Category: Business Ethics

Standing Together in Defiance

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Government Failure

Over the last year, we have seen many American institutions cave in to the demands of the current administration.

But in the last couple of days, media outlets have united in refusing to give in to Pentagon demands over their reporting.

Here is the opening part of a statement from NPR:

NPR will never be party to limitations on the independence of the press and the objective, fact-based reporting of our journalists. We will not sign the Administration’s restrictive policy that asks reporters to undermine their commitment of providing trustworthy, independent journalism to the American public.

Courage has been rare in the last six months, but we’re seeing it now. It is a good thing.

On Monday, the Washington Post joined the New York Times, CNN, the Atlantic, the Guardian, Reuters, the Associated Press, NPR, HuffPost and trade publication Breaking Defense in saying it would not sign on to the agreement.

(The finest journalism in American history has often come from the battlefield.)

Pete Hegseth, the unqualified current Secretary of Defense, and a former commentator on Fox News, is demanding that journalists comply with his demands. And these demands go far beyond any conditions imposed even in the midst of war.

Walter Cronkite was a war correspondent in World War II. I have read some of his work. Eric Sevareid was another. I’ve read his book on his tour as a correspondent. I am confident from that they would refuse this nonsense just like the current journalists do.

But lets us mention the legend, Ernie Pyle. He was killed while reporting on the American troops whose stories and sacrifices he so carefully documented. I have read his books and marveled at his courage and writings. I have every confidence that he would have told Hegseth to go straight to hell.

For the moment we still live in a democracy and our Defense Department is funded to the tune of more than one trillion dollars in public money. Surely, some journalistic oversight is called for.

Wherever American troops have gone from the time of the American Revolution to the current sad age, there have been rules that have been followed. I know this and understand this. Military secrets must be protected and the lives of the troops placed first and foremost in journalistic ethics.

But what has been happening has nothing to do with military secrets given up by journalists. It is the Secretary of Defense himself who threw open military planning and secrets. We are not at war. But we have seen a truly incredible number of firings and retirements in our military. This administration and its lackeys seem to have serios difficulty with minorities and women serving our country. And I believe it is these controversies not military secrets or the defense of the United States that are in question here. It is simply a matter of an administration that wished to avoid oversight for its often bizarre decisions.

But there is a larger issue here. We are constantly being threatened and cajoled by this administration toward obedience and compliance like some sort of medieval peasants.

But we are not medieval peasants, we are a nation of free men and women who will not bow down and give up our rights to a band of incompetent and openly corrupt government officials.

James Alan Pilant

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One Man Protected the Sword of Eisenhower from Being Given Away

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure

And then he was forced to resign.

He was told “Resign or be Fired.”

Todd Arrington refused to give up one of Eisenhower’s swords so our current regime could give it to King Charles III.

So, we the American people retain our property, one of the prized possessions of a famous soldier and former President of the United States.

This is one of those times I wish I knew nothing about ethics, honor and righteousness. If I didn’t know, I would not know the depths to which a nation has to sink for a man to stand with honor and do his job and I might, do his job well strongly evidencing courage and then see him constructively fired.

What kind of people when looking around for gifts for foreign royalty goes to the preserved treasures of our heritage, our history, and says “Let’s get one of those!” What kind of people want to grab an item from our museums and historical collections so that we might flatter the faltering and flawed royalty of another nation and gratify the thoughtless greed of the President and those around him?

On the plus side, the sword was saved. On the negative side, our nation’s lack of leadership and the all consuming grasping greed of our current government is on display once again. .

(Eisenhower trained a tank unit for World War I and was deployed to France in 1918, before he arrived the armistice was signed.)

Here is a link to a news story on the subject written by Ed O’Keefe for CBS News.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/head-eisenhower-library-resigns-sword-110206460.html

It is entitled: Head of Eisenhower library resigns after sword spat with Trump administration

Todd Arrington, a career historian who previously held posts with the National Park Service and National Archives and Records Administration, said he stepped down on Monday under pressure as director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home.

In an interview with CBS News, Arrington said he was told on Monday, “Resign — or be fired.”

This story concludes with the following two paragraphs.

The 52-year-old said he is less than five years away from retirement eligibility and is hoping to find a new job at a different federal agency.

