Category: Business Ethics

Bugs Bunny and Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

Bugs Bunny is a cartoon version of an idealized American. He embodies many American virtues. He is not greedy and content with having just enough. Many simple pleasures make him happy. He loves a good meal, meeting new people, travel and a good joke. He is courageous and does not tolerate abuse or injustice. He is the very soul of patriotism, (He is an honorary United States Marine!)

(This is a 1912 picture from a book of stories. Alas, there is no picture of Bugs that is not under copyright protection.)

I used some of his cartoons in my classes to illustrate several different economic concepts. Like most Americans he does not aspire to be rich, he aspires to have “enough.” In the cartoons, his concept of “enough” boils down to a comfortable rabbit hole, food to eat, (many cartoons show him as visiting stores or cultivating food). He is often seen in bed reading what we assume is a good book.

The plot of the story in the cartoons revolves around Bugs’ response to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Various hunters, crooks, con men, grifters, mad scientists, monsters and the occasional vampire show up to steal from him, harm him or just kill him. Bugs defeats his opponents by determination, humor and inventiveness, qualities that Americans with considerable justification believe they have in abundance.

Using him as an economic example generally involved his less meritorious sometimes friend and often enemy, Daffy Duck.

The Economics of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck

In one cartoon I used “Ali Baba Bunny” (1957), Bugs and Daffy find the fabled treasure of Ali Baba, a huge and sprawling treasure similar to a dragon horde, which is promptly claimed in total with no justification whatever by Daffy – with the following line:

“It’s mine, you understand?! Mine! All mine! Get back in there! Down, down, down! Go, go, go! Mine, mine, mine! Mwahahahahahaha!” He dives into the treasure pile with whoops of joy to the tune of the song “We’re in the Money”. “I’m rich! I’m wealthy! Yahoo! I’m comfortably well off.”

While Bugs is content with what he has, Daffy is the “other” American, the grasping “get rich quick” fool who never stops looking for some easy way to make piles of money. If that wasn’t bad enough he is perennially incompetent and constantly goes into situations over his head.

Of course, whenever you encounter treasure there must be a guard. Bugs saves Daffy from certain death at the hands of “Hassan,” although repeatedly the cowardly duck tries to betray him. Daffy’s greed keeps getting him into danger and eventually Bugs leaves him to his dire fate.

Daffy at one point bundles every last coin up for his own use while Bugs simply continues on his journey taking nothing, content with what he has and unwilling to take what isn’t his.

It’s a good lesson and I usually add examples of treasure hunters spending their lives in the fruitless search for immense wealth. You know pirate treasure, the lost Dutchman mine, gold prospecting and the list goes on.

In another cartoon showcasing his immense greed, Daffy captures the Tasmanian Devil. In the 1957 short feature, Ducking the Devil, Daffy a loudly self-proclaimed coward discovers that there is a 5,000 dollar reward for returned the escaped Tasmanian Devil to the zoo.

Wikipedia tells me that in 2022, this five thousands dollar reward would be the equivalent of $45,686.65, not bad if you’re willing to be dismembered by a tornadic homicidal loon.

Daffy after many misadventures lures the creature back into its cage and collects the money. While he is walking away, a single dollar bill is caught by a breeze and carried into the monster’s cage, where upon an outraged Daffy charges in, beats the creature to a pulp and recovers his dollar. (My Chinese exchange students really enjoyed this cartoon.)

I use cartoons, short movie clips, jokes, etc. to lead into discussion of the more intricate points of law, of capitalism, the American Experience — you know – Teaching.

Why use cartoons and all the myriad things I find to interest my students?

It was my transcript.

As you might imagine I am quite capable as a student (317 college hours later). So, I have a large transcript and I happened to be looking at it and I realized there were many classes I had no memory of. I could not picture the instructor, remember the textbook and to my ultimate despair, none of the coeds I flirted with. It made me sad.

And so I decided to teach in an unforgettable manner. I took whatever subject was in hand (I’ve taught 23 different courses and I am qualified to teach quite a few subjects I never got around to teaching.) and divided it into a set of critical lessons. My Business Law course, one of them, boiled down to thirteen critical lessons.

