Question

Analyze the following ethical situation using YOUR ethical philosophy. Read the situation and then in your answer, explain why this is an ethical situation, what the "issues" are, and how an "ethical" person would resolve them.

Explain how YOUR ethical philosophy has helped you read a conclusion about how to resolve or analyze this situation. Employees' worth to their employers may diminish before they are eligible for retirement.

In such cases, the employer is faced with the dilemma of choosing between retaining an old and trusted yet unproductive worker for 5 or 10 more years, or firing that worker and jeopardizing his or her retirement benefits.

1. Should an employer have an ethical obligation to keep such unproductive, but loyal employees? What if the employee had been a problem his or her entire career?

Are there certain circumstances where your answer to these questions would be different?

2. What is the duty of an unproductive employee to his or her employer? Is there an ethical obligation to retire when productivity begins to wane? If a person is simply "coasting" for his or her last few years, is that person "unethical?" Be sure to explain your answer.

3. How do you feel Ayn Rand would have solved the above ethical situation differently or the same as you did using your philosophy? Please explain the reasons for the similarities or differences.

What Rand advocates is an approach to life that's unlike anything you've ever heard before. Selfishness, in her philosophy, means:

Follow reason, not whims or faith.

Work hard to achieve a life of purpose and productiveness.

Earn genuine self-esteem.

Pursue your own happiness as your highest moral aim.

Prosper by treating others as individuals, trading value for value.

At the dawn of our lives, writes Rand, we "seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential." Rand's philosophy is that vision. Explore it for yourself.

Objectivism, a philosophy for living on earth.