The Good, the Bad & the Difference: How to Tell the Right from Wrong in Everyday Situations

Book by Cohen Randy

Commercial Life

Whoever commits a fraud is guilty not only of the particular injury to him who he deceives, but of the diminution of that confidence which constitutes not only the ease but the existence of society.
-Johnson, Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)

That this is one of the book's longest chapters is unsurprising: It takes up the ethics of commercial transactions, our culture's most common sort of human interaction. One way or another, these questions involve money. In particular, they deal with shopping and with the essential conflict between buyer and seller. The former wants to pay the lowest price, the latter wants to receive the highest; the temptations of deceit are powerful. That is why the used-car dealer has long been depicted as a reviled and tormented soul. If the car had been invented one hundred years earlier, Verdi would no doubt have written an opera about a used-car dealer. (And he would have taken very different sorts of vacations, perhaps driving along the seacoast with a backseat full of kids singing "Are We There Yet?")

There is an entire body of ethics and a great deal of law designed to keep the wheels of commerce turning smoothly, and that's not entirely a bad thing. It's nice to be able to buy groceries knowing that your pound of coffee is an actual pound. And actual coffee. And it makes the shopkeeper's job more relaxing if he can be confident that you'll pay for it, rather than slip it down your trousers. (And it makes your guests happier, knowing they won't be drinking trouser coffee.)

Commercial codes are ancient and nearly universal; laws touching on business practices can be found among Roman law, and farther back among the Egyptians and Babylonians. The earliest such provisions were little more than caveat emptor, but we have made a kind of moral progress. In America, there has been something of a revival of such codes under the rubric of consumerism. Most Americans appreciate measures to ensure that today even the unwary are unlikely to buy tainted pork or a cardboard sedan.

But an uneasy tension persists between consumerism and commerce. We are, after all, a country that both discourages the sale of tobacco, a toxic product, and subsidizes its cultivation. Were you to introduce some other new product that killed off its users at so impressive a rate--some kind of exploding hat, perhaps--one suspects that Congress would take more vigorous steps to discourage its sale (at least to minors).

Health and safety are not the only factors in the creation of consumer law. Tradition and self-interest also play their parts. Philip Morris is reluctant to give up its enormous profits; tobacco farmers find a sentimental comfort (and a hardscrabble livelihood) in the family farm. Of course, similar arguments have been made by Colombian cocaine cartels and small coca growers. Someday, perhaps, a satisfyingly ironic solution to our tobacco problem will be found when the Colombian government sends us a billion dollars in foreign aid so we can attack the big tobacco traffickers and shift the small farmers to alternative crops, something less deadly and less addictive. Marijuana?

There are broad ethical implications in what is sometimes referred to as the "consumer movement." Its virtues are those of our democracy itself, high among them being truthfulness and the free flow of information that enables consumers (and citizens) to make informed choices, albeit when choosing breakfast cereal rather than a congressman (although, come to think of it, lately there may be less of a distinction here than the Founding Fathers could have anticipated).

And yet, conceding the righteousness of this crusading zeal, there is something in me that does not wish to be referred to as a "consumer." It smacks of the French Revolution somehow, only instead of being addressed as Citizen Cohen, I'm now Consumer Cohen, an honorific that rather overemphasizes a single sphere of existence. The problem is not so much that commerce dominates public life, it is that commerce is public life. It is often noted that too few of us vote, but we turn out in impressive numbers to any event that includes the phrase "10 percent Off!" We spend less time in the town square than we do at the mall, where there is, for example, no guarantee of free speech (although there is occasionally a nice free sample of cheese at that snack shop). All too often, shopping is what we have instead of civic activity.

The centrality of shopping is seen in the clash between those who cherish "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and the "life, liberty, and property" crowd. Indeed, the sanctification of property "rights" by the latter group has contributed much to human misery. It is difficult to make an ethical case for those whose worship of property has led them to challenge, for example, the very idea of environmental protection laws.

