1.5 Case Studies
Dance Safe?
Raves, acid house parties, and techno concerts attract different kinds of people. Some arrive, enjoy themselves for a few hours, and return home. Others stay longer: Their nights rush through the morning and they’re still thumping as the sun rises and most everyone else is getting underway with the new day. Of course college students and people around that age can do a lot of things the rest of us can’t, including pulling all-nighters, but anyone who’s found themselves surrounded by a euphoric, dancing tribe as they spill out of a downtown warehouse at 9 a.m. Sunday morning figures out two things pretty quickly: These people are mostly having a great time, and they’ve been fueled by something more than youthful exuberance.
One of the fuels is MDMA, commonly known as ecstasy.
Ecstasy is illegal in most places for a number of reasons. Some people don’t approve of enabling substances that send their users into all night reveries. Others note that people on ecstasy—like people who’ve had too much to drink—occasionally do things they and others regret later on. In strictly medical terms, the drug frequently comes with adverse short-term effects. Suicide Tuesday is a common term for the depression that may set in a few days after the drug’s happiness-effect has worn off. In the longer term, there may be some memory loss and increased susceptibility to depression.
One of the greatest dangers of ecstasy, however, isn’t ecstasy. Since the drug is illegal, manufacturing is, to be generous, informal. Being less generous, the people making the pills in basement labs aren’t too concerned about what happens to their clients after they’ve paid, so they sometimes fatten their profits by adding cheap ingredients to the MDMA. One is a hallucinogenic amphetamine called PMA; it feels like ecstasy and does some of the same things, but it’s a dirty drug that causes erratic behavior, a mixed-up head, and frantic heartbeat. Some people literally dance themselves to death.
Enter DanceSafe. A volunteer organization, they set up tables outside raves, dance factories, concerts, and similar places where people are known to take ecstasy. The DanceSafe crew distributes pamphlets describing some chemical facts about ecstasy and, as best as they can, answer questions about the drug. (DanceSafe volunteers are typically young people who seem to have a pretty good idea about what it feels like to be high on MDMA.) Not everyone believes this casual discussion of illegal drug use is a good idea, but the real objections rise when the testing kits come out. The most important service the DanceSafe volunteers offer is purity testing. With no questions asked, no names, no judgments, and no final advice, the volunteers offer to scrape a bit of a presumed ecstasy pill onto a plate and then do a quick chemical reaction check to see whether the drug is really ecstasy or something else. They’ll do that for anyone who visits their table. After they’re done, they hand the pills back to the partiers, inform them the test’s results, and move on to the next person.
The DanceSafe volunteers don’t know what happens next. Probably, it’s safe to assume that when people get their pill back, they hold it out in their hand, take a deep breath, and decide whether they’re going to swallow.
Video Clip 1.2.
An ABC News report on ecstasy and DanceSafe.
Questions
What are some of the ethical issues arising from this study of ecstasy and DanceSafe? How can the issues be framed as questions?
Take the question: Is using ecstasy OK?
What are the pertinent facts here?
Are there any facts that you’d like to have that are missing from the case study? If so, why are they important?
From the facts in the case, can you create an argument that answers yes to ecstasy? What values underwrite the argument?
From the facts in the case, can you create an argument that answers no to ecstasy? What values underwrite the argument?
Form an ethical argument in favor of people taking ecstasy on Saturday nights. Next, dispute that argument in terms of:
the facts
the values
the reasoning
How might an ethical decision about taking ecstasy compare with a decision made in terms of:
Laws
Prudence
Religion
Authority figures
Peer pressure
Custom
Conscience
Some people support the efforts of the DanceSafe organization, while others object. Without taking sides, if you were going to evaluate the group in ethical terms, who are the stakeholders, the people who need to be considered in making a decision about the ethics of the DanceSafe project?
Some people object to DanceSafe by asserting that their testing program encourages drug use, and makes using drugs seem safer than it is. Can you convert these points into the ethical argument that the DanceSafe volunteers should fold up their tables and go home?
