this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Anarchism
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It sounds like the people you've used as an example certainly try to do good.
I think an issue here is that "ethical" and "unethical" as value judgements operate on many different levels and just because someone does something considered one or the other, it doesn't necessarily mean they are wholly bad or good.
Providing services aimed at helping poor and marginalized people? I'd argue that's ethical.
Accumulating wealth? I'd argue that's unethical, whether it's by doing something helpful or harmful: as another commenter pointed out, it's a zero-sum game and keeping more for yourself means there is less for others.
I don't think the people you described are bad people; they're doing something philanthropic within an unethical system.
Thanks for that well written response. That is very helpful!
This is a fair point I considered. That's why I wondered how to define because it can't be on an individual basis.
Could you expand upon how getting paid a high salary is unethical? Does giving a lot to charity make it better?
A high salary isn't unethical on it's own, just like how a small salary isn't necessarily ethical when it is acquired by unethical means. However, high yet ethical salaries are vanishingly rare because the structure of our economy provides very few opportunities for an individual to create that much value, while the opportunities for extracting that much value from masses of working people abound.
Capital imposes an iron law of economics: Profit = Income - Expenses. Labor costs are an expense, therefore profits can only be achieved when the workers aren't fully compensated for the value they've created for the company. This generally breaks down two ways, the actual workers who create value and are massively underpaid for it, and the generously-salaried managers who extract that value to finance the shareholders' dividends.
Every dollar paid to someone who owns a share of a business is a dollar stolen from someone who works there.
So based on what you just said, profit would/should essentially not exist. It should be expenses going towards all workers fairly and the rest put back into the company and means?
Ideally, yeah.
There's no way to make profits that doesn't exploit the very people who make them possible, and therefore no moral way for shareholders to exist as an economic class. Ownership and it's demand for perpetual dividends on finite investments can't ever be anything other than a machine for extracting value from workers.
Thanks! That makes a lot of sense. So if one wanted to expand and make more one would thus have to divide that amongst more workers. Any expanse, salary, and expense would all be decided and taken upon together.
Indeed!
It's not perfect, but worker-ownership is as close as we get to ethical forms of business organization.
Thanks for taking the time to explain :)
Of course! Online discourse is my favorite way to procrastinate at work. XD
Same! I’m doing it as I watch my infant eat remotes lol