Publication : two people need a hamburger on the street

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~ two people need a hamburger on the street

Ask this question to any conservative, liberal, libertarian, or socialist.

You drive a car with two people in it, and you get lost and run out of gas and end up in a ghost town 150km away from nearest store. You are filled up with food and can last for a long time, but the two people you are with are starving.

So two guys are on the street, both are extremely hungry, in fact starving. One is a millionaire, and one of them is so poor that he has no place to live, and no money at all. No one has cell phones. There are no payphones.

You have a small piece of hamburger with a bit if bun, and that is it. Both need the hamburger piece, as they are starving. There are simply no places open (all places are closed, it's a ghost town, there is simply nothing open: no grocery stores are open, no restaurants are open).

You ask them both a bit about themselves, and you find out that one of them is a millionaire and one of them is a poor person.

You only have one hamburger piece, nothing else.

You could give either person the hamburger piece - or possibly split it. But even splitting it, and giving the millionaire half of it, seems silly, since the poor person is in so much need that he could literally die the next day if he doesn't get food - whereas the millionaire would maybe find a solution with his money, if someone drove by and was willing to take payment to go and get some food 150km away, if someone so happened to drive by.

Now apply this to any business situation: torrent files, musicians, hollywood. If there was a struggling artist with almost no income, with a song or movie that you liked, would you buy it? To support that artist? And if there was a song or movie made by a billion dollar company, would you buy it?

Obviously it seems more ethical to pay the struggling artist than to pay the billion dollar company.

I'm not suggesting anything here: that you should, or should not, first pay struggling artists. I'm simply offering this story as a thought provoking question... should people be supporting struggling artists, and then just not supporting billion dollar companies that are already so successful? Again, don't think I am suggesting anything here: I am asking the questions, I am not saying you should do either one, either way. You have to decide.

Is it fair that if both the millionaire and the poor person need the hamburger, that giving either of them the hamburger would be fair, or splitting it would be fair? Really think about it carefully: the poor person could literally die if he doesn't get any food. The millionaire could possibly find food in the next 24 hours if he can use his money some way (if a car happens to drive by).

So apply the same setup to a torrent system: should you pay a company $290 for music, software, video, or any other content? If they already have millions of dollars in the bank account and you are so poor that you can barely afford a $10 shirt, what is the ethical thing to do? And, if someone wants $40 for their video and they are struggling, but you love their video, should you just get it on a torrent system for free or should you pay the struggling artist?

Again, I'm not suggesting you do any of these or making any assumptions about what you should be doing. I'm asking these questions to thought provoke.

Legally the right thing to do is to always pay for every product no matter how much money the company already has in the account. But consider the hamburger situation where a millionaire needs the burger, but a starving person needs it too. Both of them are not bad people, both of them are not criminals.. You've checked out their history on the planet and they are good people. Who deserves the burger the most? The person with an existing account of millions of dollars at the bank, or the poor person?

If both of them could die within the next 24 hours from starvation, then it would be a hard choice to make: you'd probably split the burger. But the person with a million dollars could find a way to access some of his money and use it. Again I am not suggesting anything: I am asking you to come up with an ethics solution to this hypothetical. And obviously this is not likely to happen in society, however, a comparable situation is very likely to happen with similar parameters - just not as absurd as a "Burger on the street with two starving people that need it". But something very similar happens with: artists on itunes, torrent files, shareware authors, operating system programmers, donations to open source vs commercial and proprietary software, clothing stores that help needy, and much more.

Once again I stress that I am not proposing the solution to the problem is to just extract wealth from all the rich people and distribute it to all poor people: I'm simply asking ethical questions to think about.

A really scary way to think about it is: if the millionaire (starving that needed the burger) was an extremely important person, who if he died, could be extremely dangerous for the planet (say he was a nuclear scientist and all our energy sources relied on his work, or say he was the inventor of some key think that all humans relied on and would likely invent more items in the future necessary for humanity), and the poor person was just a good person but really was not as important as the millionaire in the future to come, the ethical thing to do in this burger situation may be (depending on what you think) to give the millionaire the burger even though the poor person and the millionaire are both good people and both deserve the burger. Splitting the burger in half would be the obvious compromise, or maybe splitting the burger into some other share system. But what if both of them were so starving, nearly to death, that only a full burger would do the trick otherwise they would die.. i.e. you had to give them a certain amount of calories otherwise they would die. Who would be the best person to give the burger to...

I am not suggesting anything: I am proposing an ethics provoking situation.

The hamburger situation they are in is a bit absurd. There could be better story lines that include say a bunch of people on a plane, and only one person on the plane can be saved after the crash. Etc.

Now think of this example: say there is a famous rock band, who has millions of dollars in their bank accounts. They have stolen plenty of old songs from struggling blues musicians and not given them any credit, or very little credit, and remade the songs in such a way that they are sell-able to the public. Think: Led Zeppelin. So you go on torrent and rip some of their songs and listen to them. Theoretically the RIAA finds this illegal that you are taking content without paying for it, even though, music artists steal content from other blues musicians and do not give them credit, and do not pay licensing fees to use their beats. A lot of rock and roll is stolen content from old blues musicians, who were for all intents and purposes starving artists, and still may be today. So why is it so unethical to steal music, from bands that are thieves too..

Again, I am not trying to suggest anything or convince you either way: I am simply asking you to make your own decisions and look at this critically. Many hollywood movies are stolen from short stories or books, too, without giving the author any credit (or very little) and without giving the original author any money or royalty. So why is it so unethical for people to go on a torrent and steal content, if the stolen torrent content is just being stolen from other thieves anyway. It would likely have to be worked out on a case by case basis. I am not trying to suggest that there is any right way of going about this generally, nor am I suggesting you do a particular action either way: I am asking you to think about it critically.

The hypocrisy on this planet is strong, as you know. Everyone is a severe hypocrite. But when the RIAA goes around complaining about people stealing their content, in the mean time the producers themselves protected by the RIAA are stealing content too.. it just seems a little bit strange. Next time you listen to a song or watch a movie, remember that the producer of that song or artist probably stole it from somewhere else so they could have their piece of the cheese and get away with it. Indeed there are fully original works out there that deserve full respect: I am not suggesting that everything is stolen (maybe it is, but that`s another article), I am simply asking you to think critically about this ethical dilemma. There may be no fair solution. It is basically one gigantic mess of hypocrisy.