Do we have a moral obligation to society?

http://burakkanber.com/blog/do-we-have-a-moral-obligation-to-society/

by bkanber • 14 years ago

43 55 14 years ago

Symbol• 14 years ago

I was going to write something fairly audacious and start dragging in the history of Western philosophy, but instead I'll just focus on what I see as the flawed foundation of your argument: fairness.

I'll argue that fairness is not really an intrinsic understanding we all share but instead is a concensus. You could argue that it's not fair that some people are blind, but that you'd find few sighted people willing to put out their eyes. Fairness is a relatively fluid concept and it doesn't make sense to try and anticipate how "fair" your actions are.

The way out of this dilemma is avoiding following this line of thought all the way to first-world guilt. So in your case, you have skills and talents you know you are applying and skills an talents you know are idle. You also likely have talents yet untapped. It is a waste of your energy to worry about this.

Do the best thing you can that intersects with the things you are most interested in. Group concensus in the forms of laws, ethics, an morals should be consulted but not necessarily blindly followed.

Do good, and do it well.

zerostar075• 14 years ago

There is research showing that fairness may be innate in humans http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193506/Humans-innat...

cead_ite• 14 years ago

If such an innate (genetic) tendency towards fairness existed in humans, it would likely have quite a spectrum of phenotypic expressions. I.e., even if everyone had a sense of fairness, odds are that such a sense would not be exactly the same for each individual.

zerostar075• 14 years ago

If you don't do what you love you won't be good at it, hence you are reducing your contribution to society. Of course we have a moral obligation to others because we are social animals, but that doesn't mean that the only way to help is doing humanitarian work.

What's generally morally condemnable is being lazy, not contributing.

goldfeld• 14 years ago

Besides, regarding his citation of Musk, that guy (and his team to boot) is only doing it because he is really passionate about it. Being something extremely relevant to human progress that no other private company is doing to that extent might help fuel the passion, but could not for the love of him trigger it had he not loved the field.

jlangenauer• 14 years ago

But what decides what we love? Is there some innate sense to each of us that governs what we're able to be passionate about? Or is this socially-constructed, as a result of the environment and culture we live in?

JacksonGariety• 14 years ago

I was just thinking about this the other day when I saw a clip of "Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo" in a YouTube video. The family is white trash, they aren't very educated, and they don't care. They sleep well at night by saying they're happy just the way they are. Under this logic, nothing would get done. Humans would we drawing pictures with sticks in the mud.

The real question is, what's so bad about that if we're all pretty happy?

zerostar075• 14 years ago

Happiness is not the only ingredient for a good life.

zeeed• 14 years ago

can you cite more?

randomdata• 14 years ago

I don't know a whole lot about the Honey Boo-Boo saga, but as I understand it, she came from the "Toddlers in Tiaras" world, which seems to indicate that the family does have a competitive streak and do strive for something more. They now star in a TV show that, I imagine, creates more value than I could ever hope to achieve, and while it does not seem like a show I would enjoy, it must have a significant impact on some people's lives in order to still be on the air.

Perhaps the family is not solving problems like world hunger, but to say nothing is getting done under their watch may not be exactly correct.

joezydeco• 14 years ago

Don't let the name fool you, "reality TV" has absolutely nothing to do with whatever reality is being videotaped.

Two decades of post-"Real World" experience have allowed producers to create whatever image they want in the minds of the viewers.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

No. Absolutely, unconditionally, unarguably not. Down that road lies the work camps of the Stalinist Russia and the action T4 Euthanasia program of Nazi Germany and the research of the Cold Harbor laboritory.

Down that road lies death, destruction and our collective doom.

Karunamon• 14 years ago

I'm not sure the Godwin was necessary or appreciated, but would you mind elaborating a bit?

kens• 14 years ago

The beginning of the article describes how the author would pay much more than $6 for $6 worth of electricity. This is called consumer surplus, and is the principle that people usually pay less for something than the maximum price they are willing to pay, because they are paying the market price (to oversimplify slightly).

This principle is relevant to Hacker News, because I've often seen statements that the value of something is exactly what people are paying for it. Taking consumer surplus into account, what people pay is an upper bound since they may be getting much more value than they are paying. People won't pay more for something than it's worth to them, but they may be paying less. (As a startup-related aside, one reason to have different pricing tiers is to collect as much of the consumer surplus as possible, by charging more to people who will pay more. Coupons and discounts are another way.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_surplus

maxharris2• 14 years ago

What is a moral obligation, and what is it for?

