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> Maybe the moral position is not to take the money. This would have been the correct route > Maybe it's okay to take the money and leak it anyway (assuming y

> Maybe the moral position is not to take the money. This would have been the correct route > Maybe it's okay to take the money and leak it anyway (assuming you think you can get away with it), because your counterpart is already irredeemably unethical, and all you can do is try to make the best of a bad situation. No this sets you up for even more financial harm and makes you untrustworthy ... if you can't follow a simple agreement that you are freely signing how can I trust anything that comes out of your mouth. > I don't think it's always so clear cut. Contracts shouldn't always be considered sacred. If the contract is legal it should be - if your unsure if it's legal talk to a lawyer. Without contracts being actually enforceable if one party believes it's immoral then everything goes to shit.

ohazi 7y ago
I was responding to an assertion about who has the moral high ground here. The law does not dictate this. Repercussions that stem from breaking the law also have no bearing on whether or not an action can be morally justified. You are talking about whether a position can be legally justified. The two are not the same thing.
- monkeywork 7y ago
  ok here is a moral question then. You and I have a disagreement privately lets say over a potted plant. In the end we decide to part ways and I say here you can have the potted plant lets just never have this come out again I never want to hear about this argument again. You shake my hand and agree that's fair, take your potted plant head home and immediately call all of our mutual friends and begin to say all kinds of horrible things about me. Who was the immoral one there? I'd argue the one who broke the final agreement The entire point of a settlement / severance / etc is the two parties saying you know what we are done of this fight - here is what makes you feel happy to walk away from it ($$) and here is what makes us feel happy (to not have to hear about it anymore).
  - ohazi 7y ago
    Your example is a mockery of what was claimed, and I think you're being disingenuous. You're using a generic "disagreement" and "potted plant" rather than "employer tried to improperly fire an employee" and "$36,000 severance for a non-disparagement agreement." I think you're doing this deliberately in order to make the letter of the agreement seem more important than the details of what happened. My moral calculus is explained clearly here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22533048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22533048 If your question is serious, then no, I don't think the immoral one is necessarily the one who broke the final agreement. In certain cases, the one who acted poorly first might be the immoral one. Signing and then breaking an agreement could, in some cases, be a response that is morally justifiable, even if it is illegal, and even if there are legal reprecussions. If the retaliating party takes it too far, then they might be the immoral one. I'm making no claims about what was or wasn't morally justifiable in this particular story. But I'm shocked that so many people seem to think that a contract is sacred and that a person who breaks one is automatically the immoral party. The actual circumstances of the situation matter more than whether or not a written agreement is broken. There are times when deciding to break a contract after signing it is morally justifiable. There are even times when signing a contract with the intention of breaking it later might be morally justifiable. Is it really that difficult for people to come up with a contrived example here? Coercion? Duress? Extreme power imbalances between the signing parties? Implied threats? Lying to get out of a dangerous situation? Do people not even see these things as possibilities? It seems blindingly obvious to me that the circumstances matter.

ohazi 7y ago

I was responding to an assertion about who has the moral high ground here. The law does not dictate this. Repercussions that stem from breaking the law also have no bearing on whether or not an action can be morally justified. You are talking about whether a position can be legally justified. The two are not the same thing.

monkeywork 7y ago
ok here is a moral question then. You and I have a disagreement privately lets say over a potted plant. In the end we decide to part ways and I say here you can have the potted plant lets just never have this come out again I never want to hear about this argument again. You shake my hand and agree that's fair, take your potted plant head home and immediately call all of our mutual friends and begin to say all kinds of horrible things about me. Who was the immoral one there? I'd argue the one who broke the final agreement The entire point of a settlement / severance / etc is the two parties saying you know what we are done of this fight - here is what makes you feel happy to walk away from it ($$) and here is what makes us feel happy (to not have to hear about it anymore).
- ohazi 7y ago
  Your example is a mockery of what was claimed, and I think you're being disingenuous. You're using a generic "disagreement" and "potted plant" rather than "employer tried to improperly fire an employee" and "$36,000 severance for a non-disparagement agreement." I think you're doing this deliberately in order to make the letter of the agreement seem more important than the details of what happened. My moral calculus is explained clearly here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22533048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22533048 If your question is serious, then no, I don't think the immoral one is necessarily the one who broke the final agreement. In certain cases, the one who acted poorly first might be the immoral one. Signing and then breaking an agreement could, in some cases, be a response that is morally justifiable, even if it is illegal, and even if there are legal reprecussions. If the retaliating party takes it too far, then they might be the immoral one. I'm making no claims about what was or wasn't morally justifiable in this particular story. But I'm shocked that so many people seem to think that a contract is sacred and that a person who breaks one is automatically the immoral party. The actual circumstances of the situation matter more than whether or not a written agreement is broken. There are times when deciding to break a contract after signing it is morally justifiable. There are even times when signing a contract with the intention of breaking it later might be morally justifiable. Is it really that difficult for people to come up with a contrived example here? Coercion? Duress? Extreme power imbalances between the signing parties? Implied threats? Lying to get out of a dangerous situation? Do people not even see these things as possibilities? It seems blindingly obvious to me that the circumstances matter.