DanceSafe defenders affirm that kids are going to take ecstasy no matter what, so they might as well check to make sure the drug is pure. Their efforts, they say, are like a needle exchange for heroin addicts. They don’t make a problem worse, instead, they take a problem that’s already there and going to be there, and alleviate some of the negative effects of the drug use. How can these points be converted in an ethical argument that DanceSafe is doing good work?
Who Made Your iPhone?
Source: Photo courtesy of Tobias Myrstrand Leander, http://www.flickr.com/photos/s8an/5207806926/in/photostream.
Her story adds details. The underage workers were fifteen in places where the minimum legal age for employment is sixteen. She wasn’t able to discover the specific countries, but learned the infractions occurred in one or more of the following: China, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, the Czech Republic, and the Philippines.
Following the discovery, the employees were released, and disciplinary action was taken against a number of the foreign suppliers. In one case, Apple stopped contracting with the company entirely.
The story closes with this: “Apple rose $2.62 to $204.62 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares more than doubled last year.”
Questions
The ethical question is whether Apple ought to contract (through suppliers) fifteen-year-olds to work on factory floors. Is the fact that the stock price has been zooming up a pertinent fact, or does it not affect the ethics? Explain.
From the information given and reasonable assumptions about these factories and the living conditions of people working inside them, sketch an ethical argument against Apple enforcing the age workplace rule. What fundamental values underwrite the argument?
From the information given and reasonable assumptions about these factories and the living conditions of people working inside them, sketch an argument in favor of Apple enforcing the age workplace rule. What fundamental values underwrite the argument?
Within the context of the Apple situation, what’s the difference between making a decision in terms of the law and in terms of ethics?
Assume that in the countries where fifteen-year-olds were working, it’s customary for children even younger to earn an adult-type living.
What is an advantage of following the local customs when making economic decisions like the one confronting Apple?
Does the custom of employing young workers in some countries change your ethical consideration of the practice in those places? Why or why not?
Attributing responsibility—blaming another for doing wrong—requires that the following conditions hold:
-
The person is able to understand right and wrong
-
The person acts to cause (or fails to act to prevent) a wrong
-
The person acts knowing what they’re doing
-
The person acts from their own free will
Assuming it’s unethical for fifteen-year-olds to work factory shifts making iPhones, who bears responsibility for the wrong?
-
Do the fifteen-year-olds bear some responsibility? Explain.
-
Did Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple? Explain.
-
Are shareholders guilty? Explain.
-
Do people who use iPhones bear responsibility? Explain.
-
I.M.P. (It’s My Party)
Source: Photo courtesy of Kevin Dooley, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/4530723795/in/photostream.
That’s Seth Hurwitz quoted in the Washington Post, talking about his 9:30 Club, a small venue playing over-the-hill bands on the way down, and fresh acts scratching their way up.
The story’s curious detail is that even though Hurwitz calls his company I.M.P. (It’s My Party), he doesn’t spend much time at his club. In fact, he’s almost never there. Part of the reason is that his workday begins at 6 a.m., so he’s actually back in bed preparing for the next day before his enterprise gets going in earnest each night. His job is straightforward: Sitting in the second floor office of his suburban DC home, he scrutinizes the music publications and statistics, probing for bands that people want to see and that won’t charge too much to appear. He told the Post that he won’t book an act as a favor, and he won’t flatter a group into playing his club to keep them away from the competition by overpaying them. “I don’t subscribe,” he says, “to doing shows that will lose money.”
Hurwitz has been connected with music in one way or another for almost as long as he can remember. The Post relates some of his early memories:
He rigged a system to broadcast radio from his basement to his parents and brothers in the living room. “I used to bring my singles into class and play them,” Hurwitz said. When he was sixteen, he decided he wanted to be a deejay and got his chance when alternative rock station WHFS gave him a spot. “It was from 7:45 to 8—fifteen minutes,” he said, laughing. “But that was okay because I wanted to be on the radio, and I had my own show, as a high school student.” He said he was fired “for being too progressive.”
It’s a long way from getting fired for playing music too obscure for alternative radio to where Hurwitz is now: putting on concerts by bands selected because they’ll make money.
Questions
Hurwitz is brutally honest about the fact that he’ll only contract bands capable of turning a profit. When he was younger and a DJ, he insisted on playing the music he judged best no matter how many people turned off the radio when his show came on (an attitude that cost him the job).
