Is It Immoral to Sell Your Morality?
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So I was sitting in my undisclosed location a few days ago, cleaning out my aggregator and listening to the radio, when I heard a commercial — for what I cannot recall — that contained, give or take a word or two, the following pronouncement:
First, an important premise: The buffalo wing in question must already exist, have been prepared, must be eaten immediately, etc. It must be, in economic terms, a sunk cost. By eating the buffalo wing, our vegetarian would therefore not be expanding the market for buffalo wings and would not cause any additional buffalos to be killed or go wingless.* The choice is binary: (1) eat the wing and get $50, or (2) someone else eats the wing (or the wing goes into the garbage, etc.). There is no "(3) save a buffalo."
If that is the choice, then wouldn't the moral course of action be to eat the buffalo wing, take the $50 — and donate it to some pro-vegetarian or anti-meat cause (or, for that matter, to any noble cause as determined by the vegetarian's subjective tastes and preferences)? By forgoing $50 — or even $0.01 — that could have furthered her morality without any offsetting cost (remember the premise), isn't the vegetarian in fact declaring that her morality is worthless?
The only true cost is opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of not eating the buffalo wing may have been $50 — but that's the wrong opportunity cost to measure. Since the opportunity cost of indeed eating the buffalo wing was not $50 but zero, the value of the vegetarian's morality must also be zero. Q.E.D.
I have at least two vegetarian bloggers among my regular readership. I therefore expect lots of discussion.
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I've privately pondered this question in the context of another wingless buffalo: Jimmy Carter. It's perfectly hunky-dory for him to go around building houses with Habitat for Humanity. Point conceded. But wouldn't it be "more moral" for him to, e.g., go on the lecture circuit, earn high speaker fees and then donate that to HfH? Is Carter being "selfish" by instead donating his (low-skilled) time as a builder?
One would think that economists would by now have studied this question, and maybe even given it a clever name. Go figure.
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I realize that there are people who are vegetarians strictly for ("selfish") health considerations and not out of ("selfless") moral concerns. For the purposes of this blogpost, however, you do not exist. Sorry.
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(Just to be clear, I'm no longer in the undisclosed location. I'm back home.)
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*Is it my imagination, or do buffalo wings taste just like chicken?
I'm a vegetarian. A man once offered me $50 to eat a buffalo wing. I decided that my morality was worth more than that.It seems to me that this woman, by refusing to take the money, is actually declaring that her morality is worth less than $50, and indeed worth zero.
First, an important premise: The buffalo wing in question must already exist, have been prepared, must be eaten immediately, etc. It must be, in economic terms, a sunk cost. By eating the buffalo wing, our vegetarian would therefore not be expanding the market for buffalo wings and would not cause any additional buffalos to be killed or go wingless.* The choice is binary: (1) eat the wing and get $50, or (2) someone else eats the wing (or the wing goes into the garbage, etc.). There is no "(3) save a buffalo."
If that is the choice, then wouldn't the moral course of action be to eat the buffalo wing, take the $50 — and donate it to some pro-vegetarian or anti-meat cause (or, for that matter, to any noble cause as determined by the vegetarian's subjective tastes and preferences)? By forgoing $50 — or even $0.01 — that could have furthered her morality without any offsetting cost (remember the premise), isn't the vegetarian in fact declaring that her morality is worthless?
The only true cost is opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of not eating the buffalo wing may have been $50 — but that's the wrong opportunity cost to measure. Since the opportunity cost of indeed eating the buffalo wing was not $50 but zero, the value of the vegetarian's morality must also be zero. Q.E.D.
I have at least two vegetarian bloggers among my regular readership. I therefore expect lots of discussion.
---
I've privately pondered this question in the context of another wingless buffalo: Jimmy Carter. It's perfectly hunky-dory for him to go around building houses with Habitat for Humanity. Point conceded. But wouldn't it be "more moral" for him to, e.g., go on the lecture circuit, earn high speaker fees and then donate that to HfH? Is Carter being "selfish" by instead donating his (low-skilled) time as a builder?
One would think that economists would by now have studied this question, and maybe even given it a clever name. Go figure.
---
I realize that there are people who are vegetarians strictly for ("selfish") health considerations and not out of ("selfless") moral concerns. For the purposes of this blogpost, however, you do not exist. Sorry.
---
(Just to be clear, I'm no longer in the undisclosed location. I'm back home.)
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*Is it my imagination, or do buffalo wings taste just like chicken?
Posted by Kip on
6 March 2008
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