Author: southwerk

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.

Goods and needs (via Belief and the Environment)

On By southwerkIn ethics

I was visiting the web site, Belief and the Environment when I came across the following list.

… These are requirements of a healthy human being in childhood, in addition to physiological needs.

The list of twenty-six psychic needs as given in Suzuki is: (1) The need for love; (2) Friendship; (3) Sensitivity; (4) The need to think soundly; (5) The need to know; (6) The need to learn; (7) The need to work; (8) The need to organize; (9) Curiosity; (10) The sense of wonder; (11) Playfulness; (12) Imagination; (13) Creativity; (14 Openmindedness; (15) Flexibility; (16) Experimental-mindedness; (17) Explorativeness; (18) Resiliency; (19) The sense of humour; (20) Joyfulness; (21) Laughter and tears; (22) Optimism; (23) Honesty and trust; (24) Compassionate intelligence; (25) Dance; (26) Song.

In the about section, the blog identifies its purpose in the following way –

This blog examines issues of belief and the environment and their relevance for solving problems that face the world today. Human beliefs about the natural world are an important feature of the global environmental crisis. Beliefs control attitudes, and problems of attitude are contributing to our difficulties.

Honesty/Ethics in Professions (via Ethics Sage)

On By southwerkIn Government Failure1 Comment

From Professor Steven Mintz, The Ethics Sage taken from his post, Honesty/Ethics in Professions.

What should we make of such rankings? I think it reflects the fact that the public is smarter than politicians seem to believe. Bankers, for example, went from a ranking of 37% for high or very high ethics in 2006 down to 23% in 2010. Bankers are now tied with TV reporters. That seems about right. Each group seems to want to put their spin on a story whether it’s the supportability and relative safety of mortgage loans that led to the financial crisis or how one side of the political spectrum portrays the other as the evil incarnate.

The bottom line is the public has lost all respect for the political process that is driven by lobbyists who cozy up to members of Congress by acting as used car salespeople to promote their cause all the while advertising that that they are trying to help the public.

Professor Mintz argues that these poll numbers indicate that the public has lost all respect for the political process. I agree.

However, I would like to add that the public has virtually no way of taking any effective action whatever their feelings.

There is little chance of being elected to office in the United States without money usually a great deal of it. Most Americans cannot make the kind of contributions that makes them a player in political campaigns. Those few that can give that kind of money have different interests than most Americans. So, what most Americans want done will not be done while what a minority of Americans want will be done.

It seems hopeless to even try to think of how to change the system.

The influence of money in elections is not decreasing, it is increasing. The total costs of the 2006 congressional campaigns were about two and one half billion dollars. The 1998 races were a billion dollars less.

The two party system makes it difficult to run as a candidate with non-traditional views. Look at it as a consumer. Essentially we have two flavors of political thought that no one really likes and the way the system is set up we can’t have another flavor. Political thought is homogenized into a form non-threatening to major donors. You can only make one of two choices in an election both of whose party organizations are devoted to fund raising.

If that wasn’t bad enough, political thought is also marketed by the enormous media empires. Their influence is manifested in a common political view expressed by pundits in print or on television. Overwhelmingly the most influential are concentrated around a New York – Washington zone of media coverage. Sometimes referred to as the beltway, this small group generally determines what is politically acceptable and politically possible.

Another factor in public dissatisfaction is the power of international finance and global corporations. Although corruption and a casino mentality produced a financial cataclysm in 2007, a disaster that leaves us with ten percent unemployment even now, these giant organizations were never called to account but in fact rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, trillions in financial guarantees and the privilege of borrowing from the Federal Reserve at zero percent interest. There have been no criminal prosecutions and their profits (and bonuses) have increased.

Because influence is concentrated with those who make large campaign contributions, most Americans have negligible influence in the government. Their concerns and needs do not appear important either to the government or media.

Day after day goes by with the government acting on issues critical to the interests of the donating classes and beltway philosophy.

This day by day continuous grinding repetition of political powerlessness creates a majority of Americans who hate the political system and consider the participants to be marginally better than criminals.

James Pilant

Political Rhetoric and the Ethics of Killing. (via Jacob Sandry’s Gap Year Blog)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Does it seem at times as if the killer in a national tragedy gets far more attention than the victims? Does it seem at times, that the television is just screaming at you, telling you that if only you would go and do something really interesting with a major weapon, you too could be famous?

There are definitely more ethical ways to cover these unfortunate events. I would discuss them but it would interest you only a little and have no effect whatever on the media which is reaping billions of dollars of profit from their, “If It Bleeds It Leads,” philosophy.

