moral luck

TARP Ethics Dilemmas: A Guide For Advocates and Critics

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Surprise! The TARP bailout of October 2008 seems to have turned out remarkably well.  The Troubled Assets Relief Program, which was and still is attacked by conservatives and Tea Party critics as a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street giants who should have been allowed to fail, is now anticipated to eventually only cost the federal government about $25 billion, according to the Government Accounting Office.

When a policy that is widely criticized as wrong-headed in principle actually works, it presents ethical problems for both advocates and critics alike.

A few helpful tips: Continue reading →

The Ghailani Verdict Spin

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Terrorist and mass murderer Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was acquitted this week of 284 counts of murder , deaths that he unquestionably engineered, planned, a brought about in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in East Africa. He was convicted of just one count: conspiracy to destroy U.S. property and buildings. Since one logically cannot conspire to destroy buildings with people in them and not be guilty of murder, the verdicts make no sense. There was indeed plenty of evidence presented to prove Ghailani  guilty of all the murder counts beyond a reasonable doubt, but this was just a bad jury, or to be more precise, a jury with a bad juror. We now know that one women held out against the rest, insisting on acquittal for the murder charges for reasons known only to her. Maybe she thought he was Ghailani. Maybe she wanted to make the Obama Administration, and specifically the Department of Justice, look inept, though it hardly needs any assistance. Maybe she’s a fan of terrorism. Maybe she’s just a dolt….who knows? The bottom line is that a terrorist got away with murder. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Former NFL agent Josh Luchs

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment
“That night I sat in my hotel room making a list of pros and cons in my head. Sure, it was breaking NCAA rules, but I would be helping Kanavis out. How would I feel if my mom was sick and I didn’t have money to help her? I went through this for hours and finally decided to do it. The next morning I went to the bank, pulled out some of my bar mitzvah money, $2,500 in cash, showed up at Kanavis’s door and told him, “Kanavis, I gave this a lot of thought, and I want to help you out. I know how I would feel if it was my mom.”

—Former registered NFL player agent Josh Luchs, describing to Sports Illustrated one of thirty incidents in which he gave money to college players to persuade them to sign up as clients.
………..
Yes, if it was Luchs’s mom, and he thought he could con an agent into handing over illicit cash using her as an excuse, he might have tried this too. Thus do we see how a profession that is faced with many ethical dilemmas is completely unprepared to apply even rudimentary ethics analysis to come to a correct decision. Luchs frames his dilemma to make him out to be a good guy, but what he was actually doing is exploiting a college kid’s personal problems to reel him in, breaking NCAA rules on the way and jeopardizing the player’s career. Did Luchs explain that accepting the money might lead to sanctions for both the player and his college? Apparently not. More importantly, Luchs wasn’t giving money to the athlete to help his family out; he was giving the money as the quid in an implied quid pro quo arrangement: “I help your mother, you sign with me. Deal?” Continue reading →

Karen Owen’s “Fuck List” and the Rutgers Sex Video Suicide: Not So Different

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Karen Owen is a recent graduate of Duke. Either they don’t comprehend the nature of the internet at Duke, or are graduating more than their share of cruel, thoughtless, reckless dolts, because Owen decided it would be a hoot to make a faux “senior thesis” Powerpoint presentation documenting her sexual activity with thirteen Duke athletes, none of whom gave consent to be named in her “study”. She classily dubbed it her “fuck list,” but it was unofficially titled “An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics.”  (“Horizontal academics…get it?) Then she e-mailed the file to three “friends,” and, as you’ve probably guessed, one  or more of them sent it around to their friends, who eventually made it viral. Soon two websites decided to maximize the harm to all concerned, as websites are prone to do…especially websites called “Deadspin.” Continue reading →

The Right Lesson From The Rutgers Sex Video Suicide

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

The tragedy can be blamed on moral luck.…bad moral luck. The two Rutgers students who humiliated a classmate by secretly taping a gay sexual encounter between him and another young man and live streaming it onto the internet couldn’t know that their sensitive victim would jump off a bridge to his death in despair. Most students would not react this way. Some might have a breakdown; some might seek revenge. Some might not even care. Raunchy teen hi-jinx gross-out comedies often feature equally awful “jokes” or worse, depicted as just part of the carefree, amoral life among uninhibited youths. This time, however, the prank killed. Everyone will look at students Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei as monsters now, because of the unpredictable result brought about by their cruel violation of a fellow student’s dignity and privacy. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce or Hero? The Paradox of “The Amex Angel”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

You probably heard the story. About three weeks ago in Manhattan,  ad executive Merrie Harris was approached by a homeless man who asked her for some spare change. Harris told the man, Jay Valentine, that she had no change, but offered to lend him her American Express Platinum Card if he would promise to return it. Valentine assured her he was trustworthy, and, incredibly, Harris gave him the card. He returned the card a short time later after a modest shipping spree that added twenty-five dollars to her bill. The New York media sang the praises of both Harris and Valentine, dubbing Harris “the Amex Angel” and calling the episode “a shining act of generosity, trust and honesty.”

I almost designated Wilson an Ethics Hero at the time, but something stopped me. I have been considering the implications of the strange story ever since. It may have been that shining act, but I’m not convinced it was even ethical. Is that possible? How can an act of generosity, trust, and kindness not be ethical?  Continue reading →

Ethics, Punishment and the Dead Child in the Back Seat

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten received a Pultitzer Prize for his feature, “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?” Focusing on the grief of parents who caused the deaths of their own children by negligently leaving them locked in over-heated cars, Weingarten, to his credit, doesn’t advocate a position in his article, although it would be impossible to read it without feeling compassion and empathy for his subjects, both those who have been prosecuted and those who have not.

The article squarely raises a classic ethical conflict, as well as the question of the role of punishment in society. As always with ethical standards, the issue ultimately encompasses how we decide what is in the best interests of society. Weingarten points out that there is no consensus on whether parents who inadvertently kill their children in this way should be brought to court: some prosecutors bring charges, others do not. Which is right?

I don’t like my answer much, but I think it is inescapable, once the emotion is left behind. Continue reading →

Shin-Soo Choo and the Duke’s Dilemma

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

You wouldn’t think that a South Korean baseball player could have much in common with John Wayne, but a slugging first baseman for the Cleveland Indians named Shin-Soo Choo now faces an ethical dilemma strikingly similar to the one “the Duke” encountered in 1942. Continue reading →

Ethical Conflicts and Dilemmas in the N.F.L.

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Last week, my esteemed colleague Bob Stone took the Indianapolis Colts and their coach Jim Caldwell to task for choosing to protect the health of the Indispensable Man, Quarterback Peyton Manning, for the play-offs by resting him in the second half of a meaningless game against the Jets, rather than go all out for a record-setting defeat-free season. The Colts lost, fans booed, the season was marred, columnists howled, and according to reports, significant numbers of Colt fans tore up their season tickets in protest. Was Caldwell unethical, as Bob argued, violating the integrity of the game and cheating the fans who had paid good money to see their team strive for an undefeated season? Continue reading →

Remembering Ted Kennedy Fairly

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Today, on the Sunday before the new year, the New York Times Magazine has its annual issue of brief profiles of famous, important, and not-so-famous-but-still-important people who breathed their last in the past twelve months. It is always a fascinating collection; for me, the exercise is a slap in the face, focusing my wandering attention upon how many remarkable lives and achievements have escaped my awareness and proper appreciation—and this is only a small, random collection. The last of the profiles, however, was about a life I knew a lot about: Ted Kennedy. In my view, the piece fails an ethical imperative. It doesn’t mention Mary-Jo Kopechne. Continue reading →