Category: business ethics

Writing about Business Ethics!

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Since I have returned to writing regularly on my business ethics site, it is important to reflect on what has changed since I first began this project.

I started this blog in 2006 and often published several times a day. I was very enthusiastic. Each morning I would go over the major news sites carefully reading their “Business” sections (sometimes the sites called it “Money” or some other euphemism) and there were always one of two things worthy of a business ethics writer’s attention.

Well, now it is 2025 and we are just at the end of first six months of this lawless administration. I went through the news and came up with 25 solid business ethics topics to discuss — and that is when I stopped counting. The regular business ethics issues I saw when I began have been replaced by a flood of business ethics failures and obscenities. One day’s news output could keep a man writing for weeks.

Wanton, incompetent and often downright evil behavior is a constant in the news, in particular when discussing the actions of our current President. But many business leaders, the wealthy and other politicians have leaped on the immorality bandwagon. Never before in American history has being cruel, self serving and vile been so celebrated and publicized. I never thought to live to see such times and it is painful to see such evil and so little push back.

Let me give you an example. And I didn’t have to look for an example, it was on today’s news.

Stupid and Immoral — And Proud of it!

Take a look at the article linked to below. This CEO’s hatred and disdain for human beings who I might add he is paid to lead and manage is self evident. He is outwardly, nakedly and proudly empty of moral values and human decency. Not to mention, astonishingly unaware, for if AI makes workers obsolete, it does the same for CEO’s. I promise that while I weep for the suffering of workers, I will celebrate with good food and friends every CEO replaced by a machine.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ceo-brags-that-he-gets-extremely-excited-firing-people-and-replacing-them-with-ai/ar-AA1JsRr4

“CEOs are extremely excited about the opportunities that AI brings,” Elijah Clark, a chief executive who advises other head honchos on using AI at their companies, told Gizmodo in an interview. “As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI.”

“AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise,” he added, parroting cliched talking points, much like a certain over-hyped technology. “These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”

I used to teach in a business college of the type that this cretin almost certainly graduated from one does not fill me with pride. We should have done better with our students than turning out morally challenged money-grubbers. I certainly tried and many faculty I knew also tried hard to give some semblance of moral, ethical and traditionally American values teaching but we were up against the corruption and evil of our current business and political leadership. All the money and power now seems to go to the psychopath and the sycophants. It is not an edifying spectacle.

It may be in a few years that we will once again live in a democracy that this proto-fascist feast of the gluttonous pigs will be over. Be we may very well lose this and all the things a whole human being should hold dear will pass away to subsumed in a morass of greed and self interest.

We’re going to find out.

James Alan Pilant

The Lessons of this Administration

On By southwerkIn business ethics

The environment both natural and artificial shapes us.

I write about business ethics and I am deeply concerned about our current students in colleges and universities across the United States. Right now they are witnessing the highest and most powerful people in the United States government behaving in often illegal and continuously unethical ways. I am pointing specifically at the Cabinet members of the current administration although they are not the only ones.

They were selected on the basis of the most craven, servile loyalty and very often without any actual qualifications for their positions. And we see often on a daily basis, that to keep these jobs they must over and over again express their fealty to the current leadership. It is a degrading spectacle. Humans were meant to walk upright like free men and women not like some kind of whipped dog.

So, the current students here in this country witness a group of people getting ahead by sacrificing their honor, their self-respect, and abdicating their obedience and oath to the Constitution and laws of the United States. These people appear on television. They get good salaries and excellent benefits. There is an implication of after office service in think tanks and foundations at even more money. (However, the future of those from this openly corrupt administration is in some doubt.) Their lives are clear evidence that giving up your principles and abject loyalty to the most monstrous of individuals can be a successful strategy, if money and position are your only goals.

We do not live purely for money and position. I believe that is a truth. However, when I was teaching my students often told me that would seek a high paying position and do that job for twenty some years and then retire and live the life they wanted. I tried to explain to them that twenty years at a degrading and morally corrupt job would change them permanently, not to mention that a long life is not something that can be depended on. I am not sure they listened. After all, the lure of the opposite sex, nice cars, social position and economic security are very persuasive.

