Problem
A decision to boycott Uber, like any other decision, will fall into one of three moral categories: morally obligatory, morally permissible, or morally prohibited (morally wrong). A personal boycott is clearly permissible: Nobody has a general moral obligation to use Uber (or to patronize any other company, organization, or attraction, for that matter), so no justification is required for a decision to refrain from using it. 12 Thus the salient question about personal boycotts is whether a personal boycott of Uber might be morally obligatory. The salient question about organized boycotts, however, is a different one. For reasons we will look at below, an organized boycott does not have the same default moral status as a personal boycott. Some organized boycotts are clearly permissible, but some might be morally wrong. Whereas the salient question about a personal boycott is whether it is merely permissible or actually obligatory, the salient question about an organized boycott is whether it is morally wrong or morally permissible. As we have seen, there are many aspects of the way Uber, its leaders, and its workforce operate that might give us pause. But there is no direct inference from "Uber does bad things" to "We shouldn't use Uber." And even if there were a direct inference, another step would be required to get us to the conclusion that we should initiate or join an organized boycott. We could attempt to construct an argument from scratch, but I propose instead that we examine and borrow some argumentative strategies from the literature on moral vegetarianism. Drawing this parallel promises to be fruitful because the debate over moral vegetarianism shares the same structure as the debate over an organized boycott of Uber: The production of some good or service involves significant harms; and this fact suggests, but does not entail, a moral obligation to refrain from consuming the product or service.
Thus, an argument is needed. And since there has been a significant amount of philosophical work done on moral vegetarianism in recent decades, we should look to see if any of that work can help us answer our questions about the permissibility or obligatoriness of an Uber boycott. Drawing a Parallel Between #deleteUber and Moral Vegetarianism The moral vegetarian argues that we are obligated to refrain from eating meat; or, more simply, that eating meat is wrong. The argument for this conclusion typically runs in two stages. 13 In the first stage, the arguer highlights some feature of the way that meat is produced to support the claim that meat production is wrong. For example, the arguer might point out that industrial animal farming ("factory farming") causes unnecessary animal suffering (unnecessary primarily because there are other available sources of food, but also because there are other ways to farm); and then the arguer might conclude that industrial animal farming is wrong in virtue of causing unnecessary animal suffering. In the second stage, the arguer attempts to establish the wrongness of meat consumption by connecting it to the wrongness of meat production. There are different paths to this conclusion, but one path focuses on the notion of participation. 14 It is wrong to participate in wrongdoing, and to consume factory-farmed meat is to participate in factory farming (which counts as wrongdoing because it causes unnecessary animal suffering); thus it is wrong to consume factory-farmed meat. If consuming factory-farmed meat is morally wrong, then, at least in ordinary circumstances, I ought to refrain from such consumption. Thus, we have the outlines of a strategy for arguing that we are morally obliged to engage in a personal boycott of meat.
In their discussion of organized boycotts, Tomhave and Vopat (2018) focus on the coercive aspect of boycotting: for them, a boycott is just an organized use of coercive force. Their question, then, is when the organized use of coercive force is justified, and to answer that question they look to the nature of the action, practice, or policy to which the boycott is responding. If the action (or practice, or policy) is merely an expression of a viewpoint, then a response involving coercive use of force, designed to silence the viewpoint in question, is probably not morally justified. But if the action extends beyond mere expression and is actually causing harm, then a coercive use of force designed to mitigate or prevent that harm has a better chance of being morally justified. 19 Whether coercive force employed for this purpose is justified will depend on a number of factors, including how much harm the boycott itself is causing or will cause. A boycott undertaken for the purpose of preventing harm could fail to be justified because the boycott itself produces harms that are greater than the harms targeted by the boycott. For example: Boycotting a hotel chain in response to their poor treatment of cleaning staff could result in layoffs, the harms of which might outweigh the goods produced by any policy changes prompted by the boycott. In such a case, the boycott might still be unjustified despite the intentions of its organizers. On this view, the moral status of a boycott depends on its outcomes: An organized boycott is morally justified "if and only if the boycott produces, on balance, more good than harm" (Tomhave & Vopat, 2018, p. 129).
