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.

Are Shifting Cultural Values Creating an Entitlement Society? (A Guest Column From the Ethics Sage!)

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Are Shifting Cultural Values Creating an Entitlement Society?

(This is a guest column by Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage. I am proud to have one of his columns appear on my site. I strongly recommend you visit his site (listed below), favorite it and visit regularly. jp)

We often hear that an entitlement society has developed in the U.S. over a number of years. In a casual sense, the term “entitlement” refers to a notion or belief that one is deserving of some particular reward or benefit—if given without deeper legal or principled cause, the term is often given with pejorative connotation (e.g. a “sense of entitlement”).

Philosophically, entitlement theory comes from the Theory of Justice. John Rawls argued that the state should have whatever powers are necessary to ensure that those citizens who are least well-off are as well-off as they can be (though these powers must be consistent with a variety of basic rights and freedoms). This viewpoint is derived from Rawls’s theory, one principle of which is that an unequal distribution of wealth and income is acceptable only if those at the bottom are better off than they would be under any other distribution. Hence we have the viewpoint to tax the rich and transfer resources to the least well off amongst us. This view of Justice Theory would justify the reallocation of resources in society.

The issue I deal with here is what is behind the entitlement mentality. I am not saying some people do not want to work and feel entitled to benefits from the government out of a sense of justice. Rather, I believe the entitlement notion stems from a shift in cultural values brought on, in part, by what we see on television and in social media. People with wealth flaunt it. TV shows glorify it. Social media exacerbates the feeling of jealousy for those without it. It’s in our face all the time from the housewives of wherever to the grossly over-the-top CNBC program The Secrets of the Super Rich.

What is the average person expected to think when they see such a television program that glorifies over-the-top wealth? Last Wednesday one segment featured a $200 million-plus ridiculously lavish yacht. The reality is that if that amount was split between 5,000 people it could clothe, house and feed them at the rate of $40,000 per year.

The entitlement mentality also comes from the way in which many Millennials were brought up and given just about anything and everything they wanted. Moreover, today we are debating whether children should be rewarded not for winning a competition but for just competing, even if they come in last. They are entitled to be recognized for their effort. But, is that how the real world works? Do you think in China and other Asian countries youngsters are rewarded for finishing behind the pack or last? I doubt it.

The Ethics Sage
The Ethics Sage

Students on college campuses feel entitled to voice their views in a way that shuts other voices down. The administration of many such colleges give in for fear of alienating one person or one group without thinking about the rights of others.

So, the key becomes how to define “entitlement.” In this regard we can turn to the theory of “moral rights.” Rights theory provides that human beings have certain fundamental rights that should be respected in all decisions: the right to free consent, privacy, freedom of conscience, free speech, and due process. A right is a capacity, a possession, or condition of existence that entitles either an individual or a group to enjoy some object or state of being. For example, the right to free speech is a condition of existence that entitles one to express one’s thoughts as one chooses.

The moral force of a right depends on its strength in relation to other moral considerations applicable to the context in question. According to rights theory, as long as the distribution of wealth in society is achieved through fair acquisition and exchange, the distribution is a just one regardless of any degree of inequalities that may ensue. The morally correct action is the one that a person has the moral right to do, that does not infringe on the moral rights of others, and that furthers the moral rights of others.

So, in my view entitlement is linked to having a fair and equitable opportunity to reach one’s God-given potential within the free exercise of one’s will. The goal is best achieved through persistence and practice. As the ancient Greeks knew, we develop good habits and ultimately success by applying them in a variety of situations.

Especially in a capitalist society, people must be free to develop their God-given talents without interference from the government. All well and good but does this occur by giving those who may not have earned it a reward or other form of recognition? No, but it does, in fact, occur because of our social-media conscious society which reflects a shift in cultural values.

