Social vs Individual Responsibility.
There's a tension
On Sunday I went to a Humanist discussion about the Universal Basic Income (UBI). I was pleased that most people accept the UBI as a good thing though there were questions about whether t is a feasible idea.
When I look at the incentive system of our society I observe that the need to torment unlucky people kind of 'drops out' of the way the system works. I've lived at the bottom of the economic scale during my adult life. I've seen how it works.
I worked in the printing trade but was never in a union. Therefore I never earned enough to support a family, but I was earning enough to pay the rent and bills. Then business would be bad and I'd be out of work and on unemployment. That was not pleasant at all but it was better than welfare. And welfare was better than begging on the streets.
People don't really want to descend into that kind of poverty (which involves increasing levels of torment).
My stance here is that this is a huge moral problem.
I'd say we have a moral obligation to fix that up.
But the responsibility here is a social one - not an individual one. Social and individual responsibility work at different levels of abstraction.
There is a certain tension between those two kinds of responsibility.
I've always thought the idea of responsibility is pretty simple - it's the ability to respond. I'm responsible for the condition of my apartment because I can respond to it in various ways.
But there is nothing that I as an individual can do to remove tormenting the unfortunate from our social incentive system. That has to happen at a social level.
An example of that is the rules of the road. If you don't have a road then you can make up you own rules. But once you have a road with cars and trucks on it then ou need rule or the road will be a death trap.
Vaccinations show a similar thing - they are effective as social measures but don't work as individual responsibility.
i the discussion in the humanist group one person denied that we have a social responsibility to alleviate the suffering of the unfortunate. I looked at him in horror - really? If that's what you think then stand away from me please.
What do you think?
I open the floor
I present regular philosophy discussions in a virtual reality called Second Life.
I set a topic and people come as avatars and sit around a virtual table to discuss it.
Each week I write a short essay to set the topic.
I show a selection of them here.