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Ethics Book Summary "What's the Right Thing to do?"
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Complete summary for the course ethics of the book "Justice: What's the Right Thing to do?"
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Ethics Summary ExamChapter 1 “Doing the Right Thing”
Price gouging when a seller spikes the prices of goods, services or commodities to a level much
higher than is considered reasonable or fair, and is considered exploitative, potentially to an
unethical extent.
In Florida they constituted a law against price gouging because people may not be charged
unconscionable prices as they flee for their lives or seek the basic commodities, but some
economists argued that the law is misconceived. In medieval times, philosophers and theologians
believed that the exchange of goods should be governed by a “just price,” determined by tradition
or the intrinsic value of things. But in market societies, the economists observed, prices are set by
supply and demand. There is no such thing as a “just price.” Price levels that consumers are used to
are not fair than other prices that market conditions may bring about. Higher prices for products
may incentivize suppliers to provide the goods and services most needed in tragic times. Economists
say that the prices simply reflect the value that buyers and sellers choose to place on the things they
exchange.
Welfare, Freedom and Virtue
The arguments for and against price-gouging laws revolve around three ideas: maximizing welfare,
respecting freedom, and promoting virtue. Each of these ideas point to a different way of thinking
about justice. The standard case for unfettered markets rests on two claims:
1. Markets promote the welfare of society as a whole by providing incentives for people to
work hard supplying the goods that other people want
2. Markets respect individual freedom rather than impose a certain value on goods and
services, markets let people choose for themselves what value to place on the things they
exchange.
Proponents of price gouging laws argue that any estimate of the general welfare must include the
pain and suffering of those who may be priced out of basic necessities during an emergency.
Defenders of price gouging laws:
The welfare of society as whole is not really served by the exorbitant prices charged in hard
times for the poorer, paying higher prices might lead them to stay in harm’s way
Under certain conditions, the free market is not truly free buyers under duress have no
freedom, the price you have to pay for certain products in times of danger is not really a
voluntary exchange
They are more visceral relating to deep inward feelings towards people who prey on the
desperation of others and want them to be punished (virtue argument)
The latter gestures at a moral argument because it causes outrage; which is a special kind of anger
you feel when you believe that people are getting things they don’t deserve.
Virtue argument in times of trouble, people look out for one another; a society where people
exploit their neighbors for financial gain in times of crisis is not a good society. Excessive greed is
therefore a vice that a good society should discourage; price-gouging laws cannot banish greed but
at least restrain it.
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,However, many find the virtue argument discomfiting because it seems more judgmental than
arguments that appeal to welfare and freedom. Everyone prefers more income rather than less and
under conditions of duress, people are free to choose and that doesn’t require evaluating their
choices. The question is to what extent people are free rather than coerced.
Virtue behavior showing high moral standards. Vice immoral or wicked behavior.
The virtue argument, by contrast, rests on a judgment that greed is a vice that the state should
discourage. But who is to judge what is virtue and what is vice? Many people hold that government
should be neutral on matters of virtue and vice; it should not try to cultivate good attitudes or
discourage bad ones.
The reactions to price-gouging are pulled in two directions:
1. We are outraged when people get things they don’t deserve
2. But we worry when judgments about virtue find their way into law
This dilemma points to one of the great questions of political philosophy: Does a just society seek to
promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward competing conceptions of virtue,
so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the best way to live?
