Should we think differently about this Goldman-Sachs case than the Snowden case? Both involve a kind of basic disloyalty, a thieving of secrets not one's own, a revealing of them to the world in violation of trust and given word. Both were done (at least allegedly) out of a basic patriotism: the one because the government's spying apparatus had been turned on Americans in overwhelming ways and the violator thought the public ought to know; the other because the government had proven to be captured by the banks it was allegedly supposed to regulate, with the effect that both key institutions had become corrupt to the core. In both cases, the idea was that revealing it all to the public was the way to begin to right the ship.
If we think differently about it, it is because we think a primal loyalty is owed to the political system -- the nation state -- that is not owed to one's employer. That's a plausible distinction. We ordinarily hope that people who discover that their company is violating the state's laws will come forward and report them. Perhaps we should also hope that people who discover that their company is violating the country's basic system of beliefs, and is not violating the laws only because it has corrupted the laws, will also come forward and report it. The reporting agency is then the citizenry, because the government can't be trusted. It is implicated in the corruption.
Does that distinction hold up? Is there another valid difference? Or should we condemn or spare them as equivalent cases?
38 comments:
Corrupt institutions really can't claim loyalty.
Corrupt governments always claim loyalty. Further, of course, in the case of the government the whole thing can be thought of as an 'institution,' but the whole thing isn't corrupt. The combat arms of the US military seem to be functional and loyal to their Constitutional oaths, for example -- at least I have no reason to doubt it, having spent a lot of time among them. I think they are chiefly men of honor who take those oaths extremely seriously.
So does the whole lose the right to claim loyalty because of a part? How big a part?
Well, corrupt institutions have no legitimate claim to loyalty, regardless of what they demand.
As for the military, they swear to defend the Constitution. If the government becomes such that the Constitution is effectively dead, to what are these men bound to be loyal to?
This was true long ago as well. Warriors who owed fealty to a man were free of their oaths when he died. Or so I've read.
Well, that's true in Medieval England, but while their loyalty to him was finished, so was their right to the land they held that was the source of their wealth. Since they held their land from him, the interest in getting back into fealty with his heir was so great that there was normally a tax charged for the privilege of being allowed to take the oath to the new guy (Tallage, I believe: not relief, which was the tax your heir pays if you die for the right to assume your feudal oaths to the king).
If the government becomes such that the Constitution is effectively dead, to what are these men bound to be loyal to?
The restoration of the Constitution, of course. Or at least seeing to it that its dissolution is done according to its forms -- an Article V amendment might be gotten out of a Congress or convention called for the purpose.
If that is beyond the realm of possibility, I don't know. 'Ought implies can,' Kant said, but sacred oaths go beyond what you can do to what you must try.
There's a claim on loyalty, and there's a claim on loyalty. Certainly, a government can claim/demand loyalty, but a government, to truly have loyalty, can only claim/earn it.
To your basic point, there's another basis to the distinction between loyalty to an institution and loyalty to government, especially under our sort of social compact.
We owe loyalty to an institution as a fellow member of our compact (leaving aside in this context arguments about whether an institution is a person or a legal fiction of a person; the institution is owned, ultimately, by one or more actual persons), each member sworn, more or less, to obey the terms of the compact or to leave it. It's also a different sort of loyalty with the institution, since unlike our relationship with our government, we do work for the institution (in the present context; there are obviously other relationships)--our responsibility here is to correct errors and misbehaviors, but from this motive: we're not protecting the fabric of our compact when we correct our employer (or another institution), but we're acting under our citizen responsibility to bring to proper authority wrong-doings for correction, even though proper authority may be us directly; we're protecting the compact only indirectly with this. The damage we're attempting to limit is itself much more limited with the institution than with the government.
We also owe loyalty to the government we've hired and animated to run our compact. The loyalty distinction here stems from the damage government can do to the compact, and by extension to the members of the compact, with its miscreancy. The institution's misbehavior is limited to a (relative) few victims, but the government's misbehavior threatens the fabric, the existence, of the compact.
