Im a person who is unusually eager to bite bullets when it comes to ethical thought experiments. Evolved vs. created moral patients is a new framework for me and I’m trying to think how much bullet I’d be willing to bite when it comes to privileging evolution. Especially if the future could include a really large number of created entities exhibiting agentic behavior relative to evolved ones.
I can imagine a spectrum of methods of creation that resemble evolution to various degrees. A domesticated dog seems more “created” and thus “purposed” by the evolved humans than a wolf, who can’t claim a creator in the same way, but they seem to be morally equal to me, at least in this respect.
Similarly, if a person with desirable traits is chosen or chooses to be cloned, than the clones still seem to me to have the same moral weight as a normal human offspring, even though they are in some sense more purposed or artificially selected for than a typical child.
Of course, any ethical desideratum is going to have messy examples and edge cases, but I feel like I’m going to have a hard time applying this ethical framework when thinking about the future where the lines between created and evolved blur and where consequences are scaled up.
I look forward to reading the other entries in the sequence and will be sure to update this comment if I find I’ve profoundly missed the point.
I think the term “Market Failure” describes an interesting phenomenon and there should be some term that describes situations where negative externalities are being generated, there is suboptimal production of a social good, etc. At the same time, it is easy to see how “market failure” easily gives laypeople additional connotations.
Specifically, I agree that this phenomenon generalizes beyond what most people think of as “markets” (i.e. private firms doing business). I can see where this would bias most peoples’ hasty analysis away from potential free-market solutions and towards that status quo or cognitively-simple solutions (“we just ought to pass a law! Lets form a new agency to enforce stricter regulations!”) without also taking the time to weigh the costs of those government interventions.
In some spaces, there are private self regulatory organizations, consumer watchdogs, civil liability, and licensing firms that can align firms closer towards socially optimal outcomes while having a greater incentive than the government to pay attention to the costs of those “regulations.” But otherwise there’s not really a market for law and regulation itself within the borders of any one country.
In short, I fear many people perceive the words “market failure” as a local condemnation of capitalism and free markets when perhaps the better solution to these “market failures” is making more market in the form of a more responsive and accountable ecosystem of firms performing the currently monopolistic regulatory function of government.