Explaining that a life you can look back on with pride is the only one worth living is difficult when your students are so young and want so many things so badly. And that is why we who teach are under a special and vital responsibility to point out the flaws in the “success at any personal cost” model.

We must be inspirational leaders not just teachers. We will have failed in a substantial and historically significant way if the current generation learns as a life lesson that servility and dishonor are proven paths to success. How will we be able to enjoy our retirements and our latter years when we see our students entering middle age in jobs they hate and despise because we were unable to communicate the important of moral and socially responsible conduct? And what of our nation? Can you imagine an entire generation admiring the antics of Pete Hegseth or Pam Bondi or any other of the cast of this ongoing federal reality show, a form of Wrestlemania writ large across our civic landscape?

If there was a time in your life to stand up for the values of the United States of America, this is it.

If you value your students’ futures, you must act to influence them to act in the interests of their nation, their posterity and their honor.

If not now, then when?

There is no convenient time to take a stand against evil.

Act now.

Your students and your nation are worth fighting for.

James Alan Pilant

Extortion as Policy

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Business ethics in the United States is taking some hard hits right now. In the last few days, one of the hardest hits that ethics in business has taken has come from what many people thought was a great university. They were mistaken.

Columbia University having agreed to a 200 million dollar payout has become the model for more Mafia style shakedowns of higher education in the United States.

Like Al Capone in Chicago, once you have one business paying protection you just roll up the rest of the block. So it is for American higher education. Columbia is the first in the dominoes.

Here – read the article about how Columbia will be the model.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-expects-other-schools-pay-164519393.html

“The deal didn’t just include a payout. Columbia also agreed to the appointment of an independent monitor who will determine if the school is abiding by the agreement, which includes provisions related to admissions, faculty hiring, and antisemitism on campus.”

Oh and look!! With an independent monitor, the shakedowns can continue indefinitely! You can bet real, hard money that a parade of demands for more money and power will come on a regular basis because once you’ve shown moral cowardice and the absence of any backbone, the extortion never, ever stops.

Perhaps, as in Florida, cronies of our “government” will find themselves well paying positions with lots of free perks in the now morally challenged atmosphere of the cowering leadership of a once great university.

The spectacle of a great university folding like a gambler with a busted flush sounds like a story from a bad novel. Who would have thought that a great independent bastion of thought would be kneeling before the great orange Cheeto?

This is a blog on business ethics so let us do our moral analysis!!

When your research grants are stopped on spurious grounds and you are given a list of nonsensical loony demands including giving up your independence and ability to do things like choose your own faculty, you should:

A. Deploy your lawyers and summon support from alumni to fight this assault.

B. Seek political support seeking input from your stakeholders while taking a principled stand for the political independence of a major university.

C. Ally with other universities like Harvard and demand fair treatment and justice.

D. Pay 200 million dollars and give into every demand the administration makes.

My analysis would be that A, B and C are all viable paths of social responsibility and justice seeking. They did D, the path of cowardice and compliance. That was wrong.

The moral bankruptcy of American businesses faced with threats from the administration offers clear parallels to the end of the Wiemar Republic and the end of democracy in that country. This is a national tragedy with dramatic implications.

Since, I have taught business ethics, I must find that Columbia has erred on the side of wrong doing and moral failure.

They have just sacrificed not just two hundred million dollars but their moral reputation and their sacred honor.

They will not be getting them back.

And their failure makes it easier for this evil administration to shake down other schools.

It will never be the same institution that it once was and may safely be discarded as having any principles besides keeping federal funding flowing at all costs.

My long term prediction is as follows. They will find in the long term that they will lose the money as well. This isn’t a just one battle, the long term goal is annihilation. As a defender of civilization and thought, Columbia is to be destroyed. And that is what is going to happen unless braver people with actual spines come to their rescue. A rescue I might add, they in no way deserve.

James Alan Pilant

    “Pure Cowardice”

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    This is what David Letterman had to say about the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

    While the network and its owners claim that the cancellation was purely motivated by financial decision making, one would have to be clueless, thoughtless and endlessly naive to accept that as a fact.

    https://www.huffpost.com/entry/david-letterman-reacts-cbs-cancels-late-show-stephen-colbert_n_68842f5ee4b02a19bf1f8bde

    (Direct Quote form the link above.)

