Is it ethical to let people's decisions screw them over?

[Surlethe]

Right now, there's (yet) a(nother) ]healthcare argument in N&P. A moral question has come up: is it ethical to permit a person's own decisions to harm him? One side seems to be saying, "let them have their money, and if they squander it, fuck them." The other side seems to be saying, "the harm caused by that is too great; the government should control their money for them." The moral differences seem to be worth discussing in its own thread, so I created this one. (Do note that this is an idealized question; I'm not looking for a policy discussion out of this, but a moral one.)

To kick this off: if someone is too stupid to manage his money properly, why should I care if he loses it? It seems analogous to someone walking into the middle of a street without looking both ways: not worth my sympathy.

Also, it occurs to me that the thread title might seem slanted. If anyone has any better ideas, let me know and I'll change it.

[Junghalli]

A moral question has come up: is it ethical to permit a person's own decisions to harm him?

Well, I think one should try to help people avoid bad decisions, but if they're dead-set on it, understand what they're doing to themselves, and are only harming themselves fundamentally I think letting people screw themselves over is probably the price of freedom.

Of course there's cases like addiction, where the person's judgment is impaired to varying degrees ... I'd say it depends on the circumstances.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

You should care because the basis of society involves people helping each other. You pay taxes for people who are on welfare because they decided to cheat on their Finals in college and got expelled and haven't managed to find a job yet thanks to this lovely down-cycle. I pay taxes for medicare to those people who jumped into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim and nearly drowned. Just because a man doesn't look both ways before crossing a street doesn't mean he deserves to die or be crippled if I can save him.

If you run out of gas on the highway, should every other driver snub you because you were stressed about your mother potentially having cancer and forgot to fill up before you left the city? I mean, have you never done anything atrociously stupid?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

GHETTO EDIT: If you indeed never have made any stupid decisions, you are indeed void of responsibility to those who have. But the idea of the Social Contract is that when you screw up, you won't have to rough it like a lone survivalist in the Wild West excommunicated and Damned for all time.

[Ender]

You should care because the basis of society involves people helping each other.

Bullshit. It can be shown both in modern day and through evolutionary psychology arguments that basic game theory is what gives rise to society. That game theory is that you will choose the course that best benefits you. Don't make up unsupported nonsense about "society is based off helping people, and the Carebears are awesome!" and treat that premise as absolute to validate your pre-existing conclusion. That is circular reasoning.

Society is born from game theory. It is better for you to be a part of it, which is why you go along with it. Since it flows from your best interests, that means it comes down to you being accountable for your choices. This makes personal responsibility paramount. This is the most basic role of government - to ensure personal responsibility. The justice system is based off the idea you are accountable for your actions. The rest of government duties are largely structured around keeping the playing field level so that your actions determine where you end up. We have a military to keep others from rolling in and taking our stuff. We regulate interactions through laws to prevent things like dint of birth from granting an advantage. We ensure that people don't get away with things because they are bigger and stronger like they used to, and we try to ensure that pre-existing wealth doesn't let them do that either.

You pay taxes for people who are on welfare because they decided to cheat on their Finals in college and got expelled and haven't managed to find a job yet thanks to this lovely down-cycle. I pay taxes for medicare to those people who jumped into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim and nearly drowned.

Bullshit. You pay taxes because it benefits you. Upkeep of roads allows you to travel and commerce to take place, which grants you access to wealth, goods and services. You pay for police and firemen to protect you from criminals and fires. Socialized health care, like labor laws, protect you and improve one of the factors of production, enriching you. You pay for welfare because it helps keep the crime rate down (immediately benefiting you) and because you might need it some day (benefiting you long term).

You can leave this country and western civilization any time you want - we have yahoos like that Into the Wild{/i] kid do it from time to time.

Just because a man doesn't look both ways before crossing a street doesn't mean he deserves to die or be crippled if I can save him.

Bullshit. Self destructive acts are, amazingly, self destructive. If you decide to put on a Superman costume and jump off the Empire State Building you get exactly what is coming to you. When you dart into a busy street without looking, it isn't that you escaped some unfair punishment, you got fucking lucky.

