Bartlet on Accountability
Continuing this week's series on design ethics, DLB borrows from The West Wing to help develop the case for accountability.
I’ve been thinking for a few days now about how I would respond to Paul’s most recent weekend ponderable.
His question was: What if you went out of your way to design an ecologically-friendly MP3 player, but in doing so, inadvertently caused the manufacturing contract to be outsourced, costing American jobs? In short, can a design be ethical despite having unethical consequences?
Whether we design sustainably or not, our decision is going to do harm to someone. As I see it, we should choose the option which does the most good for the most people– i.e. design the MP3 player with recycled materials because, ultimately, it’s better for everyone. Being environmental, in this case, is a higher obligation.
Fair enough, but how does one do that?
Yesterday, Paul wrote that, to be ethical, designers must be accountable, which is a position I wholeheartedly agree with.
Being accountable, one must not merely consider the consequences and make the tough choice; one must be prepared to confront those choices head-on; own up to the bad consequences and state one’s case for the good in those actions. I’m not talking about selling the idea, I’m talking about standing up for the idea.
Without culpability, ethics devolve into cost-benefit analysis– they’re a feature of the design, not an obligation of the designer.
This brings to mind one of the pivotal scenes in The West Wing, when it becomes clear that Martin Sheen’s character (Bartlet) is not a typical politician– he is accountable.
MAN
Governor Bartlet, when you were a member of Congress, you voted against the New England Dairy Farming Compact. That vote hurt me sir.MAN
I’m a businessman. That vote hurt me to the tune of maybe, 10 cents a gallon. I voted for you three times for Congress. I voted for you twice for Governor.MAN
And I’m here sir, and I’d like to ask you for an explanation.BARTLET
[pause] Yeah, I screwed you on that one.MAN
I’m sorry?BARTLET
I screwed you. You got hosed.MAN
Sir, I…BARTLET
And not just you. A lot of my constituents. I put the hammer to farms in Concord, Salem, Laconia, and Elem.BARTLET
You guys got rogered but good.BARTLET
Today, for the first time in history, one in five Americans living in poverty are children.BARTLET
One in five children live in the most abject, dangerous, hopeless, backbreaking, gut wrenching, poverty, one in five, and they’re children. If fidelity to freedom and democracy is the code of our civic religion then surely, the code of our humanity is faithful service to that unwritten commandment that says “We shall give our children better than we ourselves had.”I voted against the bill ’cause I didn’t want it to be hard for people to buy milk. I stopped some money from flowing into your pocket. If that angers you, if you resent me, I completely respect that, but if you expect anything different from the President of the United States, I suggest you vote for somebody else.
Thanks very much. Hope you enjoyed the chicken.
Instead of dodging the issue, Bartlet tells the man plainly that, in order to do the most good, leaders can’t always make everyone happy.
Which is Paul’s point, I believe: being perfectly ethical may be unattainable. What we can –and should– do is strive to be perfectly accountable.
| Tagged with: | Accountability, Consequentialism, Design Ethics, The West Wing |
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