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.

What’s Ethical At The Cinema?

On By southwerkIn ethics3 Comments

David Gushee has some thoughts. He analyzes several recent movies for their virtuous elements. Here’s his view of True Grit –

True Grit is certainly the only movie in living memory that starts with a biblical quotation and has a musical score drawn from old Baptist hymns like “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” This Western of fierce retribution and family honor is indeed one of the most explicitly religious major films in a long time. (If you leave out the Left Behind movies, or anything with Kirk Cameron in it.)

But this is a religiosity of law and retribution, of wrath and justice. This is eye-for-eye religion; it’s about the price in blood and sweat and risk one is obligated to pay to avenge the unjust death of a loved one. True Grit teaches the virtues of, well, true grit, courage and toughness and unflinching justice. And yet the score hits grace notes in the margins, perhaps a reminder that frontier religion mixed justice in the street with grace in the sanctuary, a paradigm that is still with us.

I have a passion for movies. Last night, my wife and I watched I Hate Valentine’s Day, a romantic comedy. The film carried no great moral weight. It was sweet and funny. I can work with that. Not to mention the fact, that while I am watching a Korean film like Cyborg She, my wife is dozing in the background. So, fnding common film ground is important if she is to remain conscious or not flee the room.

I Hate Valentine’s Day

Cyborg She

I try to watch at least one film a night. I don’t manage it as often as I like.

Many films are just entertainment. But the great films like Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, The Apartment, Lawrence of Arabia, etc. often carry a great deal of moral weight.

Movies tend to bypass our analytical abilities and go straight to our emotions and unconscious. Sending moral and ethical messages more or less unconsciously has serious ethical implications. Nevertheless, since it is already a common practice, using this unconscious loading factor we can manipulate our own morality and the morality of others through film choices.

James Pilant

Goldman Sachs Lies

On By southwerkIn business ethics

From the Huffington Post –

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs generated at least 18 percent of its revenues last year through trading and investing for its own benefit, according to a regulatory filing made Tuesday detailing the first nine months, flatly contradicting the firm’s previous claims that such speculative activity made up a much smaller slice of its business.

In recent months, as Goldman has fended off widespread accusations that it has become the leading example of the gambling culture permeating Wall Street — placing bets for its own profit rather than engaging in old-fashioned banking services — the company has insisted that trading made up no more than one-tenth of its revenues.

During a conference call last year, the firm’s chief financial officer, David Viniar, described the company’s private trades as comprising “10-ish type of percent” of its total revenues.

But the company’s disclosures filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that trading and investing comprises almost twice that percentage.

Maybe in the minds at Goldman Sachs, “tenish percent” can go up to 18 or 19 percent. It’s just a little white lie, unless of course, you’re one of the biggest financial trading houses on earth; unless you’re trying to reassure your investors that you don’t spend most of your time and their money by playing them for fools.

The temptation to make incredible sums of money by using the inside knowledge of your clients investments is difficult to overcome. The temptation to deliberately damage your clients’ interests by betting against their investments is also difficult to overcome. These temptations are why the proportion of proprietary trading is so important. The more proprietary trading, the harder it is to believe that the investors are not getting stiffed.

So, this lie is significant. It tells us a lot about an investment company and its standards.

I get the impression that the long term has only a certain amount of importance. The level of proprietary trading would be lower if the firm were maximizing its long term postion by reassuring investors of the security of their investments. The numbers indicate a drive toward short term, quarterly and yearly, profits.

Business ethics, how much are we looking at?

James Pilant

Would You Like Your Surgery On Network Television?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

(This article appeared originally in June of 2010. It wasn’t properly tagged and I am resubmitting it so Google can see it.)

An quite intelligent gentleman sent me an e-mail asking what I thought ethically about TV crews filming real cases up to and including surgery. He referred to two articles, Doctors on the Cutting Edge of Reality (The Boston Globe), and ABC’s ‘Boston Med’ shows the painful reality of surgery at the heart of 3 Massachusetts hospitals, (The New York Daily News).