All too many act in a way to achieve their fifteen minutes of fame whether it is a You Tube posting or other form of social media exhibitionism. We want what we want and no one should get in our way less they violate our rights. Unfortunately, the pursuit of wealth and fame take over and shove hard work and responsibility into the background. This is a narcissistic approach to life and one that leads to the entitlement mentality. I believe it is dangerous and threatens the values we have long aspired to such as to act with integrity and develop a strong work ethic.

Dr. Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage. Professor Mintz is on the faculty of the Orfalea College of Business at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He blogs at: http://www.ethicssage.com.

Minimum Wage Dispute?

On By southwerkIn business ethics9 Comments

Minimum Wage Dispute?

Classic economics would suggest that raising the minimum wage will kill hiring. I had my basic economics class in 1974 and the book set up a graph showing virtual mathematical certainty that increased wages meant decreased hiring.

Classic economics deals with wages, prices and employment as if they are some kind of “natural forces” like wind and rain. When I was 18 and 19, that kind of thing was persuasive. The young like certainty. And today, many both young and old find the certainty of that kind of free market fundamentalism very attractive. The Utopian vision of the invisible hand dispensing economic justice to the deserving and undeserving is a kind of pre-final judgment. An invisible but very equitable economic deity is the kind of idea that only someone desperate for simple solutions to complex problems can find believable.

There is nothing natural about an economic system. It is made up of fallible human beings. Everything about it is artificial, human created.

Let’s examine the economics in regard to Seattle’s minimum wage increase. This is from Huffpost Business:

Basic economic theory suggests that when you increase the price of something, demand decreases. In minimum wage terms, that would mean when it’s more expensive to hire people, businesses won’t hire as many people. But in practice, the research doesn’t bear that out. Studies show that small minimum wage increases don’t affect employment that much. 

Adam Ozimek, an economist at Moody’s Analytics and a frequent economics blogger, wrote Monday about some of the initial results out of Seattle, which started phasing in a $15 minimum wage in 2015. Very early results seemed to indicate that the higher minimum wage, which is only $13 as of Jan. 1, 2016, led to people losing their jobs. But more recent revisions to the local data more or less erase that dip.

“So far there haven’t been any smoking guns” to prove that higher minimum wages kill jobs, Ozimek wrote. 

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Minimum Wage Dispute?

This should simply not be possible. Under classic economics, there is no dispute. Higher wages produce job loss and reduced hiring. Yet, here the numbers do not show that.

I want you to remember this very clearly. Classic economics does not in practice seem to work. And we have been using the rules of classic economics for decades. What price have we paid for this “science” and its predictions?

I think the price has been enormous. I believe that millions of Americans are paid less, our economy smaller and financialization adopted as a national policy based on the predictions of classic economics.

It’s time for second look. The data from the Seattle minimum wage demonstrate serious weaknesses in the theories of classical economics.

James Pilant

 

Our Incompetent Pundits

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics5 Comments

Our Incompetent Pundits

This week Peggy Noonan decided based on her math skills that there are sixteen million jihadist sympathizers and 1.6 million actual jihadists out there stalking us. A reader who took this stuff seriously could be excused if that locked themselves in an interior room and refused to come out. Fortunately for all of us, the actual number of terrorists depending on which estimate you use range from less than a hundred thousand to almost two hundred thousand.

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Our Incompetent Pundits

So, it seems to me that those recalcitrant students of mine who refuse to do Internet searches to verify their data have a future writing for the Wall Street Journal.

This wouldn’t be so bad if this kind of nonsense didn’t have legs. I promise I’m going to run into someone blogging or commenting on Facebook who are going to be talking about these bogus numbers. It’ll run something like this –

“How dare you talk about good and kind followers of Islam in your blogs? There are one point six million jihadists out to kill us – KILL US – Don’t you get it! We are in a war for survival here. A terrorism expert writing for the Wall Street Journal said that as many as 160,000,000 Muslims want us dead.”

Peggy Noonan gets paid a lot of money to write this nonsense, and it is an excellent example of the intellectual bankruptcy of our pundit class.