Thus, we owe a primal loyalty--indivisible from a primal responsibility for (not only "to")--our government as our employee, created for the explicit purpose of safeguarding our compact and its members. The primality here stems from that responsibility--to correct its errors and its misbehaviors as threats to our compact as a whole.
In either case, institution or government, we swore loyalty to a properly behaving entity. When that entity misbehaves to enough of a degree, it ceases to be the entity to which we promised our loyalty; it's become a different entity, and that replacing entity does not have our consent or our loyalty.
To get at your secondary question: there's no severance clause in the Constitution, and working in the opposite direction of the usual with severance clauses, the whole loses our loyalty when its misbehavior rises to loyalty-threatening behavior. We don't run our military; the government we hired and which is going rogue does. Of course, should it come to the point that we must throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [our] future security, there's no reason those new Guards can't include our well-behaving military, brought over intact.
An aside: the breadth and depth of the information "revealed" and the place Snowden went to continue revealing it are pretty strong indications that he set out, not to expose government misbehavior, but to damage the US.
Eric Hines
Article V amendment might be gotten out of a Congress
A quibble: no amendments can be gotten out of Congress; only proposals for amendments. Amendments can only be gotten from the People through our State legislatures or State-level conventions.
I speculate, though, that the Supremes would have a hard time overruling the voice of the People were we to represent ourselves directly through State-level referendums.
Eric Hines
Well, Congress can author an Amendment but not ratify it; but I was only thinking as far as the event, as military pressure on Congress is a small thing compared to what ratification would entail. It's a dizzying prospect, given all the possibilities that would bring us to such a head.
But I suppose, were the country fragmenting and the central government too corrupt to recover or restore, that one ought to try. Most likely (as in the past, for example in the matter of Texas' entry into the Union in a highly unorthodox and apparently un-Constitutional manner) the niceties of form would be overtaken by events.
I think we're examining the foundations of "duty" here, and I think we can distinguish a hierarchy of "duties" as Grim set forth.
The most common formulation, used by the Boy Scouts, orders those duties thuswise: "...to God and country..." Thus, an informed moral decision (informed by right religion) will take precedence over a 'country' (or employer, or friendship).
The hard work is making the distinctions necessary to arrive at the correct moral decision.
In the Federal Reserve case, assuming all we read in the newspapers is true and that there is nothing else that we SHOULD know, it seems clear to me: the FRB is not "the country," and certainly not God, so both take precedence over 'the institution' or 'the employer.'
One element of the decision is 'whether revealing these actions is good or bad for "the country" (clan)'.
That, I think, allows us to distinguish between Snowden's act and that of the ex-FRB examiner.
An obvious problem with my feudal analogy is that it can be difficult to tell when a constitution is dead. I feel like ours is the proverbial boiling frog. It's getting there, but it's not dead yet ... I think.
That said, I think the majority of people will take the noble position in the case of the death of a feudal lord: pledge loyalty to the next lord, in this case, the next system of government. I think most Americans probably wouldn't mind living under a less-free system if the government made sure they lived comfortably.
But what about the military? If a feudal lord dies, there's no bringing him back. But a constitution? I wonder if that's even possible at this point. That is, I don't think the Constitution is even dead yet, but I wonder if it's possible to keep it alive. Resurrecting it after its death seems to be a whole other game.
Does that distinction hold up? Is there another valid difference? Or should we condemn or spare them as equivalent cases?
Whether you be traitor or patriot, is only determined by who wins the war later.
It is not up to a faction to condemn or spare, since that faction might be soon to be annihilated by weaker or stronger foes.
Loyalty is still a two way street.
Obey the Police or else. Although one of Insta's link says that even if you obey the police, you'll still get shot. So... do whatever.
It just so happened that the CIA annex had more than 2 people disobeying their stand down orders. I wonder what the total size of the team was and how many individually chose to do the right thing, and that just happened to be the entire team's motivation and goal.
That's how loyalty and unity should come out, out of the individual warrior's conscience that coincidentally is mutually compatible with the group's interest.
But the US Regime has a habit of finding ways to kill those people and eject them (Sarah Palin) out of the realm of power so you have no options but conflict or slavery. It's a nice little game house they have set up, where the house always wins. Sort of like North Korea.