The program is “Boston Med,” an eight part documentary filmed by ABC. The newspaper article from the Boston Globe quotes George Annas and Arthur L. Caplan. Both express ethical concerns about the program suggesting that the program is inappropriate and exploitative. Inappropriate because filming changes the acts of the filmed. Exploitative because these patients did not come to the hospital with the intent of being in a film.

Now, the tricky part, is this ethical or unethical based on my judgment? After all, that is what the gentleman asked me. I will discuss the two kinds of objects posed by the critics quoted by the Globe. Is the filming inappropriate or exploitative?

I do not believe such filming is inappropriate. Being filmed is rapidly becoming a constant. Cameras are located at businesses and parking areas. There are also cameras at public facilities likes parks and bridges. I could go on listing where business or government cameras might be found. In addition, personal cameras either individually or part of a another apparatus like a cell phone are also very common. So, my first claim is that being filmed is a cultural phenomenon. I believe that we are in a sea change period of cultural change in which it is rapidly becoming accepted behavior. That does not totally resolve the issue. We are not totally accustomed to being filmed yet. So, the next element is consent.

It is clear from the articles that the institutions, the professionals and the patients had signed waivers. It is entirely possible to improperly influence all of the different levels of personnel and patients to get their consent. However, a television network has enormous experience in these matters and with what can be only described as an alert and experienced legal department. My opinion is that no lawyer would allow the program to go forward with his strong participation and with all possible safeguards.

Does being filmed change human behavior? I would say almost certainly. We always do things differently if we are being observed. We care what other people think. We can become self-conscious. Strangely that really isn’t the ethical question here. The ethical question is, “Does this change technical competence or medical judgment for the worse?” I know of no such evidence. My personal experience is that when watched, I am more careful, take greater pains and think more about what I am doing. (If anyone reading this post has any study or data that suggests that being filmed is detrimental to performance, I want to know where to find that study. I want to read it and thoroughly understand it. That study would be vital and would undoubtedly change the procedures of knowingly filmed observations.)

Exploitation is more difficult. Where do you cross the line between objective reporting and using people? The network will make a great deal of money from these programs. The hospital and the doctors as part of the hospital are essentially participating in public relations program which will enhance the reputation and thus, the value of the institution.

The patients are not part of this. They do not profit and their stories, the intimate details of their medical records and and procedures, are used by the network to make money. This is exploitation. These patients are not a routine participants. The very nature of the television strongly suggests that the reason they would choose these particular stories is that they are not routine. And even if their stories are in some sense routine, they are still individual stories, critical elements of their life stories.

You could argue that in our strange celebrity culture, the very fact of appearing on television is in some sense compensation. “In some sense” doesn’t cut it. There are people who genuinely enjoy their jobs, they like what they do and many enjoy being seen doing it. They still expect to get paid. There is a difference between the urge to appear on Jerry Springer and having a serious medical problem brought before the public.

The patients should be paid or compensated in some other way. There should be some value given for the value that was taken. It is not the custom to share our medical problems, treatments and individual stories with millions of strangers. These stories are the personal property of the patients, not the hospital and not the doctors. As a society we have already acknowledged the vital nature of medical record privacy in the form of HIPAA, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.

It is obvious from these accounts that the patients voluntarily signed away their rights and allowed the network access to their stories. What has been done here and is being done is legal. But being in compliance with the law is not the measure of ethical responsibility or, what is most important, what is right and wrong.

James Pilant

Dylan Ratigan Challenges The Current Beltway Definition Of “Free Market”

On By southwerkIn Capitalism1 Comment

Dylan Ratigan has a interesting essay in the Huffington Post. As is usual with his writing, the indignation boils over. I find this very pleasing. My indignation boils over from time to time. I have long been struck by the beltway commentator constant refrain, “free market.” It is used over and over as a cure for every economic malady. I can’t help but believe they don’t know the subject. Little industrial or financial business in the United States can be considered free market in any traditional sense: Our agricultural products are heavily subsidized; our financial industry is favored by a host of friendly laws as well as being able to borrow money from the Federal Reserve at zero percent interest.

What’s free market about any of that?

