Moral Beliefs as Prices

People tend to see consequentialism and deontology as immaculate categories, I do not. I think deontology often fills a gap where there are consequences but they hard to track. (there’s another way I think they overlap and we’re fussing with elsewhere) In a situation where an employer - the rich guy who will pay me to kill a random person - my going along with this has consquences, I would argue, that are not present when I work for a contruction company that takes significant steps to protect workers and the employers dislike it when a worker dies. Let’s say on average each employer leads to a single death per decade. The consequences for the dead person are very similar, the consequences for society, even the family of the dead person are different. In the first scenerio as the killer, I have contributed to the ends of a sociopathic entity. In the second, if I am an employee, I have not. People know that the employers in the second took steps to protect their workers, and they will likely, at least make noises they are disappointed by the death. In this assasination this is not present. How do we track these effects? that is very hard. I think to pretend they are nothing, is confused and in error. Attitudes and intentions have effects. To the extent they are known they do things like increase trust and community feeling or reduce them. (plus any effects of 'aiding the intentions and plans of people who intend to kill as opposed to people who do not do all they can to prevent all deaths. These are two very different types of people and they will interact with people differently and they will feel different to people. Now, I do know that these are not immaculate categories either. Indifference can be to such a degree - certainly some mine owners over a hundred years ago - where it is very similar to intent to kill. But there is still a real spectrum and the ends are quite different and have all sorts of different aftereffects)

I think on a gut leve we know this set of effects that are hard to track and, fallibly of course, create deontological rules where we sense their will be consequences that are hard to track.

Further - what are the effects of saying that the effects are different? What are the effects of my taking a stand and saying here I would not take the money (let alone the effects of not doing it)?

The more that people value intent, the more this creates a culture with specific effects. Perhaps it reduces the number of people who are comfortable with their sociopathy. Perhaps it will actually reduce sociopathy since people will grow up where other people look to intent, judge it, react to it. And not just at consequences. The hirer of assassins does not hire assassins and then this option has no effects on their interactoins with humans in general. It is a kind of full permission to not feel guilty of denying the existence of another. This implies permission in all sorts of other ways. The taint is removed from them.

I do nto think it is the same with the employer who tries to eliminate all possible danger - an impossible task.

So the very act of having the public opinion that one will not kill for money, that there is a difference between an employer who wants me to kill a random person for money and another employer who does not prevent all deaths, leads to attitudes, disapprovals, guilts, social pressures
that all have effects.

Effects that are hard to track, but again, I think it is silly to pretend they are not there and

to a consequentialist - who often conflates this with being simply a realist - those should still exist, even if it is hard to measure them. I think that is a lot of the role deontology has played and I think it is also something that should make consequentialists concerned about stripping away deontology. The frontal lobe’s hubris is just that…hubris.

Every time I get in my car and drive I am risking my life and those of others. But I do not go out to kill. God, I hope I run someone over. The driver who decides he will try to kill one person, while remaining within the law. IOW not braking as fast as he might when someone jaywalks. That’s very different from the person who does get into a traffic accident where there is a death.

If we as a society conflate those two people, we are conflating two people who WILL very differently relate to others during their lifetimes.

And if we tell people those acts are the same, we are telling people that intending to kill is the same as not trying to eliminate all possible ways one might accidently kill. Which would eliminate driving, voting and not voting, buying pretty much any product - given that producing these entails risks, etc.

And further if we tell people those acts are the same, we are depathologizing sociopathy. And this will have all sorts of effects.

The social human world is not a lab and not very Newtonian - as far as tracking effects. Stuff slides and subtly shifts. This slip into the depths and reappear later. Things seep into the next generation. In the mind it can seem like we can contain variables and vectors, dominoes and billiard balls- ‘those are the effects’- but in the world…

Under capitalism, everything is commodified , so it is only rational to apply prices to moral beliefs. MacIntyre’s After Virtue opens up by talking about how, post-Enlightenment, we don’t really talk about moral beliefs good anymore because shit got all fucked up.

Hegelian sunderings of modernity mean that we don’t really even know what we mean when we talk about moral beliefs anymore. That’s why a question like this can be posed. It makes sense to the modern mind that morals can be quantified, then commodified and then (naturally) bought and sold through various means.

That’s a little uncharitable, I suppose. My google-fu is weak right now, but I think that after Gilgamesh, the second thing humans wrote down and kept (unlike various tax records and transactions) is a riff on the Faust myth and like Gilgamesh, it was a popular epic poem well before that.

