Counterfactuals of stealing
I am delighted to discover that at least one other person defends a view I have until now only expressed privately, that “piracy (or ‘free riding’ generally) is only wrong if you would otherwise have paid for it.”
I’ve had this argument with respect to a related case: sneaking into movies. It is morally permissible to sneak into a movie if at least the following two conditions obtain:
(1) You would not otherwise have payed to see the movie
(2) Your presence in the theater does not negatively impact others
Now for a little unpacking: (1) is tricky because the ability to sneak in plausibly influences one’s decision-making. Someone might think, “Given that I can sneak in, I’m not going to pay for it.” So for (1) to obtain it must truly be the case that, given the impossibility of sneaking in, you would not pay to see the film. (2) has any number of implications. The most important, it seems to me, is that the seat you’re are sitting in must otherwise have been empty. Granted, depriving someone of their preferred seat could make them unknowingly choose a seat that is better for them, but let’s not give ourselves that much authority.
In my experience, counter-arguments to this position are miserable failures. Richard Chappell (author of the link above) wisely points out that it is best not to publicize this principle, for fear of offering “incentive for self-deception.” As a practical matter I agree, but as he says, moral principles are not knave-proof.
I am very happy to hear my software piracy habits are morally permissible.
BB,
OMG I KNOW YOU! But for realzies, you conveniently left out the first comment on Richard’s blog, which is, in my mind, a rational rebuttal of your argument. He was unable to respond adequately. 你呢？
FF
Ben: Probably your software habits are not morally permissible, but it depends on various psychological facts about you.
FormicidaeFantasy: I take Richard’s responses to that comment and ensuing discussion to be decisive. In any case I don’t think substitution effects really contribute to motivate the ethic against stealing. The reason why it’s bad to steal a shirt from a clothing store is hardly that if you hadn’t been stealing you would have purchased some other shirt, or a burger at McDonalds, etc. It seems to me that the substitution might just as well work in the world’s favor. Perhaps the time spent legitimately sneaking into movies would otherwise be spent lighting cats on fire, or stealing shirts, or downloading music you would have otherwise paid for.
Good point!
This is such a load off my mind. I was feeling guilty about letting people hang out in your apartment when you were not there.
When we were in high school, my brother used to buy a ticket to a movie, then walk past the usher without showing his ticket as if he were going to the bathroom. In retrospect, I argue that this was a peccadillo, since he was weakening his own character by proving to himself that he could see movies without paying for it if he wanted to. That’s not knowledge he needed.
אמא: I would say that the owners of the movie theater, and their workers, have the legal, and if they’re lucky moral right to kick out people sneaking in. But it seems that a crucial difference between movie theaters and apartments is that violation of privacy doesn’t happen in the former.
Carl: I think some sort of virtue theory, and concern over conditioning oneself toward or away from a certain character, is somewhat convincing as a counterargument. In theory however a saint could endure such dangerous flirtation with immoral descent. Perhaps only Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Lady Gaga have the moral right to sneak into theaters, and to download music.
(1) You would not otherwise have payed [sic] to see the movie
(2) Your presence in the theater does not negatively impact others
When stating ethical principles you must not do so by using examples, otherwise they are not ethical principles, but examples.
So, how about these instead:
(1) You would not otherwise have paid for x.
(2) Your having obtained x does not adversely affect anyone else.
Is this fair?
Now we can insert the examples, like sneaking into a theater, hanging out in someone’s apartment when he is gone, or stealing from a billionaire.
There are a great many things we would never pay for but which we would enjoy if they were available for free. So, a great many actions are allowed from (1). I may want a TV, but that doesn’t mean I would pay for the top of the line, you see. I may want to see a movie but I may not want to see it in a theater if I had to pay for it, you see. Many people wait to watch movies until they come out on DVD.
Most thieves would never have paid for the stuff they stole, either. In fact this is both obvious and noncontroversial. So if thieves can reason that by stealing $100 from a billionaire it does not adversely affect him (how could it?), then condition (2) obtains, thus legitimizing the theft. Most thieves probably think this way, although I haven’t conducted a scientific poll to know for sure. And it equally legitimizes pirated copies of songs (which musicians have sued others for doing, which is a criminal offense), and movies. Now I’m no prude about minor offenses, so don’t get me wrong here. But they do seem to be offenses and could be justified by your principles.