But why stop there! Let’s quote another famous pundit saying something bizarre –

This is a wonderful moment to be a conservative. For decades now the Republican Party has been groaning under the Reagan orthodoxy, which was right for the 1980s but has become increasingly obsolete. The Reagan worldview was based on the idea that a rising economic tide would lift all boats. But that’s clearly no longer true.

A wonderful time! That’s right. Donald Trump is highly likely to be the nominee of the Republican Party for President of the United States and could very well win. But these are wonderful times.

You might ask where David Brooks is going with this. Oh, please ask. You see, our friend, Mr. Brooks, has been reading Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (I’ve read the book myself and still own a copy.) Brooks believes based on his understanding of the book that conservatives are on the verge of a new paradigm generated by their failure to deal successfully with Donald Trump and the issues he has raised.

I suppose you could argue that something positive will come out of the Trump candidacy and its collision with Republican orthodoxy but the idea that a sunny new paradigm will result is Pollyanna on massive steroids.

Brooks would likely be right if the Republican Party and conservatism were some kind of intellectual community but that hardly defines what we have right now. If I may remind you, modern conservatism is a product of Republican politicians, a vast network of think tanks, campaign consultants, and political action committees, a network of rabid talk radio shows, Fox Television, and a vast number of madder than hell voters. Thomas Kuhn would have never considered this bizarre grouping a community of scholars like he was describing in his book. I don’t either.

And what happens now to conservatism and the Republican Party is certainly not predictable. Political parties can become more expansive, more insular or just die. I don’t know what is going to happen but I can’t see this as a sunny time to be a conservative.

This appears to me to be a blatant misapplication of a Kuhn’s ideas to an irrelevant situation. So, here we have once again a pundit in over his head

He might do better to remember the example of revolutionary France. In 1789, members of the new republican government believed they were on the verge of a new world of human reason and justice. In 1804, Napoleon is the Emperor of France. Politics is more than just ideas.

Noonan and Brooks are supposed to be the great intellectual arbiters of our age based on their status and placement.

Right now we need real intellectual depth, not made up fearmongering statistics and half read books.

There are several hundred million Americans. A lot of them write. Many have written for years. Can’t the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal find some or is this just the kind of nonsense they want to see propagated?

James Pilant

 

NFL Research Flawed

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

NFL Research Flawed

From the New York Times Article entitled – In N.F.L., Deeply Flawed Concussion Research and Ties to Big Tobacco

For the last 13 years, the N.F.L. has stood by the research, which, the papers stated, was based on a full accounting of all concussions diagnosed by team physicians from 1996 through 2001. But confidential data obtained by The Times shows that more than 100 diagnosed concussions were omitted from the studies — including some severe injuries to stars like quarterbacks Steve Young and Troy Aikman. The committee then calculated the rates of concussions using the incomplete data, making them appear less frequent than they actually were.

Since the beginning of the American colonization, tobacco has been a powerful business. Because of tobacco’s addictive qualities profits were assured and these were not small profits, the tobacco industry made several trillion dollars over the past two centuries.

In the latter half of the 20th century, it became evident that tobacco use was dangerous to both the user and anyone exposed to the second hand smoke. Yet, in spite of the clear weight of the evidence, the industry was able to stall regulation for decades. It did this by a powerful public relations campaign designed to cast doubt on the science. It created studies and paid “scientists” to write a counter narrative. These delaying tactics made the industry many billions of dollars of profits and enabled them to buy up profitable businesses while moving much of their tobacco sales overseas.

Here we see the Tobacco industry playbook in use once again.  Often using the very same people that enabled the tobacco industry to stall and confuse the science, the NFL created a set of self serving studies that downplayed the dangers of concussion.

Like the tobacco industry, the NFL bought time, in this case, 13 years to continue to rake in the money as if nothing was happening. The human cost will never be fully calculated.

