How many man-minutes of inconvenience are you willing to create for random strangers for every dollar you can save for yourself?
Come to think of it, this question is about as close to an objective measure of an individual's level of morality as we can get. Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire planeload of people sitting on the tarmac for an extra ten minutes.
"Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire planeload of people sitting on the tarmac for an extra ten minutes."
Lets consider a few hypothetical scenarios:
1. You can get 50 dollars but it may potentially result in 60 minutes of delay for 100 people. Would you turn it down?
2. You can get 1000 dollars but it may potentially result in 5 minutes of delay for 100 people. Would you turn it down?
3. You can get 10,000 dollars but it can potentially result in 5 minutes of delay for 100 people. Would you turn it down?
4. You can get 100 Million dollars but it can potentially result in 3 minutes of delay for 100 people. Would you turn it down?
5. What if you are broke and have a child to support?
Intent of the hypothetical, addressing its parent's thought about moral relativism, clearly supposes that you are inconveniencing people for monetary gain without possibility of compensating or otherwise being able to undo that.
Your reply is the equivalent of answering "If a genie grants you one single wish, what would it be?" with "I'll wish for a million wishes" :-)
And your reply subscribes to moral relativism too ('If I give them $x each, then it is okay to delay them. What is a few minutes anyway?'). Also note that $x that you are suggesting to give per person times 100 is just 1% of your gain. You don't know how much you cost them with the few minutes of delay that you caused. Perhaps someone missed a connecting flight and lost the chance to see his mom before she passed away.
Yes, but if you base your life on those sorts of hypotheticals you can never do anything.
If you push a button at a pedestrian crossing so you can cross the road, you're stopping potentially hundreds of cars just for your benefit. How much have you cost them? What if one of those is someone who's racing to the airport to catch a flight to see their mom who's about to pass away, and your decision to cross the road then delays them just enough to miss their flight?
Please note in my first comment I was replying to the statement: "Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire planeload of people sitting on the tarmac for an extra ten minutes." I tried to explain that he will become a moral relativist if the 'rewards' are high enough. In the second comment, I tried to explain that handing $10K to each doesn't correct it. It just makes you feel better. Still moral relativism.
At least in NYC, the pedestrian crossing buttons have no effect on the traffic lights. They computerized the traffic grid and them pesky pedestrians screw up the flow. So you can push all you want, but it wont speed things up.
> Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire planeload of people sitting on the tarmac for an extra ten minutes.
I hope that the person at the airlines who came up with the pricing model is also bound by the same moral framework. Something like - how big a bonus does it need to tempt you in coming up with a scheme which robs thousands of customers of your employer an extra $5 for the next few years?
To be fair... money has different value to different people. I doubt any billionaires would care to waste 10 minutes of other people's time to save much money, because money doesn't have that much value to them. On the other hand, college students that eat lots of ramen are already valuing money more than their own health, so it seems natural that they'd place far more value on the money, even if they place the same value on other people's time.
Disregarding the infamous rich brats you see on TV, rich people are in general very frugal and do care about dimes and nickels. That's how many of them got rich in the first place.
And regardless, billionaires are in a minority.
college students that eat lots of ramen are already
valuing money more than their own health
On the contrary, I think college students are the ones that don't care about money.
No, he's clearly arguing that the billionaire is more rational with his money. Even though the marginal value is higher for the college student, that student is not as smart might not even see the opportunity for monetary gain.
So with a Full boeing 747 (probably a large overestimate), that's about 366 people (with wikipedia as source). At 10 minutes you're wasting 61 man hours (did I make a mistake? That seems way too large). Taking a low estimate on the value of people's time of about $10 per hour, you should be saving $610 to justify it...
Let's go with a smaller plane... My friend who is into airplanes tells me that 40 is a good estimate for shuttle planes from small cities to bigger hubs (30ish to 50ish, I just averaged them). So every 10 minutes you waste is about 6.5 man hours. Again valuing people's time at $10 per hour, you'd have to save $65 to break even (though that relies on pretty low valuation of the value of people's time).
Come to think of it, this question is about as close to an objective measure of an individual's level of morality as we can get. Screw all theories of moral relativism; I can tell whether you're a good person or not by knowing how much money it would take to tempt you to leave an entire planeload of people sitting on the tarmac for an extra ten minutes.