NevDull’s Take On Things

Rambling about the ethics of a country

November 19th, 2005

In a thread on Slashdot about the ethics of doing business with China, my first reply was that if one uses an absolutist view of ethics in trading partners, it certainly might be the case that people shouldn’t trade with us. For two parties to get anything done, to some extent they must compromise… and in some cases, that compromise is one of ethical ideals.

A reply came from someone using the moniker Puff Daddy, who said: I was gonna type a response to this pointing out that the US, while far from ideal, is still way ahead of most, but then I realized that you wouldn’t read it.

And here is how I responded:

I’m going to have to assume that you’re saying that because I must have a closed mind and hate America.

Quite to the contrary. I’m idealistic about my country, and despite that, I realize the compromises which must be made in order for it to work. Freedom to do good implies freedom to do bad. Freedom means that some will win, some will lose. Some will take advantage, and some will be taken advantage of.

If you think it’s unethical to have anyone ever starve, then freedom is unethical. If you think it’s unethical to deprive people of freedom, then it’s unethical to force people to give to others so they won’t starve.

Ethics, unfortunately, can’t be compared against absolutes.

I think that we can agree that killing large groups of your population is probably unethical. Most of the industrialized world considers capital punishment unethical.

Most of the world considers terrorism to be unethical. Most of the world considers what the US and UK and others seek to do to those suspected of any involvement in terrorism unethical.

Heck, fear makes a lot of unethical things done on your behalf seem unethical.

It all comes back to compromise. Whether or not we’re better than most, we also come as a country from a set of ideals embodied in a Constitution which both called a slave 3/5 of a person, but also set forth some pretty amazing principles. Luckily, we’ve come a long way from the former… unfortunately, we’ve also come too far from the latter as well.

What have we learned over the last 229 years?

We should hold ourselves to a higher standard. We should hold our neighbors to a higher standard. We should hold our country to a higher standard.

But, then again… as I said in the prior post… we have to compromise to get anything done.

Entry Filed under: Government Sucks