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NFL Research Flawed

Here, the NFL will have to diverge from the tobacco industry strategy. Tobacco tended to kill long term users who tended to be from the lower economic classes and they died quietly and painfully but generally outside the glare of publicity. Former NFL players do not perish quietly and their heartbreaking stories of brain damage find a ready market in a celebrity obsessed culture like ours.

So, the NFL is going to change. How? Presumably to something more low impact? I don’t know but it is going to change.

James Pilant

Self Regulation in 1819

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Self Regulation in 1819

Labeling poison as, well, poison, might strike you as an obvious social good. That wasn’t always so obvious as the selection below indicates –

Stratmann’s portrait of the age of arsenic (by far the most frequently used poison) is more than a string of grisly tales, and more relevant to our age than you might think. Two hundred years ago, lethal substances were readily available in a way that now seems utterly perverse. Arsenic was used widely in medicine, agriculture, industry and the home. It was employed to dip sheep, kill rats, anoint fly papers, and could be purchased in powdered form from grocers, no questions asked. In 1819 a bill was introduced that would have made the labelling of deadly poisons compulsory, but it was opposed by the Society of Chemists and Druggists as potentially damaging to their business. It never passed.

From http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/18/poison-arsenic-gun-control-crime

Has it always been this way and will it always be this way? Every attempt to do the most obvious necessary thing that might conceivably cost a business man money will be opposed by trade organizations, corporations, chambers of commerce and laissez faire conservative of all stripes regardless?

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Self Regulation in 1819

Yes, the dollar always has a constituency and never lacks for friends. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrong, the dollar will still scream out in pain and let us all know of its suffering.

But we have a responsibility too. The dollar has friends but so does humanity. Humankind is not always valued as much as money but should be and if money always has friends the some brave souls will have to volunteer to stand up for all of us and sometimes the least of us.

James Pilant

Pay to Pray Scam

On By southwerkIn business ethics4 Comments

Pay to Pray Scam

Suppose that you are in trouble. Your child is dying. You are told of a web site run by a Christian pastor with followers who can help. His site has testimonials to the healing power of prayer and how he has helped many before. All you have to do is make a thirty-five dollar contribution and thousands of Christians will pray for you. Your child may be saved.

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Pay to Pray Scam

Unfortunately some of this is true and some not. The true parts are about the dying child and the web site. But there was no pastor and no followers and no people praying and all the testimonials were lies. There were however fraudulent withdrawals from the credit card account once the site had the data. The money was very real.

From http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/20/pay-to-pray-scam-washington-christian-prayer-center-online.

As a result, the owner of christianprayercenter.com and its Spanish-language counterpart, oracioncristiana.org, have been ordered to pay up to $7m in restitution to an estimated 125,000 desperate consumers who reached out for prayers in their times of need.

Seattle businessman Benjamin Rogovy and the Christian Prayer Center “created fake religious leaders and posted false testimonials in order to attract consumers”, the attorney general’s office said in a statement announcing the settlement last week.

Christianity and other religions have always been magnets for hucksters and thieves. This is just the latest thing.

The appalling morality here is disgusting. The cynicism is breath taking. Many Americans are Christians or have some kind of religious belief. When people are in trouble they tend to appeal to a “higher power.” And the question asked by our intrepid enterprising young businessman is “How can I turn this into profit?”

He made a lot of money but that was not the only angle. He also helped with “consumer complaints” and provided ordination online.

But this whole matter I find very upsetting. I don’t see any criminal investigation. The last I heard make extra withdrawals on a credit card account is illegal. Further, is the financial penalty in any way commiserate with the profit made? The article is silent on this.

But what really gets me is this question: If he had gotten a real pastor to pray each week presumably with some members of the church participating, would he anything he did be illegal? Making false charges on the credit card would still be actionable but as long as someone prayed and people wrote testimonials about how in their experience these things were good, I don’t see anything actionable.

