Saying one thing and doing another as part of your business strategy is a failure of business ethics. Here we have a good example. This is not just an academic violation. This kind of marketing to children can take a terrible toll of lives lost or diminished.

Why would you want to do this? Is it just the ethos of let the buyer beware? The Ayn Rand concept of only profit as the measure of morality? Will they blame the often lower class families for poor decision making when they have gone to enormous, billions of dollars, lengths to persuade them to make those decisions?

In a prison, you can interview or survey the populations as to why they committed crimes. Some will tell you they had no choice, they were made to do it by forces in the larger society. Very few people buy that argument. But these corporate officials are quite likely to say things like, “If we don’t do it, our competitors will.” From their point of view social pressure forces them to do immoral things, and they are not to blame not only because they have to do it, but in a world with 100% free will (that’s right, many corporate officials believe in total free will), they merely provide a product, it is its misuse by a unlettered and immediate gratification oriented population that is the problem.

I don’t like the current corporate ethos, but with the “Citizens United” decision and a capacity for unlimited campaign contributions, new horrors await us all.

James Pilant

My thanks to guvedipivady.

Myriad processed-food conglomerates including General Mills, Unilever (which also owns Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream), Post Foods, Kraft and Kellogg’s, have pledged to stop or significantly limit their marketing of less healthy options to kids. But is seems that few if any of these companies are actually sticking to their word. As this excellent investigative report in the NYT?reveals, it seems all (except for perhaps Kraft, which is not mentioned) … Read More

via guvedipivady