Ethics

Some of the statements in the conversation on ethics in class this week surprised me quite a bit. I have always considered myself to be a fairly selfless person overall when I compare myself to many of the people I see out in the world. Money has almost no influence on me and while there are definitely many material goods that I would like to acquire, I despise the thought of getting them in some fashion that would be unfair to or harm others.

While there were not many who did, the fact that anyone could fathom bringing up pro-piracy or other innately greedy concepts during a conversation on ethics was astonishing. I knew that greed and piracy are common, but always assumed that the person doing them knew that what they were doing was ethically wrong. I am not completely sure if these people in class were simply saying that they know it is ethically wrong, but they simply do not care and do it anyways, or if they truly see it as the right thing to do.

There is no legitimate argument to support piracy. One of the major claims of supporters of piracy is that the cost of the goods is too high, and they refuse to pay $60 for a video game(or whatever price for music, etc.). However, a team of several people put countless hours into developing that product, and deserve compensation for their hard work. In our economic system, if goods are priced too high, they wont be bought and the price will naturally drop. If a customer does not feel that they have the money to pay for the goods, they should not be able to enjoy the product. In my eyes, this is no different than stealing a luxury car and claiming that it was just because the price they put on it was too high for me to pay for.

Overall, my ethics come fairly naturally to me. They likely are based strongly on the set of morals my parents raised me on, but are constantly evolving. While the minute details change, the overall purpose of them does not though. My ethics are simply focused around improving the lives of others and minimizing the amount of "badness" in the world.