Category: business ethics

Let The Age Of False Information Begin!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

Our Internet privacy is disappearing. Probably the government is looking at our posts down to the last comma and thirty to forty companies have embedded cookies to follow our visits and there enough tracking software on us to tell if we spent nano seconds at one place or another.

So, they are playing games with us and manipulating us.

Let’s manipulate back.

On your social networking sites, move a lot. If you always wanted to live in Hawaii, get a map and find a nice place and declare it your home. Move every couple of months. You can live in fictional places from Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis to John Foster Caine’s Xanadu (a double header – fictional character and fictional place). What about birthdays? These are excellent ways for people to track down medical and financial information about you. Well, have you ever wanted to have two birthdays in a year? Why be a piker, have three or four. Change them every few weeks.

Political beliefs? Give up being a boring Democrat or strict Republican. Vote with the crew of the Enterprise, join the “wild” party, declare yourself at one with the hopes and aspirations of the Pirates of the Carribean.

How about being tracked on the internet and having your every move sold to spammers and marketers determined to exploit this knowledge? At the end or beginning of your web surfing, go wild. Visit this web site and discover how to build your own coffin. Go to the World Wildlife Fund and discover how to adopt a beaver! Fill your your web trackers with useless and incorrect information. Make their tracking as useless as time permits.

Ah, the tough one, how do we write e-mails to annoy the Department of Homeland Security? It’s easy. Now, you’ve heard people say to put words in like terrorist or bomb. Don’t do that. Write e-mails in praise of the Department of Homeland Security or the FBI or the DEA and alway include the latest plot these agencies have foiled. The computer will probably have to cough up all these e-mails to an actual person to discern the seriousness of the message. What will they find? – that you like the government! What could be more harmless?

Now, there are a few of you saying, “James, you shouldn’t be messing with the American government’s ability to catch terrorists?” To which I reply, “They have never said or alleged at any time that they are reading our e-mails. So, obviously, there is no surveillance and you are doing no harm at all. You can’t interfere with non-existant privacy violations, can you?”

“If they were monitoring our e-mail, that would be a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, so you see they can’t be doing that. What’s more I love the Deparment of Homeland Security. What a bunch of great guys! I sleep better at night knowing that they are looking out for me!”

What about you? Have you ever become tired of that same old face in the mirror? It’s time to live a little! Get yourself a new e-mail. Become a movie star, a little old lady, an heiress or a Wall Street executive. Creat a dozen new e-mail addresses, every single one with a new version of yourself. Didn’t Walt Whitman say, “I am multitudes!” Be a multitude. Leave a few blog comments in your new identity. Try out some interesting points of view.

If all these turkeys want to collect information on you, help them out. Give them tons of information. Be cooperative. Don’t just show them the data from one person but dozens.

And do log on and post from different computers. Use programs that disguise or block identity searches, so our friends can grow and develop as human beings (whatever doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger!!).

These people are kind enough to take an interest in us. We should take an interest in them and help them out with a much data as possible.

James Pilant

China Following Old American Policies?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

The policies of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln are guides to the Chinese Communists and their economic policies.

Irony?

James Pilant

American Policy Not Fair To The Middle Class

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

RT is really laying it on the line. I sometimes disagree with their take on things, but I agree with this one.

James Pilant

Is “Grownups” The Worst Film Of 2010, NO!

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

It may well be the worst film of the decade.

I saw it all the way through. Here’s how that happened.

My wife likes Adam Sandler and we saw the preview. It looked funny and romantic. So, we and our 17 year old son set out to see the film. We sat him between us. It was just an accident but it changed the whole night. After about a half hour, I wanted to walk out but I didn’t want to spoil the film for Renee. Renee wanted to walk out on the film but didn’t want to spoil the film for me. Since, Jake was sitting between us, neither one of us could explain our exuberant hatred of the film. So, I saw the whole thing.

When you see a film like that, there should be some kind of celestial balance, a cosmic sense of fairness, that gives you the time back.

