The Commentariat

On By southwerkIn ethics

This passage is from Glenn Greenwald’s column on Salon. I hope that I hold my commentators in as much esteem as Mr. Greenwald. He’s right over and over again. You learn a lot from those who comment. They have thoughts and ideas you hadn’t considered. If this blog gains readership and becomes more and more successful, a great deal of success will be due my critics and commentators.

James Pilant

This is the essay from Glen Greenwald’s column –

This, for me, underscores how truly valuable is a vibrant comment section. The effort to find a compelling title had been a fairly futile one notwithstanding the efforts of multiple people who do this sort of thing professionally. But by expanding the effort to thousands of people, the number of great ideas increased dramatically. That’s a microcosm of how a smart, engaged readership and commentariat can substantially improve the value of what one writes. I’m periodically mocked for my propensity to add multiple updates to my posts, but so often, my doing so is because readers/commenters point out added ideas, evidence, arguments, objections, etc. that I didn’t know or think of and which deserve attention or a response. The ability to interact and engage with readers, rather than speak to them in monologue form, has always been one of the things that has most appealed to me about writing a blog. Several of the posts I’ve written which received the most attention, made the biggest impact, came directly from readers/commenters.

For those reasons, I’m amazed when journalists scorn their comment sections and treat them like a nuisance or worse. The interactive aspect of writing on the Internet — being able immediately to hear from smart, opinionated, engaged readers who often know things that the writer doesn’t know — is one of the forum’s biggest advantages. It provides a crucial check (no factual, logical or grammatical errors remain undetected for very long), and the ability to quickly access the knowledge base of thousands and thousands of people at once is an irreplaceable resource. Of course, commenters (like every group) can sometimes be annoying, and for the thin-skinned, the criticisms to which one is continuously subjected render the entire process undesirable. But as this highly successful search for a creative book title reveals, the benefits so far outweigh the burdens that it’s not even a close call. Smart journalists see their readership as a great resource to be tapped, not as a passive audience to be ignored.

Learn About The Magic Word – PREEMPTION

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

Preemption is a legal device that gets rid of state regulation by replacing it with federal regulation. Without preemption, a corporation might have to be worried about multiple lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. By preempting the states, the feds make state regulation of corporations impossible.

The America I Grew Up In

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

This is a quote from Rogue Columnist –

I grew up in an America that had created the greatest middle class in the history of the world, a great civilization not just a great market. Where people were citizens, not consumers. Where we landed men on the moon and would always be on the forefront. Where Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream…” And we worked for that. But we’ve become a different America and different Americans. For King warned, “A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.”

I fully agree. I believe in the unity of citizenship and a cooperative ethic recognizing that we are all in this together particularly in these very bad times.

James Pilant

Suggested Rules For Corporate “Moral” Decision Making

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Corporate Social Responsibility, ethics, Philosophy of Business3 Comments

Badaracco is presenting a theory of ethics that I have seen in textbooks before. I’m not impressed. The first has got to be the shallowest possible interpretation of Utilitarianism as well as an equally inadequate exposition of the principle of rights. Then there is “what will people think.” My reputation is all. And we can’t live in a fantasyland. Wow, I betcha that Bible and the Western Civilization stuff got nailed there.

Of course, I guess you have to make it simple for the masses of the corporate relativists in the crowd.

Oh, well, read it for what’s it is worth –

The conference’s concluding keynote speaker, Joseph Badaracco, Professor of Business Ethics at Harvard Business School, presented the assembled CIOs a practical guide to making ethical decisions—not in case of right versus wrong, because that’s easy—but in right versus right, because that’s hard.

Badaracco suggested four ways to think about each decision:

1. Will it produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people? That’s a good place to start, Badaracco said, but it’s not sufficient.
2. What are the rights of the people involved? For example, if a Nobel Prize winner, on the verge of discovering a cure for cancer, needs your heart, having it cut out of your chest against your will would, ultimately, produce a great deal of good for a great number of people, but it would certainly violate your rights. Not to mention establishing a grisly precedent.
3. What will the decision say about your values, your character, and the values and character of your organization? Leaders need to represent the values they hold dear. However, simply focusing on how the decision reflects upon you can be short-sighted at best, priggish at worst. Finally,
4. What will work in the real world? Leaders cannot afford to live in fantasyland.

All these questions eventually need to be answered, and one can spend a long time thinking about them. But say you don’t have a lot of time? Badaracco offered a quick three-step process:

1. The newspaper test. How will you feel if your decision hit the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper?
2. The Golden Rule. How would you feel if someone else made the decision about you?
3. The obituary test. How would you like the people you respect to look back at your decision?

Shareholder Power?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business, shareholder

One again, I’m going to lament that the people who own the corporations don’t seem to have any actual control over them. Let me quote Nouriel Roubini from his excellent essay, Gordon Gecko Reborn.

