Should Honesty Be Rewarded?

[GGT]

Sounds like a nice hotel. I've left cameras and pillows behind in hotel rooms, and damn if any cleaning person ever admitted to finding them, even within an hour of checkout. (Who wants a used pillow? eww)

The hotel obviously wants to praise their employee, both as PR for their brand name, and retaining a reliable/trustworthy worker.

Made me wonder why the Japanese man who got his $50,000 returned didn't go to the press, calling the finder a hero, and giving him a nice finder's fee. That would have been a good deed.

[Steely Glint]

He probably did the right thing from a practical point of view, too. It would be very difficult to explain why you've suddenly got $50,000 you didn't have before, which is a sum of money that could go a very long way in India. This way, he gets a reward he can actually use, plus a reputation for honesty.

The interplay between the amount of money and whether or not a person returns it is quite interesting. Obviously, on one level there's a competition between the individual's principles and the financial reward: whether or not the money they get is worth more than the peace of mind they get from returning it. But OTOH if the sum is small enough, it's not actually worth the bother of returning it. If he'd found a $5 note, what then? It'd have cost more to return it to the owner - he might as well have taken it. Arguably, it takes more moral courage to return a sum of between $10-$50 than anything larger, since the sum is still significant, yet small enough for someone to talk themselves into thinking it won't be missed and is still in "change down the sofa" territory.

[GGT]

Probably depends on the person's conscience. Is that what you mean by "moral courage", Steely?

My son lost his wallet, with about ten bucks in it. He had no idea where or when it was lost. Then he got a note from the school secretary, a message and phone number from the man who'd found his wallet. He'd used the student ID (basically a picture with his name and the school's name) to look up the school's phone number (from NJ to PA). Then he mailed the wallet with all its contents after we called and gave him our mailing address. I thought that was really nice.

[Timbuk2]

The interplay between the amount of money and whether or not a person returns it is quite interesting. Obviously, on one level there's a competition between the individual's principles and the financial reward: whether or not the money they get is worth more than the peace of mind they get from returning it. But OTOH if the sum is small enough, it's not actually worth the bother of returning it. If he'd found a $5 note, what then? It'd have cost more to return it to the owner - he might as well have taken it. Arguably, it takes more moral courage to return a sum of between $10-$50 than anything larger, since the sum is still significant, yet small enough for someone to talk themselves into thinking it won't be missed and is still in "change down the sofa" territory.

Yep this is a discussion I've had with friends, in a "what would you do" kind of way.

Finding a few notes on the street. What is the amount it takes for you to hand it in to the cops, the amount below which you pocket it?

Around £50 is my write-off point.

If I lose that amount or less in the street, I'd write it off as bad lack.

If I lose more than that amount, I'd pop into the local police station to see if it'd been handed in.

At what point does one expect money to be handed in, in the context of finding it in the street, rather than at work, say.