So, could you charge people for praying or for having someone else pray? I think you probably can. I am sure most denominations would back away from this but this is the United States and setting up a church here is quite simple.

So I don’t think we have seen the end of incentivized prayer, a kind of Neoliberal Christianity. Which, of course, makes the religion more marketable if that is desirable. I’m from a previous era where Christianity had something to do with service, believe and sacrifice. I admit to being both out of fashion and economically archaic in my beliefs.
James Pilant

Is Donald Trump Right About Oreo Cookies?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Is Donald Trump Right About Oreo Cookies?

Way back in July of 2015, it was decided in a corporate board room to move another factory to Mexico. This one didn’t make refrigerators or cars, it made cookies.

Oreos.

It employed 600 Americans and as far as can be told, it generated a profit, not that it mattered. Moving a factory to Mexico can be deducted directly from a corporation’s taxes. So, basically all Americans pay to be de-industrialized.

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Is Donald Trump Right About Oreo Cookies?

Lately, the destruction of these American jobs, these lives, has attracted some attention because Donald Trump has been talking about it.

From USA Today – http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2015/11/19/fact-check-donald-trumps-oreo-boycott/76066018/

Donald Trump says he’s “never eating another Oreo again” because its parent company is “closing a factory in Chicago and they’re moving to Mexico.” Some Oreo production is moving to Mexico, but a downsized Chicago plant will remain. And there will still be three plants in the U.S. making Oreos.

Trump also has overstated the number of job losses in Chicago. The parent company projects 600 employees in Chicago will be laid off, not 1,200, as Trump has said.

So, the company will still make oreos at two plants in the United States and while 600 jobs will be lost, it won’t be 1200 like Trump claims.

So, should we continue to eat oreos?

It seems to me that the “Donald” is mostly right about this. They are closing a part of a factory in Chicago and moving the jobs to Mexico. The fact that they didn’t entirely close the factory and move all the jobs to Mexico might mitigate against his claims. But the simple fact is that there is no impediment to the destruction of those remaining jobs and that factory at any time. It may well be just a matter of time before the company moves all production to Mexico. Why not? They can take if off their taxes and the public pays the bill. Isn’t that the smart move?

When I was a boy, my father worked at a factory and he supported our family with that one job. That world’s disappearance is not an accident, was not inevitable and did not have to happen. But powerful people decided that policies beneficial to capital (money, financial interests) were more important than policies beneficial to workers. And over the past forty or fifty depending on where you start counting, the jobs have been disappearing, the salaries decreasing and the factories torn down.

America has been diminished in a real and fundamental way. The ability of a nation to make things, to create, is much more important that the glittering mansions and skyscrapers devoted to a besotted financial class.

Impoverishing millions of Americans to make financial speculators rich is wrong and will never be right, no matter how it is defended by venal and bought politicians.

So, I’m going to side with Donald Trump on this issue. I will not eat or buy an oreo even though the company still retains a couple of factories in the United States. In principle, he is right on this issue.

James Pilant

Below is an article I used for reference. It is a good one. You might give it a read. jp

 

This article is from the web site, In These Times – http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18259/oreos-union-busting

I may have to give up one of my longest-standing indulgences: the dunking of an Oreo cookie in cold milk (whole is preferred). I don’t do this lightly, as I have been dunking those deliciously wicked rounds of chocolate and what I choose to believe is cream since I’ve been three.

Why give them up? Because this week, Irene Rosenfeld, the head of Mondolez (the food conglomerate based in Illinois that has Nabisco in its portfolio), a woman touted for breaking the glass ceiling upon becoming the head of Kraft Foods and then its spin off, announced that rather than invest $130 million in modernizing the plant in Chicago, where Oreos have been lovingly produced for the past 100 years, she will instead move the jobs to a new factory in Mexico. The result: a loss of 600 well-paying and community-sustaining jobs on Chicago’s Southwest Side.

