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The park where I’d go to play basketball as a kid was a big Blood hangout. And obviously, my CD empire wouldn’t exactly hold up 100 percent to copyright laws bu

The park where I’d go to play basketball as a kid was a big Blood hangout. And obviously, my CD empire wouldn’t exactly hold up 100 percent to copyright laws but compared to the alternatives of what I could’ve been doing for money, I think it was pretty solid. I'm not a big moral relativist, but "ethics" when viewed by a resident of Compton in the early 2000's might appear in a slightly different light than many other places I can think of.

webwanderings 11y ago
Two wrongs do not make one right. Principles are only relevant when they are difficult to follow.
- noonespecial 11y ago
  I'd argue its that degree of difficulty that is at issue here. $15.99 paid to a big corp is very different to an out-grouped minority living in poverty with almost no investment in "the system" than it is to a Princeton student living on his trust fund. Ethics are for rich people. Morality is for everyone. What this kid did may have violated some of the ethical rules a bunch of privileged people set up to perpetuate and sanitize their own in-grouped society, but Aaron had basically zero participation in that group so its rules must have seemed impossibly distant to him. His actions, however seem to have been both a benefit to him and to his community, vs the other choices he could have made that would benefit him at the expense of his own group. I'd call these actions moral, even if not "ethical". How different really is this than when Uber or AirBNB thumbs their collective noses at the rules "the man" has set up that seem wrong to them? Aaron's a hacker, and a hustler, just like us. One of our kind.
  - webwanderings 11y ago
    Sadly, you are incorrect, and probably in the majority. Rules of ethics are not setup by privileged few; they are the cause of civilized humanity. Without them, we wouldn't have come this far. What he did to hustle the donuts, was fair and ethical. He earned his fair share. But what he did with churning out CDs, was not. We all can possibly see that. But of course, the trade born out of Napster must have been hard to resist. The part about resisting, is where ethics reside.
    - mindslight 11y ago
      One can have a consistent set of ethics in which imaginary property does not exist. For example, my personal opinion is that it is unethical to directly support companies working to put the Internet genie back in the bottle, especially for mere convenience.
      - twoodfin 11y ago
        One can have a consistent set of ethics in which imaginary property does not exist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but an NBA player's livelihood depends quite a bit on the "imaginary property" that makes it illegal to rebroadcast games and sell counterfeit jerseys.
        mindslight 11y ago
        Yes, at least ostensibly. But the author wasn't the one who brought up ethics. A "hustle everything" set of ethics seems like it would include both breaking copyright law and utilizing it, depending on how it benefits oneself. Perhaps this is approaching a "null" ethics, but if those values are shared by his peer group then it seems like they should still qualify as ethics. It's just a bit disingenuous to appeal to ethics and morality while really referencing laws, especially when we can see (historically) that laws are often wrong.
        webwanderings 11y ago
        Remove the notion of laws, and you'd arrive at the same situation. Laws are auto generated through human evolution, they are not forced in themselves. Look at it this way: does anyone get hurt if 50 cent donut is being sought for $1? There's no Napster of donut business.
        jpatokal 11y ago
        And how much was 50 Cent hurt when somebody bought a $5 bootleg CD, instead of not buying a $16.99 CD they couldn't afford?
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    One of us as long as the ethics and laws he breaks are what we find personally agreeable. Skirt rental laws and you become popular because so few people understand the reason for those laws. Skirt child labor laws and you don't, because people do see the major wrong, even if what you are providing for those children is a better alternative than any of their other choices. In this case, the guy violated copyright law, one of the laws people tend to not agree with, so he is popular.
- vonklaus 11y ago
  Ethics are subjective. In the culture he described this seems like it was no only ethical, but praiseworthy. Ethics are not universal and neither are principles. I think he turned out alright, but that is my opinion.
  - hugh4 11y ago
    Ethics are not subjective. People merely disagree on what the right ones are. There is some optimal set of ethics which, if consistently followed, will lead to an optimal set of outcomes. We're not clever enough to figure them out, though, and so people will quite happily come up with their own, inevitably self-serving ethical systems in which "the things I want to do are right, the things you want to do are wrong". Getting everyone to behave perfectly ethically is impossible, but telling everyone that their own self-serving ethical systems are perfectly valid is one of the worst things you can do.
  - webwanderings 11y ago
    Fundamental ethics are not subjective. Is murder subjective? A live human disappears from existence by force, how is that subjective? Now, murder something of that live person, say, make him handicapped by force. Is that subjective? You will now claim that it is subjective, because the person is at least alive. No. It is still not subjective. Now, take it further down the food chain. Steal something from a person. Bully him. Curse him. Make his life miserable. All subjective? Nothing is subjective here. The fundamental ethics filters down to the common ethics. If one is subjective, they are all subjective. But you will be hard pressed to prove a murder to be subjective. So, none of the ethics are subjective.