What, if anything, is Hurwitz, the older concert promoter, compromising to get ahead? Is there an ethical objection that could be raised here? If so, what? If not, why not?
Someone may feel that Hurwitz sold out. If you were going to make an ethical case to fit that accusation, who would you consider as important people to think about in making the case? What facts would you consider pertinent? What values would underwrite the argument?
Hurwitz says that he doesn’t book bands as favors. Presumably, at least some of the favors he’s talking about would be to friends. Do people who run their own company have an ethical responsibility to separate friends from business? Take a similar situation in the classroom. Imagine you have a friend who skipped the class for the entire semester. Now, two days before the final, she comes to you and asks to see your notes and to get some study guidance. Make the ethical case that you should say no.
One nice thing about Hurwitz working upstairs in his own house is that he can show up for work in the morning in his pajamas. Should all places of business be like that—with people free to wear whatever they want for work? Explain your answer from an ethical perspective.
What about school? Should students be able to wear whatever they want? Can you imagine a t-shirt or something else that should be banned from the classroom? Explain.
If people can wear whatever they decide, they could, presumably, decide to wear nothing. What’s an ethical case for a clothing (you have to wear some) requirement?
Occupy Wall Street Occupies Broadway
Source: Author
The Occupy Wall Street movement is hard to define. Members come and go, meeting places and political strategies shift, the group’s aims are both diverse and evolving. They’re definitely an activist organization, though; it’s protest in the streets that galvanizes their project. In New York City, public parks have been occupied, bridges have been shut down, and streets overrun by adherents.
Video Clip 1.3.
This video captures a few scenes from the Occupy Wall Street march on May Day, 2012. It was a chaotic and varied scene, so it would be a mistake to see the video as anything more than a few snapshots of some of what happened. Still, the facts accumulated that early evening raise sharp ethical questions.
Questions
The May Day march shut down Broadway in New York City, a major thoroughfare that people depend on to move around in traffic-choked Manhattan. While the march snaked down the street, cars and buses in the surrounding blocks inched forward, switched into reverse, experimented with new routes and, eventually, succumbed to gridlock.
Leaving aside what’s being protested, do protesters ever have the right to shut down public streets for their cause? What values and facts could justify the action?
What kind of ethical case could a bus driver make against the protest march? A worker trying to get to her office? A tourist?
Again leaving aside the specific cause the protesters are promoting, what kinds of counter-arguments could the protesters form to defend themselves against the criticisms?
Is it ever acceptable to inconvenience others in order to make a political point? How do you draw the line between the ethically acceptable civil disorder and going too far?
The protesters didn’t have a permit; they just shut Broadway down. Does the fact that the march was illegal change your evaluation of the ethics of the protest? Why or why not?
Some protesters chanted and sang that they wanted more taxpayer money dedicated to education. Others waved communist flags and called for the overthrow of capitalism in America. A third group used the occupied street to perform dances—in traditional attire—from Latin America.
Politically, what’s the difference between protesting within a system, and against an entire system? Is there a difference between the two in terms of the ethics?
Some protesters chanted against the police. As it happened, the police surrounded the marchers and cleared the street for them. Make the ethical case that the police have to stand in and keep clearing way for the marchers even while receiving their insults.
Even in perfect traffic conditions, it’s hard to get to hospitals in Manhattan. If you were a protester, what could you say to the parents of a child who died because the ambulance, stuck in the Occupy Wall Street traffic—couldn’t get to the downtown hospital in time?
Of course no protester would have intended for the death to happen. Does that make any difference?
The march was planned by the Occupy Wall Street leaders. Could you make an ethical case against them for the child’s death, one that also spared the rest of the marchers from responsibility for the tragedy? In terms of responsibility, what is the distinction based on?
One basic agreement among the protesters is that wealth in America is unjustly concentrated in the hands of the very wealthy, about the top 1 percent of the population. Develop an ethical case against this concentration, and show how it justifies the occupation of Broadway.
The video’s last scene captures a homeless man sleeping on a sidewalk as Occupy Wall Street marches past. No one helps him. Does this sad man justify the march, discredit it, have nothing to do with it? Explain.