Okay, very good, I knew what to teach. How to get it across? Not hard. Stories! At first I told stories from the law. Stories I’d learned in law school and from my wide reading. Then I added jokes and then I read large story collections and picked out a chosen few. Then I began my use of classic movies and I added discussions of literature, history, sociology and the struggles of Americans toward greater freedom, minorities and women. Every day I combed the Internet, magazines and sometimes just stuff I observed always looking for that hook that would catch their interest.

Years after being in one of my courses, students will remind me of a story I told, or a movie they watched or a class discussion they never forgot.

I think I did okay. I miss teaching.

But I will maintain against all opposition that Bugs Bunny has his place in Business Law and Business Ethics.

James Alan Pilant

Will African Courts “Fix” the Internet?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, corruption

(This picture is borrowed from dear friends at Wikipedia (they deserve donations and support!) and they got the picture from NASA which being a government agency places it in the public domain.)

Social media, the internet, broadcasts almost infinite amounts of lies, misinformation and abuse. It causes severe and lasting harm to our society. And yet our political system seems unable to cope in anyway, not even able to curb the international scams that plague the elderly and the young.

The other day I was reading Al Jazeera, probably the best source of information about the war in the Ukraine, (they have daily coverage), and noticed an interesting editorial. Mercy Mutemi is the managing partner at Nzili & Sumbi Advocates, a law firm. She wrote a very fine editorial about efforts in African Courts to rein in the abuses of the Internet.

Here is a link to the editorial:

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/8/16/african-courts-may-pave-the-way-for-holding-social-media-giants-to-account

In April 2025, the Human Rights Court in Kenya issued an unprecedented ruling that it has the jurisdiction to hear a case about harmful content on one of Meta’s platforms. The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Abraham Meareg, the son of an Ethiopian academic who was murdered after he was doxxed and threatened on Facebook, Fisseha Tekle, an Ethiopian human rights activist, who was also doxxed and threatened on Facebook, and Katiba Institute, a Kenyan non-profit that defends constitutionalism. They maintain that Facebook’s algorithm design and its content moderation decisions made in Kenya resulted in harm done to two of the claimants, fuelled the conflict in Ethiopia and led to widespread human rights violations within and outside Kenya.

Further down in the article she very eloquently explains the significance of the court’s decision thusly:

The ultimate goal of the Bill of Rights, a common feature in African constitutions, is to uphold and protect the inherent dignity of all people. Kenya’s Bill of Rights, for example, has as its sole mission to preserve the dignity of individuals and communities and to promote social justice and the realisation of the potential of all human beings. The supremacy of the Constitution also guarantees that, should there be safe harbour provisions in the laws of that country, they would not be a sufficient liability shield for platforms if their business decisions do not ultimately uphold human rights.

I would have liked to summarize the findings about this case but I unable to approach the level of her eloquence. She states the principle in question very well indeed.

The Internet is a world wide phenomenon and while we here in the United States suffer terribly from its abuses, we are only a small proportion of its victims.

And that means that justice systems all over the world have jurisdiction when their citizens are harmed. The argument here is that a internet provider has immunity provided its business decisions do not result in the diminishment of guaranteed human right.

Our enforcement in the United States has been lacking because of legal complexity and the horrible unsustainable influence of the Tech Bros, our wannabe Oligarchs.

Their time is coming.

We have to rise up as a nation and end this constant stream of bots, foreign influence, etc. It is an open decaying sewer of utter evil and it harms all of us.

We can do better.

James Alan Pilant

Newsmax Settles Lawsuit

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

The good guys, the guys in the white hats, our modern Hop-Along Cassidy’s, do not win many victories these days what with the scoundrels running the government but sometimes the good guys win one. And today is one of those days.

Here is the headline, the link and a quote.

Conservative network Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/newsmax-agrees-pay-67m-settlement-154603217.html

The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday.

The settlement comes after Fox News Channel paid $787.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit in 2023 and Newsmax paid what court papers describe as $40 million to settle a libel lawsuit from a different voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which also was a target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories on the network.

