Moral Beliefs as Prices

Carleas,

I understand your position. You are being presented with a barrage.

You have to pick and choose what you respond to. From the garden that is here, It is most interesting to get a taste for your preferences. Sample a smidgen here and there of new food, but a good old scoop of what ever is Ma’s home cookin’ always is of comfort.

Wow.

Irrational, like the assessment of it as a universal.

A mild over statement? As long as a very small subset is exclusively applied to something that has to the best of our awareness only been a “practice” by one species ,for say 12,000 years, that accounts for less then a really really small percentage of all the life that has lived on this planet? That’s got to have even less of an impact on what is considered a universal, then 1 billion dollars has on what we consider the value of GWP.

Essentially the wold can be divided into two classes. What exists as natural resources before we were even around, and what resources we have moved around with our efforts. That would distinguish the value of the resources from what is a human added “value”. Let’s consider, just for the sake of the argument, that what existed as natural resources couldn’t have had a value that could be priced as the practice of economics hadn’t even come into existence yet. The “resources” had an existence without an assessed price and that did not affect their existence. No value that could be compared to a monetary unit of exchange.

No one is providing anything in exchange for the resources. It’s pretty much a flat out take without exchange. To whom would the exchange be made? So our current economic system does not place a value on the resources and can only place a value on what we consider we’ve added. When I buy a can of green beans I am not actually buying the green beans. I am buying a human process of cultivation, harvest, canning, distribution, and all the human time that involves. The beans are free. They are a product of the natural resource that were here way before we were. If all the beans in the world went extinct, our human species in general would feel no loss of value. We would just shift our attention to squash.

I see no indication that our species values the existence of green beans, If green beans were to go extinct it doesn’t affect the GWP. No species that was here before us and goes extinct because of us, factors into the GWP. No I don’t think the cost of natural resources is factored into GWP. “Buildings and the like”, well those are just natural resources no longer in their natural state.

So when I asked how much is a breadth of air worth? You seem to have missed the obvious.

Water was fresh and clean where it was available. It was free. It was a natural resource that didn’t require processing. It isn’t any longer. Now it’s something that is collected processed and sold. There aren’t any wells that tap into ground water anymore in metropolitan areas. Even in rural areas it has become unfit to consume. So now we have to have it processed, piped and delivered to our faucets, funneled into plastic bottles and placed on shelves for purchase. There is no end to what water will cost us. All the while it remains free, but the processing, now that’s going to have a continually rising cost as we foul it more and more. And sure we pay for oxygen to be pumped into pressure tanks now for our amusement. And some people have to pay to have it pumped into tanks just so they can breath at all, as their lungs have been damaged due to long term exposure to asbestos. Another of those natural resources that we have been moving into unnatural places, and I’m pretty sure someone realized it would end up in peoples lungs too. That is a fairly unnatural place for it to be found.

Ask any owner of a company that has had work related fatalities what those deaths of their random employees was worth. Not what it cost the company, but what they were worth? Would they be able to tell you they profited “X” number of dollars for every shortcut in safety they took that cost a life?

At the rate we are headed with our human contrived value system I don’t imagine it will be long before we are all flat our working for the money just to pay for our next breath. No the air still won’t cost you a thing but the air filter you will require, is going to set you back a bit. Tell me those face masks worn by all those people in polluted cities grows on trees. They are already paying for each breath now. It is possible everyone will need to soon.
Our human added values.

Money isn’t a universal, it doesn’t have a stable worth and it’s value is tied to human greed. Talk about more human pollution.

Since the commons is disappearing in pretty much every other way, it can now be in the conceptual (and emotional, ha) realms also. Pretty soon someone will patent snide anger.

I am pretty sure the car companies at least used to work this out in numbers.

There have been attempts to privatize water, I see no reason why companies will hold off on air. It might be filters, but I would guess they will ‘clean the air moving over your town using nanotech fog boundaries’ for some incredible fee, rather than masks. One hand polluting the other hand getting paid to help you with that. Like doctors running around town spraying viruses and they putting up billboards on buses for where to go for help.

Not necessarily. I think that there is a price in theory for nearly all humans.

Let me take a step back here. We can say with certainty that some people’s stated prices are irrational, right? Experiments on loss aversion and framing that show that people evaluate prices differently depending on how they’re presented, e.g. being given a larger amount of money from which some is taken away vs. being given a smaller amount of money to which more is added; paying a single fee vs. a sum of several fees; a single fee at one time vs. many fees in installments. People’s subjective choices in these situations are internally logically inconsistent.

Similarly here: very few people may accept an explicit deal of $X for committing murder, but most would accept Y% of $X to commit an act with a Z% chance of killing someone, and even more would only be willing to pay a finite amount to avoid killing someone. But logically, those are the same choice.

