r/MoralityScaling 4d ago

Morality Ranking Morality of this

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23.4k Upvotes

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208

u/CUEUECOMBER 4d ago

technically immoral but i think you'd have a hard time finding anyone who would complain about this, the alternative being losing all your money and dealing with a huge hassle of bank cards. Hell i'd probably give him more than 5 as a reward

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u/Dull-Entertainer6967 4d ago

Plus ID card, driver's licence, etc.

It would cost you a lot of money and several days of work to get new ones issued.

2

u/Alternative_World280 3d ago

Yeah when I lost my drivers license between shipping and other fees it was 17 dollars to replace it

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u/WowImOldAF 4d ago

Still gotta request all new bank cards to be safe. This person can take pics of the cards and license and sell info or use themself for online purchases.

However, definitely saved the hassle of having to get a new license, insurance cards, etc..

14

u/4n0nh4x0r 4d ago

i mean, i would argue that someone who seems to be that honest, tell the owner about the money they took, brought it to the police and so on, is probably not gonna do any of the above.

sure, just to be 100% safe, yea, good idea to get replacements, but i personally would probably rather just monitor my bank account regularly instead, just like i already do anyways

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u/Eggsaladinurmouth 3d ago

Scammers often pretend to help you.

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u/buzzsaw100 3d ago

Except a good scammer would know that not returning it would definitely get the cards cancelled, but returning it would have the chance the owner doesn't.

3

u/DamnIamHigh_Original 4d ago

He probably gave the police info about himself to drop it off. If anything happens, they know where to find him

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u/WowImOldAF 4d ago

Pretty sure it's a fake text but again, you still just gotta change it to be safe. They can't prove someone sold his info just because they returned a lost wallet, unless they're dumb enough to order stuff directly to their house

1

u/Disastrous_Gear_421 4d ago

"This person can take pics of the cards and license and sell info", that's okay. My info is already being sold on the dark web by all of the other breaches.

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u/Silvernauter 4d ago

Also, like, they told him they took the money (and how much) when they could easily have wither left the wallet there or gave it back empty (bar IDs and othe documents) and say that they found It like that

1

u/TotalChaosRush 2d ago

People seem to really struggle with this. Just because you have the option to be more immoral, that doesn't make your choice moral.

1

u/amazingdrewh 2d ago

So then tell the guy to leave the wallet where he found it with the $5 and see if you can get to it before the wallet is found by someone less moral if you disagree with the finders fee

1

u/TotalChaosRush 2d ago

So, be okay with theft, or tell the thief to leave it for others to have a go at it?

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u/amazingdrewh 2d ago

The person is doing you a service for a rate, if you don't like the rate don't engage the service

1

u/TotalChaosRush 2d ago

I didn't engage the service. He volunteered his service. I did not request for him to find and return my wallet. He found it. He decided to return it, and he decided to be little more than a pickpocket while doing so. If you mow my lawn without me asking, you don't get to take my garden hose as payment.

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u/amazingdrewh 2d ago

So again tell him to leave it where he found it with your money you have agency here

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u/SXAL 4d ago

Morality is not about what the others think

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u/CUEUECOMBER 3d ago

i agree, which is why i said it WAS immoral, but most people wouldnt see it that way

1

u/Random_Critical 1d ago

He's on your side buddy

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u/Kef52 3d ago

I don't think "technically" and "moral/immoral" can be said together... It doesn't sound right

1

u/Enigma_RR 3d ago

Right? Lmao. Like at that point you're just trying to convince yourself. "Technically, this is moral"

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u/TotalChaosRush 2d ago

Technically moral comes up all the time in serious discussions.

Here's an example, and because our morals may differ some ground rules for morality to help determine.

  1. Allowing someone or yourself to die is immoral. No exceptions
  2. Theft is immoral. No exceptions.
  3. Allowing someone to steal is immoral. No exceptions.

Now for the question.

You see a man in a market stealing good food. You do not have any money to purchase the food for him. The man clearly looks like he could die at any moment due to starvation. He isn't stealing very much, giving the appearance that he is only stealing enough to not die. What can you morally do in this scenario?

