the golden rule sucks.

They say that the golden rule is 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you.' But I don't think that works all that well.

For example, I want to worship the boots of damned near anyone I see wearing them. But I don't want that to happen to me.

But aside from the sexuality side, there are other times the 'golden rule' doesn't apply. The problem is that it asks people 'would you be okay if this happened to you?', and for a lot of situations, the answer can be yes even when what's happening isn't fair.

Take a CEO paying themselves ten million dollars a year. Would he want other CEOs to make that much money? Sure, why not? And saying that he is doing unto others when he pays his executives a fraction of that salary isn't entirely accurate. Those people are others, but the CEO isn't the same job. So a CEO paying an entry level employee forty grand a year is just saying that's how much he or she would EXPECT to be paid for an entry level job.

The problem is, it's not fair. If I'm in a position of power, I should (according to the golden rule) treat those I have power over the way I would want to be treated if our positions were reversed. But what if I think that our situations being reversed would mean that I SHOULD be treated badly?

Fair, on the other hand, is fair. It's fair for people who are more experienced, whose jobs require more education or skill, and those who bring the most to the company to get paid more than those who don't. But there's still a point where fair ends.

If I'm a CEO, I may, possibly, fairly deserve ten or even twenty times what my lowest level employee makes. But that comes to about half a million a year, not ten. Ten isn't fair.

If I make the rules for something, I should make the rules FAIR, not just the way I would want them to apply to me. That encourages me to make the rules lean in my favor, so even if I AM in that situation, I'd still have an advantage. I should be focusing on making sure that the equals are all treated equally.

Because THAT, dear readers, is the real golden rule. It's the rule we SHOULD follow, the first principle of ethical thinking: Equals should be treated equally.

Treated equally. Fairly.