10 ms·

> if they are not breaking the law, are they really blameworthy? This mindset needs to die. Yes. If you do something ostensibly immoral, it's still bad even i

by jchw 3y ago

> if they are not breaking the law, are they really blameworthy? This mindset needs to die. Yes. If you do something ostensibly immoral, it's still bad even if it's legal. It's still bad even if other people were going to do it if you didn't, anyway. It's still bad even if there's negative incentives that ultimately led to it. It's just still bad in general. If you have a reasonable decision and you choose to do a bad thing, you still chose to do it. It doesn't matter either, if a single person made this decision, or if a corporate board made this decision, or if a bunch of people in an angry mob collectively decided something. What you can do is explain why it happened, but that doesn't mean that there is absolutely zero social responsibility to have. All that something being legal means is that it's legal. Something being legal doesn't necessarily mean it's good. Something being illegal doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. We've conflated what we've come to expect from corporations to the standards we must hold them to. The standard that a corporation should live up to is indeed much higher and significantly more nuanced than "technically not breaking the law." I'm not suggesting that I believe in no regulation. Regulation is clearly valuable in many cases, but I believe that it is clearly not inherently good (duh, bad regulation is everywhere) nor is it inherently the only solution to any class of problems. Believing that companies should not simply maximally exploit what is technically legal while still regulating them when they do abuse the system is possible and I'm pretty sure if we don't start thinking that way, we're even more screwed than we think we are. Even if some corporations amass unthinkable amounts of influence and power and fundamentally escape the pressures of social responsibility through this, I still think that it's necessary to fight the learned-helplessness mindset. If absolutely nothing else, I think everyone is at least responsible for ensuring the bar doesn't drop so low as to allow this kind of thought process to remain "normal". It should always be thought of as abnormal, and as the threat to liberty and democracy that it clearly can be.

ChuckMcM 3y ago
Completely concur with the notion that if something is "perfectly legal" then there is no basis for judging the bad actor poorly. There absolutely is of course as judgement in this context is a moral choice, not a legal one. The other one I wish would die is: "It is not illegal if you don't get caught."
deepsun 3y ago
No, thank you very much, heard that blame story long enough in my childhood (socialistic country). If it's bad -- let's make it illegal. Law is a reflection of what people consider fair and just. If it's legal -- it's fair and just.
- vkou 3y ago
  > Law is a reflection of what people consider fair and just Law is a reflection of what people with political power consider fair and just, and that set of people is only a subset of all people affected by it.
- comrh 3y ago
  > If it's legal -- it's fair and just. A quick look at history shows this to be false (Jim Crow laws, Nuremberg Laws, a million other examples). People should never derive their morality from bureaucrats.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    The politicians (not bureaucrats: bureaucrats don't make policy) aren't making these laws up all by themselves: they're responding to the whims of the voters. Jim Crow laws were "fair and just" at the time, according to most people of the time; that's why the laws existed. The people wanted them (well, the majority who had political power anyway, obviously not the Black people). "Fair and just" is simply an opinion, and according to the people at that time, those shitty laws were fine. They weren't getting their morality from lawmakers; the people at the time simply had bad morals.
    - von_lohengramm 3y ago
      Exactly. Just like how the British people just recently decided that privacy and encryption aren't "fair and just." After all, would a policymaker ever go against the desires of the voters? > well, the majority who had political power anyway You're making a massive assumption that this somehow equates to voters/the people.
arcticbull 3y ago
Honestly, there's nothing immoral about charging market rates. What's immoral is preventing construction of housing to allow supply and demand to meet. What's immoral is zoning rules that allow prices to rise well above the level of what would historically have been considered affordable. Obviously, from looking around, we cannot rely on people to just not raise prices to market levels in exchange for feeling good about themselves. We need to take action to lower the price of housing. Housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.
- marcus_holmes 3y ago
  We desperately need to stop thinking of housing in terms of investment at all. Housing is for people to live in. That's it. Any other purpose is a long-distant second to that. The fact that it has become primarily an investment product is what's causing all the pain.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Japan got burned by real estate investments in the 80s and now real estate isn't considered an investment, so housing in even Tokyo is affordable. It also helps that housing structures are considered as a deprecating asset, to be rebuilt every 30-40 years.
    - solumunus 3y ago
      We must live in a different world. I’ve been reading articles for years about Tokyo house prices being a huge problem, and that young people are depressed and checking out because they see no way to climb the ladder in Tokyo. A quick Google search confirms I’m remembering correctly. Tokyo has the same real estate issues as any major western city.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Ah, the problem with that is that you can’t earn enough money, the housing prices are sane but the salaries for workers is not. But there aren’t really the same codes as the west, so you can rent something for $2-300/month. Kids can get by on low salaries they way, but buying is out of reach even. If the prices are affordable by our standards. You can pull up either narrative in Google by searching specifically for it. Tokyo is cheap, Tokyo is expensive, etc… eg Tokyo housing is cheap: https://medium.com/land-buildings-identity-and-values/what-is-the-secret-to-tokyos-affordable-housing-266283531012 https://medium.com/land-buildings-identity-and-values/what-i... And Tokyo housing is expensive: https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/surging-tokyo-property-prices-squeeze-out-young-professionals-2023-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/surging-tokyo-property-... They are both true with nuance.
lmm 3y ago
> We've conflated what we've come to expect from corporations to the standards we must hold them to. The standard that a corporation should live up to is indeed much higher and significantly more nuanced than "technically not breaking the law." We shouldn't try to hold a standard that we can't or won't enforce. If we want better behaviour from corporations we need to actually make them behave better, not wring our hands when they don't do it by themselves. > Even if some corporations amass unthinkable amounts of influence and power and fundamentally escape the pressures of social responsibility through this, I still think that it's necessary to fight the learned-helplessness mindset. If absolutely nothing else, I think everyone is at least responsible for ensuring the bar doesn't drop so low as to allow this kind of thought process to remain "normal". It should always be thought of as abnormal, and as the threat to liberty and democracy that it clearly can be. If you think it shouldn't be normal, figure out how to make it illegal. But raging against greedy landlords/corporations/what-have-you is just its own form of learned helplessness.
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> This mindset needs to die. Survival bias get in the way. The morality you refer to exists, it just doesn’t survive long enough to notice. So yes, you do something ostensibly immoral but legal for some advantage, that advantage allows you to economically out compete your more moral neighbor, who winds up insolvent eventually. If morality isn’t encoded in law and their is an economic advantage to being immoral but legal, then that’s what you will ultimately wind up with, because the moral actors will simply die off.

