Five Ethicists Walk into a World Cup Party
"Ethically speaking, you can look at it from a utilitarian perspective and say what would make the most people happy?, then say who’s got the largest worldwide population of, you know, Francophiles or Croatians, and make your determination from that. You could say based on the play of the game and how the athletes perform. You could look at it from which team has the most virtuous, well-rounded, good people on their team. So there’s lots of ways to consider it. We tend to pride ourselves here at the Markkula Center on never answering questions like that…
"I tend personally to be a common good ethicist, someone who says, well, what will be the outcome that will result in creating a public good that the shared community will benefit from? For me, that’s a cleanly played game and a fair outcome. In this case, if people can feel good after the final is over, that you know it was well-fought and there was no taint, if you will, to the outcome — to me, that’s a good outcome."
Ann Skeet quoted in The Outline. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev).