Category: Business Ethics

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.

illo-p0079
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.

i008
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

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.

01
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.

Wheelchair Ethics

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Wheelchair Ethics

i009
Wheelchair Ethics

I write regularly about business ethics and when you read the horrible things that one international corporation or another has done each week, (sometimes each day), you get depressed about the fate of human kind but sometimes they get it right.

And here is an example. Perhaps, this should have been done earlier. Perhaps, it could have been done better. But it is being done.

Here is another step, a good step, in the acceptance of the disabled as full participants in society. Please read – (Full article)

Lego is releasing a new toy collection featuring a mini-figure in a wheelchair set for release later this year, a company executive told ABC News today.

Photos of the Lego character in a wheelchair emerged online from the Nuremberg toy fair in Germany and the London Toy Fair in the U.K. this week, and took the Internet by storm.

The Danish toy giant has created the Lego “City” set, which “features a mini-figure scale wheelchair,” Michael McNally, senior director of brand relations for Lego, told ABC News. “It will be available starting in June.”

Perhaps, I will try more often to highlight businesses who succeed in by performing ethically and morally?

James Pilant

The Ethics Sage Explains Ethical Behavior

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics1 Comment

Rules for Ethical Behavior in Life and the Workplace

(This is a guest column by Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage. This is a great privilege for me. He is allowing me to post this before it appears anywhere else. You see it here first!)

The Ethics Sage
The Ethics Sage

Have you ever taken something from your employer’s workplace thinking nothing was wrong with “borrowing” office supplies for your home or using company software on your home computer? Surveys consistently show that about 20% of workers take something from their employer that doesn’t belong to them and use it for personal purposes. Well, not only are these people engaging in “asset misappropriation” but they become untrustworthy employees.

So, where do we draw the line between a minor offense that may be excusable and one much more significant that warrants a strong response from management? Well, folks, it doesn’t work that way. There is no materiality test on what is right and what is wrong. Taking something that belongs to your employer is no different than taking something from your neighbor’s house without their permission. Would you go to your neighbor’s medicine chest and take some pharmaceutical item? Of course not so why do the same where your employer is concerned?

Many people do not understand what ethics is. Ethics are not like a spigot that you can turn on and turn off. The ancient Greeks knew that ethics requires practice – practice doing the right thing so that it becomes habitual. Good ethics is dependent upon repetitive acts. It becomes part of your DNA. It’s almost as if you don’t have to think about what the right thing to do is. It becomes instinctive.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you deliberate about what action you should take.

  1. What is the nature of my ethical dilemma (i.e. taking something that doesn’t belong to me; a conflict of interest; or how I treat someone else).
  2. Who are the stakeholders potentially affected by my actions? (i.e. my employer; a co-worker; a friend or family member).
  3. What are the potential consequences of my action? (e.g. potential harms and benefits of my intended action).
  4. Am I potentially violating any party’s rights? (e.g. employer’s right of loyalty; confidentiality; fair-treatment of others).
  5. Reflect on your intended action. How would you feel if your intended action made the front pages of tomorrow’s paper? Would you be proud of your action? Could you defend it?

Some ethical decision-making rules are:

  1. Ethics are not relative to the situation; they are based on long-standing norms of society. Ethics/ethical behavior is based on certain immutable traits of character (i.e. virtues) such as honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, respect, responsibility.
  2. The ends do not justify the means. The way in which you get to your goal is just as important as getting there. If not, you might rationalize an unethical action by saying it accomplishes your goal.
  3. The rights of one party affected by my action directly influences my ethical obligation to that party. My employer has a right to expect me not to divulge confidential information so I have an ethical obligation to act accordingly.

What if you make a mistake; do something you later regret; and want to acknowledge your mistake? Here is my advice in that regard.

  1. Admit your mistake in no uncertain terms; don’t rationalize your misbehavior.
  2. Seem genuinely remorseful for your actions; you’re not admitting it because you got caught.
  3. Promise never to do it again; make amends to those harmed by your actions.
  4. Take steps to change any behavioral patterns that led to your mistake.

We all do things that we regret later on. It’s how we handle the next step that counts most. The problem in business is many try to cover up their actions and their misdeed becomes much worse. One lie begets another until they are sliding down the proverbial “ethical slippery slope” and there is no way to reverse course and seek the moral high ground.

I like to think of ethics as what we do when no one is looking. There is a difference between what you have a right to do and what the right thing to do is. Moreover, under pressure a person’s true character is revealed. You can’t always control the situation you find yourself in, but you can control how you react to it.

