I tweeted this two-part Twitter thread earlier this afternoon.
I am not sure I have a lot to add here:
Isn't that just about the ultimate ethical question and the one no neoliberal wants to answer?
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I’ve been wondering if anyone would dare put that in the MSM.
I thought it myself, and read it in a lot of the media that I read. It can make it feel that you care less about those whose lives were lost in the Titan, but then, they knew what they were possibly letting themselves in for, except maybe for the teenager.
Another of the problems of rescue in the Mediterranean is that so many countries do not want those rescued even if they are on board a rescue ship, and send them from port to port, country to country, passing the buck, even when they are supposed to have signed agreements not to let people die at sea. There are two large rescue ships at the moment having trouble re-equipping themselves so they can set to sea again. In both cases it’s because they have had to use up too much of their fuel and provisions as they haven’t been allowed to land at the first port they have arrived at.
I really appreciated seeing the RNLI boat in the Channel where the rescuers said they were going to continue doing their job whatever the government said.
Here’s another ethical dilemma based on rich and poor.
Most of the people who died of covid were poor, in jobs that exposed them to it more regularly and without PPE.
And then you get Johnson lying about nearly dying from it, to elicit sympathy from the voting public.
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/thepoweroflies
Fortunately it is now known that he lied about it, and a film has been made of it.
Anyone with any spare money to crowdfund the film?
Rich boy Rishi Sunak accused of being a narcissistic sociopath. In other words living on the Planet Zog, a parallel universe:-
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mendacious-sociopath-ben-elton-rips-into-rishi-sunak-on-live-tv_uk_6498057ce4b007604cf99f6b
John Rawls answered the question in the second post decades ago – The Veil of Ignorance.
Once you accept Rawls’ premise then what needs to be done in terms of how people are treated is very clear.
I note that many of the dead came from Pakistan – a country that has been a basket case for decades – not least due to its military who are incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery. With the amplifer that is a growing climate disaster, things are going to get worse. Which then begs the question: what to do. There are no easy answers.
Agreed. Including on Rawls, who is my big philosophical influence
Equally how can it be right that someone who tries to comply with maritime law to rescue seafarers in trouble can be prosecuted?
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/german-sea-captain-faces-20-years-jail-over-migrant-recsue-efforts
Well, to engage at a philosophical level, valuing all human lives equally is a fine ethical principle to espouse, but I’m not sure many people actually act as though all human lives actually have equal worth. Do your children or parents or siblings or spouse or neighbours mean nothing more to you than any one of the other c.8 billion people alive today? We all have equal dignity perhaps, but most people would I think do much more to protect and help the people closer to them than strangers. Perhaps it should not be so, but it is. If you need a reason for that, I’d suggest rational self-interest, and a hope or expectation of reciprocity.
Politics should rise above that
Absolutely right. The function of the state and government IS to rise above it.
Many of the people on that ship in the Mediterranean were there because their families judged they would be better off if they became refugees in another country, rather than stay where they lived and be killed. So of course people care more for their families in some situations. But it shouldn’t be something that is measured like that, empathy versus altruism.
While I appreciate that there are taste issues and of course this is far from the only case where having too much money has sent people to an early grave, it seems to me that were we to have a more equitable distribution of income/wealth then there might be a few more members of the top 1% who get to reach four score years and ten rather than ending up in the sort of accidents that only having far to much money can buy.
What is meant by equal worth? The amount of money they have? The amount of money expended by society to save someone for a few more years (since death is of course eventually inevitable)? The opportunities afforded to everyone?
I think most of us can agree that many of our cultural and societal views are stupid and lead to inequality and the notion that some are worth more than others. For example, racism is really stupid, since we are all descendants of the original humans that arose in Africa, and therefore distant cousins of each other. Indeed we all share an ancestral mother and an ancestral father. We should all be colour-blind since the only reason I am white is because my more distant ancestors moved to higher latitudes earlier than the ancestors of blacks.
Countries are stupid – borders are completely arbitrary (even relatively small islands can have internal borders, like the UK or Cyprus), and can change over time. So the idea that one country is better than another (and inherently meaning that the citizens of one country are worth more than the citizens of another) is also flawed.
All I see is market failure.
The private market failed to protect to some rich people who had the money to visit a shipwreck in a vessel that was not fit for its intended use.
The private market in immigration failed to protect the people in another vessel that was not fit for its intended use.
All this happens because states are backing away from their responsibilities under the impression that only markets can satisfy needs and standards.
The simple fact is that they can’t and political order needs to be restored so that markets are made to heel to proper standards god damn them.