But, he said, “If there’s any way for it to happen, I’d return to this job in a heartbeat. I love the job, I love the people, I love the history. I never in a million years wanted this to happen.”

As a business ethics expert, I am appalled. If you get into the weeds of the story, there are the usual denials of White House responsibility we have come to know so well. And once again, the clear message sent directly by this administration is that any form of opposition will not be tolerated. What this administration wants and desires are to be yielded to under all circumstances as if it were the law.

But this administration lives for revenge and payback. (Is it not written that we are to forgive our enemies?)

This is wrong. This is unethical. This is a violation of dozens of systems of morality. This is petty and pathetic.

We should honor the man and women who do their jobs with pride and serve the interests of the American people.

What kind of nation punishes those that follow the way of duty? What kind of nation seeks vengeance for every act that offends the President?

The answer is the one we have now – honorless, crude, grasping and incompetent.

James Alan Pilant

TikTok Leads Youth to Porn?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

As an expert on business ethics, each day is another dreary ride into greed and evil. Today is Friday and just another day in the exploration of greed when we find that an internet platform leads children to porn. Yes, just another day.

TikTok leads teenagers to porn after a few clicks. The internet being the cesspool that it is, we shouldn’t be too surprised but I am. What surprises me is that this was in “restricted” mode.

That’s right. The fake accounts used in the study were not just teenagers, they were supposed to be operating in restricted mode but still after a few clicks they began leading these example children to adult topics and pornography. A parent doing due diligence could be fooled be this thing and that was probably the intent.

Let me get the news article that leads to my content out of the way as well as the usual quote.

(Internet Porn breaching the home’s defenses.)

The article is called – TikTok ‘directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/03/tiktok-child-accounts-pornographic-content-accessible

Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s “restricted mode”, which limits exposure to “sexually suggestive” content.

Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.

The terms suggested under the “you may like” feature included “very very rude skimpy outfits” and “very rude babes” – and then escalated to terms such as “hardcore pawn [sic] clips”. For three of the accounts the sexualised searches were suggested immediately.

The article was written by Dan Milmo writing for the online version of the Guardian.

The inevitable question here is why would anyone do this. The money is very good. Teenagers have a lot of spending power and these villains want to tap into it.

How many ways can I say that this terribly wrong and people shouldn’t make money this way? Close to infinity. So moral persuasion is useless. If you want to stop children watching and buying porn, people have to pay fines and go to jail.

There is no other choice. We’ve had the kind words and tried to reason with them and yet here we find a process designed to fool a cautious parent but still get the child as a customer. That speaks to a massive amount of intent. They are playing the government and the people of this nation for fools pretending to regulate content while building a Swiss cheese of holes that any child can get through to get to the supposedly regulated content. It is not right.

Let me in closing state the facts about online regulation when it comes to the United States. We are failing as a regulator of the internet. The EU and Australia have long ago taken the lead in online regulation and we should be following their lead.

James Alan Pilant

Children’s Brains Changed by Inequality

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Editorial, Government Failure

Research finds that Inequality creates a toxic environment.

MRI scans of thousands of children found that those living in areas of higher inequality had measurable changes to the brain and it is believed that these changes may have long term effects on mental health.

This should be front page news.

I am not surprised with the results or the fact that this is not a major story. As a society we talk about children as important but when it comes to money and effort, we demonstrate a lack of concern. .

If you live in a society where basic unfairness is part of the life you lead, you are harmed. The study showed that children from different social classes, that is, the winners and losers, suffered just the same.

The old simple Biblical principle that doing evil and having evil done to you damages the soul.

Yes, it does.

What are we going to do about it. The standard playbook used by Big Tobacco and currently by the fossil fuels industry will be applied as it always is when social change threatens the established order. And so, the result will be —

Nothing.

The Right Wing media machine will spend tens of thousands of words explaining the results away. They are quite likely to produce several made up studies in which they decisively prove that inequality is good for everybody. They will endlessly discuss avoiding a culture of “dependence,” which is a scurrilous way of describing having people fed. There will be several hundred thousand bots posting derogatory attacks on the specific researches and on academics in general. And there will have to be some death threats to round out the mix. After all, the cruelty is the point.

