Ethics of New Yorks Smoking Ban Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Ethics of New Yorks Smoking Ban - Essay Example The freedom of the smoker is not impinged in balance with the rights of the other patrons, as the smoker can go outside and all are free. Rawls - Ethical. If you are a smoker, you are negatively impacted and would find this unethical. Given the fact that the majority of people are non-smokers, you (PJ) are most likely to be a non-smoker and not want to breathe second-hand smoke; ergo, the ban is ethical because it benefits you. Kant - Ethical. The categorical imperative is the health of the people. It is universally agreed that smoking is harmful to the health of both the smoker and the breather of second-hand smoke. The right thing, or moral principle in keeping the health of the people as the prime objective, is to ban smoking. Egoists - Ethical/Unethical. If you are a smoker, the ban is unethical because it does not allow you to engage in your preferred behavior. If you are a non-smoker, the ban is ethical because you don't have to breathe smoke. The two forms are Act and Rule. In Act Utilitarianism, an action determines what is moral, and general rules can be distilled from the act. For example, if two people were in a burning building-say an elderly man and a small child-and you could only rescue one, you would rescue the child because she would have the higher potential for happiness in the future; the rule being that the higher degree of happiness wins out. In Rule Utilitarianism, a principle determines what is moral, and individual actions follow the general rules of morality. If the rule says that homicide is wrong, for example, killing Hitler in 1933 would still be wrong even though it would lead to the prevention of millions of deaths. 2. What do economists mean by the "declining marginal utility of money" This is a concept which is fairly intuitive. It means that a specific amount of money has proportional importance relative to the wealth of an individual. The amount of $ 5,000.00 given to a specific person would be an unimaginable amount of money for a welfare mother, a nice bonus for a mid-level corporate manager, and completely irrelevant for Warren Buffet. Conversely, the loss of $ 1,000.00 would be very painful for a college student, somewhat annoying to the average attorney, and unnoticed by Bill Gates. 3. Robert Nozick presents his entitlement theory as a function of three basic principles. What are these three basic principles These principles relate to the holdings or possessions of an individual and that person's justifiable right (entitlement) to have them. The Transfer Principle says that, for any particular item, a person is entitled to have it if they properly obtained it from someone who had the right to transfer it. If I purchased a watch from a retail store that had honestly acquired it, the transfer is valid. If I bought the same watch from an individual on the street who had stolen it from its owner, the transfer is invalid. Under the Acquisition Principle, a person who has something that was justly obtained is entitled to that item. In the watch example, my purchase from the retailer is just and I have the right to wear the watch; the street deal is invalid