Another requirement for an “ethical enterprise” is that they should only offer products and services which are “ethically” acceptable.
For me, it is trivial that an enterprise selling the services of assassins or mines is just as much an “unethical enterprise” as on that sells child pornography. When we are talking weapons in general, the issue is a little harder to decide. There is no doubt that weapons intended for sports exclusively are “ethically acceptable”. In fact, manufacturing weapons that support the executive organs of a democratic country might even “ethically necessary”.
But what about luxury food that is bad for your health? I am sure that producing tobacco for leisure smokers is “ethically acceptable”. Yet is it the same with tobacco the sale of which is extensively advertised (especially among young people)? These days, this is certainly a very controversial issue. What about alcohol and other intoxicants?
There are even more controversial examples. How to evaluate the innovation of all kinds of computer games? Can we judge the generic technology or embryonic science? Especially in medicine, a number of recent developments are extremely borderline.
Even if you consider those issues very objectively, it is really hard to come to a clear result based on a dialectical dispute. Just think of all the ethics commissions and how they are confronted with impossible tasks.
That is why I consider the following requirement sufficient for an “ethical enterprise”:
When you decide whether or not to develop or introduce a new product, you have to balance the arguments in an ethically responsible way. In the process, you have to list all possible reasons for and against the new product. Especially the economical interests must be reduced to a reasonable level.
And an “ethical enterprise” must be prepared to forego a business transaction, even if this means that you make room for an “unethical enterprise”. In the long run, the decision will pay, even if it seems to be detrimental to the enterprise in the short run. Your customers will thank you by respecting you more than ever.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Allow me to clarify the difference between useful, necessary and sufficient requirements: the linguistically stressed necessary requirement means that a statement is “then and only then” valuable, if the requirement is met. That does not yet mean that the statement is validif one requirement ie met, because there might be more than one necessary requirement. If a single one of the necessary requirements is not met, the statement is still not valid.
If all necessary requirements are formulated sufficiently, the sum of all necessary requirements may lead to the sufficient requirement.
Some requirements doubtless promote the goal, yet they are not strictly necessary. I call them “useful requirements”.
The pictures were taken on the way back from the cave of Diros (Itylo). The nice thing about Mani is that there are hardly any knick-knack vendors. And the cave of Diros would be well worth the effort of getting a wikipedia article. Any volunteers?
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