NFL Admits Link between Football and Degenerative Brain Disease

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is from the Guadian – http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/mar/14/cte-nfl-link-football-brain-disease-senior-official-acknowledges and is followed by my comments.

An NFL official has acknowledged a link between football and a degenerative brain disease for the first time.

Jeff Miller, the NFL’s senior vice president for health and safety, spoke about the connection during an appearance Monday at a congressional committee’s round table discussion about concussions.

Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) asked Miller: “Do you think there is a link between football and degenerative brain disorders like CTE?”

Miller, who was referring to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), began by discussing the work of Boston University neuropathologist Dr Ann McKee, who has found CTE in the brains of 90 out of 94 former pro football players.

“Well, certainly, Dr McKee’s research shows that a number of retired NFL players were diagnosed with CTE, so the answer to that question is certainly ‘yes,’ but there are also a number of questions that come with that,” Miller said.

Schakowsky repeated the question: “Is there a link?”

“Yes. Sure,” Miller responded.

Will football as we now understand it continue?

hmlbr30I think that this kind of admission reflects a conclusion that the NFL has already reached, and that is, that the game cannot continue in its current form.

I believe right now they are busy looking at new ways the game can be played and at fairly immediate rule changes to limit the damage to players and the league’s bottom line.

They don’t have a choice. The evidence that repeated impacts are destroying the players brains is accumulating very quickly and looks very solid.

I am very impressed that they didn’t choose the tobacco defense of deny and stall or decide to fund some “climate denying” style web sites and organizations. Of course, that kind of thing would have only worked for a while and I suspect that stalling the inevitable when they have other and better choices such as re-designing the game struck them as painful and revenue threatening. They’d rather play ball and make money. That makes sense to me.

James Pilant

The Media Is Clueless

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The Media Is Clueless

Basic business ethics requires that you perform a business function with competence. Yet, our American media simply doesn’t understand the American people.

The success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are in the minds of our media incredible beyond all bounds of rationality, and they continue to write long serious stories about how both of them will explode and crash any time now -basically the same articles they’ve been writing for months.

(Now understand clearly, it is not hard to see that Trump and Sanders are very different phenomenon. The only reason I’m talking about them both at the same time is that the media doesn’t get either one.)

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The Media Is Clueless

I’ve been reading much of the discourse about the two candidates since the beginning and the old fabled beltway, villager, very serious people analysis is failing and they are astonished; aghast that their establishment alternatives (always very limited in number) are not the public’s choice. And therefore, according to them, the American people are just stupid. 

Well, there is stupidity here and it’s a mile deep but it is not the American peoples’ problem. It is the gross incompetence of a complacent, servile media. It is the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of our ruling class whose servitude to the intellectually shallow concept (more of a puddle, actually) of Neoliberalism has wrought havoc on the lives of millions with little discernable gain unless you are a billionaire. 

Why are the media and the ruling class unaware of the anger of the American people? Because they live in an economic bubble. They literally don’t know anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. And that means, they don’t know anyone who has to work three jobs. They don’t know anyone with a terminal degree doing adjunct work making an average of $22,500 a year. They have never met someone who works a job where their schedule is created by a computer for the company’s convenience so they can’t hold a second job, get an education or have any kind of home life. 

In short, they are ignorant of the lives of the great mass of the American people. They walk this land like tourists, living in nice hotels, eating in nice restaurants and keeping the locals at a safe distance. 

I don’t know how you can live in this country and not know that things have gone badly wrong. The economic statistics by themselves are staggering in their implications. The United States has a huge underclass, a seeming flood of the homeless and mentally ill and a real continuous problem with people not having enough to eat.

And if that isn’t enough to get your attention, we have a brand new study showing that white males with less than a college education have diminishing life spans due to suicide, drug and alcohol abuse. These people are dying but apparently unless they throw themselves under the wheels of a press bus, our media elites are not going to consider the implications.

