A real small example of ethical conundrum (maybe you find it interesting)?
  • Hypnos
    13
    Dear all, I would love your opinion on the following matter.

    Fighting against consumerism and programmed obsolescence, one of my hobbies and challenge is to keep my old smartphone alive as long as possible.

    Always on the look-out for spare parts, I found on a listed ads website an exact same model, declared as "dead" by the vendor, which I bought for 20 bucks, for spare parts.

    Now as I received the phone, I quickly went through google to find ways to fix it and in not even 10 minutes I was able to revive the phone, whose market value just went up to 200 bucks.

    My first instinct was to want to contact the vendor with a message in the sort of "hey buddy turns out your phone works fine, do you want it back?"

    Then I thought of the other potential arguments:
    - If he didn't bother to even try to go to Google, does he "deserve" the alive phone?
    - If it was my business to fix phones, would I tell my customer that it took me only 10 min to fix it while I probably would charge him 75 bucks for it?
    - Wouldn't a merchant capable of finding excellent deals (i.e. buying "dead" carcasses and reliving them) be declared as successful (thus good, thus morally good?)
    - Is the amount significant enough? If it was a much smaller amount I would probably not mind, and if it was a much bigger amount I would probably be unable to do the morally right thing.

    No matter how I turn it, I can't feel at ease keeping the phone with me. So I feel it's morally wrong to keep it. I am a moral subjectivist btw (I think).

    Now plot twist... I checked the vendor's facebook profile, and turns out the gentleman is a pro-military fascist !! That is totally against my values and as such I would perceive him as an "enemy".

    Does it change the moral judgment/decision? I feel we were united as proletarians abused by the consumerist system, but now I feel we are politically and ideologically divided. Which division line should prevail?
    Hypnos Options
  • tim wood
    8.7k
    No matter how I turn it, I can't feel at ease keeping the phone with me. So I feel it's morally wrong to keep it. I am a moral subjectivist btw (I think). — Hypnos

    Value is in the eye of the beholder. What's not trivial in that bromide is that the value is a real thing. Things, then, have value. As such they are (usually) owned, and the owner has certain rights and obligations both to himself and to others. One of those obligations to himself is to know what he needs to know; of his rights (again, usually) is the right to sell his interests - his thing - whatever it is, at a price he agrees to. Imo you are correct and admirable to reflect on a situation where something seems incorrectly valued. Indeed, if a store makes a mistake and sells you a $2,000 refrigerator for $50, they can get it back; but the key here is "mistake."

    It's not clear any mistake was made. He sold a dead phone. We all have to suppose that he priced his dead phone correctly. In any case, he apparently freely sold it at a price he agreed with. You, on the other hand, are the weirdo with the phone's twin. You took the risk; you added enterprise, effort, and expertise, and parts and labor; you added the value. Implicit in his operating his business is that he could have done those things but chose not to. Or another way: value is a kind of "hard goods." Being subjectively touchy-feely about value is not a bad thing, but also it's not always appropriate. It's not pig in the parlor, but there's an aspect of parlor in the pig-sty.

    A different category is a non-business seller, like someone holding a garage-sale. But the general
    "rules" for all of this are the combined caveat emptor and caveat venditor. Beyond that is law - a whole other animal.

    The value, it seems to me, is yours. You added it, and very likely you're the only person who could have added it. Judge Judy rules for you, and you're welcome!
    tim wood Options
  • deletedmemberMD
    588
    Definitely an interesting dilemma/connundrum? (I always forget the difference there haha)

    Have you considered, that the most beneficial thing you could do to act as the moral agent of yours and my shared disdain for the moral qualms we have with the acquisitions of the materials used to produce these
    Devils Dildos
    - Patrick Maguire in Shameless original UK version (Never the US version!).
    Is to provide direct and complaint heavy feedback to manufacturers demanding increased longevity in future devices, and deep moral consideration and improvement on and in the lives of peoples who have been negatively effected by the ravaging of their countries natural resources, by the capitalist machine? while at the same time, acknowledging and praising the good intentions behind the pursuit of enhancing technology for all of humanities and lifes benefit?

    I'd be so much happier giving my money to a company the makes a point to gain long term economic stability by producing truly generational devices that are a bit closer to our own human lengthed generations and that also makes a point to recall and recycle the materials of the old devices at even 5-10 year intervals with upgrades, software's updates and device maintenance being given at a low cost to as many customers as possible. The prices could even be rolled into the 5/10/20 year intervals as one purchase wherein you pay for all the previous software and routine servicing along with the price of the next gen device since this long term model would be easy for investors and crediters to get behind during the lower cost periods of servicing and long spaced out research and development.

    Just give me my Damn PipBoy already, before fallout please! #PipBoyForJusticeInTheCongo
    deletedmemberMD Options
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