The Heinz dilemma is a frequently used example in many ethics and morality classes. One well-known version of the dilemma, used in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, is stated as follows: A woman was on her deathbed. There was one drug that the doctors said would save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman’s husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: “No, I discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man’s laboratory…
Universal human ethics: Saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the property rights of another person.
This is the camp I am in.
Is this your universal position? I guess you don’t give everything you possibly can without starving to a charity that saves human lives.
With the cost of your phone alone you could fund dozens of vaccinations in poor regions that save lives but you don’t.
You let those people die for your own selfish reasons.
I’m playing the devil’s advocate of course, but it’s interesting where people draw the line.
You need to take care of your own life too, selling off everything you have and give it to the red cross is not the way to go. The correct way is probably being pro capitalist, but garness the efficiency to do good (which might be impossible).
What a weird statement too, killing the messenger style.
I guess you wanted to jumpstart the discussion :-) ?
Not who you replied to, but your arguments remind me of Peter Singer. Basically, that none of us live ethical lives because of exactly the first problem you mentioned. If we CAN donate to a cause we know will do good with the money, more good than we could do ourselves, then we MUST do so. Failing to do so is a moral failing.
It’s definitely an appealing argument, and I enjoy exploring the limits of such philosophies. To me, it’s about immediacy, guarantee, and proximity. I see something that has a shorter timeline as something that must be acted on with higher priority. Something that’s guaranteed is higher priority than a slim chance. And I’m more likely to help those closer to me than across the world.
We’re all limited in our capacity to know and to do. I don’t have to be perfect, I can accept that some of my actions are less moral than they could be. I just aim to be as above the line, so to speak, trying to bring more positive than negative. I think the comment you initially replied to is a pretty good heuristic to follow to do so.
Is there a name for the concept that
One individual doing that is a tiny drop in a huge bucket- It would be a drastic change for the giver, and a tiny incremental change for the ones in need? Like, you’re fighting a systemic problem that you alone can never solve.
I use “fighting the long defeat”:
“I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win.” ~Paul Farmer
Do what you must, but don’t expect results. Expect defeat, embrace it, and then persist through it.
starfish parable
Ok but I feel like instead of throwing a dozen starfish into the ocean, I’m moving a thousand of them two inches. Sure, some on the margin might survive now, but I’ve wasted a lot of time.
I had to look it up. Thank you! I learned something new
https://youtu.be/8bps_PMmJ6k
By the way, I think it’s quite different than what that other commenter was asking.
Taking the response to a very specific and pointed question out of context and then applying that answer to other things doesn’t really make sense.
The answer to the question, “Do you like chocolate?” is not transferrable to other things.
If you said, “Yes, I like chocolate”, that does not give me permission to assume that you have agreed to go to the store and buy everybody chocolate.
One does not equal the other.
You are just guessing that giving away all your worldly possessions to charities will help people, and not just make some charity management obscenely wealthy.
The Devil’s advocate position should be about things the person can directly witness or experience, like do they volunteer their time or have looked for a local place to contribute to etc