Wife and I were watching Handmaid's Tale last night and for some reason this hypothetical popped into my mind.
You are presented with a choice at age 18. The choice is, you are gifted unimaginable wealth and can live your life any way you please, and you and your friends and family will never need to worry about money again. But this is conditional. You have to accept as a personal assistant someone pulled from poverty at age 18 who will be required to work for you until they reach retirement age. You can pay them any salary you'd like, provide any benefits you'd like to them and their family, provide the best working conditions imaginable, but they are obligated to you for 40h per week, every year from age 18 through 65 and they cannot leave the job. The candidate is selected randomly from an impoverished 3rd world region and in the hypothetical they will be capable and pleasant to work with. They will not have a say in whether they are assigned to you and once they are they are obligated to you for the next 47 years of life, and their day to day work life will be entirely determined by you.
Does the capacity to give someone who would otherwise likely die in poverty a lifestyle they could hardly imagine outweigh the moral offense of depriving them of their freedom of self determination in that one aspect (choice of employment, location, etc), and does the fact that you would personally benefit from doing so affect that answer?
My wife took the meta view of everyone being beholden to an economic system in one way or another and accepting the proposition would increase the amount of prosperity in the world and in your immediate influence. She leans yes. I remain on the fence.
Do you accept the proposition?
The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W
You are presented with a choice at age 18. The choice is, you are gifted unimaginable wealth and can live your life any way you please, and you and your friends and family will never need to worry about money again. But this is conditional. You have to accept as a personal assistant someone pulled from poverty at age 18 who will be required to work for you until they reach retirement age. You can pay them any salary you'd like, provide any benefits you'd like to them and their family, provide the best working conditions imaginable, but they are obligated to you for 40h per week, every year from age 18 through 65 and they cannot leave the job. The candidate is selected randomly from an impoverished 3rd world region and in the hypothetical they will be capable and pleasant to work with. They will not have a say in whether they are assigned to you and once they are they are obligated to you for the next 47 years of life, and their day to day work life will be entirely determined by you.
Does the capacity to give someone who would otherwise likely die in poverty a lifestyle they could hardly imagine outweigh the moral offense of depriving them of their freedom of self determination in that one aspect (choice of employment, location, etc), and does the fact that you would personally benefit from doing so affect that answer?
My wife took the meta view of everyone being beholden to an economic system in one way or another and accepting the proposition would increase the amount of prosperity in the world and in your immediate influence. She leans yes. I remain on the fence.
Do you accept the proposition?
The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W