    “I think one day, if not today, the people at CBS who have manipulated and handled this are going to be embarrassed because this is gutless,” he told former “Late Show” producers Barbara Gaines and Mary Barclay in a Zoom chat uploaded to his YouTube page.

    From the quote above one gets the impression that Letterman believes that there will be a future without the stain of the current administration upon us.

    It is to be hoped that this current regime’s catalogue of horrors will some day end but that is not at this time clear. We are faced with the possibility of these wicked monied interests and their debauched and greedy lickspittles may have permanently impaired our democracy and perverted our future into a Putin like totalitarian regime.

    Should democracy survive we will have to come to terms with the cowardice of CBS and many other businesses who gave up any shred of decency to serve the regime. But above all, we must turn our attention to the six Justices of the Supreme Court who during this time of crisis have served as the President’s abject servants in disregard of their oaths, their duty and their status as citizens of the United States. Their decisions opened the pathway to the end of our democracy and if it is saved it will be in spite of these six. They must be dealt with – impeached or the court packed — but these proto-fascist, pseudo judicial decisions must end. We must have actual judges who follow the law.

    I have been away from this my web site, Pilant’s Business Ethics, for a long time. I retired from teaching and only wished to sit quietly, read my books and maybe write a mystery novel or even a Western. At one time, I had around seventy thousand followers. Right now there are a little more than two hundred who subscribe. It has been a long time.

    But I cannot be silent. A horrifying evil infests our nation and while my voice may be small and ineffectual, it is still my voice and I am American – and I have a duty to speak and speak as loudly as I can against the current regime.

    And so, I’m back. Daily posting and much outrage. May God bless us all.

    James Alan Pilant

    The Onion Speaks the Truth

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    We live in strange times. Fools, charlatans and Fox News refugees run our government. Yet, this is all normalized by cowering and cowardly “news” organizations desperate to curry favor with the current regime.

    So, who will stand up and tell us the king is naked?

    The Onion.

    Yes, the satirical online magazine is the last bulwark of truth, justice and the American way in this nation.

    They write truthfully and forcefully about the legion of cowards and bought lackeys that inhabit the halls of the two houses of the federal legislature. We have on one hand the fellow travelers of the Republican Party willing and happy to overlook any crime or power over reach by the President and on the other hand we have the Democrats, a party (with a handful of brave exceptions) so beholden to its donors that it is unable to actually represent any average American at any time although they occasionally hold a focus group to see what they should be saying since they have no message of their own save the continuous begging for more contributions.

    The Onions speaks the truth and it is cruel … and funny.

    And sad.

    (A quote from the Onion’s essay is below:)

    “Members of Congress—now, more than ever, our nation desperately needs your cowardice,” the editorial states. “We teeter on the brink of collapse into an authoritarian state. That is why, today, The Onion calls upon our lawmakers to sit back and do absolutely nothing. Now is not the time for bravery or valor! This is the time for protecting your own hide and lining your pocket. Now is not the time for listening to your idiotic constituents drone on about what’s happening to their precious democracy. This is the time for getting down on all fours and groveling.”

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/onion-mocks-congress-cowardice-york-161111538.html

    A Truly Symbolic Picture

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    Donald Trump ordered the Rose Garden, Jackie Kennedy’s addition to the White House Grounds bulldozed. If you go to the link below you can see pictures of this atrocity as it happens.

    If it is good, or kind, or responsible, or beautiful, Trump wants it dead.

    I don’t see how this kind of nonsense can go on for three and half more years.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/photos-show-latest-white-house-162703251.html

    James Alan Pilant

    An Excellent Brief Business Ethics Film

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    I was only going to pose a link but WordPress allowed me to post the video itself. This 13 minute video is full of useful business ethics issues.

    Anyone teaching a business ethics class, could use this as a tale of ethics failure or a failure of government oversight. It could even be a test. You just run the video and ask the students to write down each business ethics issue they see. There are a good number here.

