This post from Megan McArdle reminds me that we have a tendency to believe that there are no trade-offs. That if we just do the right thing, things will magically work out for the best, and that doing the wrong thing has some other non-anticpated consequences that make it worthwhile. McArdle’s post deal with the notion that slavery was not economically viable for Southern plantation owners, anyway, so it was doomed to failure. Some other examples:
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Torture is intrinsically immoral, and besides, it doesn’t work!
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Abortion is the killing of the unborn child, plus it causes emotional and physical problems for the women who procured it.
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Embryonic stem cell research is immoral; besides, stem cells from other sources are so much more promising!
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The invasion of Iraq was unjust; plus, it made us less secure.
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It is a moral imperative to have a diverse work force; plus, it makes good business sense!
We haven’t been promised that doing the right thing will not involve sacrifice. It sure is nifty when doing the right thing aligns with our material interests, and it sure would be nice if right behavior was immediately rewarded, but it’s not guaranteed.
Why is this a problem? Well, if we base our argument against abortion on the notion that it damages the women who pocure them, then all it takes is one counter-example of a woman who had an abortion and is doing fine to debunk it. Plus, some of these claims whittle away at the credibility of the movement.
Second, it leads us to resist paths that do entail sacrifice. We (convenientyl) see bad material consequences as a sign that we’re doing the wrong thing.
It sure would be nice if doing the right thing always resulted in good consequences, and doing the wrong thing was immediately punished. Unfortunately, real life isn’t that easy.
