Too bad Prof. Appiah doesn’t read Ethics Alarms…
A particularly clueless inquirer of the Times Magazine advice columnist “The Ethicist” asks…
“I volunteer for a small nonprofit organization picking up free food from pantries and delivering it to an impoverished local community. Recently I learned that one of the directors of the organization lied to food pantry personnel to obtain more food for our clients. The pantry normally allocates one bag of food per week for each family. Our director said we were delivering to twice as many families, so each family actually received two bags a week. When asked to provide the names of the clients we were delivering to, our director gave fake names.
“I’m uncomfortable with lying to sister organizations so we can procure more food than our families would receive under the established rules. And I worry that the extra bags for our families mean that other needy clients don’t get what they need.
“When I discussed this with another volunteer, they reminded me that one bag of food could never feed our large client families and that the director’s intentions were good. Please help me sort this out.”
Both the fact that anyone would ask such a question and that a philosophy professor thinks enough readers wouldn’t know the answer makes me again wonder if I’m wasting my life trying to advance the cause of ethical decision-making.
Ethics Alarms 
I wonder if the extra bags went to people the director knew personally.
I am all for charity but this appears to be another way to make people dependent.
Aside from the obvious issue of double dipping to get more free stuff at the expense of another the ethics of the entire delivery of food practice should be examined.
First, these families if impoverished are getting free meals for children in schools, SNAP benefits, and now want food delivered to them from the food bank. What is this door dash on steroids.
I can understand meals on wheels for the elderly and infirm but if you have a large family you are hardly infirm or elderly.
Food assistance programs in general are in many ways are also justified under the saints excuse without any consideration of the behavioral modification of the recipients over time. Expanding the food assistance to include home delivery exacerbates the problem. This is in large measure why we have intergenerational poverty. We train people to believe learning to be productive by attending school and working to support yourself is for suckers when you can just marry the government and be cared for and if you get any push back you claim it is an attempt to stigmatize them or some other bigoted reason.
If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say the powers that be want the general populace dependent, fearful and ignorant. Easier to control that way, don’t ya know. It’s a small step from this to “you will own nothing and be happy”. Perhaps it’s just the path toward decline that the Romans followed, rotting from within. Perhaps it’s a level of comfort only seen with general wealth and prosperity of all for a long time that the worst off even rarely starve or are without like they were in generations past.
Demeter
Dependency seems to be not to be orchestrated by the “powers that be” but such powers do reinforce what seems to be coming naturally to those who live in relative comfort vis a vis the rest of the world.
I for one am tired of hearing about the price increase of gasoline because of the military operation to eliminate the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran and its 47 year long asymmetric campaign against the U.S. and the region as a whole as it tries to establish hegemony.
My parents and grandparent knew what sacrifice was like having lived through the Great Depression and WW2. Today’s Americans bitch loudly if the government has not done enough for them. It does not matter whether they argue for an increase in SNAP benefits or a tax cut so they can buy more stuff.
The following is a bit off topic but it relates to the growing trend of Americans unwillingness to understand that their immediate gratification sometimes need to take a back seat to the preservation of the very society that provides far more than we deserve individually.
Based on my understanding of the age demographic of EA I can surmise that many remember what happened when the Arab (OPEC) sates decided that our support for Israel during the Yom Kippur war cutoff a significant amount of our supply of energy. So, $4.00 gasoline gets people upset and politicians use that anger to undermine our nation’s elected leaders yet most of them never sat in a gas line for hours only to be told that the station was out of gas. I find it amusing that the same politicians belaboring $4.00 gas now supported its own environmental policies that raised gasoline prices to an inflation adjusted cost of $5.09 in 2012. That was Obama and $4.89 in 2022 under Biden. They told us to go buy a $60,000 EV. Given the increase in fuel economy improvements in ICE vehicles compared to 1973 the cost of fuel per mile is less today than when gas was about 37 cents per gallon ( inflation adjusted to 2026 would be $2.53 because getting 15 MPG then was perhaps gotten in a VW beetle but the average car was lucky to get 12 MPG. I get an average of 37 MPG in my Toyota which is better than twice the mileage I got in my 1972 Vega (about 15) so by my calculations my fuel costs are not all that bad. I understand most people don’t evaluate things the way I do but they should look at things relative to other periods.
How many remember the supply side inflation that cause mortgage rates to run upwards of 18% not to mention that home building virtually ended driving prices up even further. Too many have forgotten that Iran’s theocracy kidnapped our personnel and played mind games with them for over a year. Many have listed Iran’s notorious acts over the years and I wont repeat them. But, we should remind ourselves that in these situations, if you cannot support the decision to deal with this middle eastern menace once and for all and if you whine long enough that the politicians will force an end to the operation it will in effect be a surrender to an enemy that the only thing it has left is the will to survive. If we force a premature end I suggest that we prepare for more and greater violence that could affect our way of life in the future.
If we had done nothing are people ready to make the sacrifices I had to make in the 70’s or my parents and grandparents had to make in the 30’s and 40’s. If not the republic will be short lived and Khrushchev will have been prescient.
And this time I spelled my name correctly.
Knowledgeable, fact-based Reality supporting post, CM!
PWS
Now, I am curious to see if the Professor gave the right answer.
-Jut
I’m not. I rate it 3-1 that he gets it right. Prof. Appiah is a standard issue woke academic from NYU. He might base his answer on “feelz.”
He said for the letter writer to raise their concerns with the director, and if he won’t listen, with the board. He did not suggest telling the food pantry about the deception. It was all very squishy and ended with this:
“None of this should obscure the larger injustice here. Your quandary should remind us how wrong it is that there are people in this rich society who struggle to feed their families.”
Which, to me, negates all the advice to take action because any action that brings out the truth may result in the food pantry cutting them off entirely. Who cares about a small injustice when there’s a “larger injustice”?
“None of this should obscure the larger injustice here. Your quandary should remind us how wrong it is that there are people in this rich society who struggle to feed their families.”
I would like to call baloney on Appia’s response here. Our church also supports ministries that help deliver food to the poor. What some of our members noticed is that some of the poor drive very nice cars when they come to collect the food. When SNAP was affected by a government shutdown, some of the affected posted YouTube videos from a good looking car using the latest cell phone.
The problem is often that those calling themselves poor have the wrong financial priorities and poor money management. Money is spent on cars and electronics, and then no money is left for the essentials such as rent and food. That is where SNAP comes in, and churches and charities are called in for assistance.
Poverty is not always related injustice. Often it is due to personal life choices, such as dropping out of school, children out of wedlock, inability to hold down a job, poor finance habits.
“The problem is often that those calling themselves poor have the wrong financial priorities and poor money management“
Bravo India November Golf Oscar!
PWS
Oh no, he didn’t go there…this is why I avoided reading The Ethicist’s answer.
I am reminded of discussions I sometimes have with my fellow tax preparers. People will ask questions like “Do I have to report this income even though it’s too small for the company to give me a 1099?” Well, of course, the proper answer (which is the one I use) is to tell them that any income is supposed to be reported. Anything else would be unethical and legally and factually wrong.
But yet, we know that unreported small (and even substantial) cash receipts are unlikely to be actually found out by the IRS. But they could — well, in theory. I admit, I don’t have a high opinion of the IRS’s competence, but I digress.
The IRS deliberately cultivates a ferocious reputation, and it is certainly the case that they have some mighty big sticks in their tool chest to bash you over the head with, if you make them. And if they so choose, they will not be ignored. So, don’t poke the bear…..