Here’s the preview –

Every single workable joke is in that preview. Watch it twice, you’ll then know every thing you’ll ever want to know about the film.

What does this have to do with Business Ethics? They knew what a turkey this was as soon as they had the film put together and they still put it out there when they should have taken it out to sea and given it a decent watery grave, or burned it on funeral pyre or, similarly, sent it straight to video.

It wasn’t just unethical, it was cruel.

James Pilant

Bailed Out Banks In Trouble Again?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

From the Huffington Post –

Nearly 100 banks previously rescued by the federal government are again poised to fail, despite billions of dollars of support from the American Treasury.

The number of banks on the brink of collapse rose from 86 to 98 during the summer months, according to analysis of federal data from the Wall Street Journal. The banks in question have received $4.2 billion dollars in aid through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Most of the troubled institutions are relatively small.

The latest sign of distress in the financial system suggests the bailout may have simply been a stopgap solution for a sector still contending with the aftershocks of the greatest banking crisis in 80 years.

If you own a business in the United States and you lose money instead of making it you go out of business. If you are a bank, the government runs to you with large bags of money and gets you back on your feet.

But twice? It’s only been two years. Is the government going to save these banks and, if so, do it again in two years.

What’s the ethics here?

Those who have committed crimes should be punished? Okay, have the banks been investigated for fraud?

The incompetent should not be rewarded for botched work or destroying their business. Has the government in the previous bailout or in the one likely to happen now, asking about competence and cleaning house in these institutions? Shouldn’t those who have ruined the banks by poor management find jobs elsewhere?

Ethically, is it wise to encourage the kind of behavior you get when you bail out failing institutions? Doesn’t that encourage immoral activity like risk taking? Doesn’t that give bank officials the impression that risky behavior is to be encouraged? If you win, you win big. If you lose, your dear Uncle Sam will find money for you?

What do you as a citizen want to happen? Maybe the government should’ve asked that question, “What results are we looking for in this bailout?” two years ago?

James Pilant

National Problem Fixable By Making Insignificant Changes In Business School

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Teaching

From Business Week –

Have business schools contributed to creating overconfident and self-focused leaders? I suspect many of you will nod your head in agreement. You might even declare that, by extension, business schools share blame for the economic crisis. As a business school dean, I take these perceptions seriously; there is enough in them to warrant careful reflection.

An antidote to overconfidence and self-focus in business leaders may lie in building more focused cultures in our business schools. Culture is the set of values and norms in an organization that shape behavior. It acts as an internal gyroscope for everybody in the organization to keep them in balance, acting ethically and in line with the larger interests. It is what people do “when the manager is not looking.”

Yes, all we have to do to fix our bizarre cultural worship of pirate CEO’s is to tinker with business school attitudes. The root of all evil is based in schooling probably in those ethics classes.

I get tired of hearing this nonsense. It is important to have good business schools. It is important that they communicate ethics, attitude, business knowledge and considerable training. But that’s it.

A business school is not like wading into a pool blessed by an angel and getting healed.

Overconfident attitudes and overly proud, ridiculously vain attitudes are not based in business school curriculum but in larger society.

If we want to change that, we give stockholders a say in how the company runs, put rigorous controls on executive salaries and change bonuses to consider long term contributions and actual contributions.

James Pilant

Bank Taxes

On By southwerkIn business ethics4 Comments

In the United States, the tax structure is based on an obsolete manufacturing model. The basis of the taxes is the income tax and corporate tax. But the biggest sector of the economy much larger than manufacturing is the financial sector. The financial sector engages in many activities that might be charitably called gambling. A transaction tax aimed solely at the speculative practices of Wall Street would raise hundreds of billions of dollars. Perhaps the tax system could be restructured to take into consideration the simple fact of where money is made in America.

This is a British commercial for a “Robin Hood” tax. I believe we should use such a tax for general revenues. Further, there can be little doubt, the United States could raise far more money with such a banking tax than could the British.