After these attacks, politicians, public figures and regular people will consider the topic controversial and have “doubts.” that these doubts are cleverly manufactured by evil and well paid advocates will be irrelevant.

(It is possible by careful planning using God’s gift of intelligence to create great and wonderful things.)

Now, what would intelligent thinking and capable human beings do with this research?

Now, that is interesting. Obviously, we need more studies of children in societies with different levels of inequality. We also need to see if there are variations that can be achieved by different methods pf parenting and education.

We have information that leads us to see brain changes in children. So, what can we do and what are we doing now that has an effect on this process.

In other word, we as a society and a people take significant research and use it to improve our way of life.

That is what is supposed to happen.

But right now, the intelligent and cultured are under attack by an increasingly unhinged band of goons who are determined to impose their lack of breeding and intelligence on all of us.

We will see whether or not they succeed.

Here is the Guardian article explaining and linking to the research – along with a short quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/30/study-links-greater-inequality-to-structural-changes-in-childrens-brains

A study of more than 10,000 young people in the US discovered altered brain development in children from wealthy and lower-income families in areas with higher rates of inequality, which were also associated with poorer mental health.

The data was gathered from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and published in the journal Nature Mental Health.

Researchers at King’s College London, Harvard University, and the University of York then measured inequality within a particular US state by scoring how evenly income is measured. States with higher levels of inequality included New York, Connecticut, California and Florida, while Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont were more equal.

This article was written by Tobi Thomas for the Guardian.

The Old Shakedown, Tech Companies Settle Lawsuits with Current Regime

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

In business, if someone files a silly lawsuit, that is, one without merit, you take them to court and get it dismissed. That is the place where meritless lawsuits go. You use the fact that the law in that area is settled and clobber them in court. And go your merry way.

But what if you are a tech bro?

Now, that is a different kettle of fish, so to speak. If you defeat the current manifestation of that man behind the curtain (See, The Wizard of Oz for the cultural reference.) he might not benevolently smile on your sort of legal attempt to build an AI empire worth trillions of dollars.

So, what do you do? You grovel and fold. You settle.

You show the American people that paying off the bad guy is a legitimate way of doing business. You expose your lack of morality and backbone. You kick morality and ethics to the curb with great contempt. You cosy up to the orange manifestation of American frustrations and make purring sounds.

It is all pretty disgusting.

What do the tech bros hope to get for caving on these lawsuits? They have the developing technology of AI.

You have to understand that AI dwells in a never never land of not quite legality. In fact, that we are allowing these individuals to pursue this tech is very questionable in itself. The potential for vast and permanent harm is clearly visible. Currently AI’s data mine copyrighted material in an almost infinite abuse of intellectual property. Their content is dominating the internet and displacing actual human beings and their work. Probably not legal. The tech bros are building AI data centers whose electrical consumption borders on the wilder dreams of science fiction excess. I’m just mentioning some of the high points.

And of course, we must touch on the thousand ton elephant in the room, and that is, that the game plan involves the destruction of millions upon millions of jobs, maybe as many as ninety percent.

And so the tech bros need the government to look the other way and bless their semi-legal activities so that they make their trillions of dollars.

It is all very elementary and, not exactly, what we are taught in business school although very much inline with Milton Friedman, the great snake in the garden who reduced all business decisions to matters of money.

Here is a link to the article reported one of these pitiful settlements.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/29/youtube-trump-lawsuit-settlement

YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5m to settle a suit brought by Donald Trump in 2021 that alleged the platform wrongly suspended his channel after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. The Google subsidiary is the latest in a long string of tech companies to make a multimillion-dollar payout to the president over past decisions about his accounts.

Trump had filed the suit against YouTube and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, alleging that the platform had “accumulated an unprecedented concentration of power, market share, and ability to dictate our nation’s public discourse”. YouTube said it suspended Trump’s channel because it had violated the website’s policies against inciting violence. Because of the settlement, the case is now dismissed. Google did not immediately return a request for comment.

Every society has to deal with the results of its historical creations. The United States in the 1830’s began the process of building railroads and small industry beginning a process which resulted in mass production and the many social changes this brought about.

