Individuals have a moral obligation to assist those in need

INTRO RESOLVED: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need. The negation stands on the opposing side of this resolution due to its violation of the Social Contract as well as it's obstruction to justice by forcing individuals to sacrifice themselves for the well-being of others. VALUE Justice VALUE/CRITERION Freedom Freedom is defined as the quality or state of being free and the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action. The resolution coerces individuals to perform an action that may or may not be out of their own free will. In order to preserve justice within society, and this resolution, the value of freedom must also be preserved. DEFINITIONS Moral obligation - an obligation arising out of considerations of right and wrong or out of one's morals Obligation - The condition of being morally or legally bound to do something Assist - to give support or aid to In need - A condition or situation in which something is required or wanted All definitions obtained from Merriam Webster Online Dictionary CONT I - Helping people shouldn't be an obligated action, we must not confuse sympathy with obligation A. Aid shouldn't be an obligated action Jan Narveso [Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo] "Is World Poverty a Moral Problem for the Wealthy?" The Journal of Ethics, Vol. 8, No. 4 2004. A much greater factor is simple general human sympathy. Insofar as people are suffering, most of us are sorry to see this, are affected, and may be moved to try to help. But that factor is most obviously relevant in situations of aid, not of poverty. The world's very poor are often very sick, have short life expectancies and high infant mortality, and that is sad. Justice does not require that we improve their situations, though sympathy recommends it. So, for that matter, does a more general interest in good relations with all and sundry. But poverty is a more endemic, basic, enduring sort of thing. For it, "aid" is not the appropriate remedy. B. Confusing "sympathy" versus obligation is a dangerous notion The things we might be able to do 10 help such people probably will not consist in sending them a check - though it possibly might, for that matter - but there might be other things some of us can do, and it will be just as true that we "ought" to do those things as that we "ought" to go out and help improve the incomes of the very poor. Which, in both cases is not that it is our moral obligation to do them, but that it would be good of us to do so would contribute to our level of moral virtue, if we want to talk that way? And [his is no trivial matter. Sympathy is an important human capacity, and it should be cultivated, not crushed. For that matter, one way to crush it is to confuse it with justice, leaving the sympathetic out in the cold with the bureaucrats who compel their support rather than solicit their sympathetic responses. CONT II – Such an obligation violates the Social Contract and would result in legal disasters A.THE SOCIAL CONTRACT DOES NOT CREATE AN OBLIGATION TO ASSIST OTHERS H. M. Malm "Bad Samaritan Laws: Harm, Help, or Hype?" Law and Philosophy, Vol. 19, No. 6, 2000. Steven Heyman argues that the "strongest basis for a legal duty to rescue is to be found not in morality but in the obligations of citizenship. The government is formed to protect its citizens against violence" and in exchange for this protection, citizens are obliged to "assist the government in enforcing the laws" against violence.' But Heyman's arguments are not likely to be widely convincing. One problem is that even if the government's role has evolved into doing more than providing protection against violence, we can't infer from this that it ought to have so evolved nor, more significantly, that citizens have a duty to assist it in every function that it now covers. Providing education to minors is widely regarded as a proper function of government, but it doesn't follow from this that every citizen has a duty to assist in this function other than by paying their taxes. B.BAD SAMARITARIAN LAWS ARE BAD FOR SOCIETY Joshua Dressler [Prof. of Law McGeorge School of Law] "Some Brief Thoughts (Mostly Negative) About "Bad Samaritan" Laws" Santa Clara Law Review. Vol. 40, 199-2000, p. 985-6 First, if such laws are taken seriously, the costs of investigating and potentially prosecuting bystanders might be prohibitive. Second, to the extent that BS statutes are narrowly drafted to reduce the risk of unfairness, prosecutions are likely to be rare (and convictions even rarer). Therefore, it is unlikely that the threat of punishment will have the desired effect of inducing bystanders to help persons in peril. The muted threat of a misdemeanor conviction is less likely to promote good behavior than the threat of public scorn that follows the publicity of such cases, or a Samaritan's own conscience. Third, to the extent that such laws do, in fact, compel "Good Samaritanism," there is a risk that the Samaritan will hurt the person she is trying to assist, hurt others in the process, or unforeseeably harm herself. Fourth, since BS statutes are not linked to any prevention-of-harm causal requirement the costs of such laws may easily outweigh their limited practical benefits. C.BAD SAMARITAN LAWS PUNISH INDIVIDUALS FOR BEING A BAD PERSON RATHER THAN COMMITING BAD ACTS Joshua Dressler [Prof. of Law McGeorge School of Law] "Some Brief Thoughts (Mostly Negative) About "Bad Samaritan" Laws" Santa Clara Law Review. Vol. 40, 199-2000, p. 981-2 The name suggests, I think, that we punish the bystander for being a bad person that caused him not to come to the aid of a person in need. However, the criminal law should not be used that way: criminal law punishes individuals for their culpable acts (or, perhaps here, culpable non-acts), but not generally for bad character. One need only consider David Cash and the public's intense feelings of disgust and anger toward him to appreciate why jurors might convict Bad Samaritans less on the basis of the "technicalities" of a statute, and more on the basis of character evaluation. I hope a great opponent!