If you have a genuine enjoyment of humor, go down further in the article and read how Newsmax claims that they did nothing wrong. “We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism.” I can’t help but think that paying sixty-seven million dollars certainly gives one the impression that someone did some wrong-doing.

Will the Right Wingers ever accept the 2020 elections as legitimate after an unbroken stream of court losses of which this one is just the latest? Not a chance. Their self identity demands victimhood and not just victimhood but giant international conspiracies to justify their foul language and overwrought histrionic emotions.

It is a real pity that the court results have a limited effect in this strange world of politics we live in.

But still a good win, a great victory.

You can make a strong argument that those who had to pay out all this money are being punished although Newsmax claims otherwise. I would bet you real money they are more judicious in their language in the future.

James Alan Pilant

Are CEO’s Paid Too Much?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

There appears to a be a considerable consensus on various web sites that indeed they are.

(That does look like corporate leadership, a daunting path, indeed!)

Let’s begin with the Guardian in an article by Michael Sainato talks about his pay.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/24/trump-bill-ceo-pay-starbucks

Starbucks’ CEO, Brian Niccol, made 6,666 times more than his average worker last year, according to a report on the growing gap between top executives and their workers.

The inequality gap between CEOs’ pay and that of their median workers rose in 2024 to 285 to 1 from 268 to 1 in 2023, according to a report released this week by the largest federation of labor unions in the US, the AFL-CIO.

I will freely disclose that I find the CEO in question, Brian Niccol, reptilian and repulsive, and that is beside the fact that he is paid way too much.

But there’s more. Here’s an article from 2023 By Nik Popli. He writes about an investor advocacy group that calls out CEO’s who get generous pay packages while their companies suffer losses particularly in shareholder returns. I recommend you read the entire article.

https://time.com/6256076/most-overpaid-ceos-2022/

The typical CEO of a company listed on the S&P 500—a stock market index with 500 large publicly traded corporations—earned $18.8 million last year. That’s up roughly 21% from 2021, even though the S&P 500 index was down 20%. Company boards gave particularly big grants of stock to reward those in charge of navigating their companies through high inflation, continued supply chain problems, and rising wages—as well as meeting performance metrics.

But an investor advocacy group says some of the nation’s most well-known companies overpaid their chief executives. A new report from As You Sow listed 100 “overpaid” CEOs who received high compensation in 2022 despite mixed shareholder returns for their companies.

At the top of the list: Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav, who received $246 million in 2022 even though the company’s stock fell 60% in the same year and roughly 40% of shares voted against his pay package. The second most overpaid CEO was Estée Lauder’s Fabrizio Freda, who earned $66 million in 2022 while the company’s stock fell 33%. Penn National Gaming’s Jay Snowden, who was paid $65.9 million, comes in at no. 3 on the list; his company’s stock fell 42.7%.

And for the year before, we have the magazine Fortune in an article by Chris Morris, Maria Aspan entitled rather directly These are the 10 most overpaid CEOs in the 2022 Fortune 500. Once again, I liked the article and recommend you read it in full.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-most-overpaid-ceos-2022-175248791.html

Overall hourly U.S. wages fell 2.4% on average last year (after adjusting for inflation), but the median total compensation of CEOs Fortune studied as part of this year’s Fortune 500 ranking jumped 30% from a year earlier to $15.9 million.

That made us curious. Did those CEOs deserve the compensation packages they received? Fortune’s Maria Aspan and Scott DeCarlo analyzed the compensation and stock performance of the 280 Fortune 500 CEOs who have held their jobs for at least three years, ranking them on pay vs. performance.

Apparently factual analysis based on the statistics of market performance does not paint an appealing picture of CEO pay. I am not surprised. The media celebrates these figures as fearless leaders and innovative entrepreneurs with little actual examination of the facts. And the way corporate power is structured, an obedient board of directors is just a matter of time for an aggressive CEO.

The Progressive Shopper posts the “Overpaid CEO Score Card.”

Overpaid CEO Score Card

The list identifies the 100 Most Overpaid CEOs from the S&P 500 index, highlighting those CEOs deemed excessively compensated based on their performance. It specifically focuses on CEOs who were addressed at annual meetings held between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023. This year’s findings also incorporate insights from annual voting patterns and regression analysis conducted by HIP Investor.