There are also massive agency problems in the financial system, because principals (such as shareholders) cannot properly monitor the actions of agents (CEOs, managers, traders, bankers) that pursue their own interest. Moreover, the problem is not just that long-term shareholders are shafted by greedy short-term agents; even the shareholders have agency problems. If financial institutions do not have enough capital, and shareholders don’t have enough of their own skin in the game, they will push CEOs and bankers to take on too much leverage and risks, because their own net worth is not at stake.

At the same time, there is a double agency problem, as the ultimate shareholders – individual shareholders – don’t directly control boards and CEOs. These shareholders are represented by institutional investors (pension funds, etc.) whose interests, agendas, and cozy relationships often align them more closely with firms’ CEOs and managers. Thus, repeated financial crises are also the result of a failed system of corporate governance.

That’s what I think too.

Simple statement – We hear over and over again about property rights but start talking about actual shareholder control, power held by the actual property owners, howls of outrage cloud the horizon.

The people that own the corporations should have say about what they do.

James Pilant

Listening!?

On By southwerkIn ethics3 Comments

I went to a wedding on Saturday. My sister, Linda, married John Fricke. My sister is very pretty. Somehow my genetics failed in this particular area but if looks and genetics can be compared to gambling, Linda broke the house. John is tall and handsome. Since, his genetics are his own, I don’t feel quite so bad about that.

I’m not good at weddings. I am self conscious and worry a lot because my 17 year old son keeps saying, “Dad, you can’t say that.” He’s probably right.

So, what is the subject of which I write? Well, probably getting out of our (my) head once and a while would be a good thing. I deserve a little credit since I am a very fine listener. But there is one problem, I forget to turn it on.

Listening is a skill and a difficult one. I had the opportunity to practice almost every day as an adviser for a couple of years. But it’s still hard and I forget to turn it on. We would much rather coast through life than live it and I am not much of an exception. I have a serious problem with not living all the time. The ridiculous thing is that I tell my class that if they are awake and alive five percent of the time and they live to be a hundred years old, they’ve only actually lived five years. Than I call upon them to have some more life. As their teacher, I should not play such a hypocrite.

Is there a moral responsibility to pay attention to the group and try to take its tone? Well, Lord Chesterfield thought so. He used an example of a funeral as a place where high spirits would be out of place and made it a rule to take the same attitude of the group.

I only did that sota on Saturday. I suppose I could promise to do better but this would impose an intolerable burden on my sister. After all, I can’t ask my relatives to keep getting married until I get enough practice in.

What moral responsibility do we have to support and participate? I frankly am unaware of any rules. So, I am issuing a call. Are there any rules? And if so what are they?

All may participate!

James Pilant

Corporate Crime – Travesties Of Justice

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

Watch this video where Mokhiber explains how corporates avoid penalties for their crimes.

Is Corporate Crime Simply The Way Things Are?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics2 Comments

Parenti claims corporate crime is far more endemic than commonly thought. Parenti’s reporting of corporate crimes and their penalties is scathing.

Net Netrality Endangered By The Mushy Middle!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Privatization

Americans are conditioned by their upbringing to compromise, to share, and to make deals. This makes it easier to get along with people and facilitates the development of relationships. But anyone who has eaten an entire bag of M&M’s knows that there can be too much of a good thing.

Now, there are people in this society, some of them famous, who say over and over again, that what we ought to do, is get the two sides together and compromise.

Net neutrality is the current target of these people. Now, here are our choices, we can allow corporate ownership of the internet or we can maintain it as a public property, so to speak, allowing all equal access. I have to tell you, I don’t see a lot of middle ground. They say if the internet goes to corporate ownership, we will have the right to complain. Well, I have the right to complain about lots of stuff, but the people who are concerned with my complaints are not many. More to the point, throw my complaint up against the power and influence of a giant multi national corporation and that phrase about snowballs and the nether regions leaps to mind.

It’s not hard for me to figure that this web site with no advertisement and no income production is not going to be a priority for a corporate controlled internet. I will wind up with long, long waits for those wishing to see my site and for many there will be no wait at all because they will never be able to see my site. My voice will disappear. That gives me a stake in the outcome and it doesn’t make me friendly to a compromise that really allows no other option but surrender to private ownership of the internet.

Sometimes, you can’t compromise. Sometimes, you can’t give int.

This is one of those times.

James Pilant

Police Academy (1984)

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

A little off the path of business ethics. The film, Police Academy, is now 26 years old. I have always enjoyed the theme which they play over the end credits. I would like to note that Leslie Easterbrook who played Sergeant Debbie Callahan in all seven films said that she thought that police would be angry (and she’d get lots of tickets), but police loved the film. It does seem to be a perennial favorite with law enforcement around the world having been a very successful film in places like Spain and Scandinavia.

While many of you will like and remember the closing music, probably many more of you remember the actual theme, and so I include the POLICE ACADEMY Soundtrack Score Suite. Have fun remembering and if you are too young, take a look back at something from the 1980’s that won’t scare you.