There are people like me who are fed up and here is one of them –

I am delighted to quote Jacob Sandry from his blog, Jacob Sandry’s Gap Year Blog –

I hate the news media. HATE. The other night I was with some friends and CNN was on. Literally for an hour straight (and based on my extrapolations it was probably more while we weren’t watching) there was 5 minutes of information and pictures about Jared Loughner repetitively displayed on the screen. This disgusted me. SOMEONE WHO COMMITS A HORRIBLE ATROCITY DOES NOT DESERVE IMMENSE MEDIA COVERAGE EVEN IF IT IS FOR BEING EVIL. If anything, that media coverage should be devoted to the victims and their families. AND the heroic people who tackled Loughner and prevented him from doing any more harm. (I’m not naïve enough to not realize that CNN and all other major news networks are profit driven and shock news is more viscerally gripping than a memorial. And this is why I hate news media) Also, the Loughner family is probably facing as much pain and hardship as any family can possibly face right now, and it is incredibly crass of the media to be incessantly surrounding their house and trying to get interviews. That’s terrible, let them be.

(This is a good blog. He likes to write and you can tell he writes as his thought roll through his mind. It gives the writing a continuous motion that makes the reader feel that he and the author are sharing the same thoughts simultaneously.

Now, beware while Mr. Sandry can be funny, he chooses serious topics more than a little often.

For a visit, go here.)

James Pilant

Tax Havens Devastating To National Sovereignty

On By southwerkIn business ethics

From the web site, Thriven’s Blog.

The blog post is a review of the book, Nicholas Shaxson’s  – Treasure Islands: Uncovering the Damage of Offshore Banking and Tax Havens 

Tax havens are the ultimate source of strength for our global elites. Just as European nobles once consolidated their unaccountable powers in fortified castles, to better subjugate and extract tribute from the surrounding peasantry, so financial capital has coalesced in their modern equivalent today: the tax havens. In these fortified nodes of secret, unaccountable political and economic power, financial and criminal interests have come together to capture local political systems and turn the havens into their own private law-making factories, protected against outside interference by the world’s most powerful countries – most especially Britain. Treasure Islands will, for the first time, show the blood and guts of just how they do it.

The nations of the world are harmed by the evasion of their laws and taxes made possible by tax havens. The tax money is important but more important is the ability to threaten governments to force actions that multinational corporations such as investment banks wish done.

These escape routes transform the merely powerful into the untouchable. “Don’t tax or regulate us or we will flee offshore!” the financiers cry, and elected politicians around the world crawl on their bellies and capitulate. And so tax havens lead a global race to the bottom to offer deeper secrecy, ever laxer financial regulations, and ever more sophisticated tax loopholes. They have become the silent battering rams of financial deregulation, forcing countries to remove financial regulations, to cut taxes and restraints on the wealthy, and to shift all the risks, costs and taxes onto the backs of the rest of us. In the process democracy unravels and the offshore system pushes ever further onshore. The world’s two most important tax havens today are United States and Britain.

But the world is not without means to remedy the situation. In the late 1700’s piracy flourished because nations found it advantageous to use them against their enemies. Pirates often employed as privateers fattened the treasury of the nations hiring them and did harm to their enemies.

But over time, it became obvious that the benefits of piracy were outweighed by the faults.

So, nations by treaty and policy ran the pirates out of business.

The United States in concert with the European Union, China and other nations could by agreement make this kind of tax haven impossible to maintain or at the very least difficult.

It has been a daunting task to motivate the government of the United States to act against the interests of these larger corporations particularly the financial ones, but the future of this nation may well depend on those tax dollars and enforcing the national interest.

James Pilant

I wish to thank homophilosophicus for calling my attention to Thriven’s Blog.

Andrew Gates Comments On My Post – What’s Ethical At The Cinema?

On By southwerkIn ethics
Andrew Gates has some thoughts on my post, What’s Ethical At The Cinema?

 

I really enjoyed ‘The Seven Samurai’. It was filled with eastern philosophy to ponder on. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes their movies to make them think.

Another good movie with moral weight behind it is ‘Silent Hill’. I originally wasn’t too interested in seeing it because it was based on the video game, but it really surprised me. If you don’t mind a bit of blood and gore, then it will really make you think a lot about the nature of good & evil and how blurry that distinction can be.

‘Gladiator’ starring Russell Crowe is another good one that touches on moral subjects such as what it means to be a good man, revenge, and social/political philosophy.

Last, but certainly not least, I HIGHLY recommend ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘The Dark Knight’. The two newest batman movies. Both are chalked full of moral, social, and political philosophy to ponder on.