Mentioned previously was the Shareholder Advocacy Group, “As You Sow.” This is a ten year study they published about CEO compensation entitled 10 Years of Study Shows Overpaid CEOs Underperform.

Listed below the link are its most damning conclusions.

https://www.asyousow.org/press-releases/2023/11/15-ten-year-study-overpaid-ceo-underperform

Key findings: 

  • Companies with the most overpaid CEOs have had lower returns to shareholders than the average S&P 500 company. The typical S&P 500 firm made 8.5% per year annualized from February 2015 to September 2023, the 100 Most Overpaid CEOs’ annual returns lagged at 7.9%, the worst 25 dragged at 6.0%, and the ten worst were behind at 6.5% per year.  As a group, over a decade, overpaid CEOs underperformed.
  • Total pay for the most overpaid CEOs continues to grow. When As You Sow compiled its first overpaid CEO list ten years ago, the average pay of the 10 Most Overpaid was $56 million. This year, the average of the top ten was $88 million, an increase over that time period of 59%. 

There were more articles and many opinion pieces. All these sources saying that CEO’s are over paid — and, yet, they continue to be overpaid!

But it seems likely that AI and an increasingly darkening economic horizon under our current regime’s bizarre decision making may very well diminish these payouts.

We can hope!

James Alan Pilant

My Blog is a NO AI Generated Content Zone!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, code of ethics

Why? Because I hate the mediocre crap! By and large it is pitiful poorly written garbage.

(My vision of the AI monster preparing to destroy all actual writing and all actual images.)

Last year I sat down to renew my Office 365 subscription. It usually ran about seventy dollars but not that time. It was a hundred dollars. They had added AI and they charged me an additional thirty dollars for it. No choice. I was in the middle of several projects so I couldn’t opt out of the service although I am really thinking about going over to WordPerfect on the next renewal date.

I did one experiment with it. I gave it five words and a topic. It wrote an essay. Not a very good essay but sort of C+ kind of high school essay. The content did not alarm me. What alarmed me was the entire process took about thirty seconds. In theory, I could generate 120 essays in an hour. And I could see in my mind’s eye, some person writing a blog online or doing school or college work or writing editorials for the local paper writing essay after essay after essay with the touch of a few buttons.

That was the last time I used the AI feature on Word. Every time I start the program, every single damn time, it starts with the AI program with the prompts to use it. I have to deliberately turn it off.

I write my blog myself. It is my thoughts, my ideas, my writing, my spelling, my punctuation and my phrasing. You, my readers, deserve nothing less.

I am considering putting some kind of “NO AI” label on the site. If one is not available online currently, I’m sure it will be soon.

I want you to know I am not the only one upset by the explosion of AI mediocrity.

Here is the magazine Scientific American’s published article linked to below by linguist Naomi S. Baron which discusses AI and writing :

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-humans-lose-when-ai-writes-for-us/

But what happens to human communication when it’s my bot talking to your bot? Microsoft, Google and others are building out AI-infused e-mail functions that increasingly “read” what’s in our inbox and then draft replies for us. Today’s AI tools can learn your writing style and produce a reasonable facsimile of what you might have written yourself.

My concern is that it’s all too tempting to yield to such wiles in the name of saving time and minimizing effort. Whatever else makes us human, the ability to use words and grammar for expressing our thoughts and feelings is a critical chunk of that essence.

I was easily able to find numerous articles in a similar vein and to my dismay many cheerleading articles as well.

But I’ve made my decision.

I am a man hopefully a gentleman — and I do my own writing.

James Alan Pilant

The End of the Corporate CEO!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

CEO’s will soon be gone. And when they are, it will be much better world and a much better economy.

When these preening fools with their enormous salaries, portfolio of stocks and out sized political power disappear, no one will lament and no one will care.

And right now they are firing people and replacing them with AI. They are so happy about it, talking about more profits and not having to deal with ungrateful and troublesome workers. You might think that they are acting like unfeeling and inhuman machines. And you would be right.