A car designer that sells enough units is guaranteed – literally guaranteed – to have someone die in one of their cars due to some lack of safety precaution or test. Even if they’re operating at a six-sigma fault tolerance, once someone sells 34 million units there’s going to be a defect, and for some product that means a death. That’s inescapable, and it logically entails exchanging someone else’s death for money.

So it isn’t a matter of reading minds. A position that says “no amount, ever” for explicit murder, but also makes decisions about health insurance, auto safety, and other similar choices, is almost certainly logically inconsistent: those various claims, if taken as premises, lead to some (a) and (b) where both (a=b) and (a \neq b).

The argument that it’s a category error doesn’t work, because in practice we plug the same values into considerations we make all the time. It can’t be the case that ([life]=$X) is category error, but (Z% * [life] = Y% * $X) isn’t. And the latter is implicit in day to day decision making.

This seems like deontology, right? In consequentialist terms, it doesn’t seem like there should be a moral difference between “definitely kill one person” and “do something 34 million times and as a result definitely kill at least one person”. It’s not even a difference of intention, since you can know going into a non-zero risk venture that a death will inevitably result, and so that outcome is intentional.

Deontologically, I think this difference makes sense. For many, this may be an argument for deontology. But I am OK with the bitter pills of consequentialism.

I think this is right. I assumed coming into this thread a certain philosophy of prices that, it turns out, is anything but accepted. I do think that my approach to prices is right, and consistent with decreasing marginal utility, changes in behavior in the presence of monetary priming, etc.

I think it’s notable that no one is suggesting that e.g. Microsoft’s acquisition of Github for $7.5 billion is nonsensical, and doesn’t Microsoft realize that it will just lead to mo’ problems? It seems like we’re generally fine with the idea that things that sell all the time for incomprehensible amounts of money can really be worth those amounts. It seems like special pleading to reject large prices here, where we’re also tempted to reject the whole premise that the thing can be sold at all.

I think this is a good distinction, but I don’t think this is exhaustive. Take something like math: the fact that only humans do math, and have only been doing math for a few thousand years, doesn’t seem to tell us very much about the ontological status of math. One way of expressing this category is, if we meet self-aware aliens who evolved elsewhere, are they likely to be aware of math? I think the answer is clearly yes. Basic math developed independently in multiple human cultures, it seems to have an existence independent of humans even though it didn’t exist before humans developed it.

I would categorize certain parts of economics into that same class. If we meet self-aware aliens (that are biologically independent etc.), they are very likely to have something like money. Like math, money developed independently in multiple human cultures, it’s a generalization of barter. We should expect any society where strangers interact and exchange goods to also have a concept of a liquid medium of exchange, a.k.a. money.

They would probably be able to tell you how much they saved from the lack of safety precautions, that’s just a math problem. And they may hate the question, but they would know if it was worth it.

People tend to see consequentialism and deontology as immaculate categories, I do not. I think deontology often fills a gap where there are consequences but they hard to track. (there’s another way I think they overlap and we’re fussing with elsewhere) In a situation where an employer - the rich guy who will pay me to kill a random person - my going along with this has consquences, I would argue, that are not present when I work for a contruction company that takes significant steps to protect workers and the employers dislike it when a worker dies. Let’s say on average each employer leads to a single death per decade. The consequences for the dead person are very similar, the consequences for society, even the family of the dead person are different. In the first scenerio as the killer, I have contributed to the ends of a sociopathic entity. In the second, if I am an employee, I have not. People know that the employers in the second took steps to protect their workers, and they will likely, at least make noises they are disappointed by the death. In this assasination this is not present. How do we track these effects? that is very hard. I think to pretend they are nothing, is confused and in error. Attitudes and intentions have effects. To the extent they are known they do things like increase trust and community feeling or reduce them. (plus any effects of 'aiding the intentions and plans of people who intend to kill as opposed to people who do not do all they can to prevent all deaths. These are two very different types of people and they will interact with people differently and they will feel different to people. Now, I do know that these are not immaculate categories either. Indifference can be to such a degree - certainly some mine owners over a hundred years ago - where it is very similar to intent to kill. But there is still a real spectrum and the ends are quite different and have all sorts of different aftereffects)

I think on a gut leve we know this set of effects that are hard to track and, fallibly of course, create deontological rules where we sense their will be consequences that are hard to track.

Further - what are the effects of saying that the effects are different? What are the effects of my taking a stand and saying here I would not take the money (let alone the effects of not doing it)?