I would like to recommend some films that deal with some of the big issues and some that I just like.

Windstruck -comedy drama – a meditation of life and death.

My Sassy Girl – A major hit in Asia – Not something you would see in the United States – life and love with an unusual girl.

To Serve Them All of My Days – Dedication

Desk Set – the greatest of the Hepburn / Tracy match ups – a woman’s place is the issue.

Persuasion – My favorite Jane Austen film – deals with regret and renewal.

Shadowless Sword – A story of redemption.

China Takes American Jobs

On By southwerkIn Capitalism4 Comments

From The Ethics Sage, Steven Mintz – The article is called, Offshoring in the Phillipines and China.

Here’s an excerpt.

In an effort to foster growth in its outsourcing industry, China  announced that the government will not be levying operating taxes on offshore service outsourcing business in 21 cities until 2013. The policy covers firms specializing in IT outsourcing, business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing. The initiative is expected to boost China’s already robust growth in the industry, where the country enjoyed a 21 percent year-on-year increase to $23.6 billion in 2009.

China

So, the Chinese are pursuing a deliberate national policy of moving jobs to their country, jobs from the United States.

Don’t we have legislators and a government? Oh, I forgot, out sourcing is good for the financial industry. There is no concern for the rapidly dwindling middle class. It’s as if we had a government for and devoted to observing the flight of jobs in a thoroughly disinterested manner like a scientist examing microbes under a microscope. The middle class microbes have to be watched. They could interfere with profits.

James Pilant

A thought?

The New Financial Elite – The Rich Are Different

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

Chrystia Freeland has written an article in The Atlantic called The Rise of the New Global Elite.

Here is a sample –

Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers, however devoted and skilled at their jobs, have missed out on the windfalls of this winner-take-most economy—or worse, found their savings, employers, or professions ravaged by the same forces that have enriched the plutocratic elite. The result of these divergent trends is a jaw-dropping surge in U.S. income inequality. According to the economists Emmanuel Saez of Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics, between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population. The financial crisis interrupted this trend temporarily, as incomes for the top 1 percent fell more than those of the rest of the population in 2008. But recent evidence suggests that, in the wake of the crisis, incomes at the summit are rebounding more quickly than those below. One example: after a down year in 2008, the top 25 hedge-fund managers were paid, on average, more than $1 billion each in 2009, quickly eclipsing the record they had set in pre-recession 2007.

The middle class is devastated and will continue to be. The difference between the middle class and the new class of the wealthy is so large as to be difficult to understand.

Try this example –

As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’”

The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”

Only ten million. Worse, this new elite is acquiring a global perspective. In other words, their attachment and loyalty to the people of America is becoming fragile indeed.

The good news—and the bad news—for America is that the nation’s own super-elite is rapidly adjusting to this more global perspective. The U.S.-based CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds told me that his firm’s investment committee often discusses the question of who wins and who loses in today’s economy. In a recent internal debate, he said, one of his senior colleagues had argued that the hollowing-out of the American middle class didn’t really matter. “His point was that if the transformation of the world economy lifts four people in China and India out of poverty and into the middle class, and meanwhile means one American drops out of the middle class, that’s not such a bad trade,” the CEO recalled.

I heard a similar sentiment from the Taiwanese-born, 30-something CFO of a U.S. Internet company. A gentle, unpretentious man who went from public school to Harvard, he’s nonetheless not terribly sympathetic to the complaints of the American middle class. “We demand a higher paycheck than the rest of the world,” he told me. “So if you’re going to demand 10 times the paycheck, you need to deliver 10 times the value. It sounds harsh, but maybe people in the middle class need to decide to take a pay cut.”

He’s right, it sounds harsh. He has all the qualities necessary in Bond villain.

At last summer’s Aspen Ideas Festival, Michael Splinter, CEO of the Silicon Valley green-tech firm Applied Materials, said that if he were starting from scratch, only 20 percent of his workforce would be domestic. “This year, almost 90 percent of our sales will be outside the U.S.,” he explained. “The pull to be close to the customers—most of them in Asia—is enormous.” Speaking at the same conference, Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate, also lamented this global reality: “I can get [workers] anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business … American businesses will adapt.”

 Why should they worry about American workers? They are virtuous and we just don’t understand. They don’t understand why we don’t understant. (I have serious doubts any of these individuals read my blog save for amusement.)