I say that the purpose of morality is to guide your own life so that it is the best, longest life that it can be.

Properly, "society" is a nothing more (or less) than a concept formed by an individual mind to grasp that there are individuals that live in geographical and/or communicative proximity to one another and that deal with each other, somehow. (Everyone alive that meets that criteria, no matter what choices they've made in life, no matter what the impact of those choices is on you, qualifies.) That's it - a society doesn't think, feel, act, etc. It's not an actual entity with the capacity to do those things.

Your only true moral obligation is to your own life, and to the values that such a life requires. In terms of the original question about society, your moral obligation is to those individuals that, in your independent jugement, benefit your life and values.

If you do the difficult, rational work to figure out what are the things and people you truly care about, and pursue those values relentlessly, your actions will not conflict with what they would see is good for them if they did the same.

rayiner2• 14 years ago

On a slightly related note, the hurricane really reinforced my understanding of the fact we do have a moral obligation to society, whether or not that requires us to pursue particular career paths.

Trains, water, and electricity being down in New Work had a staggering economic cost. We're talking about billions of dollars per day. As people couldn't get to work, it became painfully apparent how much the top of the pyramid depends on the bottom. Bankers making $5m a year couldn't get work done because support staff making $50k a year weren't there. The city is an organism. It's a machine. It's an engine for creating wealth, and like any structured thing it has differentiable pieces that are ultimately completely interdependent.

When I was younger, I used to have a moral and political framework based on the economic model of the farmer. A farmer who farms for his own subsistence has little moral obligation to society. He plants his seeds, he tends them, he reaps them. Society loosely protects him from other societies, but that's about his only link to his fellow man.

Yet, we're not a nation of farmers. Division of labor has allowed us to create tremendous wealth, but has also made it so nobody is useful without thousands of other people to do everything else. The subsistance farmer's productivity doesn't change at all if all the farms around him are flooded. A New York businessman's productivity goes to zero if the homes of his workers and customers are flooded. He is no more valuable, disconnected from the powerful economic engine that is New York City, than a peasant farmer in Bangladesh.

As I have gotten older, I have grappled with a moral philosophy that accepts our position as elements of these tremendous economic engines. I don't think such a moral philosophy requires eschewing individual liberty. Indeed, individual liberty becomes more important in the context of an industrial economy where everyone is forced to interact with each other. Yet I've become convinced that there is no moral philosophy that eschews an obligation to the other elements of the economic engine that is compatible with the realities of that economic structure. I think it's foolish to apply philosophies rooted in the idea of independent subsistence farmers to a world that looks nothing like that.

marvin• 14 years ago

It also underscores the value and incredible importance of reliable infrastructure and a well-oiled economic machinery. We're all humans, we can all use our time and energy to do "useful" things for ourselves or our peers. But the amount of useful stuff you can get done during a day is extremely dependent on the available infrastructure and support machinery.

This is incredibly obvious today when you can rent as much world-class computing machinery as you want at a moment's notice just by using your credit card, and when you have libraries and languages that took hundreds of man-years to create available for free. But the same is true all the way down to the point where we are running around in the jungle, naked, picking berries and nuts and attempting not to get eaten by lions. Computers, electricity, plumbing, roads, debt, currency, money transfers, automated farming, artificial fertilizers, remote communications technology, materials technology, engineering and physics, chemistry, mathematics, written language and spoken language.

It's all a giant pyramid of human accomplishment that allows us to produce wealth/do useful and interesting things so much cheaper and simpler than before that it is simply ridiculous.

yummyfajitas2• 14 years ago

I'm curious - you are correct that the top of the pyramid worked from home because the middle [1] of the pyramid was unable to clean up the office.

But what I don't understand is, what moral obligation does this create? Who is obligated to who, and why? Specifically, what transactions create a moral obligation beyond fulfilling the terms of the transaction?

