It’s a gradient of more or less unethical things. You could also use the slavery analogy to less and less unethical investments, to reach the conclusion that you shouldn’t invest in anything that you have even the most miniscule ethical issues with.
You could make a lot of these same arguments for owning slaves. If you don’t buy them then someone else will, and they may be a worse master then you. Better that you buy them and treat them right, provide them good food and housing, while at the same time advocating for the abolition of slavery.
In both secenarios you may say you want what’s best for them, but that desire is in direct conflict with your desire for profit so either you become a bad investor or a bad slave master / landlord. Why bring yourself into that conflict instead of investing in something without those moral implications?
nimpnin@sopuli.xyz 1 week ago
blarghly@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I feel like this is a reasonable counterargument. My response is that you can reasonably and ethically seek a profit with real estate investment because pieces of land are not people. And any harm you do to people is going to be extremely distributed across the population. Like, if you went around to everyone in your city and whistled an annoyingly saccharine tune next to them while they walked to work on a Monday morning, maybe the total negative utils would add up to a single human life of slavery - but I still think distributed harm is far more justifiable.