As a consequence of this disconnect, when business titans talk about the economy and their role in it, the notes they strike are often discordant: for example, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein waving away public outrage in 2009 by saying he was “doing God’s work”; or the insistence by several top bankers after the immediate threat of the financial crisis receded that their institutions could have survived without TARP funding and that they had accepted it only because they had been strong-armed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Nor does this aloof disposition end at the water’s edge: think of BP CEO Tony Hayward, who complained of wanting to get his life back after the Gulf oil spill and then proceeded to do so by watching his yacht compete in a race off the Isle of Wight.

I want you to go and read the full article.

James Pilant

Involuntary Committment

On By southwerkIn ethics4 Comments

From Alicia Curtis –

Husbands ridding themselves of wives via the psychiatric institution was still enough of a problem in the 1930s that the first woman in Maine’s legislature, Gail Laughlin, authorized a bill penalizing husbands for bringing false testimony in the involuntary commitment hearings of their wives. I worked with a patient who in the 1960s had been brought to the hospital by her husband. The chief complaint listed on the admitting record was: “Patient does not do her housework.” I think she did actually have a recurrent depression, a symptom of which was her inability to care for herself and her home, but there was obviously a large overlap conceptually between mental illness and not functioning in a proscribed social role. There is also a large history of the forced treatment of homosexuality as mental “illness.” One gay man I know has a familiar story. He was brought, as a teenager, to a psychiatric hospital in the Midwest by his parents, when they found out he had been having gay sex. He was involuntarily committed to the institution and treated for his homosexuality. (The treatment didn’t work).

There is some talk in Congress about returning the warm, wonderful days of involuntary committment. Our national experience with this practice was less than edifying. Thousands of people were thrown into facilities often for the crime of “being different.”

We are being called upon once again to repeat the mistakes of the past.

From The New Republic, William Galston –

Warning label: This article will make civil libertarians unhappy. Read at your own risk.

We are embroiled, alas, in a politicized argument about the slaughter in Tucson. While most of the charges being flung about rest on a scanty basis (at best), the most important and least contestable facts are getting lost: Jared Lee Loughner was mentally ill when he pulled the trigger, there were multiple signs of his descent into delusion over the past year, and no one did very much about it.

To be sure, the authorities at Pima Community College finally suspended him after five contacts with the police and conditioned his return on clearance from a mental health professional. Police delivered the letter of suspension to Loughner’s home and talked with him and his parents. We do not know what happened next. Perhaps his parents tried to persuade him to seek help and were rebuffed; perhaps they were reluctant to have further involvement with the authorities; perhaps they were too confused or conflicted even to try. In any event, there’s no evidence that he did receive treatment, and according to college officials, he did not attempt to return to school.

What do you say to this kind of argument? Let’s lock them all up! It would have prevented the Arizona massacre!

No, it wouldn’t have. The argument is based on fantasy. Let’s go through the elements.

First I have to admire the opening, “This will make civil libertarians unhappy.” The author has now established that he is bold and tough willing to say the unpopular but necessary truth. The actual meaning of the opening line runs more like this, “I’m going to put it to those left wingers this time.” It’s not bold to argue for tough measures after a national tragedy. It’s a particular good time for the silly, fringe ideas to gain traction.

First paragraph, he argues that you all are engaged in a political argument while I deal in facts. Political assassinations shouldn’t be discussed politically? The assassin put his manifesto of currency not based on gold and government mind control on the web. He shot those people to forward a political agenda. All I have to do to accept this gentleman’s “facts” is to disregard the evidence.

 “No one did very much about it.” Great line. Except the next paragraph eviscerate his own argument. Suspended from college, five contacts with the police, the police personally delivered the notice of suspension to the parents and discussed it with him and his parents, the authorities acted in measured response to the situation. The authorities acted reasonably and intelligently.

Yes, he made people uncomfortable. Show me one shred of evidence of any viable warning that he was dangerous to anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Unless something shows up new, I haven’t seen it.

The circumstances of the case would not have merited involuntary committment without more evidence. The very cure being offered would not have prevented the tragedy.

You could argue back that, “If we loosen the restrictions on involuntary commitment, we would probably have got him.”

Okay, you are going to involuntary commit people for being disruptive in a social environment (college) and acting oddly. Doesn’t that cover a high proportion of the homeless? Doesn’t that cover countless eccentrics you have spent time with in high school or college? How about you personally? Have you every acted oddly in the wake of a financial disaster, the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage? Don’t many people?

Once we remove the standard of dangerous to others or to himself, it gets pretty fluid. Who do you put in?

I challenge you. Phrase the requirement for involuntary committment so that it gets this assassin and doesn’t net several million people. Go for it.

Not possible.