The problem comes when everyone feels justified in doing the same thing. Kant’s categorical imperative would disallow such an action because such a principle could not be universalized. The problem is also in disregarding people’s preferences. Just ask the theater owner if it’s okay? You know he would say “no.” And for this reason I see no principled distinction between the property rights of an apartment owner and the theater owner so long as the apartment owner doesn’t know you invaded his apartment.
J.S. Mill’s Harm Principle applies to laws we make, and the reason why these type of actions are criminalized is precisely because they do harm. So what you’re proposing could get you fined or some jail time, if caught. Sounds a lot like hedonism to me.
That is, until or unless you refine your ethical principles above to include some actions while excluding others for some better reasons.
John: First, trivial points:
(1) Your correct spelling of ‘paid’ can’t be bettered.
(2) As for your comments about “stating ethical principles,” true enough. But I wasn’t stating ethical principles. If you read it over, you’ll see I was just stating that “at least the following two conditions [must] obtain” for it to be morally permissible to sneak into movies. That’s simple enough. Onto more interesting stuff.
A fuller statement of this view (which is actually better-exampled by the downloading case in the post I link to) would unpack the concept of “negative impact” on others. A crucial element of the wrongness of stealing (and free riding in general) is that you are depriving someone of something they otherwise would have had (had it not been for the free riding). Surely this is the most compelling argument about downloading music – that it hurts artists by depriving them of sales. So the TV and billionaire examples are unproblematic (on my view) in virtue of the fact that those actions are stealing. Really (again, this would come out in a fuller statement), there’s an interesting way in which downloading music and sneaking into movies isn’t stealing, if the purported victim hasn’t lost something she otherwise would have had.
This is also going to severely limit the worry about justification of thieves, who will only be permitted to steal in cases where they are not depriving somebody of something they otherwise would have had. There’s an even further limitation on thieves, which is that such a view must stipulate principles that avoid unsavory observer effects. For example, say we spread this justification of downloading music. Well it would probably turn out that more and more people believed they wouldn’t otherwise buy it. Perhaps in light of the ability to download it, they wouldn’t otherwise buy it. But this is easily dealt with. The term “otherwise” is really supposed to describe one’s psychological state in the nearest possible world where downloading, sneaking in, etc., is not such a possibility.
At this point, I don’t think there are strong moral objections to the permissibility of “stealing” in these unusual cases (unusual, e.g., because downloading is replicating and not subtracting). One non-moral objection might be psychological – you might say it’s impossible to really know what our nearest possible selves would be willing to purchase. That’s fair enough, and I won’t argue the point. A second objection, raised by a friend of mine, is that there is an indefinite number of future mental states for us, any one of which might include willingness to purchase the downloaded item (or pay the movie theater). Both of these worries send us into deep epistemological waters, which I will not tread at this time.
Lastly, you are almost certainly correct that this principle disregards people’s preferences. But we should note first that there are any number of things we are morally permitted to do despite the preferences of others, for example, participate in interracial marriage, listen to rap music, and wear ugly clothing. Second, it seems to me that the concerns which motivate, say, the theater owner’s preferences, are well taken care of in my scenarios.
Speaking of downloading music, and speaking of you being John Loftus, I wonder what you think about an interesting but (as far as I can tell) generally unnoticed parallel to downloading music, which is reading without purchasing books in bookstores. For example, just yesterday I was reading and taking notes on your chapter, “The Outsider Test for Faith Revisited,” in The Christian Delusion. I will return again to continue my analysis, until I complete a post on your new presentation. I do this sort of thing regularly (benefit in various ways from books in bookstores without buying them). I wonder if this practice would, theoretically at least, fall victim to whatever arguments are supposed to undermine downloading music. One counterargument might be that at least I do not gain permanent possession of the book, which makes it more like streaming online. But then I do have indefinite access to it and the ability to take notes, so it is somewhere in the middle.
I should add that although I might be able to rescue free riding movie goers from accusations of stealing, it’s not clear I can rescue them from accusations of trespassing, in light of אמא’s vicious satire above. But the ethics of trespassing are elusive to me. As I say above, I think trespassing has a lot to do with violation of privacy, and so there is a disanalogy between residences and widely accessed businesses designed for gatherings of strangers. But there does seem to be some sense in which there’s a violation involved in trespassing business properties, in virtue of which the owners have the right to kick you out. But I’m not sure that these violations and rights constitute anything beyond legal facts; they seem a bit sub-moral to me.