In the United States, the middle class is a continual target for fees and local taxes. The tax system need to be rethought and a greater reliance placed on a single tax system.

James Pilant

Police Unions And Pension Funds

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics

Back in the 1990’s police unions negotiated for benefits likes salaries, health insurance and pensions. During the early years of the first decade of the 21st Century, investment banking and, in fact, often regular banking left its conservative investment moorings and struck out into mortgage “securities” and other strange ideas of what an “investment” might be.

Cities and States (even universities) got caught up in the lure of easy investment profits. Pensions suffered when these “investments” disentegrated.

And this is one of the results – from the Baltimore Sun:

Union leaders, who stress the dangerous and grueling nature of police and fire work, have resisted the pension changes that the city has proposed, saying they constitute a violation of their contract.

“Some in city government are portraying this as a crisis,” said Bob Sledgeski, president of the firefighters union. “This has been long, ongoing neglect on the part of the city to follow their own experts’ advice. That’s not an accident, and 10 years does not a crisis make.”

City Council members, led by Helen L. Holton, chairwoman of the taxation and finance committee, have been scrambling for a solution to the pension problem before the fiscal year ends June 30.

Scores of police and firefighters have threatened to resign or retire if their benefits are significantly diminished. But city officials, grappling with a $121 million overall budget shortfall, say they cannot pay much more than the currently allotted $101 million pension contribution, although the city’s required obligations would be about $166 million if no changes are made in the way benefits are calculated.

I might have been more sympathetic to the city’s financial plight if they hadn’t played with the money.

That money was not a pile of gambling chips. It was a contractual promise.

These people being penalized are not wealthy entrepeneurs, they are the police and firefighters of the city.

Everyone talks about their sacrifice and bravery right up until it comes time to write the pension checks.

And then it looks like, well, it wasn’t really a promise. Apparently they only meant it if they could play with the money and not lose it.

And they lost it.

James Pilant

Lecture On Plato

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics3 Comments

Plato falls between Socrates and Aristotle. These three philosophers lived during the Athenian decline. This caused a great deal of turmoil in their lives and deeply influenced their philosophical views. Here is a lecture on Plato I found very enjoyable.

James Pilant




Lee J. Cobb – Blacklists In American

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics

Lee J. Cobb
Hollywood is a business and has been a business for a long time. Whether, studio system, independents or corporate, it has always been a business. During the red scare of the 1950’s, actors and writers were thrown out of work for having “communist” sympathies which generally meant having the wrong ideas at the wrong time. For instance, being opposed the fascists in Spain is okay if you were opposed later than the Spanish Civil War but opposition to the Spanish fascists is suspect if you were opposed during the civil war.

Are we entering a time when having the wrong beliefs, pro religious freedom (letting the followers of Islam build mosques in the United States), expressing opposition to government surveillance (being in league with the terrorists), or believing in progressive values (liberal fascists), can get you fired?

To save your job would you name the names of others who shared your “subversive” beliefs?

Read Lee J. Cobb’s account –

From Wikipedia –

Later, Cobb explained why he “named names” saying:

When the facilities of the government of the United States are drawn on an individual it can be terrifying. The blacklist is just the opening gambit—being deprived of work. Your passport is confiscated. That’s minor. But not being able to move without being tailed is something else. After a certain point it grows to implied as well as articulated threats, and people succumb. My wife did, and she was institutionalized. The HUAC did a deal with me. I was pretty much worn down. I had no money. I couldn’t borrow. I had the expenses of taking care of the children. Why am I subjecting my loved ones to this? If it’s worth dying for, and I am just as idealistic as the next fellow. But I decided it wasn’t worth dying for, and if this gesture was the way of getting out of the penitentiary I’d do it. I had to be employable again.

— Interview with Victor Navasky for the 1982 book Naming Names

What’s worth dying for? What will it take before you sell out your friends for actions you don’t consider crimes?

James Pilant