If you run out of gas on the highway, should every other driver snub you because you were stressed about your mother potentially having cancer and forgot to fill up before you left the city? I mean, have you never done anything atrociously stupid?

Yes I have. And you know what? It has been my fault, and I took the lumps for it. "You did it too!" isn't a valid argument from a 5 year old, it certainly won't fly here.


WRT the opening post, it depends on the scenario. It is certainly the nice thing to do (note that just because you are angeling for some benefit from helping another doesn't negate the good you did in helping them). If the person is somehow impaired you would likely be obligated to help, but not necessarily. It may be in your best interests to help ( I call 911 when your house is on fire so that you will do the same for me). But if there is some absolute moral argument that I am ethically bound to save you from yourself I am yet to hear it.

[Ender]

GHETTO EDIT: If you indeed never have made any stupid decisions, you are indeed void of responsibility to those who have. But the idea of the Social Contract is that when you screw up, you won't have to rough it like a lone survivalist in the Wild West excommunicated and Damned for all time.

How about you learn what the words mean before you use them. Social Contract was Locke's argument that we agree to preserve social order because it protects our property rights. I was entirely based on individuality and accountability. It is the exact opposite of what you are claiming it is about. Locke and Hobbes believed that we gave up the natural rights to claim the civil rights so that there would be no more "war of all against all". You didn't join up because we all want to hug and love and share, you sign up to make sure your shit doesn't get jacked and agree to be held accountable if you try to jack someone's shit.

[PeZook]

I think people are ethically responsible for helping others avoid bad decisions, and government have an ethical responsibility to preserve the good of society: for example, if 90% of your citizens are incapable of managing their own health care, the entire society is in danger, and thus the government should take over. Sometimes, the government has to do the opposite: bring down people and organizations which are too succesful, again: for the benefit of the system as a whole.

Personal accountability is a fine thing in theory, untill the scale gets too large. For example, let's say that thousands of people lost their homes to a flood, because they lived in an area which floods from time to time, and they didn't insure their homes: should the government just say "fuck them, it was their decision", or help them find some basic shelter at least? The first option will create several thousand disenfranchised people who will enlarge the teeming masses of the poor and without a doubt contribute to crime and other social problems ; The second will potentially rehabilitate some of those people and have them paying taxes again in some time, so it's probably more ethical.

[Sikon]

Is it ethical to permit a person's own decisions to harm him?

In general, such depends on the consequences.

Is it moral to let a person starve to death? No, not in any circumstance.

While everybody reading this thread including me is letting people in places including Africa starve to death insofar as one of us going greatly out of our way could save at least one life, I don't claim that is moral, although it fits within my own ethical system of helping people to a moderate "practical" degree. (E.g. I don't spend money helping them now but would do so if I was a billionaire or if I could save a life for sufficiently small effort).

Is it moral to let a person lose a luxury because they made poor decisions? Yes. It isn't our responsibility to eliminate all consequences of someone else's actions.

Is it moral to let a person end up just on welfare, food stamps, and Medicare/Medicaid (the worst situation that somebody normally should be in within the U.S. since someone poor enough is eligible for all three)? Circumstantially yes, such as in cases where it was through their own fault from making a lot of poor choices after being given other opportunities (although that isn't always so for all people ending up on it in the unpleasant realities of the real world).

If the answer wasn't yes, than that would mean expenditures per person for one or more of those programs could need to be increased a little, but my impression is of them being as much as the minimum acceptable.

For example, while not allowing a lot of restaurant eating since even fast food places are more expensive than bulk food purchases from supermarkets, the $100/month food equivalent of the U.S. food stamp program per person is enough for a decent variety of food and a plentiful enough amount. My charity doesn't go so far as trying to ensure they can buy $8 pizzas from Pizza Hut instead of the $2.50 cheap-brand frozen ones from the supermarket that they would have to bother to spend some minutes cooking in an oven first. It'd be a lousy life by first-world standards and one that I hope people avoid but not starving to death. Any healthy people on it normally technically have the ability to get out of if it over time if they are willing to take extreme measures like illegal immigrants sometimes succeed after working long hours, traveling long distances to better employment if necessary, and saving up money over time, although such is very hard, of course.

