It seems like it comes down to personal responsibility: WHO are we responsible for? Our neighbors, yes. But since we live in a global environment as well as a local one, ‘neighbor’ encompasses more than the people who live on my street, or that I come in contact with in the grocery store.

I truly believe that in order to be good at what we do, we need to find out who those people are that we feel responsible toward; I feel that I need to help any person who has an ittybiz, for example. All those small business people are my neighbors.

Hope that makes some kind of sense – thank you for the questions, Charlie!
.-= Rachael´s last blog ..What To Do When You Just Don’t Feel Inspired =-.

Thanks for starting this series; you write in a very clear and non-patronising style! I’ve had very little philosophy education, and didn’t study anything ethics-related beyond Kant vs utilitarianism. Looking forward to reading and learning more…

I really appreciate this, Ali. I was really worried about this post because I’m really passionate about it, but it requires a bit of background and prefacing to get into – I didn’t want to leave anyone out of the conversation, but I didn’t want it to come across as “talking down” to anybody, as well. I’d also like to show people what the draw to philosophy is, as well; it’s not just a bunch of abstractions, but instead deals with the very real issues we face in a considered, reasoned way.

So, again, thanks for the encouragement.

As Duff pointed out in Naomi’s similar post, the challenge is that we can never really know someone else’s motives. What’s even more disturbing is that we sometimes don’t know our own motives. But this doesn’t mean that asking questions about motives is useless.

One of the things I hope to bring to light in this series is the bias that we have against entrepreneurs. Many of us assume that most people are legit until they prove otherwise, but entrepreneurs have to prove their trustworthy first. It’s fascinating when you think about it…

I find it interesting that you think the motives are different for #1 or #2 – more specifically, I find it interesting that you didn’t make the same changes to motives between the cases. Normally what we’d try to do is make a motive change and translate them across all the cases.

I think that what’s at play is that people think that entrepreneurs are solely self-interested more than others, so when we make generous translations regarding self-interest, we don’t make them for entrepreneurs. In other words, why couldn’t the entrepreneur’s real motive be the pleasure of others just the same as mine in #1? Or, in #3, why couldn’t my real motive be helping people, with business interests being a side-benefit?

Many people think that it’s more praiseworthy to help someone you don’t know than someone you do. Think about helping your next door neighbor versus helping some “faceless” Nigerian.

What do you think? And what does this mean for the ideas in this post?

Entrepreneurs cannot simply be in business to give stuff away. There is no value there – for anyone.

A lot of entrepreneurs either forget this or have a hard time getting their mind wrapped around. I’ve said it before: sharing and selling aren’t two kinds of things – selling is a type of sharing. Create valuable stuff that helps people and/or makes their lives easier, and recieve in kind.

In the other cases, some action beyond mere acceptance of the “goodie” is assumed.

I suppose for me, Case #1 would seem more analagous if you cooked dinner for Angela because you love her (and because it’s a meal you enjoy too), but you’re hoping she’ll do something for you in return…

The *moral* situation to me seems fine in each of them. There is no trickery involved; a free gift (dinner, sweets, planners) is offered, and the recipient can accept or not.

I totally agree with you that business ethics are not a morally special category. One of the reasons why I freelance is so that my own values can be congruent with the way that I conduct business.

Thanks for starting this series; you write in a very clear and non-patronising style! I’ve had very little philosophy education, and didn’t study anything ethics-related beyond Kant vs utilitarianism. Looking forward to reading and learning more…
.-= Ali Hale´s last blog ..Review of Marketing School (from IttyBiz/Naomi Dunford) =-.

Liz mentions that in case #2, it appears that the agent is motivated by her own interests. I know that in this particular case she is speaking only to the example, but I think that this assumed motivation is something we all do when dealing with the multitude of strangers we interact with on a day to day basis.

To use your examples in case 1 and 3, we know and like Charlie. We assume his motivations are, if not pure, than at least good. However, how much would change if we found out that the real motivation behind Charlie cooking dinner was because he was about to admit an affair and wanted to soften the blow? What if we discovered that the free planners had a trojan horse installed in them that allowed Charlie to track the websites you visit and see what purchases you made?

To the shopkeeper in case 2, we assume that her motivation for giving away candy is to increase her sales. Liz quite reasonably points out that if her sales did not increase she would most likely stop giving the candy away. But is that her true motivation? What if she had a banner year and felt that she should give something back? Why are we so quick to assume we know or understand someone else’s motivations?

Perhaps we assume the worst about people we don’t know because it allows us to protect ourselves from disappointment. Or, more cynically, perhaps we assume the worst because we are playing the averages. But I see this a lot in blog comments on various blogs – people outright accusing others of a hidden agenda they have absolutely no way of knowing the person has. They have automatically assumed the worst of motivations.

Thanks for letting me rant, sorry this was so long. And for clarification, Charlie is not (to my knowledge) having an affair or sneaking trojan horses into his downloads. Not that we thought he was.
.-= Jamie´s last blog ..Everything You Need To Know About SEO. Or Not. =-.

I actually think all three cases are fine, but I don’t think they’re exactly the same for most people. (I do think some businesspeople will give things away simply because they want them to be out there, much like I would cook a dinner a friend would enjoy even if it weren’t my favorite meal. Only you know which is you!)
.-= Sarah´s last blog ..Warm chickpea and butternut squash salad =-.

I never thought I’d be having a conversation on the finer points of ethical theory outside the university- but what fun!

So here’s my take- in each of your three cases, the agents are acting in morally permissible ways. There’s nothing in the situations as you’ve described them to suggest that the dinner maker, the shopkeeper or the you of case 3 are doing anything wrong.

I would say that there is no moral obligation on the part of any of these agents to perform the actions you describe- hence they might be considered supererogatory (above and beyond the call of strict duty).

There does, however seem to be a subtle difference between the agent’s motives in case 1 and the agents’ motives cases 2 and 3 having to do with the object of the agent’s action.

In case 1, Angela’s happiness is the primary objective and you benefit because you share a common preference for what to eat. It’s conceivable that you might do something that she would really enjoy- but wouldn’t be your first choice. For example, you might bump her chick flick to the top of the netflix queue. Her pleasure is what really matters, and even if you didn’t benefit (or didn’t benefit much), you’d still perform the action.

In case 2, it seems that the agent is motivated by her own interests and her customers are benefiting as a side effect. If the shop owner gave away the candy and her customers enjoyed it, but they didn’t buy any candy (either the awesome new candy or anything else) chances are she’d quit offering the free samples pretty quickly. If there is no benefit to her, it’s hard to see why she would keep performing this action. Since she has no obligation to provide the free samples, she wouldn’t be violating any moral norms if she stopped.

Case 3 is the fuzziest- since it’s not clear exactly what benefit you receive (or hope to receive) from giving away the planners. (You say it ‘could’ serve a business motive…) In this case, it seems that the benefit to those who use the planners is more immediate and direct than the benefit to you at this point. But I’m guessing that if there were no benefit to you and no reasonable expectation of some future benefit, you would stop making them available (or stop giving them away.)

Looking forward to the dirty hands post!