The Heinz dilemma
"A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife.
Should Heinz have broken into the store to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?"
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row (For the "Stages of Moral Development, see here)
If you say that the theft is legitimate, it must be because you believe the transaction the druggist proposed was NOT euvoluntary.
"If you say that the theft is legitimate, it must be because you believe the transaction the druggist proposed was NOT euvoluntary."
ReplyDeleteWell, if I made a fetish of the voluntary nature of exchanges, then it "must" be so. Otherwise, the claim is nonsense.
The claim may be nonsense. But this blog is ABOUT whether exchanges are voluntary or not.
ReplyDeleteAnd the claim above is that these exchanges must be involuntary. AND the definition of "truly voluntary" has been given quite precisely.
Saying where that definition is wrong (and of course it may be!) would be very useful, if you are willing to give it a shot.
But careful definitions are not fetishes.