Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
I think your point about moral degradation having nothing to do with our current economic problems is about as far from reality as one can drift and not disappear into a black hole. It certainly wasn't the sole factor, but it definitely contributed to it.
Again, setting up circumstances that seem almost designed to reward and encourage "immoral" financial behavour and then blaming "moral degradation" for the consequences seems... well, see the analogy above with the dog and the ground beef.

Quote Originally Posted by Kiwigrunt View Post
The first part seems obvious. But I’m not sure that the intentionality of the act is what makes it intrinsically immoral. Going to war in the sandbox was also intentional, and so is the death penalty.

Collateral damage may be unintended, but I should think that in many cases it is clearly possible and probable. So it would seem an accepted side effect to the intentional action.
Is the acceptability contingent on the (un)predictability of its scope? Does that provide a smoke screen over the morality of it?
Craphappencidental seems to hover somewhere between accidental and intentional.
Has there ever been a war that was not marked by accusations of torture, atrocity, etc? One might call those parts of collateral damages, as they inevitably seem to accompany war. Of course it was... clumsy, to put it mildly, for the administration to openly sanction that behaviour, rather than expressing shock and carrying on, as the habit of the past has generally been.

Going to war brings a host of miseries, torture and collateral damage among them. It guts the finances too, if we want to get taxes back into he picture. Still we do it... because we believe we must? Because we know it's right? Because we have the "moral courage" to stiffen our upper lips and take on the grim tasks that we know, or maybe believe, must be done?