I am a 53 year old teacher. I have double major in Speech and Criminal Justice resulting in a Bachelor's degree from Northeastern State University in Oklahoma and a law degree.
I teach about ethics and morality. Now there are many people who have ethical and moral beliefs and there are far fewer who actually practice those beliefs.
Here we have an outstanding example of “applied ethics,” ethical practice in real life. Scotty McCreery was giving a concert when he saw a man (allegedly?) strike a woman. He stopped the concert until the fellow was escorted out be security and then he told the crowd that a man who hits a woman is a coward.
Wow, that was the act of a real gentleman. We don’t see that much these days. I admire him for his actions and wish him well.
This is a good example of business ethics. Mr. McCreery interrupted a money making endeavor to do what was right. There was nothing in it for him except that it was the right thing to do. And I know there are cynics who would say he did it for click bait or for the publicity. I am not that cynical and I think we could do in our national life with a lot less of it. I firmly believe that he was outraged and acting in that moment. And those moments are the times where we find out who people are.
Scotty McCreery is a good man, a gentleman and a man of honor.
What he did is a good example of business ethics in action.
If you look on the box of whatever food you buy at the supermarket you find a huge and impressive list of additives. Many have long complex names. And many are bad for you and quite a few nobody knows how bad they might be.
There is a bill in the California that would ban six dyes. It is a very small beginning. Treated food lasts longer and tastes different than it would otherwise. This means billions of dollars of annual profit based on the chemicals.
Now, I would prefer my food to be less treated and more like, well, food. How many American ailments and how much American obesity is due to these additives? Nobody can tell because nobody know.
Why don’t we err on the side of caution and only allow additives with proven benefits and in particular, proven safety?
Boeing continues its downward spiral. For those of us who teach business course like business ethics, this is a historical example that will stand the test of time. It is an incredible story of hubris and greed. One of the most respected companies on the planet earth has deservedly plummeted in reputation. We’ll be talking about this the same way we talk about the Titanic and WorldCom.
But it wasn’t always like this. Boeing created over its lifetime billions of dollars in value. Aircraft like the 707 and the 747 changed the world of aviation forever. And it would take whole books to talk about the engineering genius and innovation that made Boeing a world leader. So, what went wrong?
Shareholder value happened. In 1997, McDonnel Douglas merged with Boeing and they had a new and “exciting” management style. Boeing was a company of creators, really serious and capable engineers. They loved flying and they loved building planes. They were the stuff of legend. People like Joe Sutter who created the 747 started as an intern at the company and spent his entire career there. The new people had a new focus, money.
So, in the pursuit of money, the first thing they did was move management away from the factory in Washington State to Chicago because if those pesky engineers had access to decision making they could cost tons of money. By reducing the role of the engineer, the corporate ‘suits’ would have primary say over decisions made about building and selling aircraft.
And over time, the company applied pressure in every direction especially clobbering its suppliers in pursuit of greater and greater profits and much of this resulted in cutting corners.
Now, you’re probably thinking, “James, these are very serious allegations you are making. Can you back them up?”
How about this:
Boeing built the 727 MAX and they decided to maintain the same control panel layout to save the airlines from having to do re-training. You might find the idea of using a cockpit layout established while the Beatles were still together an appalling and nonsensical idea forty years later but remember those pesky foolish money-costing engineers are back in Washington State and you don’t have to pay any attention to them. The free corporate air in Chicago is better for decision making based purely on corporate number crunching. However, there was a problem with the “new” plane. First, it is only kind of new. What we have is a re-engined 737. But the engines are much bigger and sit further forward changing the center of gravity. So, they, corporate geniuses that they are, added a software update that would dive the airplane if had too high an angle of climb. They slipped this past the regulators, this is, the FAA, because they were largely doing their own regulation. Remember that Boeing reputation!! You can run a long time on what kind of company you used to be. The company they used to be pursued safety and competence with great vigor and focus but the new management has a more measured approach to safety and competence. And then, just to make sure that no one gets upset, you make sure that you don’t tell the pilots about this change.
So, two Boeing 737 MAX’s fly themselves into the ground. These were passenger flights with many, many people on board. When the genius software flew these planes into the ground, the passengers were reduced into tiny fragments scattered across the land.
That makes me unhappy. I look at the enormous profits, the stock value and all the executive perks — and I can’t help but feel that something is just a bit off at the old Boeing corral. What did Hamlet say, “Something is rotten in Demark?” Rotten, you say? That could just be all those corpses. One hundred, fifty seven dead on one of the planes and one hundred, eighty-nine people on the other. (I’m tempted to list them by name. After all, the costs of focusing on profit as the great Milton Friedman demands that all corporations do – has a cost that might best be summarized by listing the names of the dead.)