[1] The bottom of the pyramid is comprised primarily of non-workers. The $50k support staff are solidly in the middle.

rayiner2• 14 years ago

I will note you used the term "transaction" rather than "interaction." A "transaction" is of course not something that exists in the state of nature. What exists are interactions. E.g. one animal killing and eating another animal. But a "transaction" is an interaction with the additional quality that it is defined relative to some legal framework. A "transaction" has no meaning without reference to a legal framework or the collective threat of force underlying that legal framework. And that legal framework is, of course, a completely arbitrary social construction.

Thus, it is not the transaction that creates the moral obligation. It is the imposition of the legal framework without which transactions would be merely interactions. That legal framework requires everyone to give up the only thing that can be called a "natural right"--the right to kill and eat whatever cross's one's path. The whole collectively sacrifices it's natural liberty in order to construct a structured society that enables wealth creation. It is that collective sacrifice that creates the collective moral obligation.

I'll give you a very concrete example. We make "conversion" a crime. That is basically using property for your own benefit that is in your possession by the voluntary action of another, but does not "belong" to you. Of course, "ownership" in any sense beyond physical possession is the product of a set of legal contrivances. Activity like embezzlement, etc, didn't actually used to be illegal until relatively recently. "Theft" was defined narrowly to taking from someone's physical possession. But we can't really have a modern economy without lower-level people taking physical possession of property that "belongs" to someone else. The truck driver, the parking garage attendant, the cashier, etc. So we alter the legal system to prohibit this certain activity presumably to increase the output of the economic engine. So when you leave your car with a parking garage attendant, you enter into a "transaction" for him to take care of your car, but that "transaction" is obviously meaningless without reference to the legal framework that's in place. And that legal framework involves people giving up the ability to do things they used to be able to do. And that creates the moral obligation.

Approaching the situation from another angle: your reverence for the "transaction" blinds you to the fact that they are nothing more than arbitrary accounting mechanisms within our arbitrary legal framework. At the physical level, the output of the economic engine of a city is the product of everyone's effort. Like a real engine, nothing goes if the fuel pump doesn't pump the gas, the cylinders don't compress the gas, the spark plug doesn't ignite the gas, the valves don't flush out waste products, etc. The fuel pump may consider itself the most important contributor, because after all there is one fuel pump and perhaps half a dozen spark plugs and a dozen or more valves, but the engine does zero work without all its elements. To the extent that anyone benefits from the output of the economic engine of a modern industrial city, they have a moral obligation to all the other elements without which that output wouldn't be possible. The fact that you use accounting mechanisms you call "transactions" to divvy up the output doesn't mean that those "transactions" are the things with real meaning at the physical level.

ef4• 14 years ago

You're hitting on one of the important facts that both supporters and detractors of economic liberty often get wrong.

When people think "free markets", they think "competition". And competition is one important ingredient. But it misses the fact that 99% of what goes on in a market is not competition, but cooperation.

Too many supporters of free markets put forward a caricature of independence. The whole reason markets work so well is that we're all so dependent on each other -- if we were all self-reliant little islands we wouldn't need markets, or we wouldn't have the incentives to play well within them.

And too many detractors of free markets deny their cooperative nature entirely, and assume that only non-commercial activity can truly be cooperative, morally pure, or beneficial to society as a whole.

dctoedt• 14 years ago

'rayiner, you should post this somewhere prominent. It's a succinct, cold-eyed, and powerful case for the notion that "we're all in this together."

hollerith• 14 years ago

I do not have a comment on whether an obligation exists.

I do however want to point out one personal benefit to pursuing a philanthropic career: your coworkers will tend to be more caring than non-philanthropic co-workers are.

Remember Joel Spolsky's short summary of what makes a good employee -- "smart and gets things done"? Well, "smart, gets things done and cares enough about other people to make helping them an important part of his or her career" is even better.

brownbat• 14 years ago

If there's a salary difference, take the higher paying job, and donate the excess to a foundation who employs people to work on the humanitarian issue you're most passionate about.

That way, society gets the benefit of both your skills and your passion.

startupfounder2• 14 years ago

"...but if anyone wants to buy my company for a few hundred million (it’s worth it!) then I promise I’ll follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps and focus on the rest of you."

I honestly don't know how to take this.

bkanber2• 14 years ago

How do you mean? I hope I haven't offended you.

startupfounder2• 14 years ago

First off I am in Brooklyn and I am experiencing the daily realities of a post Sandy city in recovery.

