Moral questions

July 22, 2010

An interesting ethical debate about to arise on Wikipedia (or it will do when I wake up). Is a system which kills people by indifference as bad as a system which kills people deliberately? So choose:

  • your economic system privileges individual choice above all else and people die by neglect, or near genocide when their lands are taken away from them by dubious economic transactions, or provocations produce revolt which justifies pacification
  • You ship people off to the gulags, stage show trials and run purges with fatal consequences.

Now I was always taught that a sin of omission is as bad as a sin of commission…

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