Ethics

Is it morally wrong to profit from other people's mistakes or stupidity?

Comments

Much depends on whether one is profiting passively or actively (taking advantage). Passive profiting is generally alright (as when you continue to enjoy the great view from your living room because your neighbor mistakenly believes that it would be illegal to build a highrise on the adjacent property). Taking advantage is generally wrong, especially when, exploiting another's stupidity, you cause her mistake (e.g., by provoking her to agree to an unwinnable bet). Somewhat less active cases are ones where you have no role in bringing about the mistake, but nonetheless do something to exploit it. This may be wrong -- as when you pick up a chunk of money another has dropped and keep it rather than try to get it back to its owner. Or it may be alright in minor cases, as when you keep some change you find in a pay phone's coin return.

The moral situation changes in competitive game contexts in which such profiting is understood to be part of the game. In such a game (e.g. chess, poker, boxing), it is alright to trick your opponent into making a mistake and then to exploit this mistake as best you can. The same is true of the competition among firms or states. But there are three provisos: First, you may exploit your opponent's mistakes only insofar as the rules allow -- you may not, for example, offer your chess opponent a sleeping pill that (you hope) he will mistake for a mint or use your opponent's mistake in a wrestling match to choke him to death. Second, your opponent's entry into the game must be voluntary and not itself a result of your luring her into the game by exploiting her stupidity (e.g., by suggesting that you are a very poor boxer or poker player when you are not). And third, the rules of the game must themselves be morally acceptable -- taking advantage of another's mistake may not be justifiable in a competitive game context whose rules give you an unfair advantage from the start (or are otherwise morally unacceptable, as with duelling).

Read another response by Thomas Pogge

Read another response about Ethics