While I think you are right to observe that business owners are generally not allowed to discriminate against persons on the basis of their unchosen characteristics, it does not follow that they are allowed to discriminate on the basis of chosen characteristics. Religion, sexual orientation and political commitments are paradigm examples: they are chosen at least in their outward manifestations, but as a society we have decided not to rank people on the basis of such choices and to impose this non-discrimination upon businesses. This makes sense insofar as such choices are ones that the person is deeply identified with. They are part of a person's identity and, by refusing to serve a person on the basis of such a choice, or by requiring a person not to express such a choice as a condition of admittance, one is rejecting and disrespecting the whole person -- just as one is rejecting and disrespecting the whole person when one refuses to serve her on the basis of her gender or skin color. The same...

This is an interesting and difficult question. One might start with the presumption that a company's hiring may be conducted in whatever way its top officers deem most advantageous. Thus imagine a company that has two positions to fill and is considering four candidates. The hiring officers rank these candidates in the following order: Alice, Ben, Celia, David. So they would like to hire Alice and Ben. But unfortunately Alice is married to David, and she will decline unless David is also made an offer. So the hiring officers discuss whether the firm is better off with Alice and David or with Ben and Celia. They determine that the Alice-David combination is more advantageous, and so they promise Alice that, if she accepts, David will also be hired. Does Ben have a complaint in this case? I don't think so. It is true that, other things equal, he would add more value to the firm than David would. But other things are not equal: if Ben is hired over David, then Alice will decline; whereas if David is...

I don't think the dilemma you sketch is really about the meaning of loyalty. You might be loyal to the organization's purpose (as you understand it) or you might be loyal to your current fellow members. The question really is which more deserves your loyalty. There is no general answer, but here are a few reflections that you may find helpful. One important factor is whether the purpose of the organization has independent importance. Suppose the organization is the Silly Hat Society. It's purpose is for members to come together for fun monthly meetings wearing silly hats. Over the years, the hat part recedes into the background, many show up with uncreative headgear and some even without anything -- but members still enjoy one another's company and are having a good time. In this case, it would be a little silly to place loyalty to the organization's purpose above loyalty to its members: silly to berate members to live up to the purpose of the organization and so on. Here it does not really matter...

There is a difference here between what you are legally entitled to claim and the loss you have actually incurred. You believe that it is permissible to claim the former, larger amount. Your wife believes that you should claim no more than the latter, smaller amount. Suppose the difference would only affect the other policy holders through an adjustment of their future premiums. Would you then have an obligation to ask for less as your wife suggests? I think this depends on the prevailing habits and practices among those who would benefit: how are they disposed to act in a case like yours? In the urban world of the East Coast I am familiar with, nearly all those buying insurance would claim no less than they are legally entitled to claim. If this is the prevailing attitude and disposition among the policy holders in your insurance as well, then it is factored into the prices of policies. So you have all along been paying premiums priced to cover people claiming what they are legally entitled to...

The answer depends, I would think, on how much money your for-profit company would charge for the service. I don't know the details of your operation, of course, but suppose you have a few employees performing the service and suppose you break even if you charge your customers $17 per hour of any of your employees' time. In fact, let's say, you charge more like $26 per hour, so your company makes $9 per hour, or whatever is left of that after taxes. As the owner of the company, you reinvest some of this money and draw out the rest for your consumption and personal savings. Now in order to be quite sure that you are acting ethically, you could have your for-profit arm charge the non-profit arm a price that does not increase your company's net profit. By using the word "unfortunately", you suggest that you would very much want underprivileged folks to have access to your service but simply cannot provide it charitably. But you can certainly afford to provide it without a mark-up. The less you charge...

Lunch and dinner invitations are, in the United States, a normal part of doing business. By extending such an invitation, you are then not gaining an unfair advantage over your competitors who (insofar as they are interested in doing business with the same company) will -- or at least can -- also extend such invitations. Thus, your payment of the meal is neither unfair to your competitors nor defrauding the shareholders/owners of the purchasing company because it does not disturb the purchasing manager's incentive to make the deal that is best for his company. By contrast, your payment of a 20% kickback will displace this incentive by inducing the purchasing manager to make a deal that is much inferior for his company. The kickback and the purchasing manager's acceptance of it therefore are unfair to your law-abiding competitors and constitute a defrauding of the shareholders/owners of the company represented by the purchasing manager.

I don't find your objections compelling. The fact that you don't value something doesn't count against your owning it. For better or worse, your purchase of the stock gives you a say in the company's affairs and, no matter how little you may care about this entitlement, you still have it. Second, by virtue of the stock you own, you're also entitled to a share of what you do care about: the company's profit. Many companies pay out part of their profits as dividends, and your stock entitles you to receive you fair share of all such dividends. If you own one millionth of the company, you get one millionth of any dividend distribution. Finally, your interest in profit gives you reason to care also about voting rights. Those who run a company will do a much better job if they are supervised by vigilant owners and know that they may well be voted out or reduced in salary if they do poorly. Not all owners need to pay attention, of course, but if none do, the executives are likely to run the company...

There are surely cases like the one you describe. But far more frequently, I would think, marketing gets people to switch to a product that costs about the same and is about equally good. In those cases, marketing still imposes a net loss on consumers because its cost gets factored into the price: the consumers of washing powers, cereals, and cars pay for the ads. But the individual firm can often not avoid advertising because it'll then lose market share and will eventually go out of business. In such a context firms can probably not be expected to desist unilaterally, but they can be asked perhaps to reduce their advertising when their competitors are willing to do likewise (insofar as this is consistent with anti-trust/competition laws). There are also clear counter-examples to your hypothesis: marketing for really new or much improved products. Here the consumer is already dissatisfied (for example, with his sexual functioning) and the consumption of the new product, though it sets him back...

I believe editors have no such responsibility to print known falsehoods that some want to see in print. In fact, I believe editors have a responsibility not to print such letters. If editors practiced such misconceived "even-handedness," then this would provide a powerful incentive to determined groups to use such letters to create uncertainty in a public that often isn't very capable of discerning what's true and what is not. Reading many letters to the effect that Obama is foreign-born and hence ineligible for the Presidency may persuade a sizable minority of US citizens that their country has been hijacked by foreign agents. And groups could then abuse the letters-to-the-editors facility to inspire this persuasion, perhaps in preparation for terrorist activities such as the Oklahoma City bombing. Companies could also abuse this sort of false even-handedness. Thus, imagine a company A that sells an expensive drug which reduces the symptoms of some dreadful disease. And imagine that a competing...

Even if both parties benefit from the transaction (relative to the baseline where they do not interact), the transaction can still be immoral. An extreme example would be a mother in Cambodia who works as a prostitute to feed her children. She prefers serving the customer and receiving the money over not interacting with him. And he prefers the transaction over not interacting with her (it only costs him as much as he earns in 20 minutes back home). But it may still be immoral to take advantage of the woman's situation by paying her so little. Let's leave this sort of case aside and consider prostitution involving two people who are both well off and roughly equally well off -- perhaps a business person buying sex from a college student from an affluent family who is saving up to buy a flashier car. In this case, I'd agree that the transaction is not immoral, assuming free and informed consent on both sides ("informed" meaning among other things that neither has failed to disclose any infectious...