(This is not to say that I agree with the opening post's implicit characterization of the debate in the other thread, but a long post on the topics of the other thread belongs in it if I get around to making it later).

[Sikon]

For example, let's say that thousands of people lost their homes to a flood, because they lived in an area which floods from time to time, and they didn't insure their homes: should the government just say "fuck them, it was their decision", or help them find some basic shelter at least?

Yes, the government should give them basic shelter, not letting people freeze to death outside or anything like that. However, I would consider it acceptable if that shelter was closer to military barracks for enlisted privates in accomodations than replacing their $300000 houses or the like.

They shouldn't die but money shouldn't be taken from sometimes poor taxpayers living in apartments to pay for their fancier houses. If they wanted no loss whatsoever, they shouldn't have chosen to move to a flood-prone area or should have paid for insurance; there would be no point in paying for insurance if the government paid out just as much as insurance to the people who didn't pay for it.

[PeZook]

Yes, the government should give them basic shelter, not letting people freeze to death outside or anything like that. However, I would consider it acceptable if that shelter was closer to military barracks for enlisted privates in accomodations than replacing their $300000 houses or the like.

Obviously, the aid should be reasonable: it's supposed to give them a chance to recover, not replace every luxury they owned. It's important to retain consequences for poor decisions while not allowing people to be perpetually thrown into poverty, since this serves no-one.

The government here maintains a modest supply of so-called "social apartments" - these are low-standard but decent flats, which are issued as-needed to pepole who, say, lost their homes to fires or floods or bankrupcy. They are supposed to live there temporarily while they recover. The standard is low enough that most people would rather not move there if they could help it, but they're far away from roach-infested shitholes, so it works pretty well.

[Sikon]

The government here maintains a modest supply of so-called "social apartments" - these are low-standard but decent flats, which are issued as-needed to pepole who, say, lost their homes to fires or floods or bankrupcy. They are supposed to live there temporarily while they recover. The standard is low enough that most people would rather not move there if they could help it, but they're far away from roach-infested shitholes, so it works pretty well.

It seems like they have the right idea, obtaining acceptable basic living standards and yet not so great as to prevent people from having motivation to get a job and make money to get out of there.

Reminiscent of Soviet-style concrete apartments, I've always thought that something like Edison's idea for making cheap buildings in a matter of hours instead of months of labor could have a niche application for refugee camps, for some people at a time in their lives where they were more concerned with saving money than aesthetics, or for other similar applications.

That August [1906], in an after-dinner speech in New York City, Edison announced his latest brainchild to the world. Concrete homes, he said, would revolutionize American life. They would be fireproof, insect-proof, easy to clean. The walls could be pre-tinted in attractive colors and would never need to be repainted. Everything from shingles to bathtubs to picture frames would be cast as a single monolith of concrete, in a process that took just a few hours. Extra stories could be added with a simple adjustment of the molding forms. Best of all, the $1,200-dollar houses would be cheap enough for even the poorest slum-dwellers to afford.

Scarcely less extravagant were the claims of Edison's admirers. "The time will most certainly come when whole houses will be turned out in one piece," a biographer declared in 1907. When the molds were removed, he wrote, "a solid and almost bomb-proof house will be left behind." [...]

A builder had to buy at least $175,000 in equipment before pouring a single house. Furthermore, nobody wanted to live in a residence that had been dubbed "the salvation of the slum dweller."

From here

In today's dollars, such would be $20000-and-some per house. Such for a house-size building suggests proportionally maybe less than $10000 per small apartment, amortized over 10+ years for maybe around $100 or less amortized capital costs a month. It seems totally plausible even discounting advances in technology in the past 102 years since then, as concrete doesn't cost much per ton and just casting something in a multipiece mold doesn't take thousands of manhours of labor or months of time per casting.