Over and over again, you see in the business press the worship of the cutthroat CEO putting the hammer down on the workers. You get the impression that they want a man who is completely free of the normal limitations on greed and wrong doing. They don’t look for Christians. They don’t look for human qualities like love, kindness and understanding. And above all a reverence for nation or an obedience to the law is a red line to be avoided.

So, what do stockholders and boards of directors want? They want a man shorn of human emotion.

However, they are often bitterly disappointed. Even the cold blooded specimens of humanity they can find sometimes slip. It is deeply regrettable. He might develop a love for a child. He might wander accidentally into a church. There is no telling what traps of morality, religion or family can do to even the best cold blooded psychopath.

At the moment, they are happily firing and destroying the human beings that get in the way of their vision. Don’t believe me??

How about this little story:

https://fortune.com/2025/08/17/ceo-laid-off-80-percent-workforce-ai-sabotage/

Eric Vaughan, CEO of enterprise-software powerhouse IgniteTech, is unwavering as he reflects on the most radical decision of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced that generative AI was an “existential” transformation, Vaughan looked at his team and saw a workforce not fully on board. His ultimate response: He ripped the company down to the studs, replacing nearly 80% of staffwithin a year, according to headcount figures reviewed by Fortune.

Over the course of 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024, Vaughan said IgniteTech replaced hundreds of employees, declining to disclose a specific number. “That was not our goal,” he told Fortune. “It was extremely difficult … But changing minds was harder than adding skills.” It was, by any measure, a brutal reckoning—but Vaughan insists it was necessary, and says he’d do it again.

He got rid of eighty percent! Now, that is cold blooded! And he is so proud telling the press the he’d do it again and talking about his former employees as if they were some kind of disobedient pets! What a guy! The ideal CEO! Got a conscience, hell no, screw that! Ice water for blood.

Now of course, there has to be a down side. Carping critics like me. I, a pitiful liberal, with my weird and out of date beliefs in the sanctity of the law, Christian obligations devised and stated clearly by Jesus Christ and a devotion to the ideals of the United States. Those beliefs lead me to believe that this CEO is doomed to Hell where many others like him dwell.

But as these CEO’s fire and proclaim their delight in cruelty, they don’t realize the bitter irony.

Let me tell you a story. There was once an episode of the Twilight Zone called “The Brain Center at Whipple’s.”

Let me Quote that master of television writing, Rod Serling’s intro:

These are the players — with or without a scorecard. In one corner a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man’s brain. We don’t make book on this one and predict no winner….but we can tell you for this particular contest, there is standing room only — in the Twilight Zone.

This passage is from my dear friends at Wikipeda, specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Center_at_Whipple%27s

In the story, a company manager replaces all the workers with machines and then is replaced by a machine himself. and this fictional and cautionary event is about to happen in real life.

(Film screen-shot of 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Intended to support film’s plot description. I include this picture because in the Twighlight episode discussed above, our friend robbie here was the one who replaced the boss – but he was uncredited, the fate of the robot.)

In an article written by Emma Burleigh in Fortune, Google X’s former chief business officer Mo Gawdat is quoted in the following article.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ai-gutting-workforces-ex-google-150148959.html

But executives shouldn’t celebrate their efficiency gains too soon—their role is also on the chopping block, Gawdat, who worked in tech for 30 years and now writes books on AI development, cautioned.

“CEOs are celebrating that they can now get rid of people and have productivity gains and cost reductions because AI can do that job. The one thing they don’t think of is AI will replace them too,” Gawdat continued. “AGI is going to be better at everything than humans, including being a CEO. You really have to imagine that there will be a time where most incompetent CEOs will be replaced.”

“Better at everything than humans, including being a CEO.” I love the irony and have a certain sense that this is finally real justice at these self-proclaimed masters of the economy.

But you say, “Stop James, that is merely one voice among many. I’m sure it is not true.”

Don’t be quite so sure, I have some other sources.

How about this one:

From by Hamza Mudassir, Kamal Munir, Shaz Ansari and Amal Zahra writing in the Harvard Business Review.

https://hbr.org/2024/09/ai-can-mostly-outperform-human-ceos

Or this article written byFrank Landymore for The Byte:

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceos-easily-replaced-with-ai

CEOs better start endearing themselves to their employees real quick, because oh boy: the case for replacing them with AI just keeps mounting.

