Norwegian climber says it would have been impossible to carry injured Pakistani porter down snowy K2

Bernie Ecclestoned@sh.itjust.works to World News@lemmy.world – 128 points –
Norwegian climber says it would have been impossible to carry injured Pakistani porter down snowy K2
apnews.com
46

You are viewing a single comment

Sure - and i'm sure I could find people who'd play a game of russian roulette for $1M but it'd be massively unethical to hire people to do that.

So there's obviously some line - as a society we consider it ethical to hire forestry workers or deep sea fishermen even though they have a significantly higher risk of death that most other professions. I think a 25% death rate is just unethical in the extreme, even Everest is something like 1%.

Everest appears to be 5%. Where would you draw the line, and how would you justify it?

I have no idea, but hiring someone for a job that has a 1 in 20 chance of killing them seems fundamentally immoral - especially given the massive financial imbalance.

It's certainly a good philosophical question though

Yeah, taking it to the extreme, the same logic applies to delivery guys on scooters and motorcycles. There's definitely no good answer, except maybe that they accepted the risk

Looking at it more, there seems to be an entire field of Risk Ethics associated with this.

Still the most dangerous job in the US is a Commercial Fisherman with a risk of death of 132 per 100,000. That's a very long way from the risk of dying on Everest or K2.