There would be some continuing expenses beyond that other than construction such as electricity, but that compares to $350 to $500+ a month for regular cheap apartments today, at least in the U.S. anyway.

[Sikon]

Edit: For some reason, I'm seeing the wrong picture displayed on refresh in the above post; it's supposed to display a house model, not a bird.

Regarding the preceding, for example, obtain on the order of $200/month for such small mass-produced apartments, $100/month for food, and $200/month misc aside from medical care ... and nominally 10 million people could be housed, fed, etc. for $5 billion a month at $500/month basic expense per person. Whatever medical coverage costs exactly would need to be added to the resulting $60 billion a year figure. However, there are less than than 10 million people on welfare, and such would correspond to literally just a bit more than 1% of the $5200 billion a year spent by federal, state, and local governments in 2008.

[Steel]

Edit: For some reason, I'm seeing the wrong picture displayed on refresh in the above post; it's supposed to display a house model, not a bird.

You might really want to get rid of that somehow, as i see a very NSFW picture of a naked-but-for-some-rope woman tied up, gagged and blindfolded...

[Solauren]

In My Humble Opinion;

It is ethical to let someone screw themselves over under the following conditions;

1 - The person was properly informed about the situation, but choose to ignore all expert advice, OR, had access to that information and choose to not seek it, OR, refused to investigate the existence of such information
example; refusal of medical treatment, risky stock market investment, bad credit card decisions, etc.

2 - The person is/was believed to be mentally fit, prior to and at the time of the situtation.

3 - The person proceeded on their own free will.


Why I believe this;
The simple fact of the matter is, if a person is a bull headed idiot, they are going to screw themselves up anyway. And most of society is like this in some regard.

The only way to prevent this would be turn into a society similiar to that protrayed in some science fiction movies, where all the work and though is done for humans by machines or other servants.

We can take steps to limit or lower the number of instances of someone screwing themselves over, through improved education, through regulations and laws, and through competiency testing, but truthfully, we'll never elminate it entirely.

And you know what? We really shouldn't.

Some people do not learn without harsh lessons (if at all). Sometimes, a drug user has to hit rock bottom and realise he needs help himself before he can be helped. Sometimes a gambling addict has to lose everything because of his addiction, and sometimes a religious idiot has to refuse medical attention and die as a result before others wake up to their own stupidity.
Hell, some people, that's the only way they respond.

And that's human nature.

We can't change it, but we can lessen the impact.

For example; Credit Card debt.
For private individuals;
Put regulations in place were your maximum limit is based on your income. Say 1 weeks pay, maybe two weeks.
Put regulations in place where someone can only have two credit cards.
Put regulations in place controlling interest rates on credit cards.
Remove over-draft from Debit Cards. Require minimum balances (enforced by the bank + machines and so forth) if someone has a credit card debt.

Now, the most someone can go into debt is two months salary. Sure, that's still alot of money, but nothing that isn't controlable.


You could do something similiar with medical treatments (all though in some countries, refusing medical treatment is the least of their medical systems problems), and alot of other things.

[Darth Wong]

Society is born from game theory. It is better for you to be a part of it, which is why you go along with it.

Wrong. Society is not necessarily better for every individual; it is better for the people in it at large. That's a fairly important distinction, because it speaks to the need for society to improve the lot of people at large, but not necessarily every single individual in it.

Since it flows from your best interests, that means it comes down to you being accountable for your choices. This makes personal responsibility paramount. This is the most basic role of government - to ensure personal responsibility.

Wrong again. The most basic role of government is to ensure the security and prosperity of the entire society at large. What you are talking about is American politico-rhetorical bullshit.

The justice system is based off the idea you are accountable for your actions.

Wrong yet again. The justice system is based on the idea of maintaining order through deterrence and monitoring. The idea of personal accountability is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

The rest of government duties are largely structured around keeping the playing field level so that your actions determine where you end up.

Ah yes, meritocracy. That is a fine attempt to achieve the goal of maximizing a society's security and prosperity, but you must keep in mind: it is not the goal in itself. It is simply what we currently feel to be the best way of achieving the goal.

