The Morality of Power

(Originally posted by me at the old version of ClawsOrPaws.)

Theories of moral responsibility often include some version of the "ought implies can" claim. It means that if you say that somebody ought to have done something, or ought not to have done something, it was in their power to do what they should have done. This usually applies both to circumstances and capacities. You would, for example, not blame somebody for not saving a drowning person if they would have to walk on thin ice that would break anyway if they tried to reach the one drowning. And you don't blame kittens, who don't understand that they cause pain, for being cruel to the mice they catch and, eventually, kill.

I would say that is fairly uncontroversial. It would be wrong to blame somebody for something they could not help.

But, then there are those that seem to think in the opposite way. "If you can do it, it is right." To them, "can" implies "ought", with a positive value attached to that "ought". I have often been fascinated to see this kind of mentality clearly illustrated in online life. Perhaps it is more clearcut here because people do not perceive things that happen online as really "real", so they do not tend to think morally the same way they do in RL.

You see this kind of thinking now and again in relation to using other people's wireless networks. The reasoning goes like "They should protect themselves, if they are so stupid that they don't, well, then I have the right to leech their bandwidth".

Now, let's assume that people who don't protect their networks don't do it because they don't know much about network security. I think that is a reasonable assumption. What the leecher is basically saying, then, is that the relative weakness of their victim makes it right to take advantage of them. It's like saying, for example, that it is OK for somebody stronger to beat up somebody who is too weak to defend themselves efficiently. And, of course it is a way to try to escape responsibility for your actions - aka "blaming the victim".

Another online variation of this mindset can be seen at some forums, where the staff members seem to think that they have a right to use their extensive control panels to manipulate users, mess with their accounts, apply different rules according to different board members' ranking, etc. Personally, I always stay away from such boards.

Because, basically, I think it may be true that "can implies ought", but not in the sense that having power makes use of that power morally right. I believe it's the other way around. Having power means having responsibilities. More power implies more responsibilities, IMO. Staying within the online examples, I have felt this clearly when changing roles between different boards; on some boards I am a mere member, on others, I am staff. It has happened that I have been annoyed with some user that I was on equal footing with at some board. But, if I meet that user at a board where I am owner, admin or moderator - the annoyance practically disappears precisely because I could actually do things to that user.

Bottom line: Being able to do things is never in itself an excuse for doing those things. Simple as that.

I should add that I foresee a twist to this argument of mine. Namely that I would not agree with those who defend file-sharing in terms of "this is how the net works, the entertainment industries, etc, have to adapt to reality". Morality, by definition, is not about how things are, but about how they should be. If the **AA were right to call file-sharers immoral (and criminals to boot), then the fact that it is easy to share files would be no defence.

So... I would say that file-sharing should be defended in terms of people finally having the power to do something about a situation (the way material has been "owned" and distributed) that was not morally right in the first place. In fact, I think I would say that the industries have abused their power...