Such private property extremists dwell in a fantasyland of the rugged farmer living in isolation, on his autonomous homestead, out in the wilderness, where his actions affect no other person; except, perhaps, in the case of Jefferson and his slaves. But here on Earth, a more powerful case could be made that this solitary farmer is not so solitary, that his fertilizer washes off his field into the stream from which, many miles away, others must drink; that his produce is brought to market on roads others must pay for, in a truck that spews fumes others must breathe. He learned to do his crop calculations at a public school; he follows crop prices on-line, using the Internet created by government researchers.

It is environmentalism that provides a counterargument to the worship of private property, and it is a morally superior argument, not because it proposes a more austere lifestyle, but because it recognizes that we each live among others, affecting and being affected by one another. While honorable people may differ about any particular policy, this much seems unarguable. Those private property fanatics (to whom the current Supreme Court is increasingly and distressingly sympathetic) act unethically, not just because they espouse greed and relentless self-interest, but because their assertion of autonomy is intellectually dishonest. That is to say, that there can be no meaningful ethics that does not consider human beings as social creatures.

It must also be noted that profit is not the loftiest goal to which we can aspire, nor are commercial exchanges the most deeply satisfying human encounters. Much as one enjoys the mall, there is something to be said for the library or the school, the theater or the park, or indeed for the bedroom. Even in nineteenth-century London, that proud capital of a mercantile empire, the English dreamed of traveling to Italy; one reads so few novels where a woman from Tuscany yearns to live nearer the London Stock Exchange. A society where all human interaction is a form of commerce is hardly a society at all. In other words, if I ran my life the way I ran my business, it would barely be a life at all. Although I'd give more of my friend's coffee mugs with my picture on them. And I'd have a jaunty and memorable catchphrase to sum myself up. And my name would be written in an instantly recognizable typeface.

This is not to decry commerce, but to assign it a more reasonable place in human affairs. Johnson himself was not averse to commerce, which he knew improves the condition of humanity in manifold ways. After the death of his friend Henry Thrale, Johnson pitched in enthusiastically to help Thrale's widow sell her husband's brewery, showing an understanding of the buyer-seller relationship that presaged modern advertising's awareness that it must sell the sizzle, not the steak:

. . . When the sale of Thrale's brewery was going forward, Johnson appeared bustling about with an ink-horn and pen in his button-hole, like an excise-man; and on being asked what he really considered to be the value of the property which was to be disposed of, answered, "We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich, beyond the dreams of avarice."

But Johnson did not let his commercial zeal compromise his integrity, nor did this most sociable of men lose his awareness of himself as a person living among others.

Q & A

Entrance Exams

DOOR POLICY

I was at the tailor when a young, casually dressed black man came in through the front door and said he was to meet a friend there. The shop owner (who is white, as am I) immediately told him that there was no one there, and closed the door, locking it behind him. But in fact there was a young woman in a fitting room--the friend in question--and, hearing his voice, she rushed out after him. Was the shopkeeper's lie blatantly racist? Should I have acted?
--Roberta Posner, New York City

You could not be certain in that brief encounter if the tailor was being deliberately, malevolently racist--nor, I suspect, could he. He may well believe that he does not exclude men who are black, but merely men who look threatening. But if he considers every African American younger than eighty-five threatening, then regardless of his intent, the result is racial discrimination. And in any case, a quick glance through the door is a dubious way for anyone to spot a potential criminal.

The frail and elderly proprietor of the Delicate Lace Shoppe may bar her door to a menacing gang of club-wielding, beer-swilling teen thugs when her experience tells her that these louts are unlikely lace fanciers. That is, she may exclude them on the basis of their behavior, i.e., what they are actually doing. But barring people from stores based simply on how they look is a violation of the public-accommodations laws (and of fundamental decency) that, because it's so hard to prove, leaves victims with little recourse.

While the tailor's security is a genuine problem that must be taken seriously, the use of buzzers is not a good solution to that problem because, far too often, it becomes a device not to deter crime but to exclude African Americans. Another solution must be found. Neighborhood policing, for example, has been quite effective in dealing with just this sort of problem. So if the tailor is frequently robbed, he might ask his local precinct to put a cop outside the door, albeit not a New Jersey State Trooper if the tailor lives in the mid-1990s.