Now, let’s try my facts. The tragedy in Arizona was a calculated murder. You will hear in the next few months, “Oh, he’ll probably got off on the insanity defense.” Not a chance. He carefully planned the murders over a lengthy period of time. He has clearly indicated by his actions that he knew his actions would be considered wrong.

The attempted assassination of President Reagan was by a delusional gunman. His idea of making Jodie Foster love him by killing the President made it arguable that he was incapable of fully apprehending the nature of his actions.

The Arizona gunman killed for political motivations. He told the world in detail.

He may be crazy by the standards of daily conversation. It won’t keep him from the death penalty.

Returning to the bad old days of grabbing people and throwing them in asylums because they disturb others is not a solution to what happened. It is highly unlikely that had such a policy been in effect, it would have applied to the gunman.

Frankly, I am tired of the “lock em up” mentality.

We skip any shred of intelligent argument and go straight to chest beating toughness. “We’re gonna put the hammer down!” Have you ever noticed that the people making these arguments tend to be political honchos who have never done police work or social work? Have you ever noticed that all their chest beating masculinity is done from a very safe distance?

No one ever talks about the millions of people being called upon to “fix” this problem. 

So, we are going to call upon educators and administrators to be responsible not just for the education of their students but police them for mental defects?

So, we are calling on the police to go out and grab people whose only crime is acting oddly as if the police had no better use of their time?

So, we are calling for the establishment of a giant network of mental institutions with a capacity for several million “patients?”

Do you have any money for that?

This is all just nonsense.

James Pilant

An Education Of Greed Destroys Nations

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments
From the Independent.ie (Ireland), Anto Kerins writes –
Our graduates need an understanding of, and a facility for, effective regulations, appropriate rules and ethical frameworks to guide organisational behaviour so as to ensure the safety and vibrancy of our economy and society.
 
 

 

From producing graduates who absorbed the mantra of deregulation and light-touch rules, we must now imbue them with the importance of ethical and regulatory frameworks and the ability to distinguish between rules that keep us safe, solvent and effective and those that just take up time.
 
 
 

 

 

 

Ireland has just experienced an ethics meltdown in the financial sector. I believe they are taking much stronger action than we have contemplated to solve the problem. I do not believe their anger is leaving any time soon. They have no beltway “wisdom” that is everything is okay except for those whiny unemployed. There is a determination for this to never happen again.

Read further –

While the economic and regulatory wings of Government are now desperately trying to get us out of the hole we are in, it is mainly to education that we look to ensure this crisis never happens again. Although the Government and its agencies are feverishly working to bed down a powerful and effective regulatory regime to keep us afloat, it is to education that we look to encourage the long-term development and sustenance of this framework.

I’m reading through the Hunt Report. It is not like anything I have seen in the United States. We have been all about job training and getting rid of those annoying history, philosophy, art and literature classes. The Hunt Report emphasizes the need for more of these, not less. I’ll be posting on this later.


James Pilant

We Bankers Said We’re Sorry — Now Buzz Off

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Alain Sherter writes a column called Financial Folly. His latest essay is entitled – Barclays CEO: We Bankers Said We’re Sorry — Now Buzz Off.

New Barclays (BCS) CEO Bob Diamond is tired of apologizing for the economic damage big banks have wrought in recent years. As he told members of Britain’s Parliament during a hearing on possible restrictions on banker pay:

“There was a period of remorse and apology for banks. I think that period is over,” Diamond told the Treasury Select Committee.

“Frankly, the biggest issue is how do we put some of the blame game behind us? There’s been apologies and remorse, now we need to build some confidence,” he added.

Seems to me Diamond, who took over last fall as chief executive at the U.K. banking giant, is skipping a step between expressing regret and rebuilding confidence. Tip of my tongue…. Ah, yes: reform. That includes restricting the kind of compensation that inclines bankers to let it roll. And since we’re nitpicking here, I don’t remember many financial executives exactly hanging their heads in shame over their role in the meltdown.

I don’t recall any real apologies or confessions of wrong doing or regret for what happened.

The general perception of the financial community is that they were profitable before the disaster, they didn’t really need the bailout and what was all the fuss about in the first place?

You may think I am exaggerating or misinformed about that my analysis of the attitude of the banking community. I truly wish I was wrong.

We have a financial class that not only can do no wrong whatever, but have no responsibility for anyone in this country at any time, under any circumstances. In their minds, they are worthy, the rest are not.

Their sense of entitlement is beyond most American’s comprehension.

If I had not heard these things said myself, I would have difficulty believing them.

James Pilant