10 ms·

Ethical entanglement: if you try to make a problem slightly better, then by not fixing it entirely you are now to blame. Happens all the time: http://blog.jaibo

• golemotron 11y ago
  I came here to post that. Thank you.
• rkho 11y ago
  Thanks for posting this.
• cubano 11y ago
  Sounds like exactly what I go through every time I've fixed a malware-laden computer at whatever house I seem to be hanging out at nowadays. Everyone seems to have a laptop that "won't boot" or something...I've had to stop cleaning them for this very reason.
  • beachstartup 11y ago
    people still do this? this is really still a thing? i thought we all agreed to stop doing this years ago. doctors, lawyers, accountants, plumbers, electricians, mechanics have figured this out, i have faith that we can too. it's really not difficult. please stop doing free tech work for people. there is something in the human condition which will cause them to be 1. ungrateful and upset with the results of your help 2. ironically, ask for more free work 3. blame you for their own fuckups 4. have set expectations that you'll do more of it on demand. worst of all, you cheapen the entire concept of technology work. be the change you want to see in the world.
    • cubano 11y ago
      I don't know if it still "a thing" or not, but I try to help friends and such who may be going thru rough times or whatever, and I enjoy fixing broken things that people have given up on. Maybe it reminds me of myself and the help I've received after people gave up on me. But like I said, the fallout of it often reminds me of the parent post.
    • ehnto 11y ago
      Stopped doing websites for friends and loved ones a long time ago. Feature creep is even more of an issue when the value of your time is not quantified in some way for the client.
      • dh997 11y ago
        Yup. Buddy deals are the best way to waste your time, lose money and damage relationships.
    • afarrell 11y ago
      I actually kinda wish I did tech support for my grandmother. She's a nurse and I occasionally call her for things. However, my father used to be a sysadmin and seems to have things set up such that she doesn't need help with anything.
    • dh997 11y ago
      People want something for nothing, and when someone teach others they're a tool for an inch, they'll take that fool for a mile. As one example, I hilaroously got the public cold shoulder from that Scalr clown because he didn't feel he had to pay for my time and expertise, even though I didn't give anything away... I suspect he uses his cheap, outsourced eastern European staff and others in the community for free labor and simply scoffs at anyone whom doesn't immediately bow to his majesty. PS: I'm going to get "fuck you, pay me" on one arm and "always be closing" on the other.
    • marincounty 11y ago
      I haven't had the problem with poor people, or family. I do tell them, there's no guarantee, and it's most likely something you did, and you should learn more about computing before you even think about opening up the command line, or even use the time machine." I have had wealthy individuals act like they are doing me a favor because I need to find the virus/malware one of their clones dowloaded from some porn site. I always give them a quote. They send me home, and then the wife calls after hubby gets to the permently blue screen, or the wheel never stops spinning.
    • omegaham 11y ago
      I trade my tech knowledge for knowledge with other things. For example, my girlfriend's dad knows relatively little about computers, but he knows an enormous amount about home improvement and car maintenance. I fix his occasional computer issues, he can walk me through anything that happens to my poor beat-up Civic. This applies to pretty much everything - friends help friends with stuff. But there's a pretty clear tit-for-tat exchange going on. If I have a problem, I expect you to give me advice, too. So, in this way, I treat tech knowledge as being exactly the same as electrician knowledge, mechanical knowledge, and medical knowledge. If you want access to my knowledge, you have to give me access to your knowledge (and to your own network if you don't have any).
    • gregjwild 11y ago
      Anecdotally speaking, in the past month or so I've seen people ask doctor friends about their maladies, lawyers asked to look at contracts and accountants asked about mortgages - all off the clock and without pay. It's not just a tech thing.
• SilasX 11y ago
  Yep, you beat me to it. It's like a variant on the old joke[1]: "You must be a profiteer." 'Sure, I guess I count as one. How'd you know?' "Well, you learned about the immense, tragic problem of homelessness, and apparently your first thought was, wow, awesome, a cheap labor force I can use to cut costs!" 'Hm, okay, fair enough. You must be a philosopher then.' "Yes! You're right! How'd you know?" 'Well, because homelessness has been around for ages, and appears to be intractable, and you've been unable to make any real progress on it, and yet when I offer homeless people an alternative to their current state, and some of them take it, somehow, the whole problem is all my fault." [1] https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm https://www2.bc.edu/~radinr/Management_Humor/jokes.htm
  • bottled_poe 11y ago
    Yes, yes, very good. But seriously, if you are paying your employees below minimum wage, then one of the following must be true: -Your business doesn't make enough income, possibly a sign of a bad business model; or -You are intentionally paying your employees as little as possible, which I see as profiteering. Perhaps there are other reasons?