Since then, Boing planes have suffered regular safety incidents involving engines, plug doors and the occasional exploding tire.
And now the Boeing Starliner has failed.
Sort of the icing on the cake. A great big multi-layered cake of American corporate foolishness and hubris.
I am surprised that intolerance toward childless women is a problem. I should not have been surprised. Our society places great burdens and expectations on women while offering few if any benefits for these demanded sacrifices.
Let me quote the article listed at the top to give you a feel for the problem:
“When a woman can’t have kids she is often portrayed as sad and damaged, but if she simply won’t, she is either deluded, destined to regret it, or written off as a cold hearted, narcissistic, and career obsessed,” Ruby Warrington writes in her book, “Women without Kids.” Though I have an advanced educational degree, a house and a life partner, I have often felt the need to minimize or defend my life choices to mere acquaintances. Even more frustrating, when I am frank about the fact that I don’t want to have kids, I have been made to feel selfish or warned I will regret my choices. I have been given multiple warnings that my career will never be as fulfilling as motherhood — that my life, in general, could never be “full” without children.
I firmly believe that having children is up to the woman. I was present during the delivery of a child and if a woman is willing to do that, she has my admiration and if she doesn’t want to do that, she has my support. And the world has changed. Woman have careers and other choices. In the 19th Century, a strange place that many conservatives admire because they clearly don’t understand history, almost all women were married, spinsters or prostitutes. We don’t live there anymore
There is a truly incredible amount of hand wringing over declining birth rates and emancipated women failing in their responsibilities. This all just nonsense. All these nonsensical people demanding that women should make babies never seem to actually be interested in helping women in their lives. It is contemptible. If this society wants a higher birth rate, it is simple and easy to achieve. We just don’t want to do it.
First, make childbirth cheap and convenient. My understanding is that the average birth runs around $30,000 dollars in total costs. If you don’t see that as a deterrent to having children, you don’t understand the lives of young men and women. Second, subsidized day care. The statistics I’ve seen indicate that each child a woman has results in an 18% drop in lifetime income. One of the main reasons for that is the expense and trouble of getting daycare. We as a nation can do something about that. Third, stop stigmatizing single women having children. Economic pressures have made marriage difficult and many men just drift from one job to another as well as from one relationship to another. Expecting women to act like it is the 1960’s is just ridiculous. I can name some more stuff but that is sufficient for now.
And it is sufficient because we as a nation, as a people, are not going to do any of those things. There will be countless politicians who blather about the traditional family while claiming that subsidized day care and kindness toward single women hurts the cause. Our corrupt and greedy medical system has Congress completely under its thumb. Any attempt at repairing our bizarre and cruel system results in long winded speeches about the “greatest healthcare system in the world,” complete and total nonsense unless you happen to be extremely rich.
If we are going to recognize women as equals with their own decision making power, the we must admit they can choose not to have children. In addition, we can decide to mind our own business and let them live their lives uncriticized. Let’s try that!
The killing of dogs (and cats) by police is so common it has a name which I have used as the title of this essay.
There is no need for deep moral or ethical analysis here. Killing people’s pets is wrong, and the official murder of a pet is particularly wrong. There is virtually no chance this shooting was in any way justified, and what internal imaginings or hysteria prompted the shooting can only be guessed at.
I read all the comments. They are virtually unanimous in concluding that a police shooting of a pet will never result in any accountability on anybody’s part. And that is unfortunately true.
Shooting dogs was no big deal for most of American history. Animals were valueless. I bought a book on hunting from the 1950’s a few days ago. It said if you wanted to hunt bear, get an old horse take it out in the country, shoot it and gut it and it will attract bears. I do not believe that is current hunting advice.
It is not unusual for a family to have hundreds of dollars invested in a pet. The bizarrely casual nature of the police killing of pets is so out of touch with current culture, that it is hard to believe that nothing has been done about it. Have we arrived at a point where the miniscule chance of a family pet assaulting an officer calls for immediate gunfire?
Postmen, UPS drivers and other visitors do not routinely kill pets. Why do police officers?
There has been a recognition in police circles that things must change.
Here is a national training standard for police encounters with dogs. I wholeheartedly completely recommend it.
(I have to admit I feel a bit guilty using the video above but I find it funny and accurate.)
The acolyte was a disaster. I have written in other places how I felt about the show but it is not likely you saw any of that so let me summarize.
The show hires a truly wonderful actress of whom I am a big fan and then kills her off murdered by a child with what appears to be a pen knife at the very beginning of the story. I suppose this is a Rian Johnson thing, where we make some random thing happen and call it directorial genius. It’s not.