Maybe we’ve always understood that poor soil makes for poor plants. Poverty corrupts. I get that. If you are materially suffering, you don’t have time to worry about principles. Counter intuitively, you can use principles to control the materially suffering.

Somewhere between that, there is an actual good . . . maybe?

For me, that’s the lifelong struggle of philosophy.

The real trick, I think, is to take a couple of steps back, and ask yourself what tiny steps are involved in a good, thriving life?

The mustache twirling villain with the lady on the train tracks doesn’t exist ex nihilo. But they do very much exist, tons of innocent people are killed every day by real life super villains. Many more suffer. So . . . how do we get there? What makes a monster? What makes the people who enable monsters?

And where do you fit into all that? I’m pretty tired, so I’ll let you fill in the rest. Blah blah blah coltan blah blah blah textiles blah blah blah modernity blah blah blah original sin as the “is” of is/ought blah blah blah bourgeois marxism something something with chinese characteristics yada yada mass line.

“I see someone who keeps halal about to unknowingly eat ham, how much do I need to be paid not to say anything? It seems like roughly zero, although I would take on non-zero costs to avoid serving someone halal, even without their knowledge.”

That happened in front of me once. A Moroccan guy ordered a “frikandel” (a stave of butchery-garbage) in a snackbar and as he was chomping it, one of his friends mentioned that there is pork in there, whereupon the eater spat out the contents of his mouth, and threw the rest of what he had in his hand in the snackbar owners face.

I don’t know what the values of the morals here were worth in dollars but the whole thing was priceless.

For the purpose of economics its a great distinction. The math is fairly simple addition and subtraction.

Distraction? We aren’t the only species on the planet with a capacity to quantify and those other species ain’t running right out to establish a currency of exchange. Maybe it has a lot to do with that human idea of ownership.

Counting is pretty rudimentary. And the fact a few culture came up with it independently is your argument? Several cultures are also credited with singular advancements in it’s application. How does that help your argument of capitalization of things we can not even own. If the system is one of exchange then who or what are we exchanging with for the natural resources? Who gave them to humans to do with as we wish? Who bought the rights to foul the water and the air and who was it paid too?

Carleas, you sure do a fine jig around the issue.

Can ethical values be priced?

So, yes, I don’t like it (our monetary system). And yes it exists, and for every now there is, I have to figure out a way to live with it. Selling out or costed out of living, either way.

If you like it, you are at an advantage in it.

Someone judging your every idea whether it has economic merit. Me being forced to judge my own ideas, by a merit that lacks in judgement. They are good. OK. They came into my head of their own volition. They grow like weeds.

So yeah, WE made it about money. Given me, how can I be happy about that?

I think you’re asking about something that has a lot more clout then morals. I thing morals are learned, and as such they do have a price.

I feel like I was born with ethics, they aren’t mine to sell. Sucks to be me cause I think they would be worth a lot, if only I could figure out how to sell them.

Have been milling it over. Ground fairly fine. I’ll concede, assuming a monetary system; everything has a price.

Are morals things?

Do you ever really get to the morals or does it get exchanged for the money first?

Carelas, You have likely a better guess then I.

Thanks, You offered a thought I felt like I wasn’t wasting my time thinking it.

A valuable question.

Sorry I think I reaped a bit of what you have sowed. Nature grows it. :shrug: I am a foraging animal.

If I appreciate it does that make it OK? Or do I owe you?

I always liked the idea that willpower is the only thing in the universe capable of travelling the path of most resistance.

It’s an aphorism but one that, I think, forms the basis of moral beliefs. Profit, on the other hand, often follows the path of least resistance.

Can everybody afford to be moral always at all times? Does morality collapse? Does it hyperinflate or deflate away overtime?

How much does it cost to live the good life? Can everybody afford the cost or price of morality equally? Is morality a monetary luxury?

How does one live the good life in the global behavioral sink?

These are good questions.

Behind them, you’ve got 1) Is Capitalism compatible with morality? and 2) Is modernity compatible with morality?

And then

3. Is humanity compatible with morality?

How does morality intersect with your life and what does it mean?

How do we live moral lives?

There is a push and a pull.

Fair enough, what’s your response to the questions?

My answer to my Q1 is “no” which basically answers your questions (or creates a null set). Capitalism is incompatible with morality.

Modernity is trickier. That’s basically MacIntyre’s whole thing and I’m a big fan of MacIntyre. Which necessarily leads to a resounding “yes” on whether morality is compatible with humanity.

