One thing that fascinates me in everyday life is how we view large institutions. Specifically, I’m interested in the moral values that we assign to large corporations like Walmart, and how those values differ from the way we think about locally owned mom-and-pop stores. Since reaching my 20s, I’ve avoided illegally downloading music. I never felt right about it intellectually. Eventually my sense of guilt at downloading something that I know a) hurts someone whose work I’m enjoying and b) removes a financial incentive for that person to keep working overcomes any pleasure I gain from saving $10 on an album. However, I feel very little compunction about finding every loophole, and even watching my roommate stretch the truth, when dealing with my cable company. A large part of this derives from the fact that it intuitively feels like my cable company would have no problem using the fact that it has a monopoly on my apartment building to offer me less than ideal service. In fact, I know that this is true from experience.
The reason I bring this history up is that recently Nate Silver wrote a column on how to beat airline fares using a “hidden-city” trick that caused some controversy over at the NYT. The basic premise of Silver’s idea was that airlines charge extra to fly somewhere if they have a monopoly on that city. It is often cheaper to fly much farther with a stopover in the city where the airline has a monopoly than to actually fly directly to that city. Chicago and Dallas/Ft. Worth are both examples of cities where it is traditionally much more expensive to fly into because United Airlines and American Airlines, respectively, have relative monopolies in these cities. So if you are flying from D.C. to Chicago, it can be cheaper to book a flight to Las Vegas and just not board the plane from Chicago to Las Vegas. Silver gets into the intricacies of how to successfully pull off this trick in his original column. However the real excitement comes from the comments and when Silver responds in the controversy in his column above.
The key point made by those who objected to this trick is that in the Contract of Carriage that one agrees to when purchasing a ticket (I never noticed that I agreed to this, but I have a bad habit of clicking as many boxes as I can, as quickly as possible, to end the pain of not looking at Cats That Look Like Ron Swanson), the passenger agrees not to use of this “hidden-city” trick. Silver responds by saying that because one does not have the option to negotiate a Contract of Carriage, this act of using the “hidden-city” trick is a way for customers to renegotiate with companies that have a relative monopoly on air travel (that is subsidized with government funds) on their Contract of Carriage. He furthers this point by noting that Contracts of Carriage are legally dubious and usually considered not binding.
My response to all of this is that I think Silver is wrong about the fact that this is a renegotiation. I think violating your Contract of Carriage is clearly breaking an agreement that was entered into willingly. If you do not like an airline’s policies you have the option to fly other airlines (Southwest has an awesomely lax Contract of Carriage) or not fly at all. Calling this a renegotiation is a way for Silver to avoid getting into tough questions like: Is it wrong to lie to a major company that is distorting a market, which also relies on taxpayer dollars? I think rather than tell ourselves we aren’t lying, it would be more useful to admit that the majority of us do not feel bad about lying to airlines on a topic like this because we have a pretty bad opinion about airlines. So until I see an argument that convinces me that airlines deserve more respect than my cable company, I am in the Nate Silver camp, with the caveat that this definitely makes me a liar.
-Bo
I generally agree with your post. The next logical step regards the fact that there are instances where the relative ‘evil’ of lying to a corporation or individual can be balanced against the respective ‘good’ it might do. I’ll use your example of the music industry. Like you, I generally purchase my music feeling that the artists and everyone else involved deserve to be compensated for their work. However, there are certain instances I will resort to downloading a song through less scrupulous means specifically if a.) the song is not available through my medium of choice (currently itunes) or b.) if a certain song I want is offered not as a single but only when purchased in conjunction with the rest of the album. In both of these cases I am able to rationalize my actions by noting in a.) that the artist could have chosen to make their property available through the currently most socially acceptable means and in b.) that while I am willing to pay $1.30 for a song I want I am not willing to pay $10 for one song I want and nine that I don’t. This suggests certain shades of grey. There may certainly be a point where an action can be looked upon as objectively evil, there are many subtle levels approaching that point. As such, each of us is set with the task of balancing the severity of our conscience with the level of rationalization we find acceptable.
ReplyDeleteI think your point is on target. One of the problems with rule based systems of ethics is the fact that they can't allow for the inherent conflicts that most people face within themselves (leading to these shades of grey). One additional point I'll make is that I think how bad we feel about lying/cheating/stealing from someone is how much we can identify, or empathize, with them. I see my favorite musicians' faces all the time. Their music is in important part not only of my day to day life, but how I view myself as a person. It's much harder for me to be deceitful to them. The same goes with my local grocer and Walmart. I immediately empathize with the small business owner, employing my neighbors. Walmart does not have a face to me. It feels like the employees there have no deep connection to the store. It's a situation where I'm far more compelled to act only in my own self-interest because I have a hard time seeing another party who's self-interest I can empathize with. Now does that make it less immoral to lie to American Airlines than it does to lie to my local grocer? I'm not truly not sure, but I do know I am far more likely to do so.
ReplyDeleteI don't see anything morally objectionable about doing this at all, because I too reject Rule ethics. From my largely Utilitarian perspective, there's nothing inherently morally wrong with lying and stealing; moral evaluation depends on context and consequences. For-profit corporations have an incentive to exploit and overcharge customers while providing the lowest-cost, lowest-quality good or service they can get away with. They exist entirely to charge me more than the service actually costs, so I see no ethical violation in thwarting their attempts to rip me off, even if I have to lie to do so (I'm not afraid to call it a lie, either; it's a well-intentioned lie that helps prevent an act of monopolistic exploitation.)
ReplyDeleteThe same goes for downloading music. Record companies are bad for music lovers. They seek the blandest, dumbest music possible and then market it to people. And they overcharge for this terrible music - seventeen bucks for a CD? Anything that cuts into their profits and chips away at this creatively stifling model is a good thing if you ascribe any importance to actual music. Yes, the beneficiaries of the current record company system suffer, but we're talking about a small number of filthy rich record executives and "artists" who don't compose their own music. Clearly, from a Utilitarian perspective, it would be better for the legions of actual musicians and actual music lovers if these people received less profit and thus had less control over the music produced in our society, and it would only HARM a select and already privileged few. Finally, with the advent of the internet, no one needs these companies to distribute their music. They aren't just distorting a market, they're distorting people's ability to share their creative work by trying to preserve their role as arbiters of taste and gatekeepers of artistic success. Fortunately, they're losing this role, and it's largely thanks to illegal downloading. I do think the issue is a lot more complicated when it comes to music released on small, independent labels, though.
I know Jer will totally disagree with me, because he'll cite some data about the negative economic implications of this approach to consumer morality. But this is how I see it right now. I'm very open to having my mind changed.