webwanderings 11y ago

Two wrongs do not make one right. Principles are only relevant when they are difficult to follow.

noonespecial 11y ago
I'd argue its that degree of difficulty that is at issue here. $15.99 paid to a big corp is very different to an out-grouped minority living in poverty with almost no investment in "the system" than it is to a Princeton student living on his trust fund. Ethics are for rich people. Morality is for everyone. What this kid did may have violated some of the ethical rules a bunch of privileged people set up to perpetuate and sanitize their own in-grouped society, but Aaron had basically zero participation in that group so its rules must have seemed impossibly distant to him. His actions, however seem to have been both a benefit to him and to his community, vs the other choices he could have made that would benefit him at the expense of his own group. I'd call these actions moral, even if not "ethical". How different really is this than when Uber or AirBNB thumbs their collective noses at the rules "the man" has set up that seem wrong to them? Aaron's a hacker, and a hustler, just like us. One of our kind.
- webwanderings 11y ago
  Sadly, you are incorrect, and probably in the majority. Rules of ethics are not setup by privileged few; they are the cause of civilized humanity. Without them, we wouldn't have come this far. What he did to hustle the donuts, was fair and ethical. He earned his fair share. But what he did with churning out CDs, was not. We all can possibly see that. But of course, the trade born out of Napster must have been hard to resist. The part about resisting, is where ethics reside.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    One can have a consistent set of ethics in which imaginary property does not exist. For example, my personal opinion is that it is unethical to directly support companies working to put the Internet genie back in the bottle, especially for mere convenience.
    - twoodfin 11y ago
      One can have a consistent set of ethics in which imaginary property does not exist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but an NBA player's livelihood depends quite a bit on the "imaginary property" that makes it illegal to rebroadcast games and sell counterfeit jerseys.
      - mindslight 11y ago
        Yes, at least ostensibly. But the author wasn't the one who brought up ethics. A "hustle everything" set of ethics seems like it would include both breaking copyright law and utilizing it, depending on how it benefits oneself. Perhaps this is approaching a "null" ethics, but if those values are shared by his peer group then it seems like they should still qualify as ethics. It's just a bit disingenuous to appeal to ethics and morality while really referencing laws, especially when we can see (historically) that laws are often wrong.
        webwanderings 11y ago
        Remove the notion of laws, and you'd arrive at the same situation. Laws are auto generated through human evolution, they are not forced in themselves. Look at it this way: does anyone get hurt if 50 cent donut is being sought for $1? There's no Napster of donut business.
        jpatokal 11y ago
        And how much was 50 Cent hurt when somebody bought a $5 bootleg CD, instead of not buying a $16.99 CD they couldn't afford?
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  One of us as long as the ethics and laws he breaks are what we find personally agreeable. Skirt rental laws and you become popular because so few people understand the reason for those laws. Skirt child labor laws and you don't, because people do see the major wrong, even if what you are providing for those children is a better alternative than any of their other choices. In this case, the guy violated copyright law, one of the laws people tend to not agree with, so he is popular.
vonklaus 11y ago
Ethics are subjective. In the culture he described this seems like it was no only ethical, but praiseworthy. Ethics are not universal and neither are principles. I think he turned out alright, but that is my opinion.
- hugh4 11y ago
  Ethics are not subjective. People merely disagree on what the right ones are. There is some optimal set of ethics which, if consistently followed, will lead to an optimal set of outcomes. We're not clever enough to figure them out, though, and so people will quite happily come up with their own, inevitably self-serving ethical systems in which "the things I want to do are right, the things you want to do are wrong". Getting everyone to behave perfectly ethically is impossible, but telling everyone that their own self-serving ethical systems are perfectly valid is one of the worst things you can do.
- webwanderings 11y ago
  Fundamental ethics are not subjective. Is murder subjective? A live human disappears from existence by force, how is that subjective? Now, murder something of that live person, say, make him handicapped by force. Is that subjective? You will now claim that it is subjective, because the person is at least alive. No. It is still not subjective. Now, take it further down the food chain. Steal something from a person. Bully him. Curse him. Make his life miserable. All subjective? Nothing is subjective here. The fundamental ethics filters down to the common ethics. If one is subjective, they are all subjective. But you will be hard pressed to prove a murder to be subjective. So, none of the ethics are subjective.