Morality intersecting with life is a process, so answers aren’t easy but it flows from cultivating your virtue and your humanity. Tu Weiming talks about learning to be human. That’s morality intersecting with your life. Which leads to “how do we live moral lives” which is “Bit by bit. Day by day.” There are times when you have to make real, hard, distinct moral decisions but almost all moral decisions are more processed based. It’s that inevitablism that you can change. You are Samwise, not Frodo. You are a gardener. I mean, unless you aren’t, but those heroes often have that same inevitablism to them as well because what got them into a position of power is a track already set for them.

So, figure out what track you are on and where it is going. What does that track look like for you and for other people?

^^^If a person can’t afford to be moral does morality ever become useless or a form of entrapment? Can morality become oppressive? Better yet, what happens when a person cannot live up to certain moral expectations imposed on them by others? Is it ever alright to defy such forms of morality or rebel against them especially if they go against people’s own personal moral beliefs? When is justifiable or alright? Who gets to decide?

You are reifying morality.

I mean, even Aristotle thought that being a slave was immoral. Granted, that’s how he justified slavery. Fighting for your freedom can be very moral. That’s how most freedom fighters work. Revolutionaries traditionally haven’t been nihilists. That’s a bourgie disease.

Fighting for freedom yes, but today’s morality is all against fighting or conflict, isn’t it?

Today’s morality is all about working, laboring, buying, earning, and serving your time in order to achieve freedom, where if that’s the case, what does that say about current perceptions of freedom or morality? [In many cases today you can do all of that working hard and still remain unfree. Why? Because all outcomes are rigged against you by others.]

No, you mistake me from years past, I’m no longer a nihilist like my youth. I absolutely believe in morality however the one I believe is a higher one which seeks to destroy and eradicate the slave morality of authority that permeates all across the planet currently over entire societies everywhere. I believe in a master kind of morality in all sense of the word coinciding with that word freedom that everybody these days takes advantage of abusing. I also don’t believe freedom is possible at all until the current social order is completely destroyed which I salivate and day dream about almost daily in the creation of an entirely new social order in its replacement.

No, it isn’t. Why on Earth would you think that? Nobody is preaching that version of morality.

No? Are you sure?

Yes. I mean, excepting the Amish and some other extreme religious minorities.

Are you ex Amish?

There is what I like to call natural freedom and morality in contrast to unnatural freedom or morality. Natural freedom and morality is innate that people are born with naturally while the other is a socio cultural construct. In the socio cultural construct model of morality or freedom both are commodifications that revolve around socio economic, monetary, and occupational status.

The fact that you have to earn, buy, or labor towards having any freedom at all in order to have some sort of a semblance in acquiring moral agency shows just how much of an illusion it all really is. It’s not based upon anything that is real, natural, or even tangible, it’s based upon an ideal often enough controlled by others to subjugate people.

It isn’t real or genuine, this reduces human existence or freedom to economic output. Is freedom and morality solely dependent on economic output or activity? Well, that’s not real, natural, or genuine. That sounds like a prisoner dilemma where a prisoner is put into a position forcefully to bargain for their entire existence or life. If the prisoner cannot afford anything they cannot afford freedom and interacting morally with others becomes an absurd notion, a luxury they cannot afford. How is one to act morally if they themselves don’t even have the luxury of freedom? The fact that others subject the prisoner to their moral ideals while they have no freedom and cannot afford to be moral themselves becomes equally absurd. This insanity breeds hostile immoral people and is a majority of the time the root of all immorality or at least a very large part of it. This is something unfortunately all the moral theoreticians of today seem to be at a loss with and I find that puzzling because it really isn’t a hard thing to understand.

It is a slavish carrot and stick model…that’s what this thread is about, right? Do you support that?

In some ways this unnatural freedom and morality imposed on the world is actually immorality disguised as being morality which becomes very insidious.

Most people of course don’t question or criticize it where instead they accept it as a mere given which explains quite a bit about the sad state of affairs in post modernity on human beings.

I think it was a mistake to reduce all human interactions materially based upon economic materialism yet here we are today. Economics should of never came to where it is now dominating all of humanity but since it does very perversely as it does currently it will undoubtedly be the very thing that unravels post modernity itself which we are witnessing now in real time. I give it a few more decades or less depending on a variety of variables…

Economics fails to account for all the various human complexities, desires, and aspirations, because of that failure economic materialism will also fail inevitably.