If saving nine people from drowning did give one enough credits to murder a tenth, society would look a lot more functional than it currently is. What sort of people would use this mechanism.
1)You are a competent good person,who would have gotten the points anyway. You push a fat man off a bridge to stop a runaway trolley. The law doesn’t see that as an excuse, but lets you off based on your previous good work.
2)You are selfish, you see some action that wouldn’t cause too much harm to others, and would enrich yourself greatly (Its harmful enough to be illegal). You also see opportunities to do lots of good. You do both instead of neither. Moral arbitrage.
The main downside I can see is people setting up situations to cause a harm, when the authorities aren’t looking, then gaining credit for stopping the harm.
You are a competent good person who would have gotten the points anyway. But since you are not immune to human error despite being a generally competent person, you do something which you perceive as necessary for the general good, but which actually, on the balance of things, causes harm. The law lets you off for this based on your good work.
It’s too easy to be a “good person” in general but prone to bias in a small area.
You are selfish in some way that doesn’t pattern-match to “selfish about every single thing”, so you would do good regardless of the law, but the law means you can also do some evil. I can imagine a doctor who would heal people for no reward other than his salary, but who might get stressed or frustrated and hurt people if he could do so without consequences. Or a white supremacist who would help fellow white people regardless of whether it benefitted him personally, but who might also beat up a couple of minorities on the side if the law permitted it.
If saving nine people from drowning did give one enough credits to murder a tenth, society would look a lot more functional than it currently is. What sort of people would use this mechanism.
1)You are a competent good person,who would have gotten the points anyway. You push a fat man off a bridge to stop a runaway trolley. The law doesn’t see that as an excuse, but lets you off based on your previous good work.
2)You are selfish, you see some action that wouldn’t cause too much harm to others, and would enrich yourself greatly (Its harmful enough to be illegal). You also see opportunities to do lots of good. You do both instead of neither. Moral arbitrage.
The main downside I can see is people setting up situations to cause a harm, when the authorities aren’t looking, then gaining credit for stopping the harm.
Responding to old post:
You are a competent good person who would have gotten the points anyway. But since you are not immune to human error despite being a generally competent person, you do something which you perceive as necessary for the general good, but which actually, on the balance of things, causes harm. The law lets you off for this based on your good work.
It’s too easy to be a “good person” in general but prone to bias in a small area.
You are selfish in some way that doesn’t pattern-match to “selfish about every single thing”, so you would do good regardless of the law, but the law means you can also do some evil. I can imagine a doctor who would heal people for no reward other than his salary, but who might get stressed or frustrated and hurt people if he could do so without consequences. Or a white supremacist who would help fellow white people regardless of whether it benefitted him personally, but who might also beat up a couple of minorities on the side if the law permitted it.
Fair point.