Category: Capitalism

Earn $30 or More an Hour with These Two-Year Degrees!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism1 Comment

So says the headline in Yahoo “Hot Jobs.”

Thirty dollars an hour is the national average. Those wages are going to vary dramatically from place to place, so is availability. The article is true in the literal sense, in other words, not really.

Is it ethical to sell, sell, sell, until there is no final customer available and you’re screaming your ad slogans into the wind?

If someone were to make us a good decent legitimate offer in the job or education area, would we be able to find it? I mean, after the bright colors, the incredible salaries, the “you can do it at home” stuff, is there any legitimacy left? Can we trust anybody?

It’s the distance, you see, the lack of contact, humanity.

Look, if I walk up to you and tell you person to person, face to face, that there’s a job, you have all the skills of humankind developed over ten of thousands of years to decide if I’m telling you the truth or not. As humans we relate to one another.

The first step away from person to person was probably a sign, then a newspaper ad, then a magazine ad and then radio, and, well, you get the picture.

It is true that we have now the opportunity to buy millions of different things all over the world (and be stolen from, lied to, or manipulated from as well) but sometimes I would just like to talk to another person when doing business.

“The Apartment” And Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching

In 1959, the Apartment, was filmed. It starred Jack Lemon and Shirley MacLaine. It was nominated for ten academy awards and won five.

They filmed some scenes in New York and intended to make much of the film there but Jack Lemon became very ill after at all night shoot in Central Park. So, they filmed most of it on the lot in Hollywood.

It’s beautifully filmed (I like black and white) and there is a great deal of subtlety in the details of the background that add to the message of the film

Why do I use it in class? First, it’s a view of an America that has ceased to be. An America whose history has tremendous resonance for our own.

Lessons from the film. (Not in order of importance.)

1. There is no normal in America. Every year we think this is normal, that everyone should do this. It’s how it is and you can’t change it. Well, it’s changing anyway. The only normal is constant motion in the direction of a new normal. It’s an important lesson because some of my students feel like they can have no effect in this world and thus should retreat to a private world of friends kept at a distance and media individualized to kill time and give a brief, fraudulent feeling of fulfillment.

2. I want my students to see the changes in how women are treated and how they adapted. Women were relegated to certain jobs and they realized their only avenue to improving their lot in life was to marry well. Many of the women in the film are just temporary forms of entertainment for all intents and purposes.

3. One of the strangest qualities of the film, and the director himself pointed this out, the Jack Lemon character, for the most part, is the architect of his problems and yet we feel sympathy for him and identify with him. And again, the Shirley MacLaine character largely chooses her own fate and we feel sorry for her.

There’s a big lesson here – we often feel sympathy, often a sense of identification and sometimes, even envy, with the unethical. I tell my students about the time one of my students came to me with this story of woe that virtually demanded sympathy. And I felt that way, until I noticed a sentence in this long story of suffering. So, I stopped him and said, “You did what?” There then followed a not very effective explanation. You see, he was a criminal. He broke the law. He was in the mess because of his own decision making. He did not deserve my sympathy. Yet, I was confident that every student he regaled with his tale of suffering felt bad for him.

If we are going to practice ethics, we are going to have to be tougher than that. People who do bad things, who treat other people cruelly, who act without honor or scruples, deserve moral condemnation. That will not change because you’re related to them, because they are friends, really attractive or you like their story. Practicing ethics is tough and it means being tough on other people who do wrong.

If you know what should be done and let it have no effect on your actions, you are acting unethically. You have failed to act ethically.

4. The role of minorities in the film is important. I believe that if film goers in 1960 believed that the film was inaccurate in its portrayal of women and minorities, it would not have been a success. Blacks in the film appear twice in the film, once a shoeshine boy and then, a group waiting to clean the offices at the end of the business day. My eagle eye students found a black man working among the mistreated proles in the huge office background and, once again, at the Christmas party (same guy). It just goes to proves that when lecturing it’s safer not to let them talk!

If my students ability to find a minority in the background when I couldn’t was bad enough, they really got me on the Eastern Europeans. I missed the fact that his neighbors and landlady were of the same ethnicity His landlady and his neighbors are all immigrants and recent ones. (The film is only fifteen years after the close of the Second World War.) They were warm and kind to the Jack Lemon character although judgmental about his ethical failings. (I did not realize the importance of this until it was pointed to out to me. Now, in my defense, I did realize the importance of his neighbor, the doctor, but I didn’t get the big picture.)

I was never able to figure out whether the restaurant hideaway was Chinese or Japanese. It seemed like one of those ethnic groups running a restaurant with some kind of Tahitian background. But basically we can conclude from the film that orientals are okay as long as they are serving food.

Generally, how did the film portray the different groups. The white corporate types were greedy, licentious, petty, and lacked any self perception whatever. Blacks are in the background, soulless workers who pretty things up. Chinese (possibly Japanese) are allowed certain profession but corporate life isn’t one of them. The Eastern Europeans are authentic human beings. They are tolerant and kind but willing not just to make moral pronouncements but willing to call attention to them. They openly criticize the Jack Lemon character for his (not real) sexual adventures. They have a moral center. Aside from our two main characters, they are the only real human beings in the film. And to be blunt, our two major characters only arrive at human hood in the last few minutes of the film.

If there is no other reason to show the film, the movement of the main characters from caricature to humanity makes it all worthwhile.

The doctor is the moral center of the film. He issues the call to personhood to the sinner in the next apartment.

As in instructor, it’s a good choice because there is no difficulty in getting students to watch and remember the film. They enjoy it and it leaves its mark on them. That makes it more useful than many more “on point” films.

If you are going to teach, misdirection, implification and appeals to unconscious motivations are legitimate tools.

James Pilant

Using Film To Teach Business Ethics

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching

I use three films in teaching business ethics, The Apartment, Cinema Paradiso, and Sabrina (the original with Bogart) (What! You think I’m crazy enough to use the Harrison Ford version?).

A thoroughly excellent question might be raised by this. “Why, Mr. Pilant, do you use commercial films instead of documentaries or teaching films from your school’s underused library?”

My response, “They don’t work, that’s why.”

Watch the reaction of your class when you announce the title of the latest exciting documentary you have found. You will note that a proportion of the class have immediately decided that the CIA had found some new interesting way of failing to extract useful information but you’re going to try it out on them anyway. The rest of the class is glad they don’t have to do any work. Strangely enough, watching films is very difficult once you realize it is an active form of study requiring training and experience, but they don’t know that and wouldn’t believe you if you told them.

So, you have lost half the battle right there.

If the film is any way (down to the microscopic) controversial, a good part of your students will ignore or marginalize the message. But what if you have a great success, what if the class cries in unison, demands action and stops after class to tell you how great it all was. You didn’t do to well on that one either. People are embarassed about their shows of emotion, their passion dies away and that letter they were going to write isn’t going to be written. You gave them the same heart tingling experience of good cone of ice cream.

So, it is time for you to argue that if documentaries don’t work, that people tune them out, etc., why can’t they do the same thing with your academy award winning crap? Because they can’t.

They can’t tune them out. The wonderful thing about great films (and when I mean great, I mean the top of the top, the top 100, the absolute best) is you can’t ignore them. They get you down where you live. When your classroom watches a documentary, you can always pick out students who are going through it objecting to this, disregarding that. They are not going to let that film just do its work. They feel obligated by their politics or whatever to make sure that it doesn’t affect them.

A great film captivates. It pulls in the attention. I’ve seen it multiple times. All the students in the class with the same expression watching the same film.

Sometimes, it’s surprising. One of my most difficult decisions was whether or not to use Cinema Paradiso. The film has two choices of spoken language, French or Italian, so I have to use a subtitled film in class. In America, the phrase “foreign film” or the even deadlier phrase “not in English'” are usually enough to stop people from watching the film in the first place.  Because the class is used to my strange ways, when I tell them I am going to use a subtitled film, any objections are quickly murmured in the back of the class. (They have gotten to used to situations in which I explain something they know couldn’t possible be true or make any sense and then I make it work. It disturbs them.)

So, I show the film. At first, there is not the strong attention I get when I show one of my English speaking films but after  the scene where the Catholic Priest is removing all the kissing scenes from the town’s movies, they are caught and they never escape.

Film is not a logical medium. It goes around the frontal lobes and lodges its message in the emotional parts of our thinking like a cleverly thrown curve ball. So, my use of outrage producing or factual documentary material throws a few facts their way which will quickly be disregarded or forgotten. I have noted in my own life that if I read a book about the Spartans, I retain far more information and make far more observations than I do from the History Channel’s documentary.

Besides I want to change my student’s way of thinking and improve their methods of observation when watching films and television.

What’s more, I want to introduce controversial subject to them without running into the immediate rejection ideas usually get.

So, how to do it? Films. No just any films, but masterpieces, films that have resonated with audiences for many years. Why those? Because these films have demonstrated a staying power which indicates they have connected with our unconscious in some manner. Now generally speaking, we believe we like certain films because of the actors, the kind of film (Western, etc.) and because our friends told us we had to see it. Those are most of the films we see. But the ones we remember, the ones that play with our heads, the ones we think about, often years later, have an appeal to our whole mind, not just the conscious stuff (which for many people isn’t that a big a deal anyway) (Okay, look, if you spend your life slavishly duplicating the actions of your neighbors, doing all the things you are supposed to do and avoiding any difficult decisions especially moral and ethical ones, the only difference between you and a corpse is that your status is not properly defined.) I use those films.

The unconscious is where the action is. Consciousness is nice, don’t get me wrong. I try to spend a lot of time there. Nevertheless, many of my decisions (more than I like to think) and most of my emotions emerge from the depths of the mind, not the top.

So, to change my students way of thinking as painlessly as possible for them and me, I use films. Now don’t think for a moment that we do not discuss the logical, moral implications of the film. We do. There is a cerebral frontal cortex appealing part of the class. But reaching behind that is more important.

Look at the three films. What are the messages? The one message they have in common is that humanity is more important than business success. But in particular –

The Apartment – Love is more important than success.

Cinema Paradiso – Film can fill your life with wonder that morphs into action.

Sabrina – We can change.

Now, take a look at my students. (Obviously, this is a majority of my students, not all, but see how many you think reject all three of these.) 1. I’m going to have a meaningful emotional life just as soon as I have enough money(or I get the right job or after my education or after I move). 2. Films and television are just films and televisions. I am too smart, too clever, too worldly wise for my actions to be influenced. (The unexamined life.) 3. I can totally completely change my life anytime I feel like it. I have total free will. Now, salary wise and where I live, I’m stuck but my point of view and how I live, if I want to change, I can. (And on number 3, let me point out that I get to stand at the top of the classroom and observe them and their bullet and bombproof self concepts day after day.) Continuing point 3, when they watch Sabrina they just can’t understand why Bogart hasn’t already changed or they spend a great deal of time telling themselves that if only they were in his shoes, they’d know what was important, when the fact is that if they were in Bogart’s position you couldn’t blast them out with a tactical nuke.

Now, it’s time for the main question. What do you teach them with these movies?

The Apartment gives examples of the changing status of women, the treatment of minorities and the often petty nature of corporate life.

The unconscious lessons are that authority can be wrong, that individual action is important and that you can live as hero or heroine even in small matters. I could teach these as part of the conscious part of the class but what for? The ideas are now planted. I might water them a little but time and inclination are more important in determining the effect. (There are also thousands of tiny lessons relating to verbal matters, environment, emotional stances and ways of thinking.)

Cinema Paradiso shows how a business can become embedded in the life of a community and how that influence changes over time. I also find it useful for demonstrating small business decision making as opposed to corporate decision making.

The unconscious lessons are the effect of entertainment particularly movies and, most precisely, on children. The film recreates and recaptures the films of our childhood but much, much more important, it captures the emotional content of those films, the emotional content that redirected our lives.

Sabrina shows the upside and downside of self transformation, an American preoccupation. The film’s observations on class differences are delightful not to mention the interrelationship between the personal and the professional.

The unconscious lesson of the film is that we do not live our lives logically or reasonably. Far more interesting is the idea that even if you are short, fairly ugly, depressed and (in the film) unemotional, beautiful young ladies will still find you attractive. (Whoops! Sorry, that’s my lesson from the film.)

The big lesson from the film is this. You are not what you think you are. You never will fully get a grip on the mystery of you. You are a great unknown. You may look for meaning all your life in books, in experience, in profession or normality, and one day, one moment, it will hit you in the form of a child, a friend, an observation, or in the case of this movie, a young female. And if you fail to grab it, to realize the importance of it, to see what it means, you will walk, talk and eat and still be as dead as a stone.

That’s what I want my students to know.

James Pilant

Remember Challenger And The Ethical Failings That Killed The Crew

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure1 Comment

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger disintegrated at 11:39AM. The crew cabin flew free of the conflagration and fell toward the earth. The initial forces on the crew were in the area of twelve to twenty times the force of gravity. These forces are not sufficient to cause death and unlikely to even cause injury. There are oxygen tanks available on the backs of the seats. These tanks are turned off during flight and have to be manually turned on. Three of four in the command section were turned on. Analysis of the amount of air used is within the bounds of what individuals would breathe during the fall to earth. The crew cabin fell to earth for two minutes and forty-five seconds. There is no clear conclusion to the question of whether or not these astronauts were conscious up to the point of impact. If they were conscious what they would have been thinking is also a matter upon which there is no clear conclusion. The crew cabin struck the ocean at two hundred and eight miles per hour. This is equivalent to over two hundred times the force of gravity.

January 27th, 1986: That evening there was a telecon meeting between Morton Thiokol, Marshal Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center.

The four engineers from Morton Thiokol recommended canceling the launch because the temperature at the pad was too low. They noted that previous launches at low temperatures had coincided with damage to the o-rings protecting the joints in the rockets from the contractions and movements of the launch and flight. It was pointed out that if an o-ring failed hot gas would be expelled from the resulting hole in the rocket.

NASA placed pressure on the company to launch. Morton Thiokol cleverly developed a new way to make decisions removing the engineers from the process and disregarding their report.

It should be emphasized that the men who made the decision to launch were not bad men. They were upstanding members of the community with wives and family. They had legitimate concerns about their jobs and futures. Morton Thiokol was pursuing a new contract with the government for a one billion dollar contract for missiles. NASA was trying to get a launch done while under considerable pressure from the White House to get the thing up on schedule.

It is of course also to be noted that while these upstanding members were under severe pressure to make a difficult decision, it was not quite as serious a situation as falling for two minutes and forty five seconds at two hundred and eight miles per hour into the surface of the ocean less than a day later.

No one who advocated that the Challenger be launched over the objections of the engineers lost their jobs, were demoted or punished.

Morton Thiokol was liable under its contract with NASA for a ten million dollar penalty in the event of such a failure but was also liable for all damages that resulted from such a failure. NASA in a brilliant move released them from liability for the damages if they would immediately pay the ten million dollar penalty. (Losses from the Challenger disaster are minimally two billion dollars.) However, upon later consideration concluded that Morton Thiokol should not pay the ten million immediately but should take it out of later profits. However, there is no indication that any such money has been paid.

Morton Thiokol won the missile contract they were seeking and also continued to build the rockets for the shuttle, although there were able to charge a higher price.

The CEO was later quoted, which he said was taken out of context, as saying that the Challenger disaster had cost the company less than ten cents per share of stock.

Roger M. Boisjoly and Allan J. McDonald, the engineers who was principally responsible for raising concerns about the launch and were willing to discuss what had happened in the discussions between Morton Thiokol and NASA were shunned by colleagues and demoted.

Let us review.

No one who sent these astronauts to their deaths were fired, demoted or otherwise punished.

The company that built the malfunctioning units and whose officers had sent the astronauts to their deaths were rewarded with further contracts and improved profits.

Those that warned of the danger were demoted and shunned by their colleagues.

Their warnings had no effect. They might very well have smiled, said the shuttle rockets were the epitome of engineering perfection, and asked to be assigned to a new and promising project.

So, let us place ourselves in the position of McDonald or Boisjoly. You can object to the launch and save no one. Even if you directly participate in the decision to launch giving every possible assurance of safety when you know nothing of the kind, you will not be punished.

Goodness, this is not like your usual example in ethics is it? In the classical decision making example in the standard textbooks, you have an ethical decision which if you make you will lose your job, your income and have your future seriously damaged.

This is a real one.

You no matter what your training or experience can give an opinion based on hard evidence to your company of imminent danger based on your product and not only do they not care, neither does the consumer. When death occurs it is you that is penalized even with full national news focus on the subject and a commission of inquiry asking you whether or not you have been retaliated against. Your superiors chew you out using expletives and when found out claim they never even raised their voices. But nothing will happen to them. You rocked the boat. The company knows what you do not. They will not be penalized. You were right but you were right in the wrong way. You’re just not a team player. You don’t have the right attitude. Killing, maiming, destroying the prospects and impairing the future of your nation are not serious problems. The worst moral failing you can have is not playing well with others.

The worst thing about this little piece of history is what it says about the standards of morals and ethics at the highest level of government, media and industry. The story held to was that this was an unfortunate accident. Most people still believe that.

http://www.onlineethics.org/CMS/profpractice/ppessays/thiokolshuttle.aspx

http://history.msfc.nasa.gov/book/chptnine.pdf

http://www.jstor.org/pss/4165304

Why Is Unethical Conduct In Business So Common?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

This is a re-publish of an earlier essay. I think it is on point for our current situation.

There are several factors. The first was the advent of the baby boomers to power and authority replacing the Depression and the World War Two Generations. Probably the best date for this transfer would be 1976 when Jimmy Carter became President. He was the first President to not have served in the Second World War since Truman. The significance of this was huge. The previous generation had solid memories of the failures of financial sector and the long hard times that resulted. The difference between study and experience are dramatic. It’s even worse when it’s collective experience. The new generation had stories, movies and television to remind them of the pain of those years, but it didn’t carry the power of the emotions involved, the collective helplessness of more than fifteen years when everything that generation knew was in peril.
The second factor I point to is the advent of the Chicago School of Economics and the doctrines of Milton Friedman. I point in particular to Friedman’s 1970 article in the New York Times Magazine, The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits. This is my favorite quote.
But the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book Capitalism and Freedom, I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”
I want you to understand that it appears to me that included in “the doctrine of social responsibility” is duty, honor, religion and patriotism, to name a few. (I like to tell my ethics class that the no religion agrees with this doctrine that doesn’t practice human sacrifice.) Here we have a rejection of those values that constitute Western Civilization. From Wikipedia:
The concept of western culture is generally linked to the classical definition of the Western world. In this definition, Western culture is the set of literary, scientific, political, artistic and philosophical principles which set it apart from other civilizations. Much of this set of traditions and knowledge is collected in the Western canon.
These things that make us human, these things that convey the values – the principles, that are the result of thousands of years of human experience are swept away in a simple doctrine that justifies any action within “the rules of the game.”
I want to point out one more thing: notice that the principles of “within the rules of the game” and “open and free competition without deception or fraud” are in many ways contradictory. If you can make or influence the rules why should you compete? Now get a load of this: Friedman tells businessmen that they are free of any restraint, every limitation of conduct, but they are supposed to hold to the duty of engaging in open and free competition without deception or fraud: Do whatever is necessary to make a profit but be good boys and compete.
The third element is the gradually increasing wave of deregulation which begins in a small way in 1971 when the Nixon Administration recommends the rail and trucking industries be deregulated. By the time, Jimmy Carter is elected the doctrine has gained enormous strength and much wider application. The basic implication that government regulation damages business success hampered any attempt at new regulation no matter what happened. This attitude is critical to what happens next.
The fourth element can be dated roughly as beginning 1981. Hostile takeovers and corporate raiding become regular parts of the business news. The basic significance of this is that it is a war. A war fought between manufacturing and finance, with manufacturing losing at every turn. The secondary effects were only a little less worse. You could make money at it. Not little money like people made from developing new products and making things, big money. T. Boone Pickens, one of the major corporate raiders of the period is worth three billion dollars and is rated currently as the 117th richest man in the world. Now let us add in a related development, the financing of these takeovers. Drexel Burnham Lambert paid Michael Milken 550 million dollars a year during its heyday. What did Michael Milken do to merit this: he created high yield bonds, junk bonds. The era of “financial innovation” begins here. Continuing to the present day, more and more bizarre mathematical creations will be used for investment, financing and speculation.
Now, let’s combine them. Those Americans familiar with the pain of the results pass on the reins of power to a new generation. The Chicago School of Economics will provide the philosophical basis for discarding societal responsibility. The government reacts with deregulation which makes it exceptionally difficult to re-regulate industries. The financial industry begins destroying manufacturing in its search for profits.
All the elements are now in place for what has happened and continues to happen. The American population without previous experience of the fruits of financial speculation have no common idea of what should be done. The ethic of the business world is converted from a complex set of factors motivated by religion, philosophy, the myriad other factors that tie us to one another as a people to one of profit as the only value. The government accepts this philosophy and applies it, making deregulation and not regulating pretty much the official doctrine of the government. The financial industry begins destroying healthy companies making hundreds of millions of dollars for what might kindly be described as little effort. The government does not intervene to stop this, which is a clear demarcation line in history that the power of that part of American that makes things is eclipsed by the power of the deal makers, the part of American society that moves money.
Out of this history we grew a generation of Americans who knew with certainty (and unfortunately with accuracy) that going into the financial industry, taking risks, and pushing the boundaries of the rules could make one a multi-millionaire in short order. The most capable of the students at the great universities many of them Ivy League schools went into finance. Those individuals were supposed to be a wide variety of things especially the keepers of the flame, the torch that is passed from one generation to another, the moral standards, the courage, the willingness to sacrifice for their country and their fellow man so that all can prosper. It is difficult to maintain a system of morals when the rewards are so extreme. My understanding is that ivy leaguers can start at a Wall Street firm for as much as $350,000 in salary. And after that if you are willing to do “what it takes,” the path to being a mere millionaire is quick and easy. These people were supposed to be crusading attorneys, publishers, politicians, administrators – all those things that make societies function. There is an ancient precept that nations succeed based on the wisdom of the learned, the courage of their soldiers and the efforts of the workers. Our best and brightest don’t go there. They go to make money in a moral vacuum.
We are going to pay for this for a long time. When the basic doctrine, the ethos of a country becomes devoted to the acquisition of wealth with not even a tiny lip service to virtue you get unethical conduct on a broad front across the business world. Everything that has happened since then, has grown out of these events that I described. The Savings and Loan Etc. (I was going to list them but you know as well as I do what they are and I find it too depressing to make such a list just at the moment) are all explainable out of these elements.
Well, I wrote this in two hours. It’s a quick and dirty summary of what I think. A lot of it is just a portion of my thought and I will probably develop the elements over time.
I wouldn’t mind hearing what you think and you can be brutal. When I was in grad school, I thought that if some teacher marked on my papers, I would be terribly offended. A professor named Don Hoover literally marked out more than a third of what I wrote in a quite lengthy article with great big red pen strokes and I discovered to my astonishment that it didn’t bother me at all. I made the corrections and turned it back in. So, if you find the time it what must be a very busy schedule to comment I will be pleased.
James Pilant

Jen Lamoureux Writes In Support Of Sustainability

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics

Jen Lamoureux writes with approval of Philip Brookes’ argument about having values greater than money. She also elaborates on her economic and social ideas. It is quite provocative. You should read it. jp

So true! We cannot expect eternal economic growth. At some point, an economy will either stabilize (optimistically) or will decline. A growth of 4%-5% may not sound like much, but compounded over time, it is simply unsustainable. 4% is actually a very large sum of money when one is talking about an economy. One must also consider who the consumers are. One must either export goods and/or services, which means depleting the economy of another country by monopolizing their citizens as our own consumers, or one must continually find new ways to increase the money being spent within the economy of one’s own country. That, in turn, means finding ways to increase efficiency. Typically, increasing efficiency in this country means more deeply exploiting the work of the lower classes so that the higher echelons may earn more money. This causes the disparity between the upper classes and lower classes to widen. At some point, we must see that allowing a small portion of people to control the wealth and monopolize the consumer power in this country is not a sustainable model. At some point, we must realize that this sort of disparity causes social unrest and a dehumanization of those with less earning capability. And, at some point, members of the upper classes will have reached a critical mass in the amount of goods and services they are able to consume, which will lead to a decline in consumer spending, and thus penalization of the lower classes in the forms of pay-cuts and layoffs. I am not necessarily advocating for communism or even socialism; rather, I advocate for a model in which workers are paid a living wage by their employers and people are allowed a fair chance at creating pleasant lives for themselves. While it may be true that a labor force of unskilled workers is easily trainable and thus, replaceable, it is no less true that their labor is what creates the goods and services being sold and managed by those who are “skilled.” The idea of any company, good, or service is absolutely worthless if one does not have the labor capital necessary to change those goods and services from concept to reality. If we continue without acknowledging these very basic truths of labor and commerce, the societal effects will indeed be dire.

Look At This!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure

I found this on the web last night. It’s a video of American unemployment by county. The film runs month by month and in about a minute you see how unemployment developed in the U.S. over the last two years. It starts in January 2007 and runs until May of 2010. High employment counties have light colors. High unemployment counties are darker. You can watch the whole nation darken in a two year period, it’s very striking.

Rumors Of A Moral Economy

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching4 Comments

Fernwood Publishing is going to bring out the book, Rumors of a Moral Economy. It is to be used as a textbook in business ethics. I attempted to apply for a review copy only to discover that since I live in Arkansas and lack a Canadian Province to report as my locale, I am out of luck. (They don’t do any business in the United States? I mean we have a common border, right?)

Nevertheless, I have the privilege of having as a friend on Facebook, the author of the aforementioned textbook. He has his very own blog (which I link to, only the seventh link I have on my blog) Christopher Lind, The Moral Economy. This is his picture and a brief description of what can only be described as a busy career. (Now, I copied this in its entirety from the web site, Fernwood Publishing.  So, if they want me to stop recommending the book, the author or copying their advertisement so others can see it, I will.)

  • Affiliation: St. Andrew’s

Dr. Christopher Lind is a Senior Fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto.
From 2003 to 2006 he served as Director of the Toronto School of Theology. The Toronto School of Theology is one of the largest and most diverse ecumenical theological cooperatives in North America. From 1985 until 2003 he was based in Saskatoon, first as Professor of Church & Society and then as President of St. Andrew’s Theological College. A lay Anglican, from 2000 to 2003 he also served as President of the amalgamated St. Andrew’s College and St. Stephen’s College in Saskatoon and Edmonton, sponsored by the United Church of Canada.
Dr. Lind holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from York University in Philosophy and Political Science, a Master of Divinity degree from Trinity College and a PhD in Theology from the University of St. Michael’s College specializing in Ethics and Economics. He has authored or co-edited five books in the areas of Ecumenical Social Ethics, Globalization and Agriculture, Mission and Theology. Dr. Lind has distinguished himself as an ethicist and theologian over 30 years of an academic career. His employment and career path are expressions of his vocation as a leader in personal, institutional, and social transformation.

I went on the web and read some of his stuff. He’s a fine writer. He avoids a heavy academic style for a more comfortable prose style. So, read his blog. Wait with breathless anticipation for his book and I will attempt to lay hands on actual Canadian copy (I may be indicted for espionage.) and tell you all about it.

James Pilant

My Friend, Jen, Argues For Normative Ethics!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics

My friend, Jen, commented on my earlier post, Personal Change Doesn’t Equal Social Change. He is kind to agree with me but I found his comments significant and I want to share them. So, I present Jen!

I agree with this post, and I think the shift has to start somewhere in education. Business ethics as a discipline needs to evolve beyond what it currently is. Currently, most of business ethics focuses on adhering to laws and other governmental regulation while maximizing profit. There is little motive for taking into account ethical concerns which do not have some sort of legal impetus. This shift will likely happen as slowly as the shift away from ethics and morality in business, but it must begin with education of those who are newly venturing into the corporate world. Business majors, MBAs, etc. need some sort of educational motivation to effect change as they move into the working world, which I believe will come in the form of making business ethics more of a normative field.

Is Greed (Or Avarice) A Deadly (Death Dealing!) Sin?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics

Gary Bender, a friend of mine, has added his thoughts to a previous blog post of mine talking about telecommunications companies, law breaking and greed. He cites books I am unaware of and an author who I shall have to pay attention to. It is pleasure to present the thoughts of Gary Bender.

Oliver James, author of Affluenza: How to Be Successful and Stay Sane (2007) and The Selfish Capitalist (2008) ‘asserts that there is a correlation between the increasing nature of affluenza and the resulting increase in material inequality: the more unequal a society, the greater the unhappiness of its citizens’ and that ‘Selfish Capitalism is a particularly aggressive form of capitalism found predominantly in English speaking nations – the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. James argues that in these countries, around 23% of the population has suffered from some form of mental illness such as depression or anxiety in the last 12 months compared to an average of 11.5% of German, Italian, French, Belgian, Spanish and Dutch people who, James argues, live under a system of social or unselfish capitalism.’ He has been criticized for including Japan, which has a high suicide rate, as an unselfish capitalist state.

Besides the points you make, James, on ethics, there is sound scientific evidence to show that avarice is, indeed, a deadly sin.