Bullshit. You pay taxes because it benefits you.

You pay taxes because it benefits society. Society includes you, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you as an individual come out ahead. To take an extreme example, if you want to do certain things that we deem illegal, you go to jail or maybe even get executed. This is obviously not good value for you as an individual.

Bullshit. Self destructive acts are, amazingly, self destructive. If you decide to put on a Superman costume and jump off the Empire State Building you get exactly what is coming to you. When you dart into a busy street without looking, it isn't that you escaped some unfair punishment, you got fucking lucky.

And why is "fairness" the ultimate arbiter of ethics? Fairness is certainly one aspect of ethics, but to act as though it is the totality of ethics is absurd. It must be balanced against the needs of society. Like many other mantras of American society, you tout fairness itself as an absolute, when it is only a means to an end.

But if there is some absolute moral argument that I am ethically bound to save you from yourself I am yet to hear it.

Human life has moral value. There's your "absolute moral argument". If it has moral value, then society is ethically obligated to try to preserve it. Or is "human life has value" too much of an alien concept for you? You've never heard it before? Or do you reject it as a moral argument? If you do, then on what grounds?

[Vendetta]

Bullshit. It can be shown both in modern day and through evolutionary psychology arguments that basic game theory is what gives rise to society. That game theory is that you will choose the course that best benefits you.

Not necessarily.

One of the core theories presented in The Selfish Gene/The Extended Phenotype is that altruism can arise genetically because the gene for altruistic behaviour has a good chance of helping other copies of that same gene to prosper, albeit in other bodies.

So no, game theory does not inevitably conclude that individuals will take the course of action which leads to the best individual benefit.

[Sikon]

Edit: For some reason, I'm seeing the wrong picture displayed on refresh in the above post; it's supposed to display a house model, not a bird.

You might really want to get rid of that somehow, as i see a very NSFW picture of a naked-but-for-some-rope woman tied up, gagged and blindfolded...

I would delete it if I could, but I can't. It links directly to an address on another site, and editing posts isn't enabled in this forum. Sorry to hear that. There wasn't anything about the site talking about history and inventions that made it seem like it would have some sort of weird changing picture script at the http://flyingmoose.org/truthfic/cementma.jpg address. It seemed to reference the cementma.jpg of the house but now reroutes to http://flyingmoose.org/hotflash.jpeg apparently. So far I have seen a house, a bird, and some old advertisement.

[Surlethe]

The most basic role of government is to ensure the security and prosperity of the entire society at large.

How do you measure the prosperity of the entire society at large? For example, US society at large is certainly far more prosperous than Canadian society, as measured by national income; does this mean that its government is doing a better job?

[Darth Wong]

The most basic role of government is to ensure the security and prosperity of the entire society at large.

How do you measure the prosperity of the entire society at large? For example, US society at large is certainly far more prosperous than Canadian society, as measured by national income; does this mean that its government is doing a better job?

There is no absolute correct way to measure the prosperity of a society at large. There are numerous ways of looking at it; the method you suggested is based on total economic output, disregarding distribution of wealth within the society (which would be like saying that a person is doing well if half his body is ravaged by disease, as long as the other half is really healthy).

No one said that outcome-based ethics was going to be simple to measure. Part of the problem with American rights-based ethics is that it aims for precisely that kind of simplicity: turning ethics into a simple black and white chess game of rights and rules, and don't give a damn what the outcome is.

[Pablo Sanchez]

How do you measure the prosperity of the entire society at large? For example, US society at large is certainly far more prosperous than Canadian society, as measured by national income; does this mean that its government is doing a better job?

Simply put, no. The UN publishes a Human Development index every year. See here. There are a lot of factors that go into the analysis. Canada is #4 this year, the USA is #12.

[Ender]

Wrong. Society is not necessarily better for every individual; it is better for the people in it at large. That's a fairly important distinction, because it speaks to the need for society to improve the lot of people at large, but not necessarily every single individual in it.

