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DOING THE RIGHT THING

Discussion

1. Hurricane Charley: A debate about price gouging

“Price gouging (is) an emotionally powerful but economically meaningless expression.”
“In times of emergency, governments cannot remain on the sidelines while people are
charged unconscionable prices as they flee for their lives…”

Is it wrong for sellers of goods and services to take advantage of a natural disaster by
charging whatever the market will bear?

2. Welfare, Freedom and Virtue

The debate about price-gouging laws is not simply about welfare and freedom. It is also
about virtue – about cultivating the attitudes and dispositions, the qualities of character, on
which a good society depends.

Some people, including many who support price-gouging laws, find the virtue argument
discomfiting. Why?

Does a just society seek to promote the virtue of its citizens? Or should law be neutral toward
competing conceptions of virtue, so that citizens can be free to choose for themselves the
best way to live?

What did Aristotle say? What about modern political philosophers?

3. Soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder: Do They Deserve the Purple Heart?

4. Bailout Outrage
“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent, if employees believe their
compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustments by the U.S. Treasury .” -CEO

“What gets people upset are executives being rewarded for failure, especially when those
rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”- President Obama

Who deserves what when times are good?

In 2007, CEOs in U.S. were paid 344 times the pay of the average worker.
In 1980, CEOs earned only 42 times what their workers did.

5. Three Approaches to Justice – ( )( )( )

A just society distributes income and wealth, duties and rights, powers and opportunities,
offices and honors. The hard questions begin when we ask what people are due, and why.

Maximizing welfare: Utilitarianism

Respecting Freedom: The Laissez-fair camp vs. The Fairness Camp

Promoting Virtue: Justice is bound up with virtue and the good life

6. The Runaway Trolley

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 Moral dilemmas: We should save as many lives as possible.
It’s wrong to kill an innocent, even for a good cause.

7. The Afghan Goatherds

“We could not possibly turn them loose. But my trouble is, I have another soul. My Christian
soul. And it was crowding in on me. Something kept whispering in the back of my mind, it
would be wrong to execute these unarmed men in cold blood.” –Marcus Luttrell

8. Moral Dilemmas
Abortion, taxing the rich to help the poor, Affirmative Action, the torture of terror suspects…
Are our moral convictions fixed beyond the reach of reason?

Is moral reflection a solitary pursuit?

The goal of the book is to invite readers to subject their own views about justice to critical
examination – to figure out what they think, and why.

Language

1. The storm claimed 22 lives and caused $11 billion in damage. It also left in its wake a debate
about price gouging. ~뒤에
2. “try to capitalize on other people’s hardship and misery.” 이용해먹다
3. Some economists argued that the price-gouging law and the public outrage were
misconceived. 잘못 생각하다
4. In times of emergency, government cannot remain on the sidelines while people are charged
unconscionable prices as they flee for their lives or seek the basic commodities.
5. In an emergency, buyers under duress have no freedom. 강압 하에
6. The standard case for unfettered markets rests on two claims. =unrestrained, unbridled
7. Much public support for price-gouging laws comes from something more visceral than
welfare or freedom. =내장의
8. Greed is a vice, a bad way of being, especially when it makes people oblivious to the suffering
of others. More than a personal vice, it is at odds with civic virtue.
9. But underlying these arguments, and sometimes contending with them, we can often glimpse
another set of convictions – about what virtues are worthy of honor and reward.
10. Thinking about justice seems to inescapably to engage us in thinking about the best way to
live. =involve
11. The reckoning came when the housing bubble burst.
12. President Bush asked Congress for $700 billion to bail out the nation’s big banks.

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13. Wall Street was now asking taxpayers to foot the bill when things had gone bad. 비용을 대다
14. Some of the companies now on the public dole were awarding millions of dollars in bonuses
to their executives. dole=money paid by the state
15. We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent, if employees believe their
compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustments by the U.S. Treasury.
16. Underlying the bailout outrage was a belief about moral desert. 당연한 보답(상, 벌)
17. Senator Sherrod Brown said that A.I.G’s behavior “smacks of greed, arrogance, and worse.”
18. Wall Street traders, bankers, and hedge fund managers are a hardcharging lot.
19. Isn’t it also wrong to reward it with market largess? =money or gifts given generously
20. A just society distributes these goods in the right way; it gives each person his or her due.
The hard questions begin when we ask what people are due, and why.
=one’s right; what is owed to one
21. The fairness camp contains theorists of a more egalitarian bent. =a skill or interest
22. The idea of legislating morality is anathema to many citizens of liberal societies. 혐오
23. a secret reconnaissance mission 정찰, 답사
24. But wrestling with their dilemmas sheds light on the way moral argument can proceed.
25. Life in democratic societies is rife with disagreement about righ and wrong.
26. But if this were true, moral persuasion would be inconceivable. (가정법 과거)
27. Then, confronted with a situation that confounds the principle, we are pitched into confusion.
28. A dialectic between our judgments about particular situations and the principles we affirm on
reflection 변증법, 논법
29. Even if we succeed in bringing our moral intuitions and principles commitments into
alignment, what confidence can we have that the result is anything more than a self-
consistent skein of prejudice?
30. All they ever see is the play of shadows on the wall, a reflection of objects they can never
apprehend. =understand
31. A philosophy untouched by the shadows on the wall can only yield a sterile utopia. =infertile
32. They prompt us to articulate and justify our moral and political convictions, not only among
family and friends but also in the demanding company of our fellow citizens.
articulate=to express something clearly
33. Its goal is not to show who influenced whom in the history of political thought, but to invite
readers to subject their own views about justice to critical examination – to figure out what
they think, and why. subject A to B: A 를 B 아래에 두다