When you witness this kind of odious behavior, you could start by asking why you were admitted to the shop and the other customer was not. (If you are uneasy about a confrontation at that moment, write him a letter.) If you are unsatisfied with his response, tell him so. Then take the matter further. Write to the mayor, to your city council representative, to your city's human-rights agency, the Civil Liberties Union, and, indeed, to the newspapers. After all, this is a matter of social policy. You would be doing a fine thing to make this matter a part of our public discourse.

TICKET MASTER

My fiance and I waited in line for four hours to buy tickets to a show. There were a limited number, so each person was allowed only two. We were approached by a man who offered us a $100 bonus to each buy an extra ticket. I was ready to accept, but my fiance said it wouldn't be fair to those who'd waited in line. Was he right? What if no bonus money had been offered?
--R.A., Connecticut

I'm with your fiance. The money-waving guy was trying to cut in line, showing contempt for everyone behind you. And by offering money, he showed contempt for you, implying that even if you disapproved of his request, you'd set aside your values if the price was right. Furthermore, because tickets were in short supply, his jumping the line means that someone farther back who might otherwise have seen the show may not get to.

Even if this smoothie had offered no "bonus"--a delightful euphemism for "bribe," by the way--his behavior would still be objectionable because it undermines one of the small civilities of ordinary life. He affronts the sense of fairness, of equal opportunity, that distinguishes a line from a mob. But that's the kind of savage behavior people might have been driven to in a desperate attempt to see the final performances of Cats.

EARLY ADMISSION

Until recently, I was too young to be admitted to R-rated movies. If my parents didn't mind my seeing a movie, was it wrong for me to lie about my age or buy a ticket to another movie and then sneak in? After all, I wasn't cheating the theater out of any money.
--Dan Margolis, Pennsylvania

If your parents are okay with your movie viewing, you have no ethical obligation to kowtow to the industry's ratings. That system might be defensible were it used merely to inform parents, but for a multiplex manager to rule on what someone else's children may or may not see is impertinent. A case could be made that when you engage in a voluntary act like going to the movies, you ought to obey the rules. However, rules ought to be reasonable, hardly the case with this capricious and arbitrary rating system (no to sex but yes to violence, vulgarity, and Chevy Chase).

When you lie to get into an unauthorized movie, you do the theater no harm: Indeed, you increase its profits without threatening its sanctimonious pose of social responsibility. However, if you buy a ticket to a G-rated movie and then sneak into an R, you deprive the creators of that movie of your nine dollars.

Lying is always unfortunate, but in this case it is a lesser transgression than sneaking, and it's not nearly as depraved as pouring a sinister gluttonous substance onto popcorn and calling it "topping."

Of course, if that R-rated movie sells out, your stealth entrance may leave a late arrival seatless. So maybe the more honorable course is to lie about your age or to sneak into only unpopular R-rated movies: There's a rich cultural life.

To lie here is regrettable, but it is the less regrettable path. Your alternative is to truckle to an overreaching authority that imposes an unreasonable stricture simply to keep the wheels of commerce turning. Obedience to such rules isn't honesty; it is docility.

SNEAK INTO BAD MOVIES

I am considering sneaking into the movies, but only into bad movies. I'll pay for independent films shown in small art houses, but not studio films in multiplexes. Given the quality of movies like Mission to Mars that leave me feeling as if someone stole my nine bucks, is it fair to say that until studios start making better films I may bend the rules?
--C. Gilmore, Los Angeles

I receive many letters from people eager to justify bad behavior, but yours is the first that attempts an aesthetic argument: It’s okay to steal from those who make bad art. I admire your ingenuity but must, alas, reject your logic.

Ethics requires an examination of the act, not the person acted upon. If it is wrong to sneak into The Producers, perhaps the funniest movie ever made, then it is also wrong to tiptoe into anything that inflates a five-minute Saturday Night Live sketch into a ninety-minute feature. In short, no. You don’t sneak into a bad movie. Not only is your proposal unethical, it’s perverse: Anyone with a lick of sense wants to sneak...