Yep, I think we are indeed living in pretty interesting times!
I think both my parents and grandparents in Germany faced similar decisions, and definitely within the last 50 years (half of Germany was under USSR occupancy around 30 years ago!).
Something being “a democracy” is I think only a weak filter on the actual need for this. The U.S. had various anti-gay and anti-communism periods in which I think lying to the government or committing fraud seemed very likely the way to go (e.g. I personally am sympathetic, though very tentatively still overall opposed to the people who committed minor fraud to e.g. dodge the draft for the vietnam war, and definitely in favor of military personnel who lied about their sexual orientation for most of the last 50 years).
I also think racism was a serious enough problem within the last 50 years that I would not judge someone if they had lied about their race in various government documents in order to gain access to fair treatment, and of course anti-semitism has been rampant enough that lying about your religious affiliation to the government or universities, even within the U.S. was an action I would not judge people too badly for.
It is indeed very easy for me to come up with a very long list of examples where committing minor fraud, with an intention of limiting the negative effects of it, was the ethical (or at least a defensible) choice. Happy to generate more if you want
(for some more examples:
Given that many universities have a policy of expelling students with mental health problems I would not fault someone for lying to their university administration when they are asked about whether they have a history of depression or are using anti-depressants.
I think various occupational licensing regimes are crazy enough that I would not fault someone for operating without a license for e.g. being a hairdresser, though I feel tentatively confused about this.
Various parts of immigration law seem crazy enough to me that engaging with the government fully honestly here seems like it could seriously endanger your life or the lives of your children.
Most recently the government had crazy enough lockdown restrictions, as well as rules about how vaccines should be distributed, that I think it was ethical to break those rules, which potentially would have involved lying to the government e.g. given that tons of vaccines were being thrown away, I think I support people who said that they hadn’t received a second dose yet in order to get a booster, since the only reason why boosters weren’t happening was crazy FDA shenanigans.
)
I also expect the world will end up more crazy in the future than it has been in the recent past. I assign substantial probability to additional widespread pandemics, major power wars, nuclear conflict and political polarization causing substantially more oppressive regimes in the west (not like, super high probabilities to any of these, but I think the last 20-30 years, at least in the western world, have been a very calm time in terms of radical global changes, and I do not expect that period of relative calmness to persist for that much longer). I think all of these are also associated with conflict that gives substantially more justification to lying to major institutions and governments and other things that might be classified as fraud.
lying to major institutions and governments and other things that might be classified as fraud.
Okay, that’s where I misunderstood you—lying to the government is not what I think of when condemning fraud. I think lying to government can be very serious and is often done too flippantly, but it’s not what I thought you were defending. In my mind, fraud is primarily about stealing money, and I just couldn’t figure out how you were defending that.
Yeah, in my mind fraud is not tied to financial benefit (and I don’t think it is legally either, any kind of personal benefit will suffice). I also think that if the government is asking you as a jew or as a gay person to pay extra taxes or pay other types of fines (as has happened in many jurisdictions, including in the last 50 years), I also think you are justified in lying in response to that, even if it would be for financial gain.
Like, we had sodomy laws in the U.S. until 2003, many of which carried fines (and were enforced within the last 50 years). I feel a bit confused about what you are allowed to do in order to avoid self-incrimination, but it wouldn’t surprise me that much if various people were pushed into various minor forms of fraud in order to avoid those fines and criminal penalties.
Separately, if there are substantial swaths of the population trying to discriminate against jews or gay people economically, I also feel a decent amount of sympathy for people trying to avoid that by lying, even if it is for financial gain (like, if many of the most prominent scholarships to U.S. universities explicitly exempt jewish or gay or black people, as I think wasn’t too uncommon within the last 50 years, then I feel pretty sympathetic to someone lying about their race/sexual-orientation/religion in order to still claim eligibility for those scholarships, though like, I do sure think this case isn’t obvious, and many quite nearby cases feel straightforwardly quite immoral).
I agree with the general tenor of your comment, but a) I think many of the examples you listed would not be considered financial fraud and b) I disagree on the object-level with several of your examples:
I also think racism was a serious enough problem within the last 50 years that I would not judge someone if they had lied about their race in various government documents in order to gain access to fair treatment
I’m not sure which are the specific examples you’re thinking of, but I know some people have advocated that Asian American students lie about their race and e.g. pretend to be white to gain college admissions. I think this is probably immoral and I do not recommend this.
I think I support people who said that they hadn’t received a second dose yet in order to get a booster, since the only reason why boosters weren’t happening was crazy FDA shenanigans.
I think I’m on the other side here, at least for healthy adults, and this was directly decision-relevant in me waiting to get a booster (but I will not fault people who have made a different choice here, particularly ones with medical necessity or who are caretakers for more vulnerable people).
a) I think many of the examples you listed would not be considered financial fraud
But nobody was specifically specifying financial fraud in any of this discussion, at least as far as I could tell. The OP talks about all fraud, and I haven’t seen anyone narrow things down to just financial fraud. I agree that most of the things I talked about don’t qualify as financial fraud, though I think I could also come up with many examples of it being justified to commit financial fraud within the last 50 years.
I’m not sure which are the specific examples you’re thinking of, but I know some people have advocated that Asian American students lie about their race and e.g. pretend to be white to gain college admissions. I think this is probably immoral and I do not recommend this.
Yeah, to be clear, I think I would not support this in the present day, where the forces of discrimination seem substantially weaker. There were however periods where the disadvantage seemed so large that I would have supported active civil disobedience against those rules.