This question divides ancient ancient and modern political thought;
Aristotle teaches that justice means giving people what they deserve, we have to determine
what virtues are worthy of honor and reward law can’t be neutral on questions of the
good life
Modern political philosophers argue that the principles of justice that define our rights
should not rest on any particular conception of virtue a just society respects each
person’s freedom to choose his or her own conception of the good life
Bailout Outrage
The financial crisis in 2008-09 in the US: reckless bets by the banks and investment houses (enabled
by inadequate government regulation) had created the crisis. The president asked congress to bail
out the nation’s big banks and firms, which they did reluctantly. But shortly after the bailout money
began to flow, news accounts revealed that some of the companies were awarding millions of
dollars to their executives. This sett of a firestorm of public protest; lavish rewards subsidized with
taxpayer funds to members of the division that had helped bring the global financial system to near
meltdown. At the heart of the bailout outrage was a sense of injustice. Americans were torn
between the need to prevent an economic meltdown that would hurt everyone and their belief that
funneling massive sums to failed banks and investment companies was deeply unfair. Underlying the
bailout outrage was a belief about moral desert: the executives receiving the bonuses (and the
companies receiving the bailouts) didn’t deserve them. Why? Two possible answers:
1. Not only the bonuses but the bailout as a whole seemed to reward greedy behavior rather
than punish it. Wall street traders, bankers and managers are focused on financial gain, that
is what they do for a living so it’s wrong to reward greed with big bailout bonuses, but it
is not wrong to reward market largess? One obvious difference is that bailout bonuses come
from the taxpayer while the bonuses paid in good times come from company earnings. The
source of the payment is not morally decisive; the reason the bonuses are coming from the
taxpayer is that the companies have failed. The American public’s real objection to the
bonuses and the bailout is that they reward failure.
2
, 2. CEO’s of failed companies insisted that they were victims “of a financial tsunami” beyond
their control. The failure of their companies was due to larger economic forces and this
would explain that they didn’t express remorse.
Three Approaches to Justice
We sometimes think of moral reasoning as a way of persuading other people. But it is also a way of
sorting out our own moral convictions, of figuring out what we believe and why.
Moral dilemmas may arise:
From conflicting moral principles
Because we are uncertain how events will unfold
Moral Dilemmas
Life in democratic societies is life with disagreement about right and wrong, justice and injustice. We
may revise our judgment about the right thing to do or rethink the principle we initially espoused. As
we encounter new situations, we move back and forth between our judgments and our principles,
revising each in light of the other. This turning of mind, from the world of action to the realm of
reasons and back again, is what moral reflection consists in. How can such reflection lead us to
justice, or moral truth? moral reflection is not a solitary pursuit but a public endeavor. It requires
an interlocutor—a friend, a neighbor, a comrade, a fellow citizen, we cannot discover the meaning of
justice or the best way to live through introspection alone.
Chapter 2 “The Greatest Happiness Principles / Utilitarianism”
Two rival approaches to justice:
1. The morality of an action depends solely on the consequences it brings about the right
thing to do is whatever will produce the best state of affairs, all things considered
2. Consequences are not all we should care about certain duties and rights should command
our respect, for reasons independent of the social consequences
Jeremy Bentham’s Utilitarianism
The main idea of utilitarianism: the highest principle of morality is to maximize happiness, the
overall balance of pleasure over pain. The right thing to do is whatever will maximize utility. Utility
whatever produces pleasure or happiness, and whatever prevents pain or suffering. Bentham
arrives at his principle by the following line of reasoning: We are all governed by the feelings of pain
and pleasure. They are our “sovereign masters” they govern us in everything we do and also
determine what we ought to do.
In deciding what laws or policies to enact, a government should do whatever will maximize the
happiness of the community as a whole. A community is a fictitious body, composed of the sum
of the individuals who comprise it. Bentham’s argument for the principle that we should maximize
utility takes the form of a bold assertion: There are no possible grounds for rejecting it. Every moral
argument, he claims, must implicitly draw on the idea of maximizing happiness.
One of Bentham’s schemes: improving “pauper management” establishing a self-financing
workhouse for the poor, sought to reduce the presence of beggars on the streets because he
observed that encountering beggars on the streets reduced the happiness of passersby. For every
happy beggar, there are many miserable ones. He concludes that the sum of the pains suffered by
the public is greater than whatever unhappiness is felt by beggars hauled off to the workhouse.
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