Here’s a quote from Ratigan’s essay –
Here we find ourselves today in a similar situation, where six industries have a stranglehold over Washington. And the draining of our current and future wealth will only continue as both the media and the political class not only tolerates but spreads the phrase “free market” when the reality doesn’t match the rhetoric.

Our politicians continue to take money from massive corporations to subsidize them in a rigged marketplace that only cares about protecting the incumbent structure. At the same time, the American people are drowning in a red sea of debt caused by perpetuating banking, health care, energy and defense systems that are expensive, ineffective and protected from competition.

So I have a challenge for those so-called free market Republicans who rode a wave of voter discontent into Washington. I challenge you to end massive corporate subsidies. To end tax loopholes. And to end rigged trade with China and release the true power of free markets.

This can no longer be simply a talking point to win votes. Because this broken system is not only costing American jobs… it’s costing us the very prosperity and freedoms that this country was founded on.

If we actually had an intelligent discussion about the economic future of this nation, the great mass of citizens would benefit. The kind of “single phrase” thinking currently in vogue only benefits the status quo. We can’t begin to address these issues until the appearance of intelligent thought is replaced by the real thing.

Fewer slogans, more thinking.

James Pilant

Chris MacDonald defines ethics (via John Ayo Olaghere)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I read Chris MacDonald’s blog, The Business Ethics Blog, regularly but somehow I missed his definitions of business ethics and ethics. Mr. Olaghere spotted the definitions and kindly posted them. Thanks!

James Pilant

Chris MacDonald, Ph.D. of The Business Ethics Blog defines ethics and business ethics. He  teaches  Philosophy, including business ethics, at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Ethics. He has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics”, two years in a row. “Ethics” ca … Read More

via John Ayo Olaghere

Free Financial Choice?

On By southwerkIn ethics2 Comments

I am what is call a compatibilist. Compatibilism is the belief that determinism and free will are compatible.

For many today, free will – free choices are terms of great import. “People should be able to fend for themselves.” “You shouldn’t count on the government.” “You should have read the fine print.” “They should have gone on the web and done their research like me.” “If only people would just get tough they could pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.”

These are all statements based on the hard concept of free will or, as it is more often termed, personal responsibility.

One writer to me said, “How come you can’t get it into your head that …” discussing another point of personal responsibility. You see, such choice seems self evident, it’s not.

Here are my objections –
1. The weight of culture, that is, parenting, schooling and the influence of one’s peers.
2. Advertising, several trillion dollars worth of it, ranging from political to mercantile.
3. Time and aptitude, for someone to make a choice, they must know there is one, they must have the time necessary to digest the data and have the mental capability and far more importantly the mental desire. By mental desire I mean a willingness and often a pleasure in thinking and deciding.

In my mind, individuals have free choices, but only a certain number of these individuals can make different choices. You see I was trained in statistics and when you are in that field you are taught (and realize that it is true) that you have very little chance of predicting what any one person will do but analyze several thousand instead of one and you have a very good grip on what most of them will do.

Who makes choices and what proportion of the population makes choices? If you go to the market and watch someone buy bread, you’ll note that only occasionally will someone spend any time making a decision, they decided at some point in time what bread they wanted to buy and they buy that kind of bread. Even at the bread level of thought there is an inertia about making a new decision. Now you can go into that supermarket and look at all the bread every time. In other words, choose not to make a decision in advance but re-study the problem every time new data (in this case, bread) comes in.

Now, you probably would agree with me that the second choice of deciding each time taking the new data into account is the better decision. Are you sure? You see, both of you are choosing from the same products limited by the store’s choices. So, you could argue (and quite intelligently) that by limiting yourself to what the store sells keeps you from making the best decision. On the other hand you might also argue that shopping outside that store poses problems of time and resources (and you would also be quite intelligent in presenting your argument).

So, here is my argument. Choosing between one alternative and another involves judgment. For most people in most situations there are physical, cultural or mental limits on making the full range of judgments. So, we don’t have a full range of decision making possibilities but only a limited set. Thus, for almost all situations, we limited by one of the three factors, have only limited choices we can make.

