Jean Kumagai's "The Whistle-blower's Dilemma" & The two videos


  • As someone who would be considered a "rational egoist," I wouldn't whistle-blow under virtually any circumstance that would result in serious negative ramifications. That said, I find it disgusting that the term "whistle-blowing" even exists, but I'm not surprised that it does. If there is a flaw in a system that I was apart of I would want to tell the issue to my supervisor, but because there is no safe way to do so, I wouldn't do it. I think the primary problem with this lies in the consequence. There should be a power allocated to the government to stop companies from firing whistle-blowers. While the company would surely find some other petty way to fire the person, there should, at the very least, be a system that directly stops the firing of whistle-blowing. While wrongful termination does exist in the legal system, it always favors the corporations with the power and money to sue any of their employees into debt. This, as I stated a thousand times over in these blogs, can ultimately be chalked up to capitalism taking no account for the well being of anyone whatsoever. 
  • I find it hard to believe that the discussion against whistle-blowing even exists. Under most relevant and popular moral systems, I find it hard to believe that anyone could justify not whistle-blowing on a significantly impact issue. Unless the person is an egoist, I find the act of not whistle-blowing nearly indefensible. Both of the readings focused on the whether one should whistle-blow or not, and the outcomes of doing so. That said, I think this is the completely wrong discussion to have. The discussion should be surrounded the obligation of the government and corporations to protect their employees from doing their duties. If the engineering code of ethics outlines that the engineer must keep in mind the well-being of the public, the corporations that utilize engineers should be required to abide by the same system, and to do that entails the engineers having a safe route to report, document, and fix issues with the system at hand. I am not sure how this issue is solved in other countries, but it is truly revolting how much protection corporations have on blatantly obvious malpractice. By not fixing this issue, the government and corporations that tout their "good morality" are undeniably endorsing engineers staying silent about issues that could lead to death. There is absolutely no morality in America business, and anyone who believes otherwise has to be so incredibly dishonest to skip around and justify the current system of safety private corporations get from the government. A corporation can't become nationally competitive under anything but a guiding system of egoist ethics, and I would be hard pressed to believe otherwise.
  • I respect the people who stand for the ethics they believe and will sacrifice themselves for an ethical cause, but I would not do the same; however, I believe the issue of whistle-blowing shouldn't be an issue. The fact that complete ostracism from an industry is the likely result of a whistle-blowing is sickening and should be fundamentally fixed at the legal level. I believe it is unethical to expect anyone to sacrifice their career in the same way that I believe it is unethical to expect anyone to give their life. It may seem extreme, but I see someone's career as an extension of themselves and a guiding reason to wake up and live, and expecting someone to give that up is ridiculous to me. I have seen what unemployment does to people, and it's not a pretty sight. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Utilitarianism (Rachels, Chapter 7 & 8)

The idea of morality being "just the attempt to bring about as much happiness as possible in this world" rather than a faithfulness of abstract rules is, in a way, an abstract rule. I would argue that happiness isn't something that can be objectively measured, so there is no way to defined what will and won't increase the overall happiness of the world. Happiness has to be see as an abstract idea, so, by nature of that, morality is still a faithfulness to an abstract.  When I read philosophical ideas and theory, I always have a really hard time understanding the practicable use of such things. While Bentham's theory seems great in thought, I find it hard to see this ever being truly adopted in real life. I understand that Utilitarianism is defining how humans ought  act rather than do, but  a total disregard of practical application makes any conversation not worth having/ I can't fathom a world where Utilitarianism could be applied—I don't think a Util...
Read more

A Response to Mina Kimes' "The Sun Tzu at Sears"

This blog is late due to me somehow not hearing the blog was supposed to start on day two of class. I apologize. Using such words as "consiglieri," comparisons to Sun Tzu, and dictator-esk war-like imagery, the author is posing Eddie Lampert to be a ruthless man through initial inspection of the article. It's obvious that this is not going to be a very kind piece before even starting the actual reading. The article makes many assuming claims that are backed mostly by anonymous people. I am not saying the author is making these people up, but we have to assume she is telling the truth as she did not use many names of the people making claims in these interviews. I am personally adverse to anarcho-capitalism, something that Lampert seems to like the idea of. I understand that competition can be a strong factor in driving business, but I think there are other ways of promoting business and technological growth without clawing at the eyes of other businesses. His seemin...
Read more

The Altered Nature of Human Action (Jonas Reading)

I have not done a lot of research into the ethics of technology in general, but by interest I have written a few papers on the ethics and threat of the technological singularity—the supposed moment in time where artificial intelligence will reach a point in which there will be an instant, irreversible change. Given that, most of my ethical consideration surrounding non-medical sciences, ignorantly so, is based of what I have researched about singularity. As Jonas addressed at the end of the chapter, there is very much a possibility that there is too much emphasis on the threat of technology and underplayed its promise. I am a dissenter for Joans' view; however, I have no doubt that the promise of technology is overplayed—in fact, I think it may be under played. When thinking about hypothetical threats of technology, I believe that artificial intelligence poses the most threat. The very idea of creating a super-human mind is something that we cannot fathom, and there are studies t...
Read more