And then there is this article from Forbes –

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sherzododilov/2024/01/11/can-ai-become-your-next-ceo/

And this article from Inc – EXPERT OPINION BY JOE PROCOPIO.

Let me add here just above the link that this is a very delightfully written article. You should read the whole thing. This guy is just a great writer. jp

https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/it-wont-be-long-before-ai-replaces-the-ceos/91194705

Corporate and unicorn CEOs have never had a stellar reputation. These aren’t men and women of the people by nature. But over the last 10 or so years, the CEO role has been further marred by alleged thieves (FTX), alleged liars (Theranos), and alleged cults of personality (WeWork), among many, many more problematic abuses of the position. 

So, in my opinion, the days of the CEO are numbered. It probably should have happened a long time ago.

James Alan Pilant

Video Games and Reality

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Philosophy of Business

There is a wonderful article linked to below on the American military operating drones by Graham Flanagan and Chris Panella

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-army-captain-says-top-drone-pilots-are-video-gamers-2025-8

Soldiers who regularly play video games are transferring those skills to flying drones, making them top pilots, a US Army captain told Business Insider.

Top Pilots!

Wow. When I was playing Pong in the early 1970’s, the idea that a video gamer might have a useful skill was very far fetched.

And yet here we are. Video games using their skills to defend the nation. Not a movie, not a cartoon but solid reality.

Here let quote some more from the article linked to above:

Transferable skills include the kind of hand-eye coordination that a gamer would have from playing with a controller and looking at a screen, which isn’t unlike flying a drone via a monitor or operating a first-person-view drone. The latter requires pilots to wear goggles similar to many of the commercially available virtual reality/augmented reality headsets. These present the world from the perspective of the camera on the drone.

Other skills include the ability to multitask, recognize patterns, maintain situational awareness, and comfortably interact with digital interfaces. Some studies have also shown that gamers have quicker reaction times and do well making decisions under pressure, potentially critical in high-stakes drone warfare.

So, the skills developed playing video games have direct practical benefits. What was once generally considered a waste of time is now in the right hands a valuable skill.

What are the business ethics implications?

At one time, it was revered wisdom that video gaming was an addictive habit that led nowhere and there was an implication that those who sold the games and wrote them were preying on the childish and weak minded among us.

That belief system, the idea that video games are an addictive and poisonous waste of time is still very much with us. I did a search on the Internet using Bing and got many, many sites claiming just that. Then I did a search on You Tube and got quite the variety of acidic anti-gaming sites that allege a dizzying variety of just awful consequences for playing these games.

(As a matter of honest disclosure, I regularly play Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4 and Civilization Five. I don’t just play them, I add online content to change the nature and form of the game. I extensively mod the first three and currently have 238 active mods on Fallout 4. It doesn’t very much look like the same game.)

Like many other elements in our culture particularly those continually changed by an evolving technology, what games are and what they mean is subject to change.

I think many individuals, both players and observers, are stuck at some point in the past.

Gaming is now divided in a wide variety of categories. There is the online novel where you live in a story and try to live it in the best way possible. The Japanese seem to write a lot of these. There is a long history of shooter games which hearken back to the very beginnings of video games, that is, the arcade machines. There are strategy games like the huge collection of Sid Meier’s Civilization games, as well as tactical and historical versions by the many copycats. And I could go on for some time, but that is another and much longer essay. The implications of this are simple, “Yes, video games can have harmful effects but they are also and often learning devices that provide real and substantial entertainment and sometimes skills.”

To further my teaching I have toyed for years with the idea of taking a gaming engine like the one in the Fallout series and writing a script in which a person searches the community for a business to build, a restaurant, a repair shop, a furniture store, etc., then has to find a location and financing, then they seek customers and eventually a positive monetary balance and a place in the community. I was planning on using real legal documents, businesses modeled on modern franchises and a litany of common business problems from employment difficulties to natural disaster to keep the story and give the flavor of reality to the game. I am firmly convinced this is how we will teach the basic concepts of business law and contracts in the near future.

