i). Judge actions morally and ethically:

The philosophy for judging actions comes in two broad styles. Consequentialist philosophies that judge actions by their consequences and the deontological philosophies that judge actions in their own right.

Landsburg finds a problem with deontology as he says he can’t think of anything that is always wrong. There can always be a situation where what is seen initially as wrong may be right when it results in a better situation. The alternate is consequentialism and philosophers use stylized moral dilemmas to separate deontologists from consequentialists. Such as the dilemma of the doctor who has to decide between saving the lives of many patients in need of an organ transplant by killing a healthy young person for his organs or allowing his patients to die, or the dilemma of a person faced with a choice of diverting a runaway trolley, heading for five children playing on a working trolley track and who have no other way to escape, on to another unused track where the victim will be a single child etc. But even if the answer to such problems seems logical, they also, somehow feel morally wrong. We need to consider why they are sick, or on the wrong trolley tracks in the first place, and if that is the result of only their responsibility or their decision, then they should live with, or suffer, the consequences.

Take stealing. Deontologists say it is always wrong. But how about when it is resorted to, to save lives? Landsburg is clear that even then it is wrong because it is destructive, because a well-executed theft takes time and energy, which could have been used productively. If you spend an hour planning for and stealing the lunch box of your school mate you have created nothing. There is still only one lunch between the two of you. But if you spend the same time and effort making or earning lunch for yourself, you have two. By diverting productive resources from useful activities, theft leaves the world an unnecessarily poorer place.

“These are good Consequentialist reasons for wanting the world to be as wealthy as possible, and therefore these are good Consequentialist reasons for disapproving of theft. And likewise, there can be good Consequentialist reasons for respecting property rights more generally, and for treating people fairly and with dignity.” – Steven E. Landsburg

He posits a rule of thumb for good behaviour. “Don’t leave the world worse off than you found it”. Its corollary is – “Don’t spend valuable time and energy in unproductive ways”.

Take the story of two youngsters each whittling away at a piece of wood while waiting for a bus at a village road junction. One whittles aimlessly passing time, and dusts off the pieces when the bus arrives. The other has whittled a small animal figure and gets on the bus with the piece, where a fellow passenger offers him Rs. 10/- for the figure. Both the youngsters had spent the same time and effort, and used similar resources, However, only one did so productively. Would it be now right for the other youngster to envy the other or claim a share in the sale price?

As Yuval Noah Harari asks – “If I went hunting with you and I killed a deer, while you caught nothing, should I share my booty with you? If you went gathering mushrooms and came back with a full basket, does the fact that I am stronger than you allow me to snatch all those mushrooms for myself? Justice demands not just one set of abstract values, but also, an understanding of cause-and-effect relations. If you collected the mushrooms to feed your children and I now take the basket of mushrooms forcefully, meaning that your work has been bought to a naught and your children will go to sleep hungry, that is unfair. It is easy to grasp this because it is easy to see the cause-and-effect relations. Ofcourse you could share, with the implicit promise that the I too would share similarly with you the next day”.

Productive actions are those that lead to benefits to you and everyone else which are more than the costs to you and everyone else. A cost is a cost and a benefit is a benefit whether they are felt by you, your neighbour or a stranger in Timbuktu, and for ease of comparison they are generally measured in monetary terms.

A fair price means it is reflective of the total costs you are imposing on other people which they are willing to accept. Can it be fair or being socially responsible to spend other people’s money on yourself by calling for and benifiting from subscidies paid for by your fellow taxpayers? Subsidies only serve to benefit special interest groups with the political clout to exploit someone.

Charity is neither productive nor destructive; it takes wealth from one person’s pocket and moves it into another’s. It allows each of us to make the call for ourselves, as different people have very different answers to how charitable you should be or you think another should be. It is not at all justifiable for you to think you have the right to decide how charitable or how understanding another should be.

Society as a whole could encourage charitable acts by recognizing and lauding those that are charitable, so as to help the really poor to reach to the bottom rung of the ladder to prosperity from which they can make their own effort to climb, the Government should also, be called upon to do so as a one-time welfare measure. (See -’Garibi Hatao’). But do not allow them to develop a dependency or entitlement mind-set. It should only be a one-time opportunity at a time of crisis and that too only for a short duration.

Society should also, seek to assimilate better the social and cultural practices in common places, leaving truly religious practices to personal and community spaces.

It is not so much racism or even religion that is to blame for not being able to assimilate in such a cooperative manner, it is the culture that does so, especially the culture derived out of discriminative religious practices adopted from cultures of other countries.

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