You’ll have to keep in mind that the laws of the land are based on the preferences of people. So there are some preferences that should we go against we are breaking the law, and the law has teeth. There are a great many movie showings where there are many empty seats. And there are a great many people who would not pay to see these movies but would rather wait to rent them in a DVD format. So, there would be, on your scenario, a great many people who would find it morally permissible to trample on the theater owner’s privacy and property rights by trespassing, which is a crime.
As to reading my book is a store, some authors would object. I don’t. I give you permission. So there.
John: Thanks for the reply.
(1) It seems pretty idealistic to suppose that laws are based on the preferences of “the people.” Certainly each law is undoubtedly based on somebody’s preferences.
(2) I certainly agree that we are breaking the law, or at least theater policies, by sneaking into films. We are also breaking laws and policies when downloading music (or software, or whatever).
(3) The DVD case is interesting, and I didn’t consider it in my previous comment. Certainly part of what one is paying for in the theater is the theater experience, and perhaps that is the thing being “stolen.” But I’m tempted to think that willingness to pay for the DVD, or DVD rental, undermines the credibility of the counterfactual, that you wouldn’t have otherwise paid. But even if it doesn’t, I’m not sure this an especially big bullet to bite.
(4) If you find Kantian approaches convincing, maybe you should rethink your allowance of reading your books without purchasing!
I just don’t think any ethicist should argue the way you do here. What if YOU were a theater owner? What about the principle of the Golden Rule? It’s less than adequate as a rule, but it’s not bad. The basic principle is that we should care for other people and their desires. It’s not just a Christian principle, either, for I affirm the basic core of it.
Recently I wrote about one such theater owner, and it’s illuminating how we defend what we prefer to be true, most all of us:
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2010/04/people-justify-what-they-prefer-to-be.html
And as far as reading books in stores goes, I think that’s the service that a store offers. In fact, some authors put their whole books online claiming that it helps their sales, for more people would buy the book once looking at it as a whole than not. I cannot do that with my published book, since I am not the sole owner. PB invested a lot of time and effort in the production and release of it. But when reading through it in a store you should not spill coffee on it of wrinkle it or break the backing, for that would do damage to it and rob the store of it’s goods.
So Kantianism does not apply because authors disagree with how their books should be displayed. And people do not want to sit in a bookstore and read books when there are libraries that will allow for this. A bookstore owner could kick you out if they felt you were spending too much time there, I suppose. There are fine lines to be drawn about this.
Besides, I’m not in it for the money. I want to change the religious landscape. Money is good, and I would like more of it though.
John:
(1) If I were the theater owner, the arguments presented in this post would still stand. Same case with the 3D thing in your post. It’s not really relevant whether someone happens to be a hypocrite. Also, note that I have supported the legal right of the theater owner to kick out the same people I claim are morally justified in sneaking in.
(2) I don’t think your response to the Kant point accords with mainstream understanding of Kantian ethics. The point isn’t what people happen to agree with (say, in a more Rawlsian or contractarian scheme), but is more about what principles could be applied categorically. What’s interesting is that if everyone just read books in the store, then there wouldn’t be books in the store to read. On these grounds, the principle could be criticized as leading the one “willing” it into a contradiction.
I should say that in light of the intractability of the problem of telling the truth to murderers, I think (the logic of) traditional Kantianism is in deep trouble. So I personally would not actually object to your position on Kantian grounds, or in fact at all.
I understand what you said about (1) the rights of theater owners. It’s a war against all, then isn’t it? Hobbesian hedonism anyone? That’s what he argued. And as far as I can tell (2) all ethical theories fail, so we can at best take an eclectic approach to them. Kantian ethics fails just like the rest of them do. I was using it as a reference point. And then I was saying it’s okay for you to read my book in the bookstore (see, Kantian ethics fails here since as the author I gave you permission!).
John:
I don’t think all ethical theories fail, unless we have a very stringent standard of success. Certainly no ethical theories completely capture moral concepts and discourse. But no physical, biological, … theory captures its respective referents and discourse. This does not make natural science a failure.
I see that our discussion is winding down. I certainly haven’t argued anything Hobbes would endorse, especially because I haven’t made any claims about the psychology of human beings as driven by pleasure. In any case my argument is far removed from the level of metaethics, and focuses on concepts such as “stealing” and its relationship to counterfactuals. It is notoriously difficult to translate metaethical theories into concrete obligations, and the reverse is next to impossible.