I'm troubled by the idea of keeping one's ill-gotten gains from an institution after deciding that it's so corrupt one no longer owes it the duty of loyalty once sworn to it.
Texan99, isn't that what the Black Caucus, Sharpton con artists, and Hussein O has been doing for decades?
Getting rich off the American dream by guilt tripping whitey, while blaming America. I think there was some comedian that made millions off sales and deals, by saying the American dream is dead.
Should ill-gotten gains ever be kept?
And what about honestly-gotten gains?
I'm troubled by the idea of keeping one's ill-gotten gains from an institution after deciding that it's so corrupt....
I agree, but as a practical matter, to whom should the gains be returned? Based on what criteria?
Should those who acted in good faith and got gains thereby also be punished by being forced to disgorge their gains?
Where is the line in the sequence of gains drawn that says, "Beyond this line those who have gains are held harmless?"
Eric Hines
I'd have to join my voice with those wondering how you make the distinction. Presumably she felt she was being paid a fair rate for her hourly work; and presumably she feels like, as a regulator, she actually did her job (and therefore earned her pay more than others working at a similar rate).
I'm not opposed to the principle, although I'd like to see it more generally applied -- if we determine that there is a way to establish a part that was ill-gotten, it shouldn't be only her who returns it. Others who did less actual regulation may indeed owe more.
Tom :-) I guess I'm saying that they're by definition ill-gotten if you decide the organization you earned them from is corrupt enough to absolve you of your loyalty duties.
And Eric and Grim: it's a question of avoiding a conflict of interest in a moral dilemma. It's too easy to get rich doing something mildly stinky, then decide after the fact that the organization no longer deserves your loyalty because it's so stinky. If keeping and enjoying the money still seems right, are you really breaking your loyalty vows out of a higher loyalty to a duty of conscience, or because you're irritated with your former bosses? It's not really a question of whether you gave fair value. It's just a way of testing your motives.
Well, if you undertook to work for the local crime syndicate and later thought better of it, returning their money wouldn't help. :) So for me, I suppose it depends more on what she thought she'd be doing when she took the job. Regulating and monitoring the big banks that essentially own the US Dollar is a hugely important assignment; I'd think we'd want good people doing it, and good people often means good wages. Not always; sometimes a job is so prestigious that you can get good people to do it for low wages. Often, though, you have to pay.
So did she take the job thinking she'd be covering for them, and then find she couldn't stomach it? Or did she think she was going to do that hugely important job in an honest way, and find herself shocked to discover that the agency was corrupt? If it's the latter, I can't fault her for keeping her salary -- she may be the only one to have earned it honestly.
You don't return the money to the employers, you give it to people harmed by the corruption of the enterprise. If you can't identify any of those, it may be harder to make a case that the enterprise was corrupt.
I don't argue that in every case the conclusion will be that one has to give the money away, only that it's a useful exercise to undertake to check one's motives.
I don't know that I agree that the ability to identify the harmed means that corruption is unlikely. It may be that you'd end up giving a tenth of a penny to everyone in the world, because the harm of corruption at this level is universal (or nearly so). If that's so, then it would cost more to send the money than the money you'd need to send.
Also, it's important to distinguish between two kinds of loyalty. One is a duty to further the interests of an organization as against the competing interests of outsiders: I'd say that one can die instantly, with no crisis of conscience, as soon as the organization proves corrupt and certainly as soon as you part ways with it.
The other is a duty of silence regarding matters that were communication in confidence up to the point of breach. That one should be tougher to break, and it's in that connection that I think some aids to self-examination are probably are good idea. It's not always unbreakable by any means, but it's a more fraught area.
And you needn't get too hung up on exactly identifying all the right people to return the money to. Pick one, and ask yourself whether it feels right to make the sacrifice. The point is to establish that you're really motivated by disgust at the harm the organization did, rather than by personal pique. It won't always be appropriate, but it's worth a thought experiment.
I was thinking of the Madoff case where a number of people invested with him in good faith, made money in good faith, and now are being forced to give it all back.
Is that just?