We through a combination of law and custom created the tech bros. A group of people whose self worship is beyond all human understanding and whose willingness to destroy the current social order an ongoing fact of American Life.

Why did we do this?

It is very simple. We worshipped a model of economic activity that deified profit as the sole goal. We failed to believe in the importance of treating our fellow citizens people with economic justice. We failed to employ any of the basic elements of Christianity into our economic way of life. We failed to believe that doing what was right was important. And we taught generations of business students to get the money first and try to live decent lives of purpose sometime later if at all.

This cannot continue, not in its present form. But that leaves the question, what are we willing to do instead.

James Alan Pilant

Stupidity as Policy: the Phrase, “Climate Change” is Banned!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure

I was having class one day and in the front row was a veteran of several combat tours in Iraq. The class got into a spirited discussion about a woman’s time of the month and the things you can buy like tampons and pads to help with that very common malady.

My combat veteran laid his head on the desk, covered his ears with his hands and tried to make the subject go away. I doubt if he was successful. We were friends, probably still are, haven’t heard from him in some years. I respected his service and gave him class time to talk about it.

Not everyone is going to be comfortable with every topic brought up in class. And I understand that.

But removing the phrase, “Climate Change” is different in a major and important way.

Climate Change is real, observable, and needs to be dealt with. And our government is supposed to dealing with it.

Before we go any further, let me give you a link and a quote from the current topic:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/energy-dept-adds-climate-change-184725341.html

“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid — and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the directive from acting director of external affairs Rachel Overbey said.

“Misaligned with the administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the weasel words for pitiful stupidity from the reality denying loons that currently form our ruling regime.

(Admiring the latest delusion at the Dept. of Energy.)

Tell me, do you think that covering your ears and making racket will drop the earth’s temperature? Because I don’t.

What are these idiots doing? Well, they are completely devoted to chasing fossil fuel money, billions of dollars, and in pursuit of that money, there is no action no matter how obviously moronic and stupid that they won’t do.

And this is one of the stupid and moronic decisions that these people are embracing in the hope of stalling effective action against climate change so that fossil fuel companies can rake in the cash.

It is wrong. It is immoral. It is pathetic. And I hope and pray for the time when these fools are driven from the government, polite society and any hope of profit.

James Alan Pilant

Australia Acts to Curb Deep Fakes

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

The Australian Associated Press published an article today detailing the punishment of a deep faker.

Entitled: Man fined $340,000 for deepfake pornography of prominent Australian women in first-of-its-kind case.

Here is a quote from the article and to the link for the article itself.

A man who posted deepfake pornographic images of prominent Australian women has been slapped with a hefty fine as a “strong message” in a first-of-its-kind case.

The federal court ordered Anthony Rotondo, also known as Antonio, to pay a $343,500 penalty plus costs on Friday after the online regulator eSafety Commissioner brought a case against him almost two years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/26/man-fined-34000-for-deepfake-pornography-of-prominent-australian-women-in-first-of-its-kind-case

(The Cathedral of Noyon no longer exists. It is fair game for new images.)

A deep fake is a created image of someone, a made up image. The “deep” adjective implies that to the unskilled eye, it appears authentic. A very good one may pass professional analysis.

The fellow punished here was publishing online deep fakes of well know Australian women and has been punished for it.

And so I ask my fellow Americans, “Shouldn’t we be punishing people for this cruel nonsense?” I think the answer is an absolute yes.

The law is pretty clear. We have sole rights to the use of our own identity and image with some thin exceptions. We should exert those rights.

That we live in an age where individuals will publish made up pictures to harm individuals is a tragedy but in the case of deep fakes, we can take action and we should.
Let us follow Australia’s actions and impose fines for such cruel acts!

James Alan Pilant

The Cowardice of Disney

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, code of ethics, Government Failure, moral philosophy, morality

When I was a little boy I used to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and they had heroes. There was Fess Parker playing Davy Crockett. There was Zorro, the Swamp Fox and the Scarecrow. They fought against tyranny.

(The kind of Americans we use to have.)

They did what was right at great risk.

I was a little boy in those far off days. Those characters were my heroes.

So, I have to ask. Do the people running Disney every watch their own programs? Do they care what kind of example they set? Do they look in the mirror and wonder where it all went wrong because wrong it is?

