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If you are getting money from a legal activity you consider morally unsound, consider donating the profits to a charity GiveWell recommends. Some other service

If you are getting money from a legal activity you consider morally unsound, consider donating the profits to a charity GiveWell recommends. Some other service will pick up the slack, so throwing in the towel and your profits is a very inefficient means of stopping that act you consider to be morally unsound. In fact, you're subsidizing those without moral scruples. Stopping this because it "feels wrong" is odd. Donate the profits to a charity. At the absurd extreme, If you honestly feel adblocking is a moral problem, donate the profits to an anti-adblocking lobby. Throwing away your money is throwing away your leverage.

alangfiles 11y ago
If utilitarian ethics are better than deontological ethics, then you're right. But it's hard to value one system over the other. I'm guess Marco is acting on principal here, and not on greatest good for the cause.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > If utilitarian ethics are better than deontological ethics, then you're right. But it's hard to value one system over the other. No, its not. Its quite easy to do so, and people do it all the time without any particular effort. Its impossible, not merely hard, to argue that someone else should value one over the other, without first choosing some from of one or the other as the basis for the argument, since you can't get a value conclusion without a value premise.
AnimalMuppet 11y ago
Do what you feel is morally wrong, and give away the profits? That's... bad ethics. "It's wrong, but it's for the greater good, so it's OK!" should be a major red flag. It says that what you're doing is wrong, you know it's wrong, and you're rationalizing. What lies down that road is the destruction of such morals as you currently have. Don't go there.
- robotresearcher 11y ago
  Governments do this on a massive scale with lotteries. I agree it's very dodgy ethically.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    Governments have a monopoly. In this case, new services will take all his customers. It's very different.
    - robotresearcher 11y ago
      They don't have a monopoly on gambling opportunities in most places.
      - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
        They do have a monopoly on lotteries.

alangfiles 11y ago

If utilitarian ethics are better than deontological ethics, then you're right. But it's hard to value one system over the other. I'm guess Marco is acting on principal here, and not on greatest good for the cause.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> If utilitarian ethics are better than deontological ethics, then you're right. But it's hard to value one system over the other. No, its not. Its quite easy to do so, and people do it all the time without any particular effort. Its impossible, not merely hard, to argue that someone else should value one over the other, without first choosing some from of one or the other as the basis for the argument, since you can't get a value conclusion without a value premise.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

Do what you feel is morally wrong, and give away the profits? That's... bad ethics. "It's wrong, but it's for the greater good, so it's OK!" should be a major red flag. It says that what you're doing is wrong, you know it's wrong, and you're rationalizing. What lies down that road is the destruction of such morals as you currently have. Don't go there.

robotresearcher 11y ago
Governments do this on a massive scale with lotteries. I agree it's very dodgy ethically.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  Governments have a monopoly. In this case, new services will take all his customers. It's very different.
  - robotresearcher 11y ago
    They don't have a monopoly on gambling opportunities in most places.
    - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
      They do have a monopoly on lotteries.