Dylan Ratigan – Why Is He Angry?

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized4 Comments

“The fundamental problem right now is that you have conflict resolution, or problem resolution, that is predicated on bad motivations, where politicians are trying to keep their jobs with the strategy of explaining to everybody why everything is fine, no matter what…What if your economic plan—where you monetize the entire future with no money and create a giant credit casino—doesn’t work? No plan! Oh, OK—so that means we’re going to spend a few extra trillion and do no reform? Interesting concept, my politician friends!”

That’s exactly what I think. We are witnessing a fundamental failure of the leaders of this country to deal with continuing financial incompetence of Wall Street. They seem to live in a world where devotion to contributions and the next election trump all considerations of patriotism and national interests.

(The quote is from an article by Lloyd Grove in The Daily Beast.)

James Pilant

Can A Non-Profit Help Women Dress For Success?

On By southwerkIn ethics1 Comment

In San Jose, California, there is a non-profit called the Career Closet. Volunteers at this non-profit can choose among a half million dollars worth of clothes to help women dress for interviews.

Let me quote from the Mercury News: “Since 1992, this nonprofit has been dressing disadvantaged women in clothes donated by the Bay Area’s working women. Clients, referred by 130 local agencies, can choose a week’s worth of clothing, as well as handbags, jewelry and new underwear. They also get free haircuts and makeup consultations — everything they need to look professional.”

(Patty Fisher of Mercury News wrote the article I am discussing here.)

Is it fair that society judges people by looks and dress rather than their experience and ability? Certainly not. Unfortunately grim realities force accommodations. So, it is that those with more clothing knowledge, upper class accents and mannerisms will dominate the job market for years to come. With the advent of “emotional intelligence,” hiring decisions are more and more based on how your social skills appear. Emotional intelligence has great validity in sales and other people oriented jobs, but to use it broadly ignores the importance of ability and punishes the socially awkward or simply independent among us. We can do better. It doesn’t require a great deal of thinking to realize that emotional intelligence is but one facet of job skills and that they must be weighed in proportion to their importance. But when read articles about EI, I see over and over again broad statements stating directly or implying that social skills are the primary skill for success in all areas. Think about that. Think about the socially awkward like Thomas Alva Edison, Soren Kierkegaard, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, William Blake, Charles Lamb, Arthur Schopenhauer, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Blaise Pascal, William James Sidis, and H.P. Lovecraft. Let society decide that only the socially skillful are producers and creators of value. Isn’t that the current direction? I wonder what kind of human development we can expect in a civilization of the popular? What would you call that society? We already know.

It’s called Mediocracy, government by the less than average. That’s what you get when ability becomes a side issue. That’s what you get when the give and take of ideas become so painful that a feigned state of agreement becomes preferable. That’s what you get when money is more important than making things, more important than being sincere and honorable; because both sincerity and honor disturb people and has the possible side effect of appearing socially awkward.

Hiring the at-first apparently popular is easy. Hiring the skilled requires judgment. Judgment means thought, work, contemplation and the application of judgment means a willingness to disagree, to advocate for the unpopular candidate. So by exercising judgment, a skill, those who believe in hiring the skilled, become unpopular and thus unhirable themselves.

Remember acting with intelligence, judgment, humor, honor or conviction can make you unpopular. These qualities make civilization go forward. They are vital in making life worth living, in cultivating the young, following the pathway of love of country and fulfilling our responsibilities to fellow citizens and posterity.These are the things we must give up to be hirable and liked.

Something of an ethics problem, huh?

James Alan Pilant

Father/Son Movie Night! No Blog Posts!

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

On Wednesday, I didn’t post. When I was in my twenties, a very long time ago, I worked out, learning Tae Kwon Do (I have expert rank and used to teach). It was every Tuesday and Thursday night. It was important not to miss a practice. But one night, our black belt canceled. The basketball playoffs were being broadcast and he wasn’t going to miss them.
“What about karate?” I asked.
He replied, “Sometimes there are more important things than karate.”

Sometimes, there are more important things than posting. My son just turned seventeen. Soon, he will realize how stupid this old guy is and before then I want to spend some time with him.

We watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Notting Hill.

We had a pretty good time and our next films are to be Lost Horizon and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

[Desperate attempts to find a Jay and Silent Bob video that was not in bad taste have all failed. Sorry.]

Thanks for reading my stuff!

James Alan Pilant

David Lazarus: Retail Credit Card Fees, Who Should Pay?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

David Lazarus writes for the Los Angeles Times. His column today deals with who should pay retail credit card fees.
Whenever you buy something from a retailer with a credit card, they pay an additional fee for processing, apparently about 1%. However, on a $300 dollar purchase that $3 and after a while it adds up. Congress has before it a new bill which will place supervision over these fees. The retailers want to be able to charge extra to consumers for using credit cards. The banks want things to stay the way they are. But what the banks are really frightened of is revealing how much it actually cost them to process these transactions.
These fees may have made sense in the early days of slow computers and inexperience, but your current computer be it a laptop or desktop could run thousands of transactions by itself. Does it cost a dollar to process a one hundred dollar credit card transaction? I don’t think so.
Lazarus has an elegant solution. Find out what the transactions cost and lower them to a more reasonable level. Banks are entitled to profit from their activities but without consumer and retailer knowledge of what actually takes place here, we have less of a service than a magical transference of your money by a priest of finance. That is not fair.