    • afarrell 11y ago
      Do you feel the same way about Goodwill?
      • vkou 11y ago
        Goodwill's a non-profit. Despite their earning statements, Amazon is only a 'non-profit' on paper.
        • jonah 11y ago
          Goodwill may technically be a "non-profit" but they're hardly altruistic.
        • SilasX 11y ago
          Right, that's exactly a paradox/error that the Copenhagen critique elucidates: two groups have (basically) the same effect on the world (providing the opportunity to have regular work to do in exchange for money), but you only rebuke one of them, since they're doing it for profit. I can think of logical reasons to justify distinguishing them, but I rarely see such reasons made explicit. (One reason might be that there's a greater incentive to cut corners on worker treatment when you're for profit rather then just doing it out of the goodness of your heart, but that would justify at most tighter oversight, not moral condemnation of doing the thing at all, as we normally see.)
• dpweb 11y ago
  As noble as the attempt may be, you still have to use your head - if you're really trying to help people. There's a tendency to say, hey its something, its better than nothing.. Not necessarily. Not an expert but it makes perfect sense that seasonal jobs are not well suited for homeless people, for the reasons the article mentions - they don't have schedule flexibility (when they can get a bed!) others have, not to mention that they really need permanent jobs. Even more so than another type of seasonal worker - the high school or college student living at home. Good for Amazon if they're doing it for the right reasons, but you still need to do it right. There's more at stake than the typical corporate pet project. These people are (sadly) incredibly vulnerable. Taking swipes at it and failing can have serious consequences.
• pyre 11y ago
  The flip side is (e.g.) promising one thing, but delivering another then claiming it's "better than nothing" so nobody should complain.
• pron 11y ago
  That is not at all the case. If you try to solve a problem but only do it partially, no one blames you. If you try to make a profit by benefitting from a problem, then you have some moral responsibility, maybe not for the problem's existence, but for the people you benefit from. So the claim isn't involvement => blame, but profit => increased responsibility, which doesn't seem so outrageous. The issue of mutually beneficial exploitation is a big problem in ethics[1]. People who say it's OK, subscribe to what's known as the "non-worseness claim", but many don't. That post you linked to is a shallow, uneducated piece that completely ignores the vast discussion on the topic in ethics literature[2]. Another thing is that even with the most generous interpretation, and even if you do subscribe to the non-worseness claim and find it ethically positive, in most such mutually-beneficial exploitation cases, no one is really trying to solve the problem, just to make the best of a bad situation. That is not bad per se, but let's not pretend Amazon is "trying to solve" the problem of homelessness. [1]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/exploitation/#4 [2]: And that is a charitable description. It reads like an article about the motion of celestial bodies written today by someone who is completely unaware that physics has been an active discipline for centuries, and may have a thing or two to say about the subject. I don't expect everyone to be an expert on everything, and it's great that non-experts write about matters they've only recently been introduced to (as this can help others), but I find it hair-pullingly frustrating when people write about something by trying to deduce from first-principles without so much as googling to see if perhaps there has been some serious treatment of the subject before. It is doubly frustrating when it is those ignorant (though perhaps well-intentioned) articles are the ones that get referenced and discussed. It's like those texts actively erase knowledge.
  • diskcat 11y ago
    Could you be any more conceited and self-satisfied? All you do is say that the poster is uneducated, but have made zero attempt in educating him, other readers or advancing any argument against what was posted. so tell me, if i was in a desert and somebody is really thirsty, why is it unethical for me to sell him some water?
    • pron 11y ago
• gadders 11y ago
  AKA No good deed goes unpunished.
• Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  The reason nothing improves in government IT. If you try to fix the problem, you are now responsible for all parts not fixed. If you do nothing, then someone long gone is still to blame.