Since I have returned to writing regularly on my business ethics site, it is important to reflect on what has changed since I first began this project.
I started this blog in 2006 and often published several times a day. I was very enthusiastic. Each morning I would go over the major news sites carefully reading their “Business” sections (sometimes the sites called it “Money” or some other euphemism) and there were always one of two things worthy of a business ethics writer’s attention.
Well, now it is 2025 and we are just at the end of first six months of this lawless administration. I went through the news and came up with 25 solid business ethics topics to discuss — and that is when I stopped counting. The regular business ethics issues I saw when I began have been replaced by a flood of business ethics failures and obscenities. One day’s news output could keep a man writing for weeks.
Wanton, incompetent and often downright evil behavior is a constant in the news, in particular when discussing the actions of our current President. But many business leaders, the wealthy and other politicians have leaped on the immorality bandwagon. Never before in American history has being cruel, self serving and vile been so celebrated and publicized. I never thought to live to see such times and it is painful to see such evil and so little push back.
Let me give you an example. And I didn’t have to look for an example, it was on today’s news.
Stupid and Immoral — And Proud of it!
Take a look at the article linked to below. This CEO’s hatred and disdain for human beings who I might add he is paid to lead and manage is self evident. He is outwardly, nakedly and proudly empty of moral values and human decency. Not to mention, astonishingly unaware, for if AI makes workers obsolete, it does the same for CEO’s. I promise that while I weep for the suffering of workers, I will celebrate with good food and friends every CEO replaced by a machine.
“CEOs are extremely excited about the opportunities that AI brings,” Elijah Clark, a chief executive who advises other head honchos on using AI at their companies, told Gizmodo in an interview. “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI.”
“AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise,” he added, parroting cliched talking points, much like a certain over-hyped technology. “These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”
I used to teach in a business college of the type that this cretin almost certainly graduated from one does not fill me with pride. We should have done better with our students than turning out morally challenged money-grubbers. I certainly tried and many faculty I knew also tried hard to give some semblance of moral, ethical and traditionally American values teaching but we were up against the corruption and evil of our current business and political leadership. All the money and power now seems to go to the psychopath and the sycophants. It is not an edifying spectacle.
It may be in a few years that we will once again live in a democracy that this proto-fascist feast of the gluttonous pigs will be over. Be we may very well lose this and all the things a whole human being should hold dear will pass away to subsumed in a morass of greed and self interest.
We’re going to find out.
James Alan Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 