[FRIAM] ethical dilemma

Fri Feb 5 16:00:30 EST 2021

Dave, 

Maybe this is the perfect time to complete your magnus opus...  consider it an NEA or NSF grant to complete your "great american novel" or redefine "object oriented design" entirely?

Boy, Howdy, do I agree with that.

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, February 5, 2021 2:06 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] ethical dilemma

Dave -

I'm glad you elaborated.   My trivial "shunt" answers to stop me from turning your "dilemma" into a "multilemma" of arbitrarily large proportions might be:

"it is only a moral dilemma for someone who is immoral"

another simple showstopper might be:

"if you judge anyone else who might consider doing this immoral then absolutely, don't do it!"

I don't know when it happened for me, but one day I woke up and realized that I'd spent the last XX% of my life eating the words I'd uttered for the first 100-XX% of my life.   A little later I realized I was still spitting words (judgements of others) that I'd have to eat "yet later", which (sometimes, and mildly) tempered those fresh round of judgements, if only minimally.

TL;DR - multilemmas all the way down from here, the shunt didn't help:

  _____  

Your elaboration covers a significant fraction of my own taxonomy of moral/ethical questions that arise.   I'd be interested if this group were able to build a rough taxonomy (albeit more likely a heterarchical web of moral/ethical implications than a simple taxonomy).   Maybe in the spirit of Glymour or Pearl, there might even be some formalizable parallels between causual webs and ethical webs?

You hit the big ones for me.   

1.	knowingly lie...  this might be slightly better for your own soul than to make up complex excuses to justify lying to yourself?
2.	community obligation...  if your workplace is a critical resource to your community and your refusing to work there contributes significantly to it's failure.
3.	by example...   You are probably not the only one weighing the options... so whether you lead, follow, or refuse might be of small consequence.  You may consider yourself a thought/moral leader among the other workers... if so then yes, I get it.
4.	confront the "poverty wage economy"...   crashing the business, using the unemployment option to effectively stage a work stoppage, forcing a > $10/hr wage (based on $400/month rather than the $600=$15*40hrs) onto the parent company (with subsequent increased prices for their goods/services).

Other considerations I would insert might include.

1.	what is the extended risk of your catching COVID with your age and underlying conditions, you are more likely to suffer badly and possibly burden a medical system in your region which either is or is not already being stressed.  Maybe rural UT continues to maintain low rates of spread which refers us back to 1 above.
2.	Is your holding the job (independent of COVID and extended unemployment benefits) a boon or bane to the community?   Is it hard to find people willing/able to do this job?  Would releasing the job allow someone else who also needs it but might not qualify for the unemployment you are considering, allow them to feed their family (albeit minimally)?    
3.	Do you have something better to contribute to the community?   Is there something else you could be doing with the same time that is less COVID-risky?  Handing off the minWage job to someone else who needs it and applying your skills/abilities to a $0 wage task might make more sense?  You would even have $100 cash per week leftover to support a longer commute or extra expenses or direct donation to the cause you are supporting?   Certainly more circulation of cash in the community (if you spend or contribute the difference).
4.	Maybe this is the perfect time to complete your magnus opus...  consider it an NEA or NSF grant to complete your "great american novel" or redefine "object oriented design" entirely?
5.	If your workplace is a genuine community resource, perhaps you could take the unemployment and return under "yet more COVID-safe conditions" to enhance that workplace for the community and the other workers (I can't stretch myself enough to conjure a specific example, but there may well be one).
6.	Maybe now is a good time for the community to take the bull by the horns and "buy out" the hard assets of the company and restart it as a proper cooperative?  Does the larger Mormon community have good precedents for cooperatives, or is it either church or private enterprise?   As an example, I submit the Grange (though they might sound like pinko-commie-f...s to some:

The Patrons of Husbandry, or the Grange, was founded in 1867 to advance methods of agriculture, as well as to promote the social and economic needs of farmers in the United States. The financial crisis of 1873, along with falling crop prices, increases in railroad fees to ship crops, and Congress’s reduction of paper money in favor of gold and silver devastated farmers’ livelihoods and caused a surge in Grange membership in the mid-1870s. Both at the state and national level, Grangers gave their support to reform minded groups such as the Greenback Party, the Populist Party, and, eventually, the Progressives.

I also wonder if part of the background to your question is whether it is moral/ethical to *offer* such a deal?

1.	As an erstwhile libertarian I can cop the attitude that a free market sets the value of labor and any interference with that is fundamentally immoral.
2.	As a budding socialist/communalist, I want to live in a world where people are encouraged to share and be generous and to build and respect a healthy and rich commons.
3.	I do think a $10 "living wage" unemployment offered over the top of a $7.50 "minimum wage" for employment *is* a cart-before-horse problem...  but given the vagaries of how bureaucracies and legislation works, it is not surprising and the "moral dilemmas" generated for people (including small, medium, and large business) are maybe helpful (like a Zen Koan) to shock the system into a more upright posture?

Mumble,

 - Steve

On 2/5/21 10:09 AM, Prof David West wrote:

One should be precise when asking a question, and I find I was not.

The first ethical dilemma is that I would have to knowingly lie about my "fear" of contracting COVID at work. I know I am at greater risk but that has not and likely will not translate into "fear."

The second ethical dilemma arises from the fact that I would be, almost, literally irreplaceable — unemployment benefits are a huge disincentive to workiong. So those I left behind will suffer some serious negative impacts, assuming my hours and increasing their own exposure to disease. Ethics of loyalty, friendship, compassion for others????

A third issue: if I inspired even one other colleague to follow my example, the store likely would have to close with negative impacts on the community as well as the other employees.

One might make a case that the only ethical thing for me to do would be to leave and take as many as my colleagues with me in hopes that the Canadian company that owns the story would raise their wages scale to $15+ an hour. This would harm nothing except their corporate profits and would benefit both the community and all the employees. Unlikely to happen, but the ethical argument could be made.

PS Nick: yes, I would be lonely, but that is a pandemic condition during the pandemic.

PPS poets: Richard Gabriel, Ph.D. Computer Science, MFA Poetry, creator of a poetry writing AI — told me that Haiku cannot be written in English, or any non-ideographic language, because meter provides only syntax, and misses the semantic point.

davew

On Fri, Feb 5, 2021, at 9:03 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>  wrote:

Dave,

Wouldn’t you be lonely?

N

Nick Thompson

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> 

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam  <mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West

Sent: Thursday, February 4, 2021 9:15 PM

To: friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 

Subject: [FRIAM] ethical dilemma

Biden's COVID relief bill includes $400/week unemployment benefits until September. 

Normally, if you voluntarily quit a job, you are not eligible for unemployment benefits. However, a person can qualify for these benefits if they quit because they "fear' contracting COVID at their job.

I know that my job has an enhanced risk for contracting COVID.

So should I quit and earn 400/wk for the next six months — tax free.

Or continue earning 300/week that is taxed.

No one but myself would ever know if I "feared" contracting COVID at that job

davew

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam <http://bit.ly/virtualfriam> 

un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/

archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

- .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6  bit.ly/virtualfriam
un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20210205/d82f67df/attachment.html>