The ethical basis of suicide prevention is illustrated by contrasting helpline emergency rescue policies of the Samaritans in the UK and the US National Suicide Prevention Lifeline network. We contrast moralist, relativist and libertarian ethical premises and question whether suicide can be rational. Samaritans respect a caller’s right to decide to die by suicide; US helplines oblige emergency intervention during an attempt even against the caller’s will. We analyse the effect of emergency rescue when there is high suicide risk but an attempt has not been initiated. Issues of legal imperatives, jurisprudence and leeway given to helpers are analysed. We examine links between values and actions, the need for empirical evidence to guide practice, and propose vigorous dialogue about values in the grey zone of moral practice.

Ethical perspectives are presented on the acceptability of suicidal behaviours and the obligations and limitations of intervening to prevent suicides intervention. Ethical concerns may influence whether potentially life-saving interventions will be undertaken, and under which circumstances, as well as what is permissible in research studies. We identify three broadly defined ethical positions, recurrent in discourses concerning suicide, which we call moralist, libertarian and relativist. The moralist position contends that suicide is unacceptable and that there is a pervasive moral obligation to protect life that takes precedence in decision-making. Libertarian perspectives emphasise the individual’s freedom of choice to determine whether to live or die, with an absence of an obligation to interfere with the personal decision to die. Relativism refers to the belief that what is morally acceptable varies according to the context or framework of assessment. Stoic views on suicide are contrasted with Jewish, Christian and Moslem perspectives. We discuss if suicide can be rational, if there can be an obligation to suicide, a right to be protected from committing suicide, and Good Samaritan laws.

Chapter 5. Bitcoin emerged in 2009 from a community of libertarian cryptographers who sought an alternative payment system free from fiat inflation and from government payment surveillance and censorship. Today it provides an alternative payment rail that circumvents central banks. Bitcoin serves as a medium of exchange in some transactions, but not yet as a commonly accepted medium of exchange. The Bitcoin source code keeps the number of Bitcoin in circulation growing, at an ever-slowing rate, along a programmed quantity path. Basic monetary theory shows that this supply mechanism has pros and cons: It avoids money supply shocks, but it rules out any supply response to variations in demand, making the purchasing power of Bitcoin more volatile than that of gold or (relatively well-managed) fiat, which limits the attractiveness of holding Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. The costs of the Bitcoin industry are borne by its users, not by third parties, to the same extent as those of any energy-using private industry. The non-zero chance of its serving as a future global money means that Bitcoin has a fundamental value. It does not inherently rest on an unsustainable chain-letter or “bigger fool” process.

This chapter ties together several moral strands under the notion of justice, where equals should be treated equally. It opens by pointing out certain facts, such as that the most likely predictor of success is parental wealth, that women earn only 86 percent of men’s income for comparable jobs, and that there are significant racial disparities at higher levels of management. The concepts of equity (merit), equality, and need are examined, as the basis for allocating resources and rewards. Libertarian views, which hold personal choice as the overriding principle, are explained and contrasted with egalitarianism which favors equal opportunities for all. Discrimination is defined in terms of power relations, and subsequently gender and racial discrimination is examined in detail, including the implications of implicit bias. Recent work in intersectionality, where individuals identify with multiple groups, is discussed as are Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives. Examples from Starbucks show the promise and difficulties in promoting equality in the workplace. The final case covers discrepancies in insurance rates and the moral jeopardy of categorizing aggregated data into groups.

Does the First Amendment forbid reforms to save and improve newsgathering, production, and distribution? All features of the news ecosystem are currently under threat, but some interpretations suggest that the First Amendment either forbids relevant government action or has no relevance. Debates about potential reforms of the businesses and structures wreaking havoc on news and information in the United States often hit a roadblock: the assumption that the First Amendment bars government from playing a role in media systems and news industries.1 Victor Pickard calls this “First Amendment fundamentalism.”2 We can understand why internet tech platforms invoke the First Amendment against any regulation and measures requiring them to pay for news posted on their sites but gathered by others. Avoiding regulation makes their work easier and their bottom line richer. But the First Amendment is not such a bar.

This chapter is concerned with understanding the limited liability corporation, the dominant form of conducting business today. First, I consider the relationship between the corporation and the individuals underlying it and argue that this is best captured by a ‘supervenience relation’: the corporation is not reducible to but dependent upon the individuals underlying it. Secondly, I consider the very purpose of forming a corporate entity and argue for a ‘socio-liberal conception of the corporation’. This view understands the corporation as a structure designed to harness the expression of individual economic interests for social benefits. Both the wider social purpose and individual profit-seeking motives are necessary to understand the complex duality that is the modern corporation. These reflections on the nature and purpose of the corporate form – as will be seen later in this book - are of vital importance to explicating the obligations such entities have that flow from fundamental rights.

This chapter examines one source of the strategic disinformation now rife in American public life: the Koch network of donors, allied organizations, and academic grantees. The architects of this network’s project to radically transform our institutions and legal system have adopted this tactic in the knowledge that the libertarian agenda is unpopular and therefore requires stealth to succeed. In the 1970s, Charles Koch and his allies determined that changes significant enough to constitute a “constitutional revolution” would be needed to protect capitalism from democracy. In the light of these foundational efforts, subsequent active disinformation by this network become more comprehensible when understood as driven by a mix of messianic dogma and self-interest. The project could not succeed by persuasion and organizing alone. Later cases include climate science denial, promotion of the myth of mass voter fraud to leverage racism to restrict the electorate, and the use of concocted memes of violent mobs requiring restraint in order to win passage of new legislation to criminalize protest, particularly against the fossil fuel industry (legislation that includes SLAPP lawsuits and laws penalizing alleged infringements on “academic freedom”).