Kwame Anthony Appiah, the long-running most recent occupant of the NYT’s “Ethicist” throne, received what I initially thought was one of the dumbest inquiries ever last week. After thinking about it, I decided that it was a good ethics quiz after all.
A man’s son had his mountain bike stolen, and the father issued a notice that there would be a $500 reward for its return, “No questions asked.” The tale continued,
“To my surprise, I got a response from someone, and we set a time to meet. Then I became worried that I was being set up to be robbed. So I called my son. Next thing I knew there were six hulking 20-somethings tagging along with me in my minivan. At the agreed-upon meeting spot, the guy appeared with my bike in hand. …while I’m looking the bike over, they said, in no uncertain terms, that it was not necessary for me to pay for the bike. The guy looked scared, and I wanted things to end safely, so I peeled off half the stack. “How about $250?” The guy took the money and ran off.”
The inquirer asked the Ethicist whether he did the right thing, since it was obvious to all present that the guy was the thief. Should the father have instead paid the whole promised amount, or nothing at all?
After initially being distracted by the fact that the writer used the Stupid Political Correctness They, thus making it unclear whether it was the “six hulking 20-somethings” who said he didn’t have to pay or the single theoretically transsexual bicycle thief, I immediately formulated my answer.
- If it was a binding promise, the thief had officially relieved him of any obligation to abide by it when he said, “You don’t have to pay me.”
- “No questions asked” means “I won’t have you interrogated, investigated or reported to the police as the possible thief, and I won’t ask for your name.”
- The assumed thief had an attack of conscience, and the reward for doing the right thing should have been a sincere “thank-you” and a handshake, along with the knowledge that he had done the right thing and undone his crime. If he’s paid for returning the bike, he has an incentive for stealing more stuff.
- No questions were asked, according to the account. The father had every justification for refusing to pay a reward to the thief.
The Ethicist agreed with that reasoning, writing in part, “You shouldn’t have to pay people to do what they ought to do anyway. Because this person should never have put you in the situation that led to your offer, he would have had no grounds to object if you chose not to keep the agreement. You would have been free, in my view, to give this fellow nothing.”
Yet Appiah saying that he was “free” to give the presumed thief nothing isn’t the same as saying that was the most ethical course.
Nothing in the account proves that the person returning the bicycle in fact stole it. If he appeared nervous and “ran off,” it could have been because the father had brought along what looked like a beat-down squad, “no questions asked.” Saying that the father didn’t have to pay him anything doesn’t mean that the guy was admitting he was the thief. In fact, there was an occasion when I did exactly this: I returned a lost item to the owner, she offered me a reward, and I refused it. It wouldn’t have changed my actions if the reward had been promised in advance: when I find lost things of value, I try to get them back to the owner. It’s Golden Rule 101.
I decided that I would have paid the whole amount, but with a statement attached:
“You did the right thing in returning my son’s bike. I’m offering you the promised reward as a gesture of thanks, and because I want to emphasize that behaving ethically is a habit that will bring you and everyone around you more rewards, tangible and otherwise, over the course of your life than hurting others for selfish reasons. You can refuse the money if you choose, which would be a fair and generous decision, but you are welcome to it as long as you understand that it is a prize for doing the right thing now, and not a reward for anything wrong you may have done before.”
Then, if he accepted the money, I’d have the six young guys with me beat the crap out of him.
Kidding!
Ethics Alarms 
I got stuck on chewing on this a while back with the reward for Lady Gaga’s lost dog. In that instance, $500,000 was offered “No Questions Asked”, which seemed to me to be an open invitation for the thief to return the dog. Who else would have access to information directly leading to the dog’s return, that would be overtly afraid of answering “questions” in exchange for a half million? If the thieves were ethically estopped from claiming the reward, was the reward even offered in good faith (thus an unethical ploy to cause the thieves to incriminate themselves)?
Now, it may be that someone might have purchased the stolen dog; the reward might reasonably be reimbursement for the cost of the dog and the “pain and suffering” of losing it. The purported buyer might not want to implicate whom he purchased from, thus the appropriateness of “no questions asked”. It might be a relative, or implicate the purported buyer with other unsavory characters. Still, $500,000 is an extreme amount of money that strains the credibility of “no questions asked”. Handing out such funds without due diligence is inherently irresponsible. The reward amount is not necessarily unethical, but the promise “no questions asked” is simply absurd on its face. (Perhaps this absurdity mitigates nominal promise to the thief that they would be rewarded for their crime; such a promise is simply cannot be real?)
Discussing this from the extreme end, let us look at the bike scenario. $500 is itself the cost of a modest mid-range bike. Someone finding an otherwise regular mountain bike and returning it would likely be embarrassed to receive such an amount. I’d accept maybe $20-$50, to nominally cover my time and gas returning it (I once returned a small dog to a neighbor when I was 12; he later gave my brother and me $20 to buy ice cream with). For a higher end bike ($2000+), $500 might be reasonable to overcome a passerby’s motivation to sell a found discarded bike secondhand. Selling an apparently abandoned bike, such as one found dumped over your fence in the backyard, is not necessarily unethical, although attempting locate the owner is certainly ethical. The reward of $500, plus the promise of “no questions asked” helps mitigate any embarrassment over perverse motives or risks of accusations of misconduct.
The order of magnitude between the two scenarios is certainly relevant here. $500 is not a life changing amount of money, even to the most destitute. At worst, you pay a thief’s rent (but not utilities) for a month, or let him buy a jalopy of a car. Handing out such an amount, even to a thief, does not require special diligence of any sort. Refusing to pay a thief when he returns the bike, if it is well established that he did it, is defensible, as it provides disincentive to theft. However, there is an inherent promise to NOT take it no further with “No Questions Asked”; reporting him discourages the ethical behavior of righting one’s wrongs. Recklessly reneging on paying the reward when the identity of the thief is well established is similarly unethical; it erodes public trust, an makes everyone’s promise of a reward for return suspect. That makes society more jaded and less ethically motivated.
Recklessly reneging on paying the reward when the identity of the thief is NOT well established is similarly unethical;
Didn’t you cover something like this awhile ago with some celebrities’ dogs that were stolen? I can’t remember the details well enough to find it.
Heck, it was three weeks ago, and you still remembered it? Wow.! July 17.
I don’t think that was it. I thought it had something to do with stealing someone’s dog. The only thing I could find on July 17 about dogs had to do with their names.
I apologize for being a bit snotty in my reply to you — a lame attempt at humor. But, yeah, it was July 17, Lady Gaga’s dogs. Rich in CT mentions it above, which I missed earlier.
Literally the last thing I read before seeing this… promises unfulfilled…