by jchw 3y ago

ChuckMcM 3y ago

Completely concur with the notion that if something is "perfectly legal" then there is no basis for judging the bad actor poorly. There absolutely is of course as judgement in this context is a moral choice, not a legal one. The other one I wish would die is: "It is not illegal if you don't get caught."

deepsun 3y ago

No, thank you very much, heard that blame story long enough in my childhood (socialistic country). If it's bad -- let's make it illegal. Law is a reflection of what people consider fair and just. If it's legal -- it's fair and just.

vkou 3y ago
> Law is a reflection of what people consider fair and just Law is a reflection of what people with political power consider fair and just, and that set of people is only a subset of all people affected by it.
comrh 3y ago
> If it's legal -- it's fair and just. A quick look at history shows this to be false (Jim Crow laws, Nuremberg Laws, a million other examples). People should never derive their morality from bureaucrats.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  The politicians (not bureaucrats: bureaucrats don't make policy) aren't making these laws up all by themselves: they're responding to the whims of the voters. Jim Crow laws were "fair and just" at the time, according to most people of the time; that's why the laws existed. The people wanted them (well, the majority who had political power anyway, obviously not the Black people). "Fair and just" is simply an opinion, and according to the people at that time, those shitty laws were fine. They weren't getting their morality from lawmakers; the people at the time simply had bad morals.
  - von_lohengramm 3y ago
    Exactly. Just like how the British people just recently decided that privacy and encryption aren't "fair and just." After all, would a policymaker ever go against the desires of the voters? > well, the majority who had political power anyway You're making a massive assumption that this somehow equates to voters/the people.

arcticbull 3y ago

Honestly, there's nothing immoral about charging market rates. What's immoral is preventing construction of housing to allow supply and demand to meet. What's immoral is zoning rules that allow prices to rise well above the level of what would historically have been considered affordable. Obviously, from looking around, we cannot rely on people to just not raise prices to market levels in exchange for feeling good about themselves. We need to take action to lower the price of housing. Housing cannot be both affordable and a good investment.

marcus_holmes 3y ago
We desperately need to stop thinking of housing in terms of investment at all. Housing is for people to live in. That's it. Any other purpose is a long-distant second to that. The fact that it has become primarily an investment product is what's causing all the pain.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Japan got burned by real estate investments in the 80s and now real estate isn't considered an investment, so housing in even Tokyo is affordable. It also helps that housing structures are considered as a deprecating asset, to be rebuilt every 30-40 years.
  - solumunus 3y ago
    We must live in a different world. I’ve been reading articles for years about Tokyo house prices being a huge problem, and that young people are depressed and checking out because they see no way to climb the ladder in Tokyo. A quick Google search confirms I’m remembering correctly. Tokyo has the same real estate issues as any major western city.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Ah, the problem with that is that you can’t earn enough money, the housing prices are sane but the salaries for workers is not. But there aren’t really the same codes as the west, so you can rent something for $2-300/month. Kids can get by on low salaries they way, but buying is out of reach even. If the prices are affordable by our standards. You can pull up either narrative in Google by searching specifically for it. Tokyo is cheap, Tokyo is expensive, etc… eg Tokyo housing is cheap: https://medium.com/land-buildings-identity-and-values/what-is-the-secret-to-tokyos-affordable-housing-266283531012 https://medium.com/land-buildings-identity-and-values/what-i... And Tokyo housing is expensive: https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/surging-tokyo-property-prices-squeeze-out-young-professionals-2023-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/surging-tokyo-property-... They are both true with nuance.

lmm 3y ago

> We've conflated what we've come to expect from corporations to the standards we must hold them to. The standard that a corporation should live up to is indeed much higher and significantly more nuanced than "technically not breaking the law." We shouldn't try to hold a standard that we can't or won't enforce. If we want better behaviour from corporations we need to actually make them behave better, not wring our hands when they don't do it by themselves. > Even if some corporations amass unthinkable amounts of influence and power and fundamentally escape the pressures of social responsibility through this, I still think that it's necessary to fight the learned-helplessness mindset. If absolutely nothing else, I think everyone is at least responsible for ensuring the bar doesn't drop so low as to allow this kind of thought process to remain "normal". It should always be thought of as abnormal, and as the threat to liberty and democracy that it clearly can be. If you think it shouldn't be normal, figure out how to make it illegal. But raging against greedy landlords/corporations/what-have-you is just its own form of learned helplessness.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago

> This mindset needs to die. Survival bias get in the way. The morality you refer to exists, it just doesn’t survive long enough to notice. So yes, you do something ostensibly immoral but legal for some advantage, that advantage allows you to economically out compete your more moral neighbor, who winds up insolvent eventually. If morality isn’t encoded in law and their is an economic advantage to being immoral but legal, then that’s what you will ultimately wind up with, because the moral actors will simply die off.