Dr. Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage, is a Professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He blogs at www.ethicssage.com.

Crisis Mode 2016

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Crisis Mode 2016

The New Year comes with the threat of a serious economic crisis. The plunge in oil prices is causing market instability all over the world with the China’s strange excuse for a stock market on the front line. But we are also in a continuing economic crisis as the middle class shrinks and its finances worsen. 

hmlbr17
Crisis Mode 2016

But I’m not the only one that believes this. Here’s Will Hutton writing in the Guardian: 

There has always been a tension at the heart of capitalism. Although it is the best wealth-creating mechanism we’ve made, it can’t be left to its own devices. Its self-regulating properties, contrary to the efforts of generations of economists trying to prove otherwise, are weak.

It needs embedded countervailing power – effective trade unions, law and public action – to keep it honest and sustain the demand off which it feeds. Above all, it needs an ordered international framework of law, finance and trade in which it can do deals and business. It certainly can’t invent one itself. The mayhem in the financial markets over the last fortnight is the result of confronting this tension. The oil price collapse should be good news. It makes everything cheaper. It puts purchasing power in the hands of business and consumers elsewhere in the world who have a greater propensity to spend than most oil-producing countries. A low oil price historically presages economic good times. Instead, the markets are panicking.

They are panicking because what is driving the lower oil price is global disorder, which capitalism is powerless to correct. Indeed, it is capitalism running amok that is one of the reasons for the disorder. Profits as a share of national income in Britain and the US touch all-time highs; wages touch an all-time low as the power of organised labour diminishes and the gig economy of short-term contracts takes hold. The excesses of the rich, digging underground basements to house swimming pools, cinemas and lavish gyms, sit alongside the travails of the new middle-class poor. These are no longer able to secure themselves decent pensions and their gig-economy children defer starting families because of the financial pressures.

Capitalism has grown inside the protective cover of the modern nation state and the international accords sought by those states to protect themselves from war and instability. It would seem that Neoliberals are contemplating a world in which the nation state is reduced to the same level of just another corporation, in which national laws including those specifying what are acts of criminality are just matters to be negotiated.

I have been sensing unease in the literature over the last few weeks. It is making me uncomfortable. The financial press seems bewildered by economic events that appear without precedent. (The financial press’ view of history never seems to run more than a couple of decades.) Could we be running into another economic crisis? Well, yes, there is almost certainly going to be some kind of downturn in the next twelve months but at what level? The Fed’s silly decision to raise interest rates is going to cause an economic slowdown. But even more troubling is the Royal Bank of Scotland’s predictions for the year. They compare the current situation to 2008. That is very bad indeed. 

Andrew Roberts, Bank of Scotland’s “head of European economics, rates & CEEMEA research,” stated that progress in automation and technology are set to “wipe out” up to half of employment in developed countries, and that the global economy has “far too much” debt, to the point where it may hinder global economic output. Roberts sees the majority of 2016 being used to sell profitable positions entered after the 2008 subprime mortgage collapse and the resulting quantitative easing-driven boom that has seen equities, as measured by the Dow Jones, gain about 90 percent since January 1, 2009.

In economics and banking “speak” this is roughly equivalent to screaming out obscure Bible verses while clutching a “The End is Near” sign. 

It seems to me that capitalism can be a positive force in society but that kind of capitalism is not one based on pure financial exploitation or an absence of patriotism or on the opportunity to evade taxes. A positive capitalism is one that creates value not in derivatives but in actual goods and services. A positive capitalism is one in which companies will not seek out their nation’s enemies as profit making opportunities. And finally, a positive capitalism recognizes the contributions of the community in its success and pays its share of taxes to maintain the common welfare. 

James Pilant

Fracking Lawsuit

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics2 Comments

Fracking Lawsuit

Can the lawsuit be an effective tool against corporate misconduct? It has been, continues to be and will be again. But what about fracking? Can lawsuits affect the practice? And I want to focus here on one aspect of fracking, and that is the disposal of waste water by injecting it deep into the earth apparently near fault lines.

Here is a brief quote from an article in Think Progress – found here: Oklahoma Residents Sue Energy Companies Over Earthquake Damage | ThinkProgress
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/01/12/3738417/oklahoma-earthquake-residents-lawsuit/

This week, a group of 14 homeowners in Edmond, Oklahoma filed a lawsuit against 12 energy companies, claiming that the companies’ fracking operations have contributed to this uptick in earthquakes. Specifically, the lawsuit targets the companies’ wastewater disposal wells, claiming that the injection of fracking wastewater into these wells “caused or contributed” to earthquakes and constituted an “ultrahazardous activity.”

