Must we share our wealth?
We’ve had a win—decent, but not huge—on the National Lottery. My (large) family would think it a betrayal were I not to share such good fortune. But with a large mortgage, modest income and two children, we need the money ourselves. I reckon we could spend it discreetly and they need never know. Is it acceptable to keep quiet about the win?
The odds of your family not finding out about your windfall are shorter even than Mickey Rooney on his bended knees (a position in which the actor finds himself pretty regularly, what with his having been married eight times: he broke the habit just in time to stop the most common name in America becoming “Mrs Mickey Rooney”). You have as much chance of your family not noticing that you’re now living more swankily as you have of persuading them to go quail-shooting with Dick Cheney.
But even if you could keep your cash quiet, should you? Moral pressure to behave well is infectious. Shovel a few quid their way today, and next month they could win a really big lottery prize and feel honour-bound to repay your recent generosity—and in proportion, too. It’s one of those instances where, if you can’t be guided by morality, be guided by greed. In other words, ask not only what you can do for your family, but what your family might one day be able to do for you. Viewed this way, a small family share-out of the spoils becomes not so much an act of sacrifice, as one of calculating selfishness. Assuming they, too, win the lottery. Then again, what are the odds?
The morality of coffee
I’ve just returned from America where Starbucks has introduced a serving size called the Trenta measuring 31 fluid ounces, which is more than 900ml. That’s bigger than a bottle of wine; and more liquid than fits in a human stomach. It just doesn’t feel right to serve close to a litre of, say, iced coffee in one go. But is it actually immoral?
Americans have embraced coffee with the zeal of the convert and can’t stop tinkering. Cafés in Italy and France have been serving fine coffee for centuries with little to-do, only rarely behaving as if they were engaged in an endeavour which—if only there were more justice in the world—would qualify for a new category of Nobel prize. Led by Starbucks, America has invented dozens of permutations of coffee and milk, accompanied by a new coffee-shop shorthand (even though many of the new terms, such as “with wings,” are longer than the old equivalents, namely “to go”).
The thought of drinking almost a litre of a coffee-based drink makes me feel queasy. But is it immoral? Gluttony counts as a sin, but a coffee that’s bigger than your stomach means less room left in your gut for foie gras and truffles, which might even make a Starbucks Trenta gastronomically virtuous rather than gluttonous. Virtuous, too, since downing a bucketful of caffeine will keep you awake until next August, which means you’ll be able to get lots of work done. So, far from being immoral, a Trenta may be a breakthrough in ethical coffee.
Should I listen to economists?
I keep reading newspapers which quote economists predicting that house prices will tumble in the coming year, the implication being that only a fool wouldn’t sell up now. But what if I sell and prices don’t fall—or, worse, rise and price me out of the market? Will these economists bear any moral responsibility for my plight?
You sound like a character in an HM Bateman cartoon—“The man who believed that economists actually know what the future holds.” If you sold your house when economists first began predicting a plunge in property prices you’d be able to buy your way back into the London property market very easily today, providing you were willing to live in a vault in a Big Yellow Self Storage facility. You know why financial advisers warn that “Prices can go down as well as up”? Because it sounds less embarrassing than “Economists’ predictions can go down as well as up.”
When the screenwriter William Goldman said “nobody knows anything” he meant in Hollywood. But he could have been talking about house prices or the stock market—which, as the economist Paul Samuelson noticed, “has forecast nine of the last five recessions.” The likelihood of correctly guessing what will happen even next Tuesday is roughly the same as the likelihood of Mel Gibson becoming mayor of Tel Aviv. So while there is a moral responsibility on economists not to make reckless forecasts, the onus lies on you to resist being swayed by house price predictions that risk leaving you homeless—or, as they say in the property business, “caveat emptor” (literally, “your cave is empty”).
Send your ethical dilemmas to ethics@prospect-magazine.co.uk
We’ve had a win—decent, but not huge—on the National Lottery. My (large) family would think it a betrayal were I not to share such good fortune. But with a large mortgage, modest income and two children, we need the money ourselves. I reckon we could spend it discreetly and they need never know. Is it acceptable to keep quiet about the win?
The odds of your family not finding out about your windfall are shorter even than Mickey Rooney on his bended knees (a position in which the actor finds himself pretty regularly, what with his having been married eight times: he broke the habit just in time to stop the most common name in America becoming “Mrs Mickey Rooney”). You have as much chance of your family not noticing that you’re now living more swankily as you have of persuading them to go quail-shooting with Dick Cheney.
But even if you could keep your cash quiet, should you? Moral pressure to behave well is infectious. Shovel a few quid their way today, and next month they could win a really big lottery prize and feel honour-bound to repay your recent generosity—and in proportion, too. It’s one of those instances where, if you can’t be guided by morality, be guided by greed. In other words, ask not only what you can do for your family, but what your family might one day be able to do for you. Viewed this way, a small family share-out of the spoils becomes not so much an act of sacrifice, as one of calculating selfishness. Assuming they, too, win the lottery. Then again, what are the odds?
The morality of coffee
I’ve just returned from America where Starbucks has introduced a serving size called the Trenta measuring 31 fluid ounces, which is more than 900ml. That’s bigger than a bottle of wine; and more liquid than fits in a human stomach. It just doesn’t feel right to serve close to a litre of, say, iced coffee in one go. But is it actually immoral?
Americans have embraced coffee with the zeal of the convert and can’t stop tinkering. Cafés in Italy and France have been serving fine coffee for centuries with little to-do, only rarely behaving as if they were engaged in an endeavour which—if only there were more justice in the world—would qualify for a new category of Nobel prize. Led by Starbucks, America has invented dozens of permutations of coffee and milk, accompanied by a new coffee-shop shorthand (even though many of the new terms, such as “with wings,” are longer than the old equivalents, namely “to go”).
The thought of drinking almost a litre of a coffee-based drink makes me feel queasy. But is it immoral? Gluttony counts as a sin, but a coffee that’s bigger than your stomach means less room left in your gut for foie gras and truffles, which might even make a Starbucks Trenta gastronomically virtuous rather than gluttonous. Virtuous, too, since downing a bucketful of caffeine will keep you awake until next August, which means you’ll be able to get lots of work done. So, far from being immoral, a Trenta may be a breakthrough in ethical coffee.
Should I listen to economists?
I keep reading newspapers which quote economists predicting that house prices will tumble in the coming year, the implication being that only a fool wouldn’t sell up now. But what if I sell and prices don’t fall—or, worse, rise and price me out of the market? Will these economists bear any moral responsibility for my plight?
You sound like a character in an HM Bateman cartoon—“The man who believed that economists actually know what the future holds.” If you sold your house when economists first began predicting a plunge in property prices you’d be able to buy your way back into the London property market very easily today, providing you were willing to live in a vault in a Big Yellow Self Storage facility. You know why financial advisers warn that “Prices can go down as well as up”? Because it sounds less embarrassing than “Economists’ predictions can go down as well as up.”
When the screenwriter William Goldman said “nobody knows anything” he meant in Hollywood. But he could have been talking about house prices or the stock market—which, as the economist Paul Samuelson noticed, “has forecast nine of the last five recessions.” The likelihood of correctly guessing what will happen even next Tuesday is roughly the same as the likelihood of Mel Gibson becoming mayor of Tel Aviv. So while there is a moral responsibility on economists not to make reckless forecasts, the onus lies on you to resist being swayed by house price predictions that risk leaving you homeless—or, as they say in the property business, “caveat emptor” (literally, “your cave is empty”).
Send your ethical dilemmas to ethics@prospect-magazine.co.uk