I think I’m on the other side here, at least for healthy adults, and this was directly decision-relevant in me waiting to get a booster (but I will not fault people who have made a different choice here, particularly ones with medical necessity or who are caretakers for more vulnerable people).
Yep, I think this is a reasonable ethical position. I felt really quite on the edge about it, and still do, though I do feel pretty strongly that it’s not an obvious case and would feel bad about our community condemning it strongly, at least given my current understanding.
Yep, I think we are indeed living in pretty interesting times!
I think both my parents and grandparents in Germany faced similar decisions, and definitely within the last 50 years (half of Germany was under USSR occupancy around 30 years ago!).
Something being “a democracy” is I think only a weak filter on the actual need for this. The U.S. had various anti-gay and anti-communism periods in which I think lying to the government or committing fraud seemed very likely the way to go (e.g. I personally am sympathetic, though very tentatively still overall opposed to the people who committed minor fraud to e.g. dodge the draft for the vietnam war, and definitely in favor of military personnel who lied about their sexual orientation for most of the last 50 years).
I also think racism was a serious enough problem within the last 50 years that I would not judge someone if they had lied about their race in various government documents in order to gain access to fair treatment, and of course anti-semitism has been rampant enough that lying about your religious affiliation to the government or universities, even within the U.S. was an action I would not judge people too badly for.
It is indeed very easy for me to come up with a very long list of examples where committing minor fraud, with an intention of limiting the negative effects of it, was the ethical (or at least a defensible) choice. Happy to generate more if you want
(for some more examples:
Given that many universities have a policy of expelling students with mental health problems I would not fault someone for lying to their university administration when they are asked about whether they have a history of depression or are using anti-depressants.
I think various occupational licensing regimes are crazy enough that I would not fault someone for operating without a license for e.g. being a hairdresser, though I feel tentatively confused about this.
Various parts of immigration law seem crazy enough to me that engaging with the government fully honestly here seems like it could seriously endanger your life or the lives of your children.
Most recently the government had crazy enough lockdown restrictions, as well as rules about how vaccines should be distributed, that I think it was ethical to break those rules, which potentially would have involved lying to the government e.g. given that tons of vaccines were being thrown away, I think I support people who said that they hadn’t received a second dose yet in order to get a booster, since the only reason why boosters weren’t happening was crazy FDA shenanigans.
)
I also expect the world will end up more crazy in the future than it has been in the recent past. I assign substantial probability to additional widespread pandemics, major power wars, nuclear conflict and political polarization causing substantially more oppressive regimes in the west (not like, super high probabilities to any of these, but I think the last 20-30 years, at least in the western world, have been a very calm time in terms of radical global changes, and I do not expect that period of relative calmness to persist for that much longer). I think all of these are also associated with conflict that gives substantially more justification to lying to major institutions and governments and other things that might be classified as fraud.
Okay, that’s where I misunderstood you—lying to the government is not what I think of when condemning fraud. I think lying to government can be very serious and is often done too flippantly, but it’s not what I thought you were defending. In my mind, fraud is primarily about stealing money, and I just couldn’t figure out how you were defending that.
Yeah, in my mind fraud is not tied to financial benefit (and I don’t think it is legally either, any kind of personal benefit will suffice). I also think that if the government is asking you as a jew or as a gay person to pay extra taxes or pay other types of fines (as has happened in many jurisdictions, including in the last 50 years), I also think you are justified in lying in response to that, even if it would be for financial gain.
Like, we had sodomy laws in the U.S. until 2003, many of which carried fines (and were enforced within the last 50 years). I feel a bit confused about what you are allowed to do in order to avoid self-incrimination, but it wouldn’t surprise me that much if various people were pushed into various minor forms of fraud in order to avoid those fines and criminal penalties.
Separately, if there are substantial swaths of the population trying to discriminate against jews or gay people economically, I also feel a decent amount of sympathy for people trying to avoid that by lying, even if it is for financial gain (like, if many of the most prominent scholarships to U.S. universities explicitly exempt jewish or gay or black people, as I think wasn’t too uncommon within the last 50 years, then I feel pretty sympathetic to someone lying about their race/sexual-orientation/religion in order to still claim eligibility for those scholarships, though like, I do sure think this case isn’t obvious, and many quite nearby cases feel straightforwardly quite immoral).
I agree with the general tenor of your comment, but a) I think many of the examples you listed would not be considered financial fraud and b) I disagree on the object-level with several of your examples:
I’m not sure which are the specific examples you’re thinking of, but I know some people have advocated that Asian American students lie about their race and e.g. pretend to be white to gain college admissions. I think this is probably immoral and I do not recommend this.
I think I’m on the other side here, at least for healthy adults, and this was directly decision-relevant in me waiting to get a booster (but I will not fault people who have made a different choice here, particularly ones with medical necessity or who are caretakers for more vulnerable people).
But nobody was specifically specifying financial fraud in any of this discussion, at least as far as I could tell. The OP talks about all fraud, and I haven’t seen anyone narrow things down to just financial fraud. I agree that most of the things I talked about don’t qualify as financial fraud, though I think I could also come up with many examples of it being justified to commit financial fraud within the last 50 years.
Yeah, to be clear, I think I would not support this in the present day, where the forces of discrimination seem substantially weaker. There were however periods where the disadvantage seemed so large that I would have supported active civil disobedience against those rules.
Yep, I think this is a reasonable ethical position. I felt really quite on the edge about it, and still do, though I do feel pretty strongly that it’s not an obvious case and would feel bad about our community condemning it strongly, at least given my current understanding.