In the lawsuit, filed in Oklahoma County court, the residents focus on two earthquakes — of 4.3and 4.2 magnitude — that struck Edmond on December 29 and January 1. The plaintiffs say they suffered damage from the earthquakes, and that the energy companies were “negligent, careless, and reckless” in their treatment of the earthquake risks surrounding wastewater injection.

i010We have questionable behavior on the part of the energy companies and a lawsuit alleging that behavior has caused harm. This works for society with most industries. Ford and General Motors have to build their cars with the knowledge that they can be sued for misconduct. Obviously, this threat hanging over their heads doesn’t always stop them from making foolish and lethal decisions but my experience is that we live in a much, much safer world because companies have to worry about being sued.

So, why do I have doubts that this will work? These aren’t “regular” companies. These are energy companies. They are the primary political powers in a number of states and the reach of their think tanks, political action committee, etc. is very difficult to measure, so enormous is the money and influence being deployed. No, these aren’t regular corporations.

I think they’ll follow the path blazed by the firearms industry and create restrictive law protecting them from lawsuits. The first legislative acts I expect to see will force those that sue and lose in court to one of these companies to pay all court costs. It may be more difficult and take more time, but in the long term they will simply seek and almost certainly get a blanket restriction on lawsuits in the “national” interest. Expect to see a giant legislative preamble talking about energy independence and the need to protect “innovation.”

James Pilant

Oklahoma Adapts!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics2 Comments

Oklahoma Adapts!

If you live in Oklahoma you may have already seen this document. It’s entitled Fast Facts on Earthquake Insurance. It is provided for free by the Office of Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John D. Doak. I was unaware of Mr. Doak and his work (I don’t live in Oklahoma.), but after reading his press releases recommending that residents of the state buy earthquake insurance and how to get the best deal while avoiding being scammed – I am impressed with the man. He makes good sense.

illo-12-th
Oklahoma Adapts!

But I write about Business Ethics and while insurance sometimes has business ethics elements, my focus here is on fracking.

Last spring, the US Geological Survey (USGS) issued a report declaring that a spate of earthquakes over seven years were man-made, triggered by drilling for oil and gas. Dumping toxic wastewater from the drilling process destabilized faults in the bedrock, according to the report, causing more problems than the high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals, or hydraulic fracturing, that is known colloquially as fracking.

The necessity of the citizens of the State of Oklahoma to buy earthquake insurance is almost totally man-made. These are induced earthquakes.

There is an injustice here that bothers me. You see part of the cost of hydraulic fracking is the necessity of disposing of the waste water, and the industry has solved this by injecting it deep into the earth. And this causes earthquakes, lots of earthquakes. (Here’s another little quote:)

According to the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), which is based in Colorado, in 2014 Oklahoma experienced 585 such quakes. In 2015 there were 842.

“That’s almost a millennium’s worth of earthquakes in two years,” George Choy, a seismologist at the center, told the Guardian on Friday. “When you see that you suspect something is going on.”

Before fracking Oklahomans experienced a couple of earthquakes a year on average and last year they had 842.

So, the industry saves itself a great deal of money by disposing of the waste water in an earthquake producing fashion while citizens of the state bear the brunt of the damage. That strikes me as unfair. The industry makes billions while the citizens of the State live on ground that is becoming more and more unsteady and dangerous.

In other words, the industry shifted the cost of their operation from themselves to the citizens in the form of earthquake damage and such necessary changes as the having to buy earthquake insurance.

And there is one further thing that bothers me.

Someone is going to die. It is inevitable. You shake the ground and buildings collapse and burn. Someone is going to die.

That’s not fair either.

In the past industries saved money by polluting the air and water instead of safely disposing of their waste products. Isn’t this just the same thing in a different format? Instead of talking about air, instead of talking about the water, we’re talking about the integrity of the earth itself.

