phyllo wrote:But doesn't that require investigating the customers?
No, you have a responsibility for your own actions. If you know that the customer is a thief of worse, you might take the next step and deal with it, if you feel you are up to it. But your primary responsibility is making sure that you are a positively contributing member of your society.
And let's say that a customer comes in and you know for a fact that he manufactures machine guns. Is not your lifestyle directly dependent on these weapons protecting you from invasion by foreign armies? Don't you get a benefit from what he does?
This is the group-thinking trap most people fall into.
This is also the justification game I was talking about in another thread.
Very few people actually want to invade other countries. Their leaders want to and their best inducement for citizens to comply is fear. Telling them that unless you invade them, they will invade you. G.W. Bush got that tactics down to perfection and most of the US citizens fell for it.
They couldn't start a war if individual people refused to participate.
Here is an illustration:
Conflicting loyalties
In grade seven, dripping with compassion,
Fred and I broke into our lab to rescue the rats...
I alone was caught and grilled for an hour,
urged to tell on my friend
or I would be expelled from the school ...
I kept silent - loyalty made me a looser, a fool.
At nineteen I was called up to the army
to attack the North Vietnamese
who never did me any harm,
I refused and had to flee,
leave my family, my friends, my life behind,
rather than become a blind puppet of the state
I chose a different fate.
Later in life, as an engineer,
I was offered a lucrative contract,
to work on weapons of mass destruction...
I chose to teach instead, for pitiful wages,
and my family had to go along,
follow me where I thought I belong.
My teaching career didn't last long.
Because support was minimal;
I didn't have the time and the resources
to teach the best way possible,
I wouldn’t support mediocre education...
I had to find a new occupation.
Finally I accepted a job
in a chemical factory,
but the conflict followed me there:
I was ordered to dump digoxin in our river
and, when I refused, I was shown the door,
out on the street once more.
That was the last straw for my wife,
she had enough of my principles,
my loyalty to my convictions,
so she left me to follow my lonely path...
...and I still do, I have no choice,
I must follow the voice in my mind
that tells me what is right…
the only loyalty I cannot fight.
