Should we care about other people?
October 25th, 2009 | Published in Economics idea | 4 Comments
Suppose we don’t care about other people. Suppose that we care only about our own welfare or perhaps the welfare of a small group of people we are a member of.
The easiest way to meet our needs is to find a way to get outsiders to meet them at as low a cost to ourselves as possible. One solution would be to round up a bunch of outsiders and force them to work for us, giving them the bare minimum they need to remain healthy enough to work. Another tactic would be to try to set up economic conditions so that they voluntarily work for low wages because their alternative is starvation.
Can this type of exploitation be justified? I think the answer, sadly, is yes. We can claim that the others wronged us in the past, are inferior in some way, or would exploit us if they were given the chance. Rationalizing oppression isn’t hard. It is actually trivially easy.
Given the potential benefits of using others to meet our needs, why should we worry about them? Why should we care about their plight?
I could list a heap of rational reasons to care about others. We could worry about crime poverty causes. We could worry about the tables turning and finding ourselves in poverty. There are all sorts of things that could go wrong. Is it worth the risk?
My guess is that a careful analysis of the pros and cons of selfishness would be inconclusive.
If there isn’t an objective rational way to decide how much to care about others, what’s the alternative? Do we trust our emotions? Do we follow tradition? It’s an important question to answer when thinking about economic problems. It is frustrating that a clear solution seems out of reach.
October 27th, 2009 at 2:33 pm (#)
I was expecting the question of “should we care?” to have wider application. You jumped right into examples of forcing others to work for us as slave labour. This would be a case where we are causing a bad situation for others. But what about those we have no direct interaction with?
Maybe we’re self-sufficient and don’t need others to meet our needs, or maybe we trade fairly with others to maintain our lifestyle. Should we care about African farmers starving because of a drought? Should we care about our next-door neighbor who wishes he had satellite TV like we do?
Eric
October 27th, 2009 at 6:54 pm (#)
Eric.
You are right, I was honing in on exploitation right off the bat.
We can take a step back and talk more broadly about the morality of caring for other people.
Let’s assume that we are totally self-sufficient and don’t need to interact with the outside world. Suppose we are very productive and could do things to help people in other places who aren’t doing as well as we are. Should we help them?
In this case there would be no self-interested reason to help them. It would simply reduce our standard of living while offering us nothing in return. The only reason to help others would be if it somehow made us feel good. This comes down to a question of how our brains are wired. Some people will feel good while others won’t care.
I don’t think there is an objective or rational way to decide how much to help other people.
October 27th, 2009 at 11:48 pm (#)
I’d be interested to see how much people professed to care correlated with how much they did about it. I think you’re right that it’s probably based on how much it makes them feel good. A lot of people “care” about homeless people, but don’t do anything about it. Some will give money to beggars or to charities, but they stop short of volunteering all their spare time and significant portions of their incomes to help the people they care about.
Eric
October 28th, 2009 at 6:22 pm (#)
I think the problem people have taking action is that they don’t feel that they can make a difference.
Giving money to a beggar or to a charity has such a small impact. It’s easy to move from thinking that you can’t make much of a difference to not doing anything at all. Does inaction mean that you don’t care? Or at least don’t care in a way that matters?
I don’t donate large sums of money to charity. Does this mean I am indifferent to the suffering of others? In a sense it does. I am putting my own needs ahead of the needs of others.
I have to admit that I live a life of hypocrisy. I want to live in a more just world. I’m not, however, doing much to bring it about. Should I feel bad about this? Perhaps. My only excuse is that I’m human. I, too, shut out the needs of others who are less fortunate than me so that I can get through the day.
What I want is to be a part of a society where fairness is part of the fundamental fabric. I’d be willing to give up a lot more to live in a fairer world. This is what economists call a collective action problem. While I’d be happy to forgo some perks if everyone was cutting back, I don’t want to be the only one making the effort. I’d feel like a sucker.