The genius of Elon Musk is that he is not choosing between being a multi-millionaire and focusing on bettering humanity (focusing on the rest of us, as you said). He is not motivated by being a millionaire or billionaire (as it seems like you are). His wealth is a direct result of providing value to society, that is how capitalism works, the more value you create for humanity the more wealth you create for yourself and others.

Musk was on the verge of loosing everything, his wife, his 3rd rocket and Tesla due to accounting errors. But his desire to do great things for humanity pushed him past all of these hurdles that would stop most which now make him look like a hero.

I think you are going about it the wrong way, it seems like you think that by selling your company for "hundres of millions" will make you happy. It seems like only when you are on your high horse of being a multi-millionaire that you will look down upon and help the rest of us.

Bullshit!

Why can't you crate value for humanity in a meaningful way through building software that is solving a big problem and creating wealth for you and society? I think you are selling yourself way short by only focusing on trying to sell your software company that is not solving a big enough problem. If it was solving a big problem you wouldn't have written this blog post! You are torn because it is not solving a big enough problem.

This is the problem with the startup culture today, you are the epitome of it! Your last statement is what is wrong with Silicon Vally today:

"...but if anyone wants to buy my company for a few hundred million (it’s worth it!) then I promise I’ll follow in Elon Musk’s footsteps and focus on the rest of you."

That is the worst IF THEN statement!

IF millionaire, THEN rest of you...

How about, IF I help solve huge problems for humanity THEN I will both be fulfilled in life and as a bonus could be a multi-millionaire or billionaire.

reasonattlm• 14 years ago

One of the many problems in considering yourself morally obliged is that any finite present obligation is a step onto a conveyor belt that leads to (countably) infinite obligation. If you're being logical, that is, as opposed to drawing random lines in the sand.

Obligation to those alive now leads to obligation to their future well-being. That in turn leads to obligation to those not yet alive. That in turn leads to obligation to all future sentience: you are obliged to ensure their existence as best you can, and that is is good. The weight of their existence, trillions of entities even in just the next millenium, is of such value compared to your miserable life that you can do nothing but beggar yourself to achieve the merest sliver of an outcome that would aid them.

If you are obliged to anyone then you are also obliged to the (countably) infinite future, by the very same arguments. When you draw lines and say "no more" then it becomes the case that you are only pretending to be obliged - you do this for yourself, a way to satisfy your own irrational desires to some threshold. You don't really care about anyone else, it's all about your own needs.

I'm given to think that moral discussions, like mathematics and physics, you pay attention to the infinities because that is how you know where the limits of your process/theory/axioms/system of thought lie.

joshtynjala• 14 years ago

By making yourself infinitely obliged to the future, you also put pressure on those who follow you to be infinitely obliged to their future. If you're turning yourself into a beggar in order to meet your obligation, aren't they expected to do the same? Their well-being is negatively impacted by your inability to accept a finite obligation.

ryanwaggoner• 14 years ago

"Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

- Howard Thurman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Thurman

sageikosa3• 14 years ago

No. Slavery isn't an obligation, it is a blight. Doesn't matter if its to one man, a nation, nor the sum collective of human existence.

Society can sanction you if you violate its rules, so ensuring the society in which you find yourself is a just society is an obligation to your own continued existence.

potatolicious2• 14 years ago

Only on HN can you see the concept of "doing good for your fellow man" be described with a ridiculous weasel word like "slavery".

This is Ayn Rand style rhetoric that is thoroughly lacking in content and subsists entirely on individualistic outrage. The issue of society vs. individual freedoms is a valuable one, going off the deep end with weasel words does not contribute to the discussion.

javert2• 14 years ago

This is Ayn Rand style rhetoric that is thoroughly lacking in content and subsists entirely on individualistic outrage

Nobody who has seriously looked into Rand's fiction and nonfiction could say something like that. Either you've only looked into Rand superficially, or you are just parroting what you've heard elsewhere. There is immense intellectual depth in her work.

I don't see why liberals allow conservatives to monopolize Rand (in their half-assed hypocritical way). Rand makes bulletproof arguments for the rights of women and gays, against racism, and against the corporate-government cronyism liberals are railing against today.