Would it matter if those good faith folks were reduced to poverty as a result of the disgorgement because that profit was all they had? This was the case with some of them.
Eric Hines
If you could track your own money, it wouldn't be an issue much.
Credit card companies can partially do it. And FedEx UPS can do it for physical objects.
But the government can't do it, even though they monitor everything.
So they just say, "sorry, we lost your money". Since it can't be tracked any more and who spent it on what can't be seen, they'll decide where it goes now. Convenient.
I was thinking of the Madoff case where a number of people invested with him in good faith, made money in good faith, and now are being forced to give it all back.
Is the argument that someone like this regulator caused them to lose the money that they didn't know was being earned through corruption? That they, then, are the proper targets for any sense of repayment she may feel?
Everyone who makes money in a Ponzi scheme makes it at the expense of the investors who lost everything. That's one of the clearest ethical cases for returning one's gains that I know of.
Is the argument that someone like this regulator caused them to lose the money....
That is, indeed, my question.
Everyone who makes money in a Ponzi scheme makes it at the expense of the investors who lost everything. That's one of the clearest ethical cases for returning one's gains that I know of.
Even if the investor didn't know it was a Ponzi scheme and acted entirely good faith? The ethics of giving back good faith earnings is unclear to me. You're suggesting that a) the earnings are irredeemably tainted by their source (which leaves my practical question unanswered: at what remove is the taint sufficiently faint), and b) that those unaware of the source should be punished despite their having done everything right.
Eric Hines
Yes, even if the investor didn't know and acted in good faith. It's not so much that the earnings are tainted as that everyone was cheated, and the best outcome is for them all to share in the loss instead of randomly assigning winnings to some and losses to others. They were all part of a scheme in which the thief skimmed off the top while using some investors to steal unwittingly from others, in order to create a false sense of profit to lure new investors in.
The people who "earned" money on their investments didn't, really. They were snookered. It's painful to find out, but no more painful than for others who lost everything and were no more at fault.
But those who acted in good faith and made money weren't cheated; at worst, the cheat failed with them. Why do they owe simply because they were luckier than those against whom the cheat succeeded?
It's not a matter of randomly assigning winners and losers; those who won are clearly and easily identifiable. Of those, the courts are fully capable in the main, if it must come to that extreme, of separating the good faith winners from the successfully cheating winners.
The people who "earned" money on their investments didn't, really. They were snookered.
Or not. They saw an investment that met a criterion for expected gain, executed the investment, and when the criterion was satisfied, they exited the investment. No different from buying a stock and then selling it later, or buying real estate and selling it later, when criteria and goals for the moves are met. They didn't even notice the snook.
no more painful than for others who lost everything and were no more at fault.
Sad for those, but how does that obligate the ones who successfully executed their investment in good faith to be similarly impoverished?
Eric Hines
You're looking at each individual investor and judging solely on the basis of his good faith. But all of the cheated investors acted equally in good faith, and none of them willingly or knowingly assumed the risk that what looked like an investment really was a scam in which they were being used against each other. It's different, I think, from an ordinary investment in which each investor knowingly assumed the risk that timing and luck might make all the difference between an investor who won and another who lost. I find the ethically more satisfying resolution to be to ask all of the investors to throw their investments back into hotchpot and share equally. For what it's worth, this is not actually what typically happens legally; ostensibly "winnings" normally are clawed back only for the most recent winners. the logistical problems are enormous.
On the issue of the presumptive good faith of the winning investors, though: it's a rare Ponzi scheme whose "winners" were really innocent or in good faith. There normally are some fairly good signs early on that the deal is too good to be true.
One strong distinction I'd like to make between this case and Snowden. Ms. Segarra stood for what she believed was right, even if it cost her. Snowden fled to avoid the cost of his disclosure.
I've said before I think that he perhaps did a service by letting the people know his information, but ultimately, he's a coward of no moral fiber for fleeing rather that face the potential penalty for his actions. If he truly believed he was in the right, he should have trusted a jury of his peers to exonerate him.
Exactly: he may well have done a lot of people a big favor, but that doesn't absolve him of all his ethical duties--especially since his disclosures seem to have hurt a lot of other people at the same time. Results aren't everything in ethics by a long shot.
