Question

What is your opinion to following text

We all face ethical, moral problems throughout our lives, most of which come with relatively straightforward solutions. But every now and then things are not so straightforward and we must make a decision both of which might have more cons than pros and we are plagued as to what we are going to do and never the less we know that a decision needs to be made. I was visiting my grandmother’s house over the summer, to make sure she was okay and didn’t need anything. We were talking in the kitchen when her phone rang, she asked me to go get her the phone and bring it to her, so I did and when I got the phone I noticed something running down her wall.
It looked like some nasty yellow liquid. So while she was on the phone, I got a ladder and placed it near this mysterious yellow liquid and it finally hit me it was water damage coming down from the ceiling. So I waited for her to get off the phone to ask her about it. And she said that was from her tenant on the second floor, and that had happened a few days ago. The person on the second floor installed their air conditioner incorrectly and was causing water to run through her ceiling. I asked her if she had mentioned anything about to the guy who lives up on the second floor, she said I already asked him to look at it and asked if he was going to be paying for the damage he caused. My grandmother said that he was not going to be paying for that damage because he didn’t cause it. And she told me that she didn’t know what to do about it. So I mentioned to her that she can use the deposit money he had gave her before he moved in to fix it and that the next time he is late on his rent to make a note of it and this way she can legally evict him from her house. The decision was made on the rights justice of being a homeowner. They signed a lease stating that if they caused damages they would have to pay for it. Which fueled her ethical decision to use the security deposit money to fix the damages. From what I have learned from this class so far, I wouldn’t have told my grandmother anything different

Answer 1

Trade-offs related to ethical and moral problems are typically complex since the normal utility function does not work here. Given a person with no moral values, he would maximize his welfare. If grandmother has no moral values, she would not have hesitated to use the security deposit to compensate her damage and maximize her utility. However, as the morality component arises, the utility function becomes complex. The opportunity costs are greater and thus leading to complexities to a straightforward problem.  The tenant was causing damages to the property and directly affecting the utility function of grandmother. Given this circumstance, it becomes a responsibility on the part of the tenant to compensate for this loss of utility. As he refuses to do so, grandmother has no other option than to use the security deposit to fix the damages. The inherent assumption here is that the loss of utility from the damages is greater than the moral conscience to address the problem. Therefore, I agree with the solution provided above.