Ethical Relativism And Act Utilitarianism Essay

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Question 1: Consider a landscaping company that employs illegal aliens. The owner of the company pays them $3.00 an hour and keeps $17.00 for each hour they work to cover operating costs and personal profit. If the employer did not make this margin of profit, he would not be willing to run the company. Without this company, many local businesses would have to pay more for landscaping services. Thoroughly assess this situation from the two different perspectives of Ethical Relativism and Act Utilitarianism (Jeremy Bentham).

Ethical relativism is when morality is determined by the culture you reside in. For us, it would be the United States. This situation becomes complex because in the US, employing illegal aliens is against the law, paying that wage is inhumane, but people always try to justify it. Politics has been too polarized to address the situation. In an ideal United States, the landscaping company would face harsh punishments because they are engaging in malpractice of paying that wage, breaking the law by employing and undocumented worker. It does not matter that the job may be creating small economic good because it comes from exploitation and the …show more content…

For $120,000 the surgeon will provide a dialysis patient with a new kidney. The surgeon pays donors $50,000 for one of their kidneys and uses the remaining $70,000 to cover expenses and as a personal fee. (The personal fee does not exceed the normal compensation of a surgeon and his staff.) The donors are healthy adults with different reasons for seeking the money. The patients who need the kidneys vary in the severity of their illness, but each is willing to pay $120,000 for a replacement kidney rather than stay on dialysis and wait for a kidney through the normal channels. Thoroughly assess this scenario from the two different perspectives of Rule Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill) and Pluralistic Deontology (W. D.

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