I mean we can debate whether it’s useful to bring up social obligation in a situation where one person is doing something pro-social for everyone else. Insofar as someone has done something pro-social and everyone is just criticizing them and not doing any of the work themselves, then I think they are also behaving in a way as to disincentivize the work being done!
There’s a question of where the responsibility lies. Should we behave as if it solely lies in the one person who did the work, or should it lie in everyone who benefits from it? Seems to me like the answer is the latter. If there is responsibility then it is a true thing to talk about, its existence is not optional, and it’s accurate to point out that others are not bearing any share of the work that they benefit from. Your point is that it could be unproductive, but I cannot tell whether you are also saying “and they also didn’t have an obligation until you brought it up”, which seems to me like a subtle but important mistake.
Insofar as someone has done something pro-social and everyone is just criticizing them and not doing any of the work themselves, then I think they are also behaving in a way as to disincentivize the work being done!
The people standing around can be valuable without doing any of the kind of work they are criticising. Not always, but it happens. (Of course this shouldn’t be a reason to get less vigilant about the other kind of people standing around, who are making things worse.) When it does happen and the bystanders are doing something valuable, putting an obligation on them can make them leave (or proactively never show up in the first place), which is damaging. Or it can motivate them to step up, which could be even more valuable than what they were doing originally.
My point is that it’s not obvious which of these is the case, as a matter of consequences of putting social pressure on such people. And therefore it’s wrong to insist that the pressure is good, unless it becomes clearer whether it actually is good. Also, it’s in any case misleading to equivocate between the people standing around making things worse, and the people who would only be standing around if there are no obligations, but who occasionally do something valuable in other ways.
One reason for the equivocation might be applicability of enforcement. If you’ve already decided that refusers of prosocial obligations must be punished (or exiled from a group), then you might be mentally putting them in the same bucket as the directly disruptive bystanders. But these are different categories, their equivalence begs the question on whether the refusers of prosocial obligations should really be punished.
I mean we can debate whether it’s useful to bring up social obligation in a situation where one person is doing something pro-social for everyone else. Insofar as someone has done something pro-social and everyone is just criticizing them and not doing any of the work themselves, then I think they are also behaving in a way as to disincentivize the work being done!
There’s a question of where the responsibility lies. Should we behave as if it solely lies in the one person who did the work, or should it lie in everyone who benefits from it? Seems to me like the answer is the latter. If there is responsibility then it is a true thing to talk about, its existence is not optional, and it’s accurate to point out that others are not bearing any share of the work that they benefit from. Your point is that it could be unproductive, but I cannot tell whether you are also saying “and they also didn’t have an obligation until you brought it up”, which seems to me like a subtle but important mistake.
The people standing around can be valuable without doing any of the kind of work they are criticising. Not always, but it happens. (Of course this shouldn’t be a reason to get less vigilant about the other kind of people standing around, who are making things worse.) When it does happen and the bystanders are doing something valuable, putting an obligation on them can make them leave (or proactively never show up in the first place), which is damaging. Or it can motivate them to step up, which could be even more valuable than what they were doing originally.
My point is that it’s not obvious which of these is the case, as a matter of consequences of putting social pressure on such people. And therefore it’s wrong to insist that the pressure is good, unless it becomes clearer whether it actually is good. Also, it’s in any case misleading to equivocate between the people standing around making things worse, and the people who would only be standing around if there are no obligations, but who occasionally do something valuable in other ways.
One reason for the equivocation might be applicability of enforcement. If you’ve already decided that refusers of prosocial obligations must be punished (or exiled from a group), then you might be mentally putting them in the same bucket as the directly disruptive bystanders. But these are different categories, their equivalence begs the question on whether the refusers of prosocial obligations should really be punished.