James Pilant

Malware Kills My Computer!

On By southwerkIn ethics

I’m thrilled. My dvd drive quit working. The computer indicated that the driver was malfunctioning and I went on the net to try to find one. I found an apparently reliable site but after it downloaded for about ten seconds, I decided I didn’t want to risk it and stopped the download. Well, guess what?, ten seconds is enough. My infested computer had to be wiped and the basic software reloaded. Now I being ever cautious have two computers that do this blog. So, one computer is left and it’s the main one. The one I just wiped is going to become a web cruiser only with tons of defensive software, so in a couple weeks I should have identical material on both computers.
It makes me angry that people would do this and much more angry that Microsoft’s operating system bears more resemblance to Swiss cheese than a computer program. But I’ll keep going.

James Pilant

Ethics Columnists Round Up 6/14/2010

On By southwerkIn business ethics1 Comment

Mitchell Schnurman writing for the Fort Worth Star Telegram discusses Radio Shack continued push for more incentives to stay in the Fort Worth area. Schnurman is upset about the whole matter and after you read the article I bet you get upset too. It’s a good two pages and most of it is spent discusses the great deals Radio Shack is already getting. This guy is fighting the good fight. I wish there were more people like him. Give ’em hell, Mitchell!

Loren Steffy has a picture of a crab sporting a new camo paint job courtesy of its friends at British Petroleum.

Steffy’s June 10th essay asks that interesting question, “Do the Chinese want to organize a takeover of BP?”

Jon Talton talks about the poorly performing stock market and asks his readers to vote on what they expect it to do. (It’s going down.)

Jay Hancock asks, “Why is anyone surprised that Moody’s downgraded Greek debt to junk status?” He’s right. The most casual reading of the newspaper would tell someone the country was in trouble. A tiny, little reading of the material disclosed Goldman Sachs’ involvement in the debt crisis. Haven’t you seen enough of Goldman Sachs to realize that all their clients are expected to be “sophisticated investors?” Doesn’t always work out, does it?

Edward Lotterman says what I have already known for a long time: the internet can be a reliable source of information. He recommends using official government reports and cross checking them with other government agencies. I consider it to be a matter of experience and judgment tempered by a willingness to keep on hunting until you are sure you have the answer, and if you can’t find a definitive answer, the willingness to explain where you found the data and that it may not be accurate. (I firmly believe that humility is seriously lacking in this culture.)

Ethics Blogs, Monday, June 14, 2010

On By southwerkIn business ethics2 Comments

Lauren Bloom blogs that employers should allow workers the freedom to deal with family problems such as illness. Currently with the great difficulty in finding jobs, there is certainly a temptation to put the hammer down. Bloom believes this is counterproductive.

 

 

 

 

Gael O’Brien discusses the World Health Organization’s problems. The WHO has been criticized for over estimating the danger of a flu pandemic and advising governments to stockpile enormous quantities of drugs as preparation. The three scientists who recommended these steps all have ties to the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs recommended. The article is long enough for a good analysis and achieves that goal. The article has links to two reports, one from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the other from BMJ (it used to be the British Medical Journal). Neither report is complimentary.

The Ethics Of A Soccer Ball

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Chris MacDonald writes in his blog, The Business Ethics Blog,  of the controversy over the design of soccer ball used in the World Cup. It is often the case that an examination of an extremely small part of reality or some basic component of a larger system can lay out larger patterns or allow the formation of the most basic elements of an ethical analysis. The soccer ball controversy is argued at different levels, play experience and scientific analysis. These two arguments can be broken down further for ethical analysis. MacDonald explains the questions raised by the change in the kind of ball.

Chinese Worker Suicides, What Are The Ethics?

On By southwerkIn business ethics

“Andrew,” an Australian, writing on his web site, Good Honest Dollar $$, analyzes the suicides at the Hon Hai Precision Industry Company. Since, these companies produce electronics for a number of American companies including Apple, there are concerns in the United States that the Chinese company is mistreating its workers. Andrew concludes that based on the evidence before us, no action should be taken. He believes that only after further investigation, should actions be considered. But this analysis is definitely ethical in construction. So, it merits a read.

Newspaper Columnists I Follow

On By southwerkIn business ethics

FThese are my current choices among newspaper columnists. There are going to be a lot of changes over time. It’s taking me a lot of reading to find authors who delve into ethics (which I believe includes reporting and explaining evil doing with a requisite level of outrage). Some that at first appear to be promising turn out to be less than level headed if read for a length of time. Each columnist, once discovered, is favorited to an intermediate category and only moved to my regular reading after a period of probation. I was writing one of my regular recommended authors when I pointed out that I seldom criticize and my writing tends to be very complimentary. So, I wanted him to know that I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings (there is little people are more sensitive about than their writing) and bad writing carries its own reward. If I find writing offensive, incompetent or crankish, it gets deleted from my favorites never to be seen again. I think that counts as criticism.

MY CHOICES
Mitchell Schnurman of the Fort Worth Star Telegram.
Loren Steffy of the Houston Chronicle (He has a Blog and a column.)
Jon Talton of the Seattle Times. His column is called, Sound Economy.
Keith Chrostowski of the Kansas City Star.
Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun. (He combines the occasional item related to ethics with consumer advocacy on consumer and sometimes very local issues, so he will only appear when I believe he is on point.)
Edward Lotterman writes for Twin Cities Pioneer Press.
David Moon writes for the Knoxville News.