If we have limited instead of unlimited choices, the question of what judgments people makes moves from what is the best decision to a different one – what is the best decision that could have been made amongst the choices remaining?

This puts me in a world where I have to look at what people are likely to do.

Example – Someone puts a payday loan business in lower middle class community. The company carefully chooses an area where the education level is a low as possible say an average of tenth grade. I can statistically predict how much business they will get based on the population, the amount and interest of the loans, etc. I, personally, will be offended at what I consider the exploitation of a population already under terrible economic stress.

If you on the other hand, assume total, not limited choice, these people are just a bunch of imbeciles, who couldn’t find their ass with a flashlight.

I believe that in this country there are a wide variety of legitimate choices in many fields, in many places, all the time. I work hard to give people the opportunity to make choices and I like to make them myself. But as long as I live in a world where the rule is limited choice not total, I’m going to sympathize with the people getting the pay day loans and suffering for it.

James Pilant

Ethics: What I Expect From An Ethical System (via Critique My Thinking)

On By southwerkIn ethics

This gentleman writes that he is “aware that making a criteria for an ethical system is unconventional…” It’s definitely time for some unconventional thinking. We need some people writing some criteria. More power to him and all of you willing to get out there and tell us what you think the world should be like rather than accepting the current ethical mess.

I am impressed and pleased with his criteria. I hope you will be too. In any case the cartoon is great!

James Pilant

Ethics: What I Expect From An Ethical System A few weeks back I posted about ethics. I expressed my disillusionment with a few approaches to ethics. At the end I charged myself with the task of reflecting on exactly what I expect from an ethical system. Here lies the result of that reflection: First, a word of disclaimer. I am aware that making a criteria for an ethical system is unconventional—who makes a list of prescriptions about a list of prescriptions?! One could reasonably say that r … Read More

via Critique My Thinking

Is It Time For Income Redistribution?

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

The inequality in the United States between the highest earners and the lowest is at its highest peak since just before the Great Depression. Middle class wages have stagnated for three decades. Stagnated is a kind way of saying, “You made more money over time, but inflation and changing patterns of spending ate the increase.”

The existence of the middle class is directly threatened. In a few years, there will be no middle class, only exploitable lower class peons and a well heeled upper class living in gated communities if they have not found a more comfortable home away from the riff raff, perhaps, in Singapore.

Mark Thoma, writing in The Fiscal Times, has an article called Income Redistribution: The Key to Economic Growth?

I’ve never favored redistributive policies, except to correct distortions in the distribution of income resulting from market failure, political power, bequests and other impediments to fair competition and equal opportunity. I’ve always believed that the best approach is to level the playing field so that everyone has an equal chance. If we can do that – an ideal we are far from presently – then we should accept the outcome as fair. Furthermore, under this approach, people are rewarded according to their contributions, and economic growth is likely to be highest.

But increasingly I am of the view that even if we could level the domestic playing field, it still won’t solve our wage stagnation and inequality problems. Redistribution of income appears to be the only answer.

The rest of the world has a huge supply of excess labor, and it is developing rapidly. So long as developing countries can continue to draw upon excess labor to expand economic activity, there will be little pressure for wages to rise and workers in the U.S. will continue to struggle. Until the rest of the world is more developed, or stops growing in a way that substantially alters the global pattern of production, a time that looks to be far, far away, unskilled workers in the U.S. will not get their share of economic growth.

We’ve given the market economy 40 years to solve the problem of growing inequality, and the result has been even more inequality. Markets do not appear to be able to solve this problem on their own, at least not in any reasonable time frame. Some people say education is the answer, but we have been trying to reform education for decades, yet the problems remain. The idea that a fix for education is just around the corner is wishful thinking.

Professor Thoma is a friend on Facebook and maintains a blog that he updates with great regularity. I recommend both.

James Pilant

Will The Deficit Kill Us?

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

Joseph White has written a timely article. In the past few weeks we have been deluged with dire warnings about the deficit, sometimes they featured the Chinese, sometimes the destruction of social security; it was all very dramatic. Then when the continuation of tax cut became an issue, it all faded a way until the wealthy were assured their tax cuts. It was a budget buster of colossal size, totally unsupportable. It will cripple the government in financing every expenditure save those supported by their own fees.

