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It's more complicated than that. If you look at the "local" outcome of the situation, both participants benefit. However, if this spreads and becomes the "new

It's more complicated than that. If you look at the "local" outcome of the situation, both participants benefit. However, if this spreads and becomes the "new normal" (eg, zero-hour contracts), this can result in a net diminution of social good compared to alternative outcomes where employers would have offered better terms to their employees. I think that's the issue people have with this kind of "improvement".

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Exactly. This is a "thin end of the wedge" argument. If you agree that certain actions can be moral in limited circumstances, you also agree to support the moral logic they're based on, on principle - even if that moral logic does huge harm elsewhere. It's a superficially clever rhetorical argument, but it's not a very moral one. If you're a poor person, you don't want to be in situation where PETA are offering to interfere in your life to make a political point - you want to be in a situation where you're not poor in the first place. There's no point saying that bandaids can stop people bleeding and people who don't want to use them are bad, if you don't address why there are flesh wounds everywhere you look. Are bandaids better than nothing? They are. But there are still people trying to fix the flesh wounds. Does the author support them, or not?
- golemotron 11y ago
  > There's no point saying that bandaids can stop people bleeding and people who don't want to use them are bad, if you don't address why there are flesh wounds everywhere you look. Yet poverty is improving globally ( http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-reduce-acute-poverty http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-red... ). Given that, no one should be faulted for doing what they can to help locally. > Are bandaids better than nothing? They are. But there are still people trying to fix the flesh wounds. Does the author support them, or not? It doesn't matter. The author presented an idea that is important in its own right. I don't think there's any moral authority anyone can draw upon to say that he or she needs to do more. Anyone who thinks there is is proving the author's point.
  - mercurial 11y ago
    It's not a problem of "doing more" or "doing less". It's that, based on the available choices the actor has ("aid"/"don't aid"/"aid conditionally"), the actor picks the outcome which disproportionately favours him, while the other actor has a limited range of strategy available. If your house is burning and the fire brigade is too busy to help, and your neighbour Bob comes with a fire extinguisher and a smile on his face, and proposes to give you the fire extinguisher in exchange for your new car, I sure hope there won't be any hard feelings next time Bob drives past your house.
    - grinnbearit 11y ago
      But would you rather him not offer to trade? You could say no, how are you in a worse position after he makes an offer? Why would you rather he didn't?
      - mercurial 11y ago
        Of course you can say no. It still means Bob is an asshole. Bob, unlike you, has many more options. He deliberately chooses to take advantage of your lack of options, even though behaving like a normal, decent human being and helping you for free by simply giving you the goddamn extinguisher would entail no great cost to him. People like Bob are not out there to help others. They're out there to win.
        TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        You've just described the business model of a Roman character called Crassus. He invented the fire brigade. He also invented a fire brigade protection racket: if your house was burning he'd offer to buy it at a knock-down once-in-a-lifetime price before putting the fire out. It was a solution of sorts. But maybe not the best of all possible solutions.
pdkl95 11y ago
If this trend of trying to optimize away away any profit in blue collar jobs until people can barely sustain themselves continues for much longer, we will have a much bigger problem to worry about than the minutia of employment. Once employment starts to dance at the low-wage edge and some people start to lose the ability to eat, open revolt and/or revolution happens. A popular misconception is this is unlikely in America, because nobody is suffering that badly. The people that believe this obviously haven't worked in the fast-food or similar low-pay industries recently[1]. [1] https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker-strikes-back-fa4c36eb306b https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker-st...
kansface 11y ago
> if this spreads and becomes the "new normal" ... that's the issue people have with this kind of "improvement". I don't find this argument convincing. 1. I don't believe anyone in this thread has actually raised this objection. 2. If others have raised this objection, I would not believe this is their actual motivation. The (acerbic) discussion in this thread is not traceable to a future possibility of worse terms for employees - it is outrage over moral turpitude. 3. The possibility of a worse future requires strong proof to not choose real benefits now.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago

Exactly. This is a "thin end of the wedge" argument. If you agree that certain actions can be moral in limited circumstances, you also agree to support the moral logic they're based on, on principle - even if that moral logic does huge harm elsewhere. It's a superficially clever rhetorical argument, but it's not a very moral one. If you're a poor person, you don't want to be in situation where PETA are offering to interfere in your life to make a political point - you want to be in a situation where you're not poor in the first place. There's no point saying that bandaids can stop people bleeding and people who don't want to use them are bad, if you don't address why there are flesh wounds everywhere you look. Are bandaids better than nothing? They are. But there are still people trying to fix the flesh wounds. Does the author support them, or not?

golemotron 11y ago
> There's no point saying that bandaids can stop people bleeding and people who don't want to use them are bad, if you don't address why there are flesh wounds everywhere you look. Yet poverty is improving globally ( http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-reduce-acute-poverty http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/17/aid-trade-red... ). Given that, no one should be faulted for doing what they can to help locally. > Are bandaids better than nothing? They are. But there are still people trying to fix the flesh wounds. Does the author support them, or not? It doesn't matter. The author presented an idea that is important in its own right. I don't think there's any moral authority anyone can draw upon to say that he or she needs to do more. Anyone who thinks there is is proving the author's point.
- mercurial 11y ago
  It's not a problem of "doing more" or "doing less". It's that, based on the available choices the actor has ("aid"/"don't aid"/"aid conditionally"), the actor picks the outcome which disproportionately favours him, while the other actor has a limited range of strategy available. If your house is burning and the fire brigade is too busy to help, and your neighbour Bob comes with a fire extinguisher and a smile on his face, and proposes to give you the fire extinguisher in exchange for your new car, I sure hope there won't be any hard feelings next time Bob drives past your house.
  - grinnbearit 11y ago
    But would you rather him not offer to trade? You could say no, how are you in a worse position after he makes an offer? Why would you rather he didn't?
    - mercurial 11y ago
      Of course you can say no. It still means Bob is an asshole. Bob, unlike you, has many more options. He deliberately chooses to take advantage of your lack of options, even though behaving like a normal, decent human being and helping you for free by simply giving you the goddamn extinguisher would entail no great cost to him. People like Bob are not out there to help others. They're out there to win.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        You've just described the business model of a Roman character called Crassus. He invented the fire brigade. He also invented a fire brigade protection racket: if your house was burning he'd offer to buy it at a knock-down once-in-a-lifetime price before putting the fire out. It was a solution of sorts. But maybe not the best of all possible solutions.

pdkl95 11y ago

If this trend of trying to optimize away away any profit in blue collar jobs until people can barely sustain themselves continues for much longer, we will have a much bigger problem to worry about than the minutia of employment. Once employment starts to dance at the low-wage edge and some people start to lose the ability to eat, open revolt and/or revolution happens. A popular misconception is this is unlikely in America, because nobody is suffering that badly. The people that believe this obviously haven't worked in the fast-food or similar low-pay industries recently[1]. [1] https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker-strikes-back-fa4c36eb306b https://medium.com/@sarahkendzior/the-minimum-wage-worker-st...

kansface 11y ago

> if this spreads and becomes the "new normal" ... that's the issue people have with this kind of "improvement". I don't find this argument convincing. 1. I don't believe anyone in this thread has actually raised this objection. 2. If others have raised this objection, I would not believe this is their actual motivation. The (acerbic) discussion in this thread is not traceable to a future possibility of worse terms for employees - it is outrage over moral turpitude. 3. The possibility of a worse future requires strong proof to not choose real benefits now.