In conclusion, video game skills are useful and transferable in the right circumstance. There are not too many of them right now. But technology is pushing us toward more gaming and more applications. A healthy amount of gaming might lead one to gainful employment or just useful skills.

You might get online and look at the incredible selection of video games and see if there is something that will help you build some skills or just some positive entertainment. It is a big world.

Trump Demands Smithsonian Spread Lies and Misinformation about American History

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, corruption

That is exactly what Trump means when he talks about institutions aligning with his vision of American history.

Sanitizing American history of critical thinking and historical fact to make the right wing loonies happy is a six lane highway to a fraudulent account of American History.

It would be nice if peaceful Native Americans had not had their land stolen or been murdered. It would be just lovely if the savage crime of slavery and its associated murder, rape and theft of labor were not part of American history but it is.

It would be nice if American corporations hadn’t sold tobacco as a remedy for breathing disorders or put lead in gasoline poisoning tens of millions of Americans when they had better alternatives. It would be nice if there weren’t millions of miles of mining tunnels under the United States, unmaintained and unmapped or if we hadn’t annihilated a good number of plant and animal species but we did.

History is messy. It records the good and the bad.

We call that “telling the truth,” currently out of fashion with the current regime.

I have read a great deal of American history and I find and continue to find much that makes me proud. More and more I discover that people living their lives in communities all over the United States acted with courage and righteousness on behalf of their country.

But I am not so simple minded or foolish to believe that is the whole story. The truth marches on and we should march with it.

If we fail to act and do right as a people and a nation we deserve destruction. No amount of lies and misinformation will cover our crimes. It seems to me that currently the balance between righteousness and evil in America is in the positive zone but will that continue? It is easy to look at the wicked and self serving members of this administration and despair.

But let us have faith in the long arc of history and our nation even in this our lowest and worst point in history.

Let us do what is best and hope that history vindicates us.

Let us tell the truth and live by it.

And that means allowing our historical institutions to actively seek and present the truth.

Thomas Lecaque writing for the Bulwark has some strong words for what the Administration is demanding.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-demands-smithsonian-deliver-shiny-070329562.html

They sure do want “collaboration”—like Anton Mussert, or Philippe Pétain, or Vidkun Quisling. Because this is fascism, and the rewriting of history in service of a fascist mythology is part of the program, from censoring the Smithsonian and the National Park Service to gutting PBS and floating the idea of PragerU replacing it. From putting Jim Crow-era Confederate statues back up to pushing for the return of racist mascots and Confederate names to DHS’s use of manifest destiny and American fascist texts in its social media account.

I recommend you read the full article. He has a lot to say.

And here is the Huffpost talking about the chilling effect of this regimes attacks on our learning institutions. Read what Jennifer Bendery has to say:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/smithsonian-staff-scared-trump-censorship-art-history_n_689bb490e4b09184403f36c0

Staff are censoring content they fear could upset President Donald Trump. Volunteers are angry and mulling quitting, even as they work for free. Employees are repeatedly warned not to talk to the press.

And the message from on high is that if you care about the Smithsonian Institution and its 17 museums in Washington, D.C., and if you care about your colleagues keeping their jobs or keeping your own, you’ll keep your mouth shut about the chilling effects of Trump’s efforts to erase art and rewrite American history in the ways that he wants.

Here is a CNN report on the subject – but do not expect it to be up very long. They don’t like their video’s on other platforms – so read it while you can.

And here is MSMBC, take.

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-smithsonian-institute-museum-library-services-rcna199331

Why study Business Ethics now?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Right now in the United States businesses are crawling on their hands and knees groveling before the current administration.

Here, look at a headline: Here’s a link –

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/volkswagen-seeks-audience-trump-dangling-143559316.html

Volkswagen believes that if they deliver up enough goodies to our “fearless” leader they will get a tariff exemption protecting their profits.

They are not alone. Universities, law firms, media firms and countless other business organizations are on bended knee. It is a humiliating spectacle to see this in what was once a proud nation of men and women who could in previous eras stand before government unafraid give up their rights and praise the current leadership, a leadership of lies and boundless corruption.