I don't know the first thing about Ms. Segarra's circumstances and certainly don't mean any of my ethical musings here to reflect on how she made her decision. All I meant to point out is that, for ordinary people facing a dilemma about breaking a confidence, it's often a good idea to examine whether we're doing it for a good reason or merely because we're now very angry with a former employer. At least in my own case, I know that would be a powerful temptation and a likely source of confusion of motives.
You're looking at each individual investor and judging solely on the basis of his good faith.
You bet. Americans are individuals, not aggregated groups. And, no, I'm not judging on the basis of good faith; I'm judging on the basis of the potential of good faith. I don't know these folks any better than you do.
But all of the cheated investors acted equally in good faith, and none of them willingly or knowingly assumed the risk
Not true. Some of them entered into the deal knowing full well what it was; they just got out-cheated. Don't forget the size of this particular scheme.
I find the ethically more satisfying resolution to be to ask all of the investors to throw their investments back into hotchpot and share equally.
Yet all the investors aren't equal in the aspects relevant to this "investment," as you seem to be assuming. Why should they be forced to equal outcomes? There's also a vast difference between being asked to participate in recoupment and having the money snatched away via the coercive power of government, independent of the circumstances of the acquisition.
...it's a rare Ponzi scheme whose "winners" were really innocent or in good faith. There normally are some fairly good signs early on that the deal is too good to be true.
Missing those early signs--even the obvious ones--doesn't necessarily mean they lack innocence or good faith. It can instead mean they're inattentive, or too trusting of their adviser.
Aside: ordinary investment in which each investor knowingly assumed the risk that timing and luck might make all the difference
And skill.
Eric Hines
Of course we're individuals. Does it follow that we should never look at the impact of our actions on a group, in deciding how to bear the costs and consequences of very bad fortune?
Whether or not people were acting in good faith at the time they invested heavily in a Ponzi scheme--a subject on which we may have to agree to disagree--that doesn't answer the ethical question. When the Ponzi scheme comes to light, we know now, even if we didn't know then.
If I bought an irreplaceable, uninsured diamond ring at a great discount, and the next day learned that it had been stolen from my neighbor at gunpoint, would I be ethically justified in saying, "Sorry, but I bought it from the thief in good faith"? My good faith at the time I got roped into the fraud is not the only important consideration. How about the queasy feeling I got that there must have been something hinky about the sale, given the price? Wouldn't it be better if I at least split the cost of the reparation with my neighbor? We could dump the value of the ring and my purchase price into hotchpot and share the loss, and both walk away feeling we'd dealt with each other fairly.
These worries are mostly too fuzzy to serve as rigid rules of law, but we're not talking about law, we're talking about what we might have to do in order not to feel dirty, and not to feel as though we'd taken unfair advantage of someone who was every bit as innocent as we were.
Missing those early signs--even the obvious ones--doesn't necessarily mean they lack innocence or good faith. It can instead mean they're inattentive, or too trusting of their adviser.
I've generally been on Tex's side in this discussion, but I should add that Ponzi schemes disproportionately target elderly senior citizens. There seems to be a natural loss of ability to sniff out a fraud that comes as a part of natural cognitive decline: a person who would have sniffed out the fraud instantly at 40 or even 70 may, at 85, no longer be quite clear on the details.
'The nice young man explained the investment, and several people I talked to said that when they asked for their money out, they got paid. That's pretty good evidence it's not a fraud, if you get the money you were promised when you were promised it.'
I don't fault the people who fall for it. They're often introduced by friends who've enjoyed a successful investment experience with the schemer, who has been carefully selecting for people of a certain age, has concocted a clever story, and who actually pays out when people ask. Most people don't because, after all, why would you want out of an investment that's doing so well?
It's an old scam, but that doesn't mean you should be thought dishonest for having fallen for it.
I don't fault the people who fall for it.
The funny part is when people are told that it's a scam and told how it works, and they refuse to believe it. Because they have bought into the whole economic authority system, via trust and reliance. Business is based on trust. Although alliances are only based on mutual interest.
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