The more that people value intent, the more this creates a culture with specific effects. Perhaps it reduces the number of people who are comfortable with their sociopathy. Perhaps it will actually reduce sociopathy since people will grow up where other people look to intent, judge it, react to it. And not just at consequences. The hirer of assassins does not hire assassins and then this option has no effects on their interactoins with humans in general. It is a kind of full permission to not feel guilty of denying the existence of another. This implies permission in all sorts of other ways. The taint is removed from them.

I do nto think it is the same with the employer who tries to eliminate all possible danger - an impossible task.

So the very act of having the public opinion that one will not kill for money, that there is a difference between an employer who wants me to kill a random person for money and another employer who does not prevent all deaths, leads to attitudes, disapprovals, guilts, social pressures
that all have effects.

Effects that are hard to track, but again, I think it is silly to pretend they are not there and

to a consequentialist - who often conflates this with being simply a realist - those should still exist, even if it is hard to measure them. I think that is a lot of the role deontology has played and I think it is also something that should make consequentialists concerned about stripping away deontology. The frontal lobe’s hubris is just that…hubris.

Every time I get in my car and drive I am risking my life and those of others. But I do not go out to kill. God, I hope I run someone over. The driver who decides he will try to kill one person, while remaining within the law. IOW not braking as fast as he might when someone jaywalks. That’s very different from the person who does get into a traffic accident where there is a death.

If we as a society conflate those two people, we are conflating two people who WILL very differently relate to others during their lifetimes.

And if we tell people those acts are the same, we are telling people that intending to kill is the same as not trying to eliminate all possible ways one might accidently kill. Which would eliminate driving, voting and not voting, buying pretty much any product - given that producing these entails risks, etc.

And further if we tell people those acts are the same, we are depathologizing sociopathy. And this will have all sorts of effects.

The social human world is not a lab and not very Newtonian - as far as tracking effects. Stuff slides and subtly shifts. This slip into the depths and reappear later. Things seep into the next generation. In the mind it can seem like we can contain variables and vectors, dominoes and billiard balls- ‘those are the effects’- but in the world…

Under capitalism, everything is commodified , so it is only rational to apply prices to moral beliefs. MacIntyre’s After Virtue opens up by talking about how, post-Enlightenment, we don’t really talk about moral beliefs good anymore because shit got all fucked up.

Hegelian sunderings of modernity mean that we don’t really even know what we mean when we talk about moral beliefs anymore. That’s why a question like this can be posed. It makes sense to the modern mind that morals can be quantified, then commodified and then (naturally) bought and sold through various means.

That’s a little uncharitable, I suppose. My google-fu is weak right now, but I think that after Gilgamesh, the second thing humans wrote down and kept (unlike various tax records and transactions) is a riff on the Faust myth and like Gilgamesh, it was a popular epic poem well before that.

Maybe we’ve always understood that poor soil makes for poor plants. Poverty corrupts. I get that. If you are materially suffering, you don’t have time to worry about principles. Counter intuitively, you can use principles to control the materially suffering.

Somewhere between that, there is an actual good . . . maybe?

For me, that’s the lifelong struggle of philosophy.

The real trick, I think, is to take a couple of steps back, and ask yourself what tiny steps are involved in a good, thriving life?

The mustache twirling villain with the lady on the train tracks doesn’t exist ex nihilo. But they do very much exist, tons of innocent people are killed every day by real life super villains. Many more suffer. So . . . how do we get there? What makes a monster? What makes the people who enable monsters?

And where do you fit into all that? I’m pretty tired, so I’ll let you fill in the rest. Blah blah blah coltan blah blah blah textiles blah blah blah modernity blah blah blah original sin as the “is” of is/ought blah blah blah bourgeois marxism something something with chinese characteristics yada yada mass line.

“I see someone who keeps halal about to unknowingly eat ham, how much do I need to be paid not to say anything? It seems like roughly zero, although I would take on non-zero costs to avoid serving someone halal, even without their knowledge.”

That happened in front of me once. A Moroccan guy ordered a “frikandel” (a stave of butchery-garbage) in a snackbar and as he was chomping it, one of his friends mentioned that there is pork in there, whereupon the eater spat out the contents of his mouth, and threw the rest of what he had in his hand in the snackbar owners face.

I don’t know what the values of the morals here were worth in dollars but the whole thing was priceless.

For the purpose of economics its a great distinction. The math is fairly simple addition and subtraction.

Distraction? We aren’t the only species on the planet with a capacity to quantify and those other species ain’t running right out to establish a currency of exchange. Maybe it has a lot to do with that human idea of ownership.