This criterion helps explain why a boycott that is organized as a response to an expression of a viewpoint is typically not morally justified. This type of censorious boycott, if successful, will have the effect of silencing the targeted viewpoint and also preventing or minimizing further expressions of that viewpoint. Since a diverse marketplace of ideas is important for a healthy society, removing a viewpoint from that marketplace causes harm. Thus, in order for a censorious boycott to be morally justified, it has to produce goods that together outweigh the harms done by restricting the marketplace of ideas. Such a situation is possible, but unlikely. Let us briefly apply this criterion to a hypothetical example. If a coffee company is exploiting its workers, then an organized boycott of that company for the purpose of stopping the worker exploitation stands a good chance of being morally justified. (Whether or not it is ultimately justified will depend on whether it can be expected to produce, on balance, more good than harm.) Alternatively, if the CEO of the coffee company expresses an unpopular political opinion, then an organized boycott for the purpose of punishing her (or forcing her to change her view, or at least forcing her to retract public statements she has made in support of her view) is probably morally impermissible. 20 An organized boycott in this case would be primarily an attempt to silence a viewpoint in the marketplace of ideas, and is thus likely not to be morally justified. Of course, there is not always a clear distinction between expressing a viewpoint and causing harm. Some views are offensive, and offense is a type of harm; and in extreme cases, expressing a view can cause harm in virtue of perpetuating or otherwise supporting systemic or structural injustice.
Nevertheless, the distinction between boycotting to prevent harm and boycotting to silence expression is a useful starting point when considering the moral status of a proposed boycott. Let us adopt the distinction and apply it to the Uber situation. Application to Uber In order to apply this distinction to the #deleteUber boycott, we have to ask whether the boycott can be expected to bring about, on balance, more good than harm. And that question will often require looking at the reasons behind the boycott. If someone were to advocate for a boycott of Uber simply because Travis Kalanick joined President Trump's economic advisory council, then it seems likely that the primary purpose of the boycott would be to suppress a viewpoint; the boycotter perceives Kalanick's actions as implying support for Trump, and they want to silence that expression of support. A boycott initiated for this reason would probably not be justified. 21 SAGE © Garrett Pendergraft 2021 SAGE Business Cases Page 8 of 14 Should We #deleteUber?
If someone organized a boycott of Uber, not as a way of silencing Kalanick but instead as a way of pressuring Uber to work harder to prevent sexual harassment and other types of wrongdoing, then that type of boycott would seem to have a better chance of bringing about more good than harm-and thus a better chance of being morally justified. As we saw above, the actual reason behind the #deleteUber boycott (or at least the proximate cause of the trend) was the lack of response by Uber to Trump's executive order on travel restrictions. Insofar as the Uber failure to participate in the work stoppage at JFK can be construed as implicit support of Trump or his policies, the actual #deleteUber trend could be seen as a "silencing of expression" boycott, and thus probably not morally justified. However, insofar as the executive order can be seen as causing harm (to travelers from the affected countries, among others), and insofar as the purpose of the boycott is to bring about a policy change, the #deleteUber trend could be seen as a "preventing harm" boycott, and thus potentially morally justified.
Determining whether it was ultimately morally justified or not will require answering complicated questions about the effects of the boycott-questions made even more complicated by the degrees of separation between Uber, the immediate target of the boycott, and the policies that the boycotters want to see changed. 22 We cannot answer all those questions here, but perhaps we can make a comparative claim: Boycotting Uber for the purpose of forcing policy changes within a presidential administration is less likely to be morally justified than boycotting Uber for the purpose of forcing policy changes within Uber itself.
Task
Summarize the implications of the boycott on Uber, the drivers and the riders. State in your opinion if the boycott brought more good than hard on each of the stakeholders.