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1. _s+(OP)[view] [source] 2025-01-22 05:09:10
I make and sell soap. The soap contains an ingredient that anyone can use to make bombs. Some people buy my soap only for that purpose. I know because they literally tell me how they use my soap. I can remove that ingredient but I would loose a lot of sales.

The police finds my soap in the lab of someone who blew up a building. Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?

replies(3): >>hbbio+t1 >>beefle+z5 >>herbst+LB
2. hbbio+t1[view] [source] 2025-01-22 05:26:09
>>_s+(OP)
> I can remove that ingredient but I would loose a lot of sales.

Or: I can remove that ingredient but it goes against my principle of not accepting constraints.

> Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15398776/

replies(2): >>jshen+v2 >>highwa+We
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3. jshen+v2[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-01-22 05:39:22
>>hbbio+t1
Jail is for people that don't accept constraints outlined by democratic society.
4. beefle+z5[view] [source] 2025-01-22 06:09:46
>>_s+(OP)
Interesting thought experiment, but no, I don't think it's llegal/unethical/immoral to sell that soap. But in practice this sort of business will change their formula to avoid bad press and regulation.
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5. highwa+We[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-01-22 07:42:37
>>hbbio+t1
This is a nonsense argument.

The manhattan project was very intentionally an attempt to create a WMD, it wasn’t a side-effect of something else. You don’t have a point here.

6. herbst+LB[view] [source] 2025-01-22 11:25:25
>>_s+(OP)
Having done some internet things (email stuff) that have been abused by others I always felt obligated to make the abuse as hard as possible once I found out about it.

I am not sure about the legal standpoint, but from a moral one I would have felt bad running the business knowing it's regularly abused to harm others and I am not doing anything against it.

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