I don’t think anyone is claiming that this describes all instances where someone calls something immoral.
It’s merely calling attention to two interesting phenomena: (1) envy can make people regard something as immoral when their real problem with it is that others can have it and they can’t, and (2) even when someone has actual principled reasons for disapproving of something, once they are in a position to take advantage of it themselves they are liable to forget those principles.
(Perhaps those are really the same phenomenon, deep down. But they feel different enough that, e.g., it took me a while to figure out how anyone could think the quotation had anything to do with the idea that “power corrupts” because I was initially thinking only of #1 while cousin_it was referring to #2.)
Let’s say X is an action that’s immoral in some sense and profitable in some sense. There are three variables:
1) Do I say it’s immoral to do X?
2) Can I do X at a low cost to myself?
3) Is it “actually” immoral to do X?
“Power corrupts” says that 1 and 2 are anticorrelated when 3 is true. The quote I posted says that 1 and 2 are anticorrelated regardless of the value of 3, because people just do a cost-benefit calculation. That seems to cover both of your scenarios as well.
(You may or may not interpret that as saying that people don’t care about 3, which sounds pretty cynical but seems to be true in some cases.)
You seem to be assuming that inequality of access to $WHATEVER is a priori morally acceptable. At least speaking for myself, there are lots of things I consider morally acceptable in an egalitarian society that I don’t consider acceptable in an inegalitarian one (usually: things liable to make the inequality worse).
(Let me try to clear up one possible source of misunderstandings: I take it that the quotation is about situations where someone who can’t afford X says “X is immoral”, not where they say “It is immoral that other people can afford X and I can’t”.)
I don’t think anyone is claiming that this describes all instances where someone calls something immoral.
It’s merely calling attention to two interesting phenomena: (1) envy can make people regard something as immoral when their real problem with it is that others can have it and they can’t, and (2) even when someone has actual principled reasons for disapproving of something, once they are in a position to take advantage of it themselves they are liable to forget those principles.
(Perhaps those are really the same phenomenon, deep down. But they feel different enough that, e.g., it took me a while to figure out how anyone could think the quotation had anything to do with the idea that “power corrupts” because I was initially thinking only of #1 while cousin_it was referring to #2.)
Let’s say X is an action that’s immoral in some sense and profitable in some sense. There are three variables:
1) Do I say it’s immoral to do X?
2) Can I do X at a low cost to myself?
3) Is it “actually” immoral to do X?
“Power corrupts” says that 1 and 2 are anticorrelated when 3 is true. The quote I posted says that 1 and 2 are anticorrelated regardless of the value of 3, because people just do a cost-benefit calculation. That seems to cover both of your scenarios as well.
(You may or may not interpret that as saying that people don’t care about 3, which sounds pretty cynical but seems to be true in some cases.)
You seem to be assuming that inequality of access to $WHATEVER is a priori morally acceptable. At least speaking for myself, there are lots of things I consider morally acceptable in an egalitarian society that I don’t consider acceptable in an inegalitarian one (usually: things liable to make the inequality worse).
Why do you think that?
(Let me try to clear up one possible source of misunderstandings: I take it that the quotation is about situations where someone who can’t afford X says “X is immoral”, not where they say “It is immoral that other people can afford X and I can’t”.)