Wrong. Society may not be optimal for individuals in it, but over all it is a substantial gain. We had a similar argument here when that "undiscovered" tribe was found - the benefits of modern civilization are undeniable, and even in a repressive and fucked up regime like China you are still doing better then you would if you were trying to etch out a living in the wilderness.

Wrong again. The most basic role of government is to ensure the security and prosperity of the entire society at large.

And it does so by ensuring personal responsibility - it may be a means to the end rather then the end itself, but it doesn't change that that is what it does.

What you are talking about is American politico-rhetorical bullshit.

Seeing as how he cited Locke as backing him, framing it within the arguments of American society is kinda the idea.

Wrong yet again. The justice system is based on the idea of maintaining order through deterrence and monitoring. The idea of personal accountability is a means to an end, not the end in itself.

I was speaking to the central point it is organized around, not the end goal in and of itself.

Ah yes, meritocracy. That is a fine attempt to achieve the goal of maximizing a society's security and prosperity, but you must keep in mind: it is not the goal in itself. It is simply what we currently feel to be the best way of achieving the goal.

Granted, but again if he wants to argue this position from the basis of Locke's writings, it makes sense to engage it within those terms.

You pay taxes because it benefits society. Society includes you, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you as an individual come out ahead. To take an extreme example, if you want to do certain things that we deem illegal, you go to jail or maybe even get executed. This is obviously not good value for you as an individual.

What benefits society benefits me - if it doesn't I do have the option of leaving it. The laws in your extreme example do benefit me, even though they harm me if I willingly break them, because so long as I do not I am protected by them.

And why is "fairness" the ultimate arbiter of ethics? Fairness is certainly one aspect of ethics, but to act as though it is the totality of ethics is absurd. It must be balanced against the needs of society. Like many other mantras of American society, you tout fairness itself as an absolute, when it is only a means to an end.

Actually he was the one arguing fairness or not by discussing whether a person "deserves to die or be crippled". My point was quite the opposite - that the universe doesn't give a shit and there will be reprecussions for your actions irrespective of your personal history, character, or other traits. I admit the sleep deprivation of writing that at near 3 in the morning may have left it unclear, but I went with the example of "you vs the laws of nature" to try and point out the flaws in the "fairness" argument.

Human life has moral value. There's your "absolute moral argument". If it has moral value, then society is ethically obligated to try to preserve it. Or is "human life has value" too much of an alien concept for you? You've never heard it before? Or do you reject it as a moral argument? If you do, then on what grounds?

Strawman, I never spoke to the value of human life, I covered protecting someone from their own actions. But if you want to cover that I would argue that human life is not that which has the moral value, but human potential. If it is simply life that holds the value, then things like the Genie Wiley case, while distasteful, are not then morally wrong - she was still alive. But if human potential is what has the moral value, then it was a morally despicable act as their mistreatment prohibited her from having the opportunity to reach her full potential. Admittedly you can't have one without the other, but I think placing the emphasis on potential instead of life allows moral arguments to be expanded into different fields with better examples. For example, it then allows a more explicit case to be made about things like differences in inner city schools vs private suburban schools. It also makes a case for things like prisons to be rehabilitation centers rather then incarceration centers.

[Ender]

fuck it, I cannot get that link to work for some reason.

[madd0ct0r]

No biggie. Concrete housing for refugees is a non starter but I'll PM you the arguments to avoid derailment.


As far as I can see there are a number of factors to take into account.
I'd love to try and quantify them into a proper equation but I'll see what the thread chucks up first.

Should I let somebody's decision screw them over?

higher value = i will intervene.


Proportional Factors:
The probability I am correct in predicting the outcome.
The severity of the outcome.
The probability they will thank me for it (instead of being neutral)
The impartial benefit to them.

Inversely Proportionate Factors:
The cost of intervening; either to me directly or to me through society.
The probability they will resent me for it (instead of being neutral)
The usefulness of the lesson to them.
The usefulness of the lesson to others.
The degree of free will and intention they can be argued to have.


Some of those are linked but I don't think any are a binary pair.
Anything I've missed?