They gave into evil.

They surrendered to an orange make up covered villain. And they did it knowing that they will be bullied again and again. Once the bad guys understand what brought fear and collapsed the spines of the management at Disney, they will do it again and again. Surrender and appeasement never stop. The crawling abasement of the defeated and the cowardly continues forever.

It is said the coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero just one. Well, Disney is on one death among many. I almost pity them.

What happened to doing what was right? What happened to facing the threat of tyranny with courage and resolve?

Was it just programming? They portrayed heroic behavior to beguile children into buying merchandise? Was that all it was, just a con? Or did they at one time believe that Americans had to stand up for what was right?

We’ll never know. For what can they say that we can trust? What can they say that we will believe?

If you don’t have a spine or courage, what won’t you say? What won’t you do to give yourself one more day, one more minute of hiding from the bully, one more desperate plea, “Please don’t hit me! I’ll do anything you want me to!”

Courage is necessary right now. Many Americans are standing up against what is happening.

But not everyone is up to the standard of men and women of courage. They prefer to crawl and we should pity them but never forget that when the time came to take a stand, they ran like hell.

James Alan Pilant

Planting Seeds

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Editorial

I want to talk about teaching and how difficult it is.

When I was teaching, there was always the “wall.” That thing that prevented what I was trying to convey from getting through.

You see, my students were generally very young, eighteen to twenty-one. There were middle aged students who returned to school and a good number of veterans, and they were wonderful students. But the great mass were the young ones. And they were inexperienced

Without perspective, they could not draw a conclusions from a similar circumstance. You could lead them to the right answer but they had enormous difficulty applying the reasoning to anything else.

I used to show a clip from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where the learned knight leads the local peasants to a completely wrong conclusion (that witches burn because they are made of wood). And while they thought it was funny, they didn’t get the hard cold fact that leading people in the wrong direction is not that hard and the tools we depend on for teaching are not always that reliable.

It soon became evident that they had never been trained to understand the implications of what they were learning. In fact, for most of them learning was just a long boring process of getting the necessary paperwork for later employment. I taught every new class the rationale for why each major subject was part of their course of study and fit my own classes in that picture of whole trained human being.

So, I began to plant seeds. It seemed to me that if I placed an idea with wide applications in front of them several times, they would realize at some point later the implications of that idea. So, I taught the great ideas. I showed legendary movies, and I would tell the great stories of Western Culture. I was talented enough to make those things interesting.

Did the seeds grow? Probably. Ideas especially ideas deeply embedded in the culture have a lot of relevance and staying power.

But do I know that for a fact? No. You never know what effect your teaching has. You just hope.

James Alan Pilant

Sadness for America and Ethics

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure

I am very unhappy today. I haven’t posted very much lately because I have some ideas percolating in my mind.

I have been wanting to write a major piece on the fact that everyone in politics seems to talk up the “free market” while working very hard to make sure that there is little or no free market activity in countless fields of ende3avor. I wanted to talk about the necessary elements for a free market and how government action is necessary to prevent combinations and price fixing.

(Our current national leadership.)

I also want to severely criticize business schools for their nonsensical devotion to the idea that in some strange way, the teachings of business are generally applicable in all industries and businesses. They are not. An understanding of how, why and a historical understanding of a business is absolutely essential to a successful leadership and day to day running of a company. Any examination of American movies and Boeing aircraft reveal the folly of a general business set of teachings applied where it simply does not belong. And I will get to it. It is a difficult subject.

No, today is a bad, bad day. Jimmy Kimmel has been removed from the air by a state sponsored form of censorship. The FCC threatened to pull broadcast licenses and the network complied with their demands.

These last twenty four hours have changed our futures. If this government, incompetent and pitiful as its is, can successfully tell media companies what is and is not acceptable, we have little chance of having fair election or even intelligent national discussion.

This is a nail in the coffin of democracy.

It is very painful for me to see the end of the American experiment in representative democracy, and I will be in mourning for some days.

I find it hard to believe that that coming elections in 2026 will be anything but a rigged farce and that will be the final act in America’s story.

After that we will live in some kind of 4th Reich.

At the moment, its seems inevitable.

James Alan Pilant