No one said followers have no moral responsibility.
It's fine if it's one morality for everyone. It's just that as an individual with little power, the pursuit of that morality will involve very different actions than for individuals with a lot of power in relevant areas.
If it is the same morality for everyone, then why bother categorizing people into how much power they have?
If a person is just and poor, then Elon Musk dies in a freak self-driving car accident and it turns out this just person is the single estranged heir, surely they haven't suddenly become more or less just by this unexpected windfall...? Whatever was good before is still good after, and whatever was evil before is still evil after.
You're being quite sloppy with categories. You've shifted from saying "if an action is good, it is good regardless of your lot in life" to talking about people being more or less good, based on wealth. Nothing else in the conversation so far assumed a moral status in people; only in actions.
Categorizing people by power follows from the fact that power enables actions unavailable to the powerless. I cannot meaningfully shift public opinion on climate change. Someone investing a billion dollars into cultural messaging probably could. The same ethics could apply to me and the billionaire: say, a rule of maximizing one's impact on the phenomenon most likely to negatively affect the most people. Now if you assume (as you seem to) that utility isn't part of the morality equation, then both I and the billionaire could each try our best and be equally good. But that's not an obviously true thing, and I think most people these days would assume that ends matter. In that light the billionaire can do more good than I can, and although the same ethical rule might apply to each of us, it's proportionally more relevant to the billionaire. So: an ethics for society's leaders.
> If it is the same morality for everyone, then why bother categorizing people into how much power they have?
While (as you say) analytics tools such as the one under discussion aren't useful for assessing individuals, they are appropriate for assessing populations.
When you asserted that only individuals have agency here, that was refuted with the example of leaders, who do have to make difficult choices about populations, and rely on tools such as this to do so.
In no way was that about different moralities for different people. Just about who can use this tool in a useful way. If you read the thread you'll see it.
> While (as you say) analytics tools such as the one under discussion aren't useful for assessing individuals, they are appropriate for assessing populations.
Right, and I say this is a category error. Populations don't exist the same way you and I do. A population can't suffer, because it can't experience. The individuals making up the population can suffer and experience, but that's a different thing entirely. The collective entity only has objectivity.
If I step on a lego brick, and dance around on one foot in pain, so will my shadow and mirror image, but I'm the only one that felt the pain.
> When you asserted that only individuals have agency here, that was refuted with the example of leaders, who do have to make difficult choices about populations, and rely on tools such as this to do so.
I just don't understand how this is a refutation at all.
> In no way was that about different moralities for different people. Just about who can use this tool in a useful way. If you read the thread you'll see it.
Surely the outcome of actions can't determine whether they are good or not.
If a large man with an Austrian accent knocks on my door and asks if I know where Sarah Connor lives, and I helpfully tell him that she lives next door, and he goes and murders her, am I a villain because I unknowingly helped the killer?
It's fine if it's one morality for everyone. It's just that as an individual with little power, the pursuit of that morality will involve very different actions than for individuals with a lot of power in relevant areas.