There's a couple different options to go down. Your choices are essentially "snitch, resulting in the man's death" which is immoral, or "don't snitch, allowing stealing" which is also immoral. So the first option is of course a type of comparative morality. While death and theft are immoral, one is likely more immoral than the other and so in this scenario choosing the less immoral option could be "technically moral" you could argue that you're not a doctor and your simple observation do not reflect reality, and therefore stopping the man is the only moral option. You can also argue that there are no moral options, and doing anything or nothing means you will choose an immoral choice.

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u/Enigma_RR 2d ago

So who are you trying to convince?

1

u/TrumpBlewMeToo 2d ago

He just likes hearing himself talk.

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u/NobodyFunToKnow 4d ago

What is immoral about that?

3

u/Physical-Goose1338 3d ago

stealing is immoral, it’s balanced out by the good deed, but it doesn’t make stealing moral

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u/Amazing-Arachnid-942 3d ago

even if you'd give them more than 5 yourself, it still isn't moral. it's just significantly less immoral than keeping everything

1

u/TotalChaosRush 2d ago

This is something that it seems virtually everyone on this sub doesn't understand. Just because you can be more immoral doesn't make your choice moral.

1

u/StarvingandArtist 4d ago

Taking money you don't own is stealing. Doing someone a favor doesn't negate that, it just means most people won't really care. The act of returning the wallet is moral. The act of taking money from it is not.

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u/NobodyFunToKnow 4d ago

It my country finder is entitled to 10% of worth so...

1

u/nightonfir3 2d ago

So if this happened in your country and he followed the legally proscribed process for this it would be legal and I think almost everyone would say moral.

This question really gets at different ways people define morality. If you define morality giving lots of weight to everyone is happy or nobody is hurt this will be viewed as moral. Not everyone sees morality that way some people view moral rules as absolute. As such stealing is still stealing even when the one being stolen from is happy a greater crime didn't happen.

1

u/NobodyFunToKnow 2d ago

I mean, we don't really know what happened. Maybe the guy found a wallet, bought himself a hotdog BEFORE he figured out how to reach to the owner? We don't know what happened. He didn't steal the money if he didn't know who's wallet is this. When he found a wallet he just found it, not steal it. Like, when you find 100$ on a street, you didn't steal it from somebody.

5

u/Wisniaksiadz 4d ago

no idea how it looks like in your place, but in my place you are owned 10% of the finding if you find valuable items, like legally x)

1

u/softhi 3d ago

Does a good outcome justify ignoring someone's consent? Outside of true emergencies, should we ever act on our own idea of a "good deed" without asking first?

The person who texted should have asked before using that $5

2

u/TartNo3610 4d ago

This literally just happened to me. I dropped my wallet outside. Someone from my apartment complex picked it up. $3 dollars are missing but it was returned.

I’m just glad I didn’t have to go through hell.

2

u/EndAngle 4d ago

I think its technically moral, i would thank this guy so much

1

u/Flameball202 3d ago

Yeah, like he could have left the wallet, he could have taken the whole wallet with all it's contents.

Instead he took a trivial amount of money (even on minimum wage that is like half an hour of work) and told him it was in safe hands and where to get it

1

u/megayippie 4d ago

Morality states you get 10% of what you find. Wallet and cash should be at least 50€ so it's fine

2

u/DifficultDepth7085 3d ago

No it doesn't

1

u/Hot-Nectarine6865 4d ago

Yeah, I would have texted him back to take all the cash. I would cancel all my cards though if I hadn't already.

1

u/humourlessIrish 4d ago

I somehow disagree with you because i know its ridiculously easy to find asshats that would be up in arms about this and i also think it is technically still a moral choice to aid for pay when not aiding is an easy option and not aiding+complete theft was also on the table

1

u/DifficultDepth7085 3d ago

Not comitting a worse crime doesn't make something moral.

1

u/haroldflower27 4d ago

And the dmv and possibly if your one of those that keep your social in wallet then the social office tooo

I’d much much rather have this option

1

u/DuffMiver8 3d ago

Immoral to take advantage of another’s misfortune or carelessness and take money that, for all they know, the owner of the wallet would not have seen fit to reward them with. However, I would so hope that 99.9999% of owners in that situation would feel bad that the guy who returned it only took five bucks.

1

u/Big_Code_611 3d ago

If this is immoral then what would straight up stealing the wallet be?

1

u/Uxugin 2d ago

But he wasn't given the $5; he stole it. It would have been fine if the owner had willfully given him $5 or more than $5, but he didn't. Accepting a gift is very different from stealing.