Ethics for the Information Age Assignment Help

This assignment requires you to write essays in response to all of the following:

Part 1: In your own words, summarize and contrast the harms and benefits of privacy, offering your commentary. Your commentary can include illustrative examples based on your perspective and experience.

Part 2: Offering your own commentary as you see fit, critically evaluate the idea that whistle blowing is a moral duty, focusing primarily on the perspectives of Richard De George and Carlos G. Bell, Jr.

Part 3: From the perspective of Robert Frank and Philip Cook, in your own words, describe the harmful effects of the winner-take-all society in general and the economy in particular. When it seems appropriate, provide examples from your experience or observations.

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Harms and Benefits of Privacy

Privacy is that ability of an individual or a group that separate themselves from the others or any information about themselves to the others. The main reason behind the maintenance of privacy is to preserve the confidentiality regarding some concepts or information, to use it more appropriately. However, it has been postulated that the benefits of privacy are less in comparison to the harms that it provides to society. One of the most common benefits of privacy can be determined in terms of freedom. Privacy enables the people or organizations to think freely and act freely without any influence or control of others (Rossler, 2018). However, it has been criticised on the fact that total freedom to a person can result in loneliness and separation from others. Privacy also creates a feeling of security in the minds and hearts of some persons when they share some of their secrets with their friends or other individuals. This, in addition, protects the economic interests of an organization or an individual by not exploring the ideas or plans that can create new products or services in the future. For example, a company designed a new T-shirt, and it thinks that it can sell that T-shirt and make a lot of money without exploring it in front of others. Then, in this case, keeping that idea secret would allow the organization to reap more benefits than the others. Privacy sometimes helps in developing some intimate and affectionate relations with other people. However, there exist some serious harms of privacy, and these are that privacy cuts off the people from others. It sometimes results in the decline of stimulation as well as in intellectual growth as exchanging of ideas and thoughts can correct the wrong thing. Privacy also enhances the costs of things and makes a person or organizationmore accountable for anything that is done wrong. One of the major harm of privacy is that it helps people in committing crimes and in hiding their crimes. Therefore, it can be established that the issue of privacy needs to be handled very carefully to get its benefits than the harms (Bansal, et. al., 2016).

Is whistle-blowing a moral duty or not?

Whistle-blowing is usually considered as an act of professional mortality. Whistle-blowing allows a person to expose any kind of activity or information that is illegal, not correct, or unethical within an organization. It should be noted that this policy has been formulated only to enable the employees or any other person in the organization to raise concern against any kind of fraud, corruption, or malpractice. Thus, it can be considered as the moral duty of a person. However, according to Richard De George, the whistleblowers should first analyzethe harms that whistle-blowing would cause to the organization or public. Secondly, he states that the whistleblower should have appropriate evidence about the same concern. The perspective of Richard De George, however, has been criticized by many researchers on the fact that availability of appropriate evidences is not necessary for a whistleblower. They have believed that the collection of evidences can result in a big loss. For instance, if a whistleblower knows about some malpractice of a drug company, but he does not displays it just because of lack of evidences, then it can result in injury or death of millions of people. In fact, it has been believed that people should sacrifice their good for the greater good of other individuals or society (Hoffman & Schwartz, 2015).

On the contrary, Carlos G. Bell states on the act of whistle-blowing that moral responsibility is the first and foremost responsibility of an individual and therefore must be borne by the individuals on a priority basis. This would not only save the life of millions of people but would also save that whistleblower from humiliation and other such feelings. However, it has been noted that whistleblowers are being suspended or suffers heavy punishment from their organizations for disclosing that information that they do not want to. But there are examples in history that different individuals paid a high price for their act of whistleblowing, yet they do not stop and continue to do the same. Hence, it can be established that whistleblowing is a moral duty and should be performed by everyone who confronts with any undue or unethical act or behaviour (Santoro & Kumar, 2018).

The harmful effects of the winner-take-all society in general and in the economy

From the perspective of Robert Frank and Philip Cook, the statement that the winner-take-all society proves to be quite true in the present era of society and economy. The cascade of new organizations or new celebrities throws a special reflection on the winner-take-all phenomenon. Similarly, the difference between the rewards leaves little or nothing for the others. This, therefore, seems to be quite unfair for those who have tried and worked hard for achieving the same target and thus harms the whole society and therefore, the whole economy. However, Robert Frank and Philip Cook supported this statement and proved that small gaps in performances result in such large differences in the reward. According to them, the focus on the main objective differentiates the winner from the others. This thus makes it possible for them to attract a large number of audiences and lead on the way of success. For example, in a company, one superior executive is trying as hard as the other to get a high income, but later on, it has been found that he has been rewarded more salary than him. The top management argued that it had been provided just because of his unique quality and role that he has played in the organization. This, therefore, resulted in low morale and low productivity of another superior executive. This loss of morale and productivity between the individuals and organizationsthus poses serious harms to the society in general and the economy as a whole (Matthijs, 2016).Also, it has been noted that this sometimes results in crime and violence, which then affects the whole economy.

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