do the predominance of individualism and instrumental reason make it impossible to live an ethical form in modern,western capitalistic society? explain your reasoning.

consider: instrumental reason providing jobs to children at nike in indonesia, you buy the shoes, are you now unethical?. the answer is yes. consider this for other more essential items to everyday life. now tell me what you think.

Among available options, our "individualist, capitalist, western society" is more or less ethical. No society is 100% ethical, with the millions who have died under collectivism & communism, I don't see how people can still conclude in 2009 that individualism is all bad. Not to go all Ayn Rand on you or anything, but individualism and self-interest can motivate an outcome that is ethical. Result matters more than intention.

And on that note:

Are you so certain? Presumably the economy is such that the families benefit from the additional income. Perhaps those children were starving before Nike moved a factory there. Would we be more ethical if we refused to bring industry to those areas so we could feel good about how ethical we are?

This isn't to say that capitalism is always ethical - it certainly isn't. No system is. I'm just saying you have to judge things in context. Americans didn't hesitate to have children work during our industrial revolution, and now that we have benefited from the fruits of that labor, we will sit in our big houses and refuse to tolerate other nations having *their* children work?

In my assessment, if Indonesians want their children to work whether or not Nike has a factory there, I do not see why it is unethical for Nike to have a factory there provided working conditions are safe, humane, and that the company pays a wage that is commensurate with what a worker can expect to receive in that economy.

No it is not impossible. This is coming from a libertarian (therefore I am a free-market capitalist). One thing that I want to say first is that (if you are thinking of the United States, which I am assuming you are) then you need to remember that there is no free-market in the United States. It happens to be "freer" than European nations but it is not free - in fact very far from free. The system that exists (or should I say "existed") in the United States is a corparatist system. There was no free-market system in the United States for almost 100 years now!

Second thing I want to ask is why is greed bad? People often say that greed is bad. Why is it bad? Greed is great. Greed is the reason that everything exists in societies. Just look at your computer, it is just an excellent example of greed. No single human being is capable of designing such a masterpiece. It takes thousands and thousands of people all over the country and all over the world forming little pieces of the computer that end up being assembled together to form the computer. Every single one of these people is not concerned about you, each one is concerned about himself, his self-interest, i.e. greed. Greed is perfectly fine and perfectly human as long as the person deserves it, as long as I earn what I earn in an honest way without cheating or stealing it from other people (because otherwise it is theft).

Now let me ask you this. If you are against capitalism because of greed then why would you ever trust the people on the top of the government? You think the beauracrats that handle your money (if you want to adopt a socialistic way of living) are not greedy? If there is one place for greed then it is definitely for the people on top of the beauracracy. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

If someone really honestly earned billions of dollars why should you punish this person by taking away all this money from him? For every dollar (if it was done honestly without any cheating or stealing) that he earned he produced as much if not more towards society. Carnegie and Rockefeller were very rich people but all their money that they got they got from people who paid for their success, and so they both had very positive effects on society with their self-interest.

I am an individualist, I want people to live their lives freely. To think for themselves and to do the things that they please. Independent of gods and governments. I do not know what you are or how you call yourself, I am going to assume that you call yourself a liberal (sorry if that is wrong). I view liberals as authoratarian collectivists. They are the ones that want to limit how people live their lives and even in some cases how people can talk, they even want to rob people of the means to defend themselves (I am talking about gun-control). I am sure they are well-motivated people but we must judge people's ideas on their consequences and not just on their motivations. It is hypocritical that people point to some extremely selfish people that arise because of capitalism and ignore all the horrors that heavily regulated government brought in history. I would rather live with some selfish people next to me that will not harm me than live under the oppresive power of a big government that pretends that it cares about me. Authoratarian collectivist love to point to "robber barrons" but they gladly ignore all the tyranny and death that powerful governments have caused.
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Why Common Thieves Are Better Than Socialists:

Thieves have the guts to do the job themselves.
Thieves do not steal in the name of "justice".
Thieves do not masquerade as "liberals".
Thieves do not comprise a unified political mob of millions.
Thieves do not loath freedom and individuality.
Thieves do not undermine the Constitution.
Thieves do not promote mind control via "political correctness" and "hate" crimes.
Thieves do not own/control the "establishment" media.
Thieves do not indoctrinate our children to be unquestioning drones of the state.
Thieves can be arrested.


"The biggest minority on the planet is the individual, those who are not willing to protect the individual cannot claim to care about minorities" - Ayn Rand (This is also a motto of some libertarian movements).

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"Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power
over people is to assure the people that they are ruling
themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully
submissive slaves." - Joseph Sobran

You of course would prefer the chidren starve?

CB

Meaningless question, what is ethical?

CB

I want children to strave. It is a turn-on for me. When I wake up in the morning the first thing I do is open a newspaper and read about all the dead children. The most pleasant sound in the world is the noise of babies crying. That is the real reason why I am a libertarian, I do not care about liberty. I just say I do to make people respect me, but secretly I want the rich to make the poor children work for them so they can die. I love money more than children. Can you imagine killing little babies and selling their organs? Can you imagine how much money you can earn !?!

I often tell people that I have no morals, I only have ethics. I do not believe in "good" or "bad/evil" because I view everything as meaningless with no value in things. Therefore, I cannot create a standard to judge "good" or "bad". But I do have a way to act with people and an idea for how people to act, i.e. I have ethics. People have feelings, we can feel happy and excited; we can also feel in pain and sadness. The way to act with people is to maximize our positive feelings and minimize our negative feelings. And that is pretty much it. That is my code of ethics. I think that people should help another because that improves our society and our overall existence. While at the same time people should not steal, insult, or kill one another because that worsens our human experience. This is not some golden principle that always works but it is the general way of thinking that I have. For this reason, I have no problem with: incest, bestiality, polygamy, or pedophilia. When I say "good/bad" I say it in my understanding in how people ought to act. The funny thing is that when I am in the subway and see a woman trying to carry something up the stairs I am one of the few people, and sometimes the only person, who walks over to her and asks her if she needs any help. It is funny people I am the one who sees no value in helping people, and yet I still do it, while the masses do believe in meaning/value and yet they do not do it. Why?

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"Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power
over people is to assure the people that they are ruling
themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully
submissive slaves." - Joseph Sobran