Counting is pretty rudimentary. And the fact a few culture came up with it independently is your argument? Several cultures are also credited with singular advancements in it’s application. How does that help your argument of capitalization of things we can not even own. If the system is one of exchange then who or what are we exchanging with for the natural resources? Who gave them to humans to do with as we wish? Who bought the rights to foul the water and the air and who was it paid too?

Carleas, you sure do a fine jig around the issue.

Can ethical values be priced?

So, yes, I don’t like it (our monetary system). And yes it exists, and for every now there is, I have to figure out a way to live with it. Selling out or costed out of living, either way.

If you like it, you are at an advantage in it.

Someone judging your every idea whether it has economic merit. Me being forced to judge my own ideas, by a merit that lacks in judgement. They are good. OK. They came into my head of their own volition. They grow like weeds.

So yeah, WE made it about money. Given me, how can I be happy about that?

I think you’re asking about something that has a lot more clout then morals. I thing morals are learned, and as such they do have a price.

I feel like I was born with ethics, they aren’t mine to sell. Sucks to be me cause I think they would be worth a lot, if only I could figure out how to sell them.

Have been milling it over. Ground fairly fine. I’ll concede, assuming a monetary system; everything has a price.

Are morals things?

Do you ever really get to the morals or does it get exchanged for the money first?

Carelas, You have likely a better guess then I.

Thanks, You offered a thought I felt like I wasn’t wasting my time thinking it.

A valuable question.

Sorry I think I reaped a bit of what you have sowed. Nature grows it. :shrug: I am a foraging animal.

If I appreciate it does that make it OK? Or do I owe you?

I always liked the idea that willpower is the only thing in the universe capable of travelling the path of most resistance.

It’s an aphorism but one that, I think, forms the basis of moral beliefs. Profit, on the other hand, often follows the path of least resistance.

Can everybody afford to be moral always at all times? Does morality collapse? Does it hyperinflate or deflate away overtime?

How much does it cost to live the good life? Can everybody afford the cost or price of morality equally? Is morality a monetary luxury?

How does one live the good life in the global behavioral sink?

These are good questions.

Behind them, you’ve got 1) Is Capitalism compatible with morality? and 2) Is modernity compatible with morality?

And then

  1. Is humanity compatible with morality?

How does morality intersect with your life and what does it mean?

How do we live moral lives?

There is a push and a pull.

Fair enough, what’s your response to the questions?

My answer to my Q1 is “no” which basically answers your questions (or creates a null set). Capitalism is incompatible with morality.

Modernity is trickier. That’s basically MacIntyre’s whole thing and I’m a big fan of MacIntyre. Which necessarily leads to a resounding “yes” on whether morality is compatible with humanity.

Morality intersecting with life is a process, so answers aren’t easy but it flows from cultivating your virtue and your humanity. Tu Weiming talks about learning to be human. That’s morality intersecting with your life. Which leads to “how do we live moral lives” which is “Bit by bit. Day by day.” There are times when you have to make real, hard, distinct moral decisions but almost all moral decisions are more processed based. It’s that inevitablism that you can change. You are Samwise, not Frodo. You are a gardener. I mean, unless you aren’t, but those heroes often have that same inevitablism to them as well because what got them into a position of power is a track already set for them.

So, figure out what track you are on and where it is going. What does that track look like for you and for other people?

^^^If a person can’t afford to be moral does morality ever become useless or a form of entrapment? Can morality become oppressive? Better yet, what happens when a person cannot live up to certain moral expectations imposed on them by others? Is it ever alright to defy such forms of morality or rebel against them especially if they go against people’s own personal moral beliefs? When is justifiable or alright? Who gets to decide?

You are reifying morality.

I mean, even Aristotle thought that being a slave was immoral. Granted, that’s how he justified slavery. Fighting for your freedom can be very moral. That’s how most freedom fighters work. Revolutionaries traditionally haven’t been nihilists. That’s a bourgie disease.

Fighting for freedom yes, but today’s morality is all against fighting or conflict, isn’t it?

Today’s morality is all about working, laboring, buying, earning, and serving your time in order to achieve freedom, where if that’s the case, what does that say about current perceptions of freedom or morality? [In many cases today you can do all of that working hard and still remain unfree. Why? Because all outcomes are rigged against you by others.]

No, you mistake me from years past, I’m no longer a nihilist like my youth. I absolutely believe in morality however the one I believe is a higher one which seeks to destroy and eradicate the slave morality of authority that permeates all across the planet currently over entire societies everywhere. I believe in a master kind of morality in all sense of the word coinciding with that word freedom that everybody these days takes advantage of abusing. I also don’t believe freedom is possible at all until the current social order is completely destroyed which I salivate and day dream about almost daily in the creation of an entirely new social order in its replacement.