The show features identical twins with different inclinations. I say inclinations because in the hypermodern world where the writers and producers assume they live “good and evil are but two sides of the same coin.” This is total nonsense. If you live in the world, you may have noticed that bad people do evil things that hurt and often kill other people. It is not a neutral value unless you live in some bizarre pseudointellectual enclave. This is totally revolutionary plotline. No one have ever thought of it before — except for Dumas in his novel, “The Corsican Brothers” published in 1844. According to Wikipedia, it has only been made into a film, 19 times.
Then we have witches. What can you say? Witches? They manipulate the Force but call it a string. And they can have virgin births and they chant, and this chant may be the most unsettling piece of bad writing and just plain weirdness I have seen in many years. None of this is every going to be compelling story telling. I mean transforming the world of Star Wars into a D&D game episode is more of a piece of minor fan fiction than anything else.
The Jedi appear to be somewhat dim witted and morally challenged. But none of what they do makes any plot sense to me. Is there a desperate need for force sensitive children to be brought into training? A hundred years before the events of Star Wars, the Jedi are the police and the military and just a bunch of other stuff wrapped up in one bundle. Is it a stretch to believe that people wanted their children to join, this body of honored individuals carrying the honor of the knights of legend?
I’ve read countless comments about the series. The most common positive thing I see is that the light saber fights were good. That’s nice. But a coherent story, real heroes with real struggles and fine acting tempered capable directing make an adventure worth watching.
But the real tragedy of this show is that there are no heroes in this story at all. They are fools, murderers and psychopaths driven by internal needs. Nobody is looking out for the common good or justice. I believe Shakespeare summed this up in Macbeth, “Sound and Fury, signifying nothing.”
It is canceled. This is the correct decision. Good Riddance.
Flight attendants are paid very badly. This is very strange. It is a very difficult and trying job. The job requires considerable training, long hours and enormous amounts of travel. Here let me quote from the article:
In interviews with 18 current or former flight attendants, workers recounted dire financial situations, assault on the job from unruly passengers and mental health crises. They shared similar stories: Paychecks much smaller than expected. Quickly falling behind on bills. Spiraling into debt.
Doesn’t sound very glamorous, does it? Well, okay, why are they treated like this? This is the logical result for “Shareholder” value, the morally bankrupt ideas of Milton Friedman. Shareholder value dictates that these employees should be paid as little as human possible. This maximizes value. Extreme capitalism.
Are they other choices that can be made?
We could pay them a “living” wage. That would be enough money to ensure a middle class life style in most states. Why should we do that? Well paid workers work harder and better. You don’t think so? Well the data shows that higher wages produce 1) increase motivation, 2) better retention, 3) attract better workers, 4) enable better health, 5) increase productivity, and 6) improve your employment brand.
So, why don’t we pay workers more? There is the problem of the “race to the bottom.” If your competitor pays its workers badly, it has a competitive advantage. So, everyone competes by cutting wages. This goes on until it is no longer sustainable. Basically people don’t show up, don’t care about doing their jobs and just generally loath the company they work for. Not the best situation.
I write about business ethics. What do ethics say about this? What is the moral choice here? We live in a society where pure unadulterated capitalism is thought well of. This is absurd. Capitalism has its advantages and these should be used but we get adulterated products, dead workers from cut corners and people living in poverty while working full time. If this isn’t evidence that pure capitalism doesn’t work very well, I don’t know what is. I reject pure capitalism because it is completely devoid of moral purpose or ethical qualm.
We should honor our fellow humans as our equals worth of dignity and life. That simple statement of value points to better pay, safe working conditions and preservation of dignity and purpose. And that is what I believe would be the correct decision here.
I ran into this article (the first one listed above) in which the writer laments the EPA enforcing the law against tuning and deleting the emissions equipment on diesel trucks. He seemed to feel that a huge organization prosecuting a small organization was somehow wrong. It’s not.
Altering the emissions system is a federal offense. The size of anyone’s business has nothing to do with breaking the law. (The second article does a fine job explaining the law. In fact, it did such a good job that I recommend the site for anyone interested in diesel trucking. These guys know their stuff.)
They got caught. Pay the fine. Quite doing illegal stuff.
Is this hard??
I’d do an ethical analysis if there was the slightest need. Polluting the air by evading emissions equipment is wrong.
Above is a judge in action bullying a teenage girl for sleeping in his courtroom. He had her handcuffed and went off on her in truly epic fashion. He threatened her with juvenile detention, wanted to put her in a jail uniform, and suggested she was on the road to being in his court on other charges.
He is on what we called in the 1960’s a power trip. He has been removed from the bench for “sensitivity training.” I don’t think that’s satisfactory. If he can’t treat a visitor to his courtroom with respect, how does he treat defendants and attorneys??
Fire him now. He is supposed to serve as a judge not some school yard bully.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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