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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: The Ethics of work
Message-ID: <563@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 16-Aug-86 12:03:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.563
Posted: Sat Aug 16 12:03:21 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Aug-86 23:41:00 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!eyal%wisdom.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <524@hplabsc.UUCP>


This article is from Eyal mozes  <eyal%wisdom.bitnet@WISCVM.WISC.EDU>
 and was received on Sat Aug 16 05:47:07 1986
 

>) picuxa!warren indicates, as a final point, that a reason for doing
>) an "evil" job is that we haven't achieved world peace, so someone
>) must do it.
>
>This overlooks the argument that we haven't achieved world peace
>because someone \fBis\fR doing this kind of work.
>
>One way to assure peace is to have reasonably unanimous rejection of
>the alternative.  (cribbed)--> What if they gave a war, and no one
>came?

This discussion has been going on for some time, but for some reason
no-one has yet raised the central question, which is: is there a moral
difference between the two sides? The above message is a typical
example of what happens when you try to discuss the issue while
ignoring this question.

You may object to some specific things the USA is doing in the name of
defending its people's freedom, but you have to admit that the primary
purpose of its military activities IS to defend its people's freedom;
this is obviously not true in the case of the USSR.

I suggest that the poster of the above message ask himself the
following two hypothetical questions: 1. what would happen if everybody
in the USSR stopped doing war-related work? 2. what would happen if
everybody in the USA stopped doing war-related work? A honest look at
the facts should make the answers clear: in the first situation, the
USA will have no reason to continue the war, any attempt to do so would
be political suicide for all politicians involved, so the war will
immediately end; in the second situation, the USSR will proceed to
conquer the world with no-one to oppose it.  "Reasonably unanimous
rejection of the alternative" will achieve peace only if it comes from
the USSR.

It should therefore be clear that refusal to work on war-related jobs
for the USSR is a true anti-war stand, and refusal to work on
war-related jobs for the USA is not (this is also why, in the USSR, the
alternative is not taking a lower-paying or less interesting job, but
imprisonment; and why people in the USSR never have such discussions).

I suggest, for the sake of clarity, that future posters on this subject
state explicitly whether they do or do not see a moral difference
between the two sides.

        Eyal Mozes

[Of course, I don't think that Eyal is exactly right - there isn't a 
 *moral* difference between the two sides (as he puts it) but, if anything,
 between the two ideologies.   BUT I don't want this group to get into 
 a discussion of 'us versus them' regardless of what direction we approach
 from.  Let's stick to individual morals and ethics, please....   -- Dave]