anyway. Even if I could, probably some people won't have skills that contribute to the business, or there will be more unskilled people than I can usefully employ. So I have to choose: do I use my limited budget to employ a smaller number of people at a higher wage, thereby improving a smaller number of people to a greater extent? Or do I employ a larger number of people at a lower wage, thereby spreading the wealth more widely but with less individual effect? It is not obvious to me that one is clearly better than the other, so I think it might be justifiable to aim for a workforce size and corresponding salary that is best for the business and therefore best for everyone since this business is the best hope we have of pulling people out of poverty. What would you do?Take the issue to its extreme - suppose you are wealthy, and the society you live in is very poor.
Hi again, briandmyers. I regret that our discussion earlier didn't lead in constructive directions, and I thought this thought experiment very interesting. I will respond to it honestly, and I would be interested to see how you would respond as well.You can pay people next to nothing, and they will work themselves to death for that pittance
But at least there is some hope. I have some wealth. It is obvious to me that the only possible comfort to be had in this situation would come from trying to elevate as many of my neighbors as possible from their wretched states. I could divide up my wealth equally among everyone and distribute it, that would be fair and it would help some. But I am too selfish to completely impoverish myself in order to provide a small benefit to many people (I must admit this as long as I, in the real world, have plenty to eat and a comfortable home while people elsewhere starve).
Thanks for the follow-up. Here's the heart of the matter, right here. You or I, as human beings, are uncomfortable, and wish to improve the wealth of our society. Good on us, but we're a tiny minority. It will be a faceless corporation which will in reality be supplying the majority of those jobs, and that entity will have a very different idea of what is "best for the business", and is (I assert) much less likely to give two shits about raising the community out of poverty. That's why a minimum wage makes sense - because in general it is NOT ethical to pay people as little as you can get away; and corporations have no ethics that are not imposed on them (not being human like you and I).I would be extremely uncomfortable in this situation.
Out of a sample size of 2, then, 100% of us care about the welfare of others and would not selfishly improve our condition if it meant harming others. This is not much data, so I did an experiment. I looked through my phone's contact list and counted all the people I think I know well enough to decide if they are also like us. By the time I got to about 50, there were none of whom I was certain they would be willing to hurt others to get ahead, and only a few of whom I was not sure. The majority of the people I know seem decent and I believe they are also very uncomfortable seeing other humans suffer. Is your experience different? Do you know a lot of people who, in this scenario, would be comfortable paying a "pittance" to have people mow their lawn and wash their car, not caring that they are trying to "keep their family alive"?You or I, as human beings, are uncomfortable, and wish to improve the wealth of our society. Good on us, but we're a tiny minority.
Exactly as b_b says, I meant "tiny minority" in the sense of the jobs we might provide. Sorry for being unclear, and thanks also for showing my mistake in framing the original postulate as a wealthy person. It's a business that I should have posited, since as you rightly point out, people in general are extremely moral in most circumstance.
I read briandmyers' comment to mean that a corporation, being incorporeal, lacks a sense of justice, and that regulations, in certain cases, can guide the behavior of a corporation to act more like individuals might act toward one another. This isn't to say that this goal is always, or even often, accomplished, but merely that it may be an aim. I, for example, used to work for Dow Chemical. My boss at Dow was an Indian fellow who worked for Union Carbide before Dow purchased them. Both of us were (are) good, caring people. Both companies are soulless and evil, having given the world such gifts are Agent Orange and the Bhopal disaster. The aggregate behavior of the companies did not reflect the morality of the individuals within. Although FWIW my boss thought Union Carbide was an excellent firm, which is a great lesson in relativism, given that the man was dirt poor as a child, and UC helped him get out of poverty, get a PhD in chemistry from University of Michigan, and live a generally good, upper middle class life in America. Bhopal didn't even enter into the calculus of how he felt about them. I can't see it that way, because I don't know what it's like to grow up picking garbage to stay alive.