[blue]
If you could push a button that gives you a hundred thousand dollars but a random person dies, would you do it?
[yellow, cautious]
Interesting thought experiment… intuitively, I’d say no, but it’s worth thinking about… it’s a genuine moral dilemma in a capitalist world: there’s a dialectic between our desires and the common good…
MEANWHILE, BILLIONAIRES
[an orange guy in a suit is shown with a terrifying grin pushing as many buttons as possible at once on a table, slamming one of the buttons, and even using their foot to press an extra one]
https://thebad.website/comic/the_totally_hypothetical_button_thought_experiment
Also factor in when they die. Maybe your action results in a demise after a period of time. Lung Cancer won’t kill someone right after they puff a cigarette, so the cigarette baron may not consider it his fault in the sort term.
It isn’t the “cigarette baron’s” fault any more than the beer baron’s fault or the parachute maker’s fault. Some people are going to die if they choose to indulge in mildly risky behavior. If the scenario is something like this, everyone here will be pushing that button. Don’t say you won’t because you will.
Yeah, that would be an interesting twist. 100% chance that pushing the button kills someone, but it might happen in 2 years or it might happen in 30 years. But, even if someone lives a perfectly normal life for 30 years, their cause of death will be this button.