Trolley problem options

You are the conductor of a trolley.  (For the purposes of this exercise, the conductor is the person who throws the switch selecting which track to take.  No, I don't know how to drive a trolley, and I don't know how a conductor would throw the switch.)

Ahead of you on the track is a switch.  If you do not switch the switch, you will drive over ten people. These ten people are poor.

If you switch the switch, you will drive on an alternate track, and drive over one person.  This one person is wealthy.  Much wealthier than the collective wealth of the ten people on the original track.

Capitalism states that the wealth of the one wealthy person, whether created or inherited/safeguarded, is greater than the wealth of the ten people, and therefore you should drive over the ten people.

(No, I don't know why none of the people will get out of the way.  Maybe they are all female, and have been tied up by Snidely Whiplash.  No, I don't know where the ranch is.)

Socialism states that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and therefore you should drive over the rich person.

(No, I don't know why the trolley has been designed with no brakes.)

(No, I don't know what the economics or business model would be for a trolley which has no brakes, and therefore has no ability to stop and allow passengers to board or disembark.)

At this point, a student, representing agnosticism, asks how you know that the people on the original track are poor, and that the people on the one person on the alternate track is rich.

For the purposes of the exercise we will posit that you have just been handed a telegram giving you all of this information, and confirming that beside the group of ten people is a priest holding a sign that you can easily read from where you are that says "Y" for yes or "N" for no, and that on the alternate track there is a rabbi standing beside the rich person with a similar set of signs.  This verifies that the information you have been given in the telegram is correct.

(For the purposes of the exercise there is absolutely no significance to the fact that the person who is verifying the identity of the rich person is Jewish, and that the person verifying the identity of a bunch of poor people is Catholic.)

At this point a student in information security points out that this form of authentication of identity is sadly lacking in verification structures and should not be trusted.

Subsequently, a fatalist says that you can avoid the whole problem of choice by simply jumping from the trolley where you are, thus relieving yourself of the responsibility and moral choice, and leaving the fate of all of the people in the hands of either God or random chance.

An American Christian nationalist now asks whether either the rabbi or the priest is black?

(At this point, the instructor has to go and lie down in a cool, dark room for a while ...)