Yet, here we are.

So, why teach ethics in an environment where Don Corleone would be morally repulsed by what is happening in the United States?

Because it is the just, the moral and the right thing to do. We have a duty as teachers to our students and our nation to teach with honor and respect for our nation’s long held traditions of fair dealing and honesty.

What’s more, it is to be hoped and is likely that the current regime will end soon. And when that happens, there will be a reckoning and many people will find themselves in legal jeopardy. Many will find new homes in prisons and jails and many more will live the rest of their lives as pariahs for having participated in this massive corrupt enterprise.

We have to hope for a positive outcome because if we lose this, our democracy ends and what is right and wrong will exist only at the whim of our government.

James Alan Pilant

Business Ethics Roundup Sept. 13th – 19th

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Business Ethics, Capitalism, code of ethics, Corpoorate Social Responsibility1 Comment

This week in Business Ethics is marred by the death by ovarian cancer of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She died during the week of Rosh Hashanah which in Jewish lore means she is particularly blessed. Here is a guide for my readers unfamiliar with the surrounding concepts.

Rosh Hashanah 2020 — A Guide for the Perplexed

Currently that American Institution, the Post Office, is under attack. Don’t believe me? A federal judge called the changes: “a politically motivated attack on the efficiency of the Postal Service” It is very poor business ethics indeed to sabotage a public agency, a public good for all Americans, for private gain. I found a good article on the importance of the sorting machines which I include here as well as the article I got the federal judge quote from.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/federal-judge-slams-dejoy-s-politically-motivated-usps-attack-n1240453

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mail-sorting-machines-are-crucial-for-the-u-s-postal-service/

Tragically there appears to be increasing violence surrounding requests that people wear masks and practice social distancing. In a particularly callous attack, a 67 year old gas station worker suffered a fractured skull after being assaulted with a pipe. It is a particularly bitter reality that during a worldwide pandemic, many Americans are unwilling to pull together in the wake of the viral threat to protect each other from infection. This generation of Americans is half helpless to act on behalf of the common good. Many believe in the crass nonsense of libertarianism and similar beliefs that the only interest is self interest. The generations of Americans that sacrificed in the face of war and epidemic must be astonished at this willingness to sacrifice our fellow Americans out of simple pig headedness.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/long-island-social-distancing-attack-arrest_n_5f66b573c5b6480e89700af8

Are we entering the Pyrocene, the age of fire? Stephen Pyne suggests in the High Country News that is indeed the case. He says that in previous ages we had ice ages and this current situation is the other side of the coin, that is, ages of fire. It’s a good read and a fairly brief one. It is attached below.

West coast wildfires signal a planetary fire age

Over the last twenty years, financial institutions including the often mentioned five, HSBC, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Standard Chartered and Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), conducted about 2 trillion dollars in suspicious activity. Rest assured this is a developing story and we are going to hear more as the particulars work their way to the surface.

https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/banks-moved-alleged-dirty-money-red-flags-reports-200920203410592.html

Federal charges of among other charges, commercial bribery, were filed against six individuals who are charged with bribing Amazon employees to gain an unfair advantage. The bribes totaled about $100,000. Temporary suspensions of competitor accounts was one of the means used to gain advantage.

This kind of crime causes people to buy inferior or even dangerous goods. Let’s hope Amazon acts to clean up its staff.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-marketplace-fraud-scheme-six-indicted/

New York filed a 2 billion dollar lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson for its role in the opoid crisis, that is, encouraging opoid use and downplaying the risks of addiction. Since Oklahoma has already won a case and 500 million dollars from the company, one has to wonder why the state has waited this long and is that the correct amount?
In positive business ethics, a firm from the UK is making protective masks out of peas which is very environmentally sound.
How is it that a video in which a man committed suicide live on Facebook does not violate their standards and is still up? Facebook says it has a policy against suicide and videos showing self harm but isn’t enforcing it.
Very poor business ethics indeed.
Movie Theatres have been open for about a month but the economic returns have been disappointing. Mulan’s crash at the box office could not have helped matters.