    And to all you teaching business ethics, “Keep up the good fight!” These are terrible times for those trying to do right and teaching people to do right. God bless us all.

    What would you pay to access the President of the United States and should you be able to?

    On By southwerkIn business ethics

    Investments in the President’s meme coin reached almost 148 million dollars with 220 getting to have dinner with the leader of the current regime.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-crypto-dinner-auction-massively-203501465.html

    From the article linked to above:

    The contest to dine with the president resulted in the top 220 holdings amounting to $147,586,796.41. The holders of Trump’s coin include companies based in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong.  

    This is wrong.

    You should not be able to buy access to the President.

    You should especially not be able to buy access to the President for buying his imaginary currency.

    I could write up a business ethics analysis but could this be any clearer. This is a grift paid for by people who want and are willing to pay the money for access. Our current “leader” could have been selling leaves of grass from his resort, used napkins or gold plated tennis shoes. It is still wrong.

    James Alan Pilant

    What Can One Person Do During this Governing Crisis? Part 5.

    On By southwerkIn business ethics
    (This picture of the Liberty Bell is borrowed from Wikipedia with my thanks!!)

    Embrace Your Rage!

    You have decided to resist the current regime.

    One of the strangest things that I continually encounter is that we must be civil, kind and forgiving of our opponents.

    Not only that, but we must also be careful not to exaggerate the threat. We are told over and over again that such “exaggerations” play into the hands of our enemies.

    And so instead of saying that a man who tried to violently overthrow the government was a threat to democracy, we should admit that there are two sides to the argument and spend endless hours on television news shows interviewing his devoted followers in the hope of understanding their grievances.

    No more. I’m not interested in their point of view. They are violent, foolish and a threat to American democracy. That is all the analysis I need. It is all the analysis you need.

    And yet I look on my internet feed and I see people who voted for the new regime who lost their jobs or their homes and their businesses and now they are sorry. They are on podcasts and network news and many other places. I don’t care and no one should.

    It took a massive amount of moral and ethical indifference to vote for the current president. They wanted to “shake up” the system. They wanted to “own the libs.” They did this to themselves with their indolence and stupidity. Victims of this regime deserve sympathy, not the enablers and cheerleaders of the regime. Their just reward is what is happening and what will happen.

    Our intelligentsia, our ruling class and business executives across America have walked us into the hands of a lunatic and his barely rational associates. The intelligentsia assured us that at all times our words must be measured and academic. Our ruling class is almost completely absent even the tiniest shred of moral authority or for that matter any interest in any form of morality of any kind as long as they are protected from the great unwashed masses. And above all, you have to admire the complete absence of intelligence and judgment in our business class who signed on with a madman in the hope of a crypto profit bonanza and a juicy tax cut.

    If you feel that the nation that you love is being devoured by a deranged lumpen pile of carnivorous maggots, you are not alone. And it is not surprising that you feel enraged about it.

    You are entitled to your anger. 

    Be enraged. Every day a band of foolish narcissistic clowns is making policy for the United States. What has been called the “Cradle of Liberty,” a great powerful and respected nation now appears as international source of humor, ridicule and satire. Everywhere we are pitied and the absence of what we were is lamented.  

    Any good, God fearing, patriot would be angry.

    Our enemies are rejoicing and our friends planning on a world without us.

    Yes, you are entitled to your rage.  

    We must act.

    We must resolve to never allow these neo-fascist goons access to our government and its powers.

    We must resolve never to allow the foreign nations that hate and fear us access to our elections.

    We must resolve to end the corrosive influence of money in our elections and restore the power of the American voter.

    We must resolve to end forever the revolting, rotting sewer pit of social media that poisons every aspect of our lives.

    We must resolve to live our lives with wisdom, resolve and righteousness while facing the incoherent ravings of madmen and fools, knowing that this will be hardest of all.

    God bless you for your willingness to join the cause of freedom and liberty. God bless you for courage and bravery. And God bless you for continuing the creation of democracy for our generation and all generations that follow.

    What to do now!

    On By southwerkIn business ethics
    What Can One Person Do During this Governing Crisis? Part 4.