She is a classical liberal, not a postmodern liberal, but today's postmodern liberals would do well to return to their roots. By doing so, they'd pull in lots of Republican voters and stomp the Republicans.

maxharris2• 14 years ago

"Doing good for your fellow man" is slavery if you're forced to do it by law or if you accept the unearned guilt delivered by a Sunday sermon.

It's not the same situation at all as when a person helps a friend or family member because that person is a value to them.

sethbannon• 14 years ago

Yes you should enjoy what you do. Yes you should do what you're good at. And yes you should do something for the greater good. These days, with the rise of impact entrepreneurship, there are an abundance of opportunities to solve interesting technical challenges, make a ton of money, and do a heap of good for those less fortunate all at once. In my opinion there is no excuse not to.

j45• 14 years ago

Our personal answer to this ties to our sense of humanity and how humane we are in the practicing of our humanity.

This question becomes less and less of an issue the more and more we take just one minute to turn a stranger into a person. Strangers can be overlooked, discounted, marginalized, ridiculed, brushed off, trivialized, dehumanized, or worse. It's harder to do with people.

If we value society, we have our part in it, and our response for our own backyard. Everything and everyone's well being is connected ultimately.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

Obligation? No, not as such. And falling victim to those ideas is hugely dangerous. The idea that we are not or should not be our own masters, that we should dedicate ourselves to service to our communities and so forth is an entrancing idea, but it is mistaken. Wanting to give back to your community is good, and noble, but being obligated to do so is a recipe for tragedy.

In the end it comes around to the same old thing: the institutionalization of morality. Which inevitably leads to obligatory orthodoxy. It's important that people have differing opinions in society, even down to ideas on morality. It's also important, so we have learned, that the strict obligation of society be limited to just those things which are strictly necessary to enable society to operate.

There was a time not long ago when being a member of a specific state religion was mandatory, and enforced. It was a time of oppression and orthodoxy where free-thinking and individual liberty were limited, and progress was stunted. There have been more recent times where similar institutionalized, obligatory morality has gained traction (under various ideological banners) and those too were times of oppression, orthodoxy, suffering, and stunted progress. It doesn't work. Obligation-to-society is merely the first brick to be used to pave the road of good intentions that leads from individual liberty to rule and oppression.

Societies were individuals express their feelings of community spirit and care through spontaneous and personal gifts of time, money, and effort are healthy. Societies where a moral obligation to society is strictly enforced are regressive and tragic.

jt2190• 14 years ago

  > In the end it comes around to the same old thing: 
  > the institutionalization of morality

Can you elaborate? At no point did the article make the leap that a moral obligation be forced on individuals by an outside body. From the article:

  > I have the skills to help other people out but instead 
  > I’m running a startup and writing on my blog. Should I
  > feel guilty? Do I have a moral obligation to use my
  > engineering skills to give back to the world 
  > in a bigger way?

How is this kind of self-examination "hugely dangerous"?

preichen• 14 years ago

It's scary how similar your story is to mine. I'm a Mechanical Engineer too (Master's), but am now the co-founder of a local-search iPhone app... I come originally from Mexico and wonder sometimes if I shouldn't be in Mexico, solving "real" problems...

commieneko• 14 years ago

The world isn't ruled by ideology or simple formulas. It's all details and proportion; with the best solutions usually emergent and as specialized as the problems.

If you have a marvelous idea or insight into how electric cars could or should be made, and it's an insight that could make a real difference, then you might very well feel that you "owe" it to society to get in there and make that difference. If you would be just another foot soldier in an army of engineers that seems to be pushing a rope, then stick with what you love.

You do owe an obligation to society, but also have an obligation to yourself, and your family if you have one. Making the call is up to you, and not something that a simple formula or ideological precept can provide.

room271• 14 years ago

What a nonsense title. Of course we have a moral obligation to society, where society means the people around us. This doesn't necessarily mean our choice of profession though. Although this can be a great way to help/serve others.

pfortuny• 14 years ago

You are not morally obliged to 'do something which costs me more and I dislike' just because you think 'you will help society more'.

You help society most by making your life as full as possible and in most cases that is related to how much you enjoy your job.

Not everybody is morally obliged to become a missionary: otherwise, there would be no 'missions' (all of us would be in the Third World preaching...).

Do we have a moral obligation to society?

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