Question of Ethics

Cultural training.

I'm wondering if mark meant the training that caused people to turn a blind eye to others experiencing misfortune, and caused "employees" to say things like "I was just following orders.

Willful ignorance is just as bad, if not worse, than doing active harm.

I'm familiar with the story.

I'm trying to make a connection to this topic.

Which part of Les Miserables to which point(s) brought up here?

Another person who thinks a minimum wage job should have no perks.

It is not like they are guarding a Brinks truck.

They actually have to handle the currency it is not a sealed suitcase with a combination lock and a message that will self destruct after it is read.

If the owner or this employee simply takes the money to a bank deposit and it is counted by a machine there is no reason why a minimum wage employee cannot profit rather than the bank.

This is like saying a chef is stealing when they taste the food to see if it has enough salt. The food must go directly from the pan to the plate... lol It is one of the perks of working with currency.

It is not always ethically right but in many cases it is.

Stop being such a prude.

The extent to which someone goes to return found valuables to their original owner is, I think, relative.

In the case posed by the OP, I think he went beyond what is ethically required. First of all the value of the silver coins hardly amounts to a treasure, and secondly, and more importantly, I think, is that while it turned out that the owner of the coins didn't know they had been used by his wife to spite him and would never, himself, have used them to pay for washing his clothes, the OP didn't know this, it wasn't immediately obvious, nor reasonably inferred.

Some people walk around with a silver coin in their pocket and use it to buy gum or some such thing. Whether they realize it's silver or not is immaterial. It's not as if some poor old man with dementia came to the OP with a diamond and said "Can you give me four quarters for this?" It may have been the only coins the person had and they didn't want to bother to get change from a local store.

I've applauded the OP's actions precisely because I believe he went further than what ethics required of him. Honesty is it's own reward and so is behaving ethically. We don't applaud people for not mugging people on the street, or stealing money from the collection plate at their church. While it certainly doesn't hurt to praise someone for doing the right thing, what earned him praise, from me at least, was doing more than the right thing.

With the hypothetical example of finding a money stuffed wallet in one of the machines, the extent to which the finder is ethically required to seek the owner is much greater. In such a case it would not be at all reasonable to assume the owner left it in the machine because he wanted to be generous towards an ultimate finder, or was too lazy to pull it out. That sort of assumption is made by someone who is unethical and wants to find a reason, no matter how absurd, to keep something that has clearly been lost or misplaced.

The fact that the hypothetical wallet was stuffed with cash and thus far more valuable than any likely wallet alone, increases the effort required to find the owner, particularly because the finder may, ultimately, be enriched handsomely by the find.

Finally, assuming that the wallet didn't contain identification, the finder could and should reasonably assume it belonged to someone in the trailer park (was it a trailer park?) This doesn't mean that someone from a thousand miles away couldn't have stopped there and used the machine, but, again, the reasonable assumption is that they lived or visited someone in the park.

Personally, I believe that holding on to it or giving it to his boss for safekeeping and finding a way to inquire of all of the residents (a posting on the community bulletin board, or distributed flyers) if they were missing their wallet would be sufficient effort, but someone else might feel that taking it to the police was necessary. Of course the police would not launch an investigation to find the owner. They would simply hold on to it for whatever length of time was required by law or precinct rules and wait to see if anyone claimed it. Conducting one's own investigation would be greater effort than turning it over to the police. Doing both is certainly an option.

(I don't know that if I lost my wallet that I would contact the police unless I had reason to think it had been stolen or contained so much cash that making a likely fruitless call seemed worth the shot)

This is one of those great cases where all ends well. The man got his silver coins back, he found out what a spiteful witch his wife could be, and the OP, I'm sure, rightfully felt good about himself.

Still, it would have ended well enough if he replaced the silver coins with ones of whatever alloy they now use, but if he didn't feel good about his decision then he made the wrong one and that is a consideration in ethical issues. Of course this is not to say that if you feel OK about stealing someone's money it was an ethical thing to do, but the adage "let your conscious be your guide" is always good to employ in these cases. You can satisfy ethical requirements and still feel you should do more...in which case you should.

(Maybe we should send this question to Mr Ethics at the NY Times, however a priest agreed with my opinion so I'm happy to stick with it. )

I think it's very ethical of him to go beyond what is ethically required.

If one is unwilling to go past the absolute minimum when it's within their power and ability to do more, they're not living up to their potential to do good for human kind as a whole.

I'm reminded of these lines in Middlemarch, by George Eliot:

"for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unmarked graves."

It's not about the big things. It's about someone being kind enough to take one step out of their way, to look out for another. That's ethics, not "what's the minimum I can do to get by"

As far as your priest, I've not known any that were particularly ethical to be honest.

In any event, the question wasn't what is the minimum required to get by, it was asking if what happened was ethical, and it was.

You seem to think we are in disagreement on this matter.

I don't.

As for the priest, he's not mine, he's the OP's. He mentioned that he had consulted his priest on the matter and he basically agreed with my opinion.

Oops, we crossed posted last night, more or less. I hadn't seen that second post.

Yes, we are on the same page.

If you can't see the connection, there's nothing I can explain.

ci, I know the story.

I'm trying to figure out if you meant the silver candelstick thing, the stealing a loaf of bread, Javerts obsession with catching a good man who has help many over a trifle, or what.

If you can't take the time to clarify what you said when politely asked, it gives the impression you may not really have a point or example in the first place.

The story as a lot of plot lines, characters, scenes, ethical questions, etc.

But apparantly you think you're too knowledgeable and superior to imagine someone might not be 100% clear on what you're saying.

Please, don't bother.

It's called stealing by finding.

Did you tell the priest the number of pieces of silver to be garnered?

Finders keepers, losers weepers.

Life is about winning and losing

Some will win, some will lose and some are born to sing the blues.