James Pilant

The Future of the Corporation

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics2 Comments

The Future of the Corporation

A Guest Post by Jason Michael McCann

(It is a great privilege to have my friend, Jason Michael McCann, post an article on my blog! I hope you all appreciate his thoughts as much as I do. Jason’s original post on his blog can be found here – The Future of the Corporation | Random Public Journal
http://randompublicjournal.com/2016/01/03/the-future-of-the-corporation/)

Already we stand on the precipice of a post-nation state future. Globalisation of private corporate interests has successfully unshackled the international market from the controls of individual governments and so has positioned the legal entity of the Corporation above the law. In the twenty-first century the transnational corporation has become a law unto itself, governed only by the imperative to increase the value of its shares for its wealthy private stakeholders. So successful has been this corporatist revolution against the bourgeois state that is has now arrogated to itself the right to sue the state when the actions of the latter undermine the corporation’s interests – a move which has cemented the subjugation of democracy to the whims of global corporations.

12189757_10205577051970375_9049019921128026109_n(3)
Jason Michael McCann

Above we have used the word Revolution, because a revolution is precisely what we have witnessed. It is no longer in the realms of conspiracy theory that the Corporation has become the new order of the world, but conspiracy fact. Years of secretive negotiations, across the developed world, between corporately sponsored governments and the corporations themselves have borne fruit in the creation of globalised treaties granting effective domination of the world’s economy to unelected and legally unaccountable super-boards-of-management. Now these new Lords of the Philistines play the tune to which elected governments must dance, regardless of the thoughts and better interests of the people who have elected them. Democracy has lost its teeth.

We the people, the newly dehorned electorate workers of the world, must think carefully about this new direction of global social evolution. Until recently we have each been, within the social contract, an asset of the state in which we have had a meaningful vote. Today the very governments we elect have become the clients of a new superstructure of suzerains over which no one has control save for the profit principal. Our multinational corporate overlords, with an overwhelming share of the world’s wealth, can now buy and sell the resources and assets of any nation – and this includes us for we too are state assets.

One does not need a crystal ball to see that this trajectory is leading to somewhere very dark. Whether it is the economy, the environment, or human rights, individual states and international bodies of states the likes of the United Nations have been rendered powerless in a post-nation state reality. Of course there is the chance that we are worrying over nothing. Corporations may discover that what’s best for people and the environment is best for business, but we have seen precious little evidence of this in the past. Our most likely path into the future is one of a dystopian hell where human and workers’ rights exist only on the statute books of pacified nations, and where the wonders of nature are broken down in ledger books to crude cash value.

The Fabric of the World

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

The Fabric of the World

“Greed, fraud, dishonesty and arrogance, these are the words that best describe the reality of Wall Street today,” Sanders told supporters in midtown Manhattan. “To those on Wall Street who may be listening today, let me be very clear. Greed is not good. In fact, the greed of Wall Street and corporate America is destroying the fabric of our nation.”

Provided by the Sanders Campaign web site. jp
Provided by the Sanders Campaign web site. jp

These are the words of Bernie Sanders. You can find the full news article here at the guardian.

Sanders says that greed is “destroying the fabric of our nation.” But as a business ethics professional, I can tell you, greed in the form of unregulated capitalism is destroying the fabric of the world.

Over the past decade, the world has been subject to commercial attacks, an oil spill in the gulf that devastated an area larger than many states, fires related to palm oil production in Indonesia and other countries as large as dozens of American counties, dam failures in Brazil that released 60 million cubic meters of iron ore tailings into the water system, in Japan – radioactive contamination made several once thriving communities uninhabitable(1) and I can go on and on.

But let me close this litany of disaster with Volkswagen, the poster child for necessity of regulation with criminal penalties. Volkswagen inserted software in 11,000,000 cars designed to evade pollution controls by running one way under tests conditions and another on the road. There is no way that Volkswagen could have believed that they would never be caught. The pollution produced by an automobile is not always measured under test conditions. There had to be an underlying belief that the company is so well placed, so influential, employs so many people – that it will not be prosecuted and will get to keep most or all of the money.

As we have seen with the virtual non prosecution of General Motors in the United States, they may have good reason for that belief. Assessed a 900 million dollar fine after 124 deaths were traced to a below specs ignition switch, General Motors escaped criminal penalties in spite of having continued their wrong doing for 10 years after first detecting the problem.

Pure capitalism, unregulated greed, whether referred to as Neo-liberalism or free market fundamentalism is dissolving the fabric that binds us together as human beings.  It is not just an economic malady but a moral evil which must be addressed.

James Pilant

(1) In case, you wish to challenge me on the corporate responsibility for Fukushima and say it was a “natural” disaster – I would respond that building a nuclear reactor to an American design on low land near the coast on an earthquake fault in Japan is malfeasance.