Now that the wealthy have their money, the deficit has returned as an issue. We must cut back on entitlements. We must find cuts in education, etc.

The two-faced asinine clowns of the beltway would be funny if they weren’t taken so seriously.

Joseph White in the article quoted below has doubts as to the importance of deficit reduction.

I have similar doubts about the dangers of the deficit. However, the idea of deficit reduction now in the midst of the Second Great Depression strikes me as far more serious and dangerous. Such austerity reduces the size of any recovery and delays it. I have seen estimates of up to ten years of recovery to return to 2007 levels of employment.

We need a serious national discussion about expenditures. We will not get it from Obama’s stacked commissions or the “beltway boys.” The big act is that these are not matters of dispute. “Everyone recognized the danger of deficits.” “Like a well functioning family, a nation must not have any debts.” Etc.

Those are not settled matters. There are far more nuances to national debt management than any family budget.

As usual, I call with little hope for actual intelligent thought.

This is written by Joseph White at the Financial Times –

In the 1980s, deficit hawks recognized that, in the words of former CBO Director Rudy Penner, , “the crisis is there is no crisis.” In other words, the deficit wasn’t actually hurting people much. But it could, eventually, like “termites in the basement” as former OMB Director Charlie Schultze put it. How could this be dramatized?

One approach was to make arguments about the economic good that would be accomplished by reducing deficits. The idea was that lower deficits would produce greater national savings so more investment and a larger economy. Unfortunately, the standard economic estimates (such as by CBO) did not project enough extra growth to convincingly justify the pain of the deficit reduction. (Would you have abolished the Navy and Medicaid so that the economy would be 3% bigger thirty years later?). So deficit hawks promoted two other arguments, each of which should sound familiar.

One was to invent scenarios about what would happen if absolutely nothing were done for decades – a highly implausible case, but one that could, with sufficient assumptions, lead to economic disaster. The point was to promote so much fear that the goal of deficit reduction would take precedence over messy, uncomfortable subjects like the consequences of any particular means of reducing the deficit.

The other was to claim that “the markets” would eventually turn against the U.S. government and U.S. economy because of the spiraling debt, forcing some sort of payback that would make everyone miserable. …

I had never thought about it the way he presents it. I think this is similar attitude to Paul Krugman.

I recommend it to your reading and thought.

James Pilant

Banks Suffer Major Setback

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

When foreclosing on mortgages the banks have been skipping the rule of law. They have not followed the rules for the transfer of property preferring to pretend that their electronic records are a viable substitute. I never believed the courts would go along with that and the Massachusetts court did not. Here’s the story from that excellent blog, Rortybomb.

From Rortybomb – Big Week in Foreclosure News –

The biggest news is the decision in Massachusetts’ “Ibanez case”, where the Massachusetts Supreme Court voided the seizures of two homes by Wells Fargo and US Bank based on their inability to show that they owned the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. Tracy Alloway walks you through the case, David Dayen has more including the PDF of the decision, and analysis from Yves Smith and Felix Salmon.

From the opinion: “Where, as here, mortgage loans are pooled together in a trust and converted into mortgage-backed securities, the underlying promissory notes serve as financial instruments generating a potential income stream for investors, but the mortgages securing these notes are still legal title to someone’s home or farm and must be treated as such.”

They ruled through Massachusetts law instead of New York law, so no answers on looming New York trust law. Bank stocks are down. This is likely to have major implications down the road. We’ll have more on this opinion later.

I do not believe the ruling will stand. Congress will ride to the rescue of the banks legalizing their reckless disregard for state law and afflicting the suffering homeowners with even more pain. Congress will enact it. Obama will sign it. He will then explain it as a major legislative victory. Everything he does merits a press release and a couple of morning show appearances demonstrating his successful legislative record.

I wish there was someone somewhere who was as concerned with the rights and privileges of the American middle class and less concerned with the welfare of the banks.

James Pilant