Quote:
Originally Posted by Ahldagor
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haven't you heard? there's no morality anymore, we're a free species
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Another example: The availability of donated clothes to some areas has decimated local textile industries. If someone was giving perfectly good cars away do you think most people would buy one or just take a free one?
Economic actions have economic consequences. The motivations or intent does not matter, only the ultimate consequence. I think I linked the video in this thread (or maybe the GMO thread) Milton Friedman asked if car companies should make cars even safer if it would make each car cost $1,000,000. The answer is clearly no. We accept certain risks because the cars provide so much utility. He asked the question again with the car costing $0.05 more per unit but it would save 1,000 lives. In the case the answer is yes, the car should be more expensive.
Few people disagree with that logic. This means that we all inherently accept the idea that certain results, however individually distasteful (the poor guy who died because we didn't have $1,000,000 cars), are still necessary because of the aggregate consequence (we all have cars now).