It takes a lot of willful stupidity for the media act and treat us the way they do. I think they’re paid to be stupid. I think that our media outlets find the stories of the lives of real Americans and the real suffering that people have to be unpleasant and not worth covering. Furthermore and most importantly, the elected officials they idolize, the decisions they respect, are all corporate just like them. That’s why there was little coverage of the Flint, Michigan water crisis until the ugly facts became overwhelming and, dare I say it, that people began to die (legionnaire’s disease). 

I don’t expect them to get any better. But there are a few writers who seem to have some grip on the situation. 

Here’s Jeb Lund writing in the Guardian – 

Anger is pretty easy to miss when it’s something pretty difficult to feel. When you sit at the center of the world and are unlikely to ever lack for the basic materials of self-sufficiency, the idea of blind, gnawing resentment – let alone of feeding that resentment even with irrational aims – is ineluctably beyond your ken.

It’s harder still to understand that there are millions of people in America whose ambitions for a life of steadily improving conditions cratered sometime around nine years ago and have never recovered. If you can hardly imagine that you could follow the Horatio Alger script to the letter and still find yourself sinking in quicksand, you’re never going to understand why someone would be so contemptuous of the pieties of a system that only pays attention to you when doing soft-focus interviews in search of a journalism award or a campaign ad.

And anger isn’t something so easily ratiocinated. When your job is explaining world events, irrational phenomena lie fundamentally outside your brief. Explaining things with, “Well, people are angry!” is like surrender; it’s explaining badly resolved story lines in a TV show with, “A wizard did it.” Journalists learn to see the world in terms of the push/pull of conflicting ideologies and the necessary stratagems within a needlessly complicated governmental system; they’re necessarily going seek their explanations for seeming irrationality in the more elegant realms of philosophy and economics and political science.

He’s right. 

We are being ill served by our news media and the ruling elites that have created this giant economic nightmare.

Perhaps this election will not just change politics but upset the mindset of the blindingly stupid who write our news and create our policies.

James Pilant

Mozzarella without Mozzarella?

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

Mozzarella without Mozzarella?

Please read the following excerpt from a Salon article entitled: The only thing missing from McDonald’s new mozzarella sticks is mozzarella cheese.

One of the main ingredients in mozzarella sticks is, well, mozzarella. I mean, it’s right there in the name. Which explains why McDonald’s patrons who purchased the chain’s newest menu item have been extra disappointed to find their mozzarella cheese sticks sorely lacking in mozzarella cheese.

 Using the hashtag #Wheresthecheese, disappointed customers have been posting photos showing cheese sticks that look like hollow breaded encasings. The mozzarella cheese filling that comes to mind when you think of traditional mozzarella sticks is nowhere to be found. On its website, McDonald’s features pictures of mozzarella sticks filled with rich, gooey, “100 percent real and melty mozzarella cheese.” Contrast those with the sad, empty food sticks people report receiving in real life: …
Sometimes, you don’t realize that there is problem with a business or corporation for many months. The pollution, the deaths, the injuries, etc. don’t form a pattern and causation is often tricky. But when you come down to the simple and the mundane, you can see the business ethics problem before your eyes and in this case taste it.
Real cheese is expensive compared to milk by-products, etc. But we don’t have to worry about substitution in this case. According to the numerous pictures which can be found of which a single sample can be found here. there isn’t any cheese.
Should we let the market take care of this or should the government act? Well, it seems to me that McDonalds is likely to get clobbered on social media and there probably will be consequences in terms of their profits. On the other hand, the product is advertised as full of real cheese, and we have laws about false advertising.
Abraham LincolnThere is story that Abraham Lincoln used to tell about a settler who got in a fight with a bear. His wife didn’t want to be seen as taking sides because she didn’t know who was going to win, so she’d shout, “Go bear!, go husband!” I don’t have a dog in this fight, so “Go government!, go consumers!. Whoever gets them first is fine with me.
James Pilant