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.

Question:

2. Distinguish between the two types of boycotts and explain the justifications and legality of the boycotts