Business Ethics Blog Posts 7-18-2016 The Neoliberalism Slam Edition

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Will Neoliberalism in the end destroy democracy? 

Polanyi was far more broadly educated than most economists, perhaps an equal to Keynes. He was employed in Vienna in the 1920s as the “senior editor for the premier economic and financial weekly of Central Europe”– the Financial Times of its day and region. On the very first page of the opening chapter of The Great Transformation, Polanyi delivers his judgement on where the logic of mandating free markets as the dominant force in society would lead if not tempered with countervailing power:

Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Inevitably, society took measures to protect itself, but whatever measures it took impaired the self-regulation of the market, disorganized industrial life, and thus endangered society in yet another way. It was this dilemma which forced the development of the market system into a definite groove and finally disrupted the social organization based upon it.

Does general equilibrium theory have any actual proof that such equilibrium take place? 

Almost a century and a half after Léon Walras founded neoclassical general equilibrium theory, economists still have not been able to show that markets move economies to equilibria. What we do know is that — under very restrictive assumptions — unique Pareto-efficient equilibria do exist.

But what good does that do? As long as we cannot show, except under exceedingly unrealistic assumptions, that there are convincing reasons to suppose there are forces which lead economies to equilibria – the value of general equilibrium theory is nil. As long as we cannot really demonstrate that there are forces operating — under reasonable, relevant and at least mildly realistic conditions — at moving markets to equilibria, there cannot really be any sustainable reason for anyone to pay any interest or attention to this theory. A stability that can only be proved by assuming “Santa Claus” conditions is of no avail. Most people do not believe in Santa Claus anymore. And for good reasons. Santa Claus is for kids.

Restaurant Associations Don’t Speak for the Industry on Tip Credit Wages

Rapid charter expansion disaster for public schools in Detroit – 

Arnsen’s study documents what many have suspected: the rapid growth of charter schools is itself a factor destabilizing so-called “portfolio school districts” which are conceptualized as school marketplaces managed like a business portfolio in which new schools are opened and so-called “failing” schools are shut down in a constant cycle of churn.  Arnsen concludes his interview with Berkshire: “A place like Detroit is just chaotic. It’s the foremost example nationally of the adverse consequences of a poorly regulated education market… Our charter sector in Michigan is unusual nationally in the extent to which the schools are run by for-profit management companies… (W)e have a situation in Michigan where the charter interests are very influential in the state legislature.  It makes it much harder in this state to reach consensus not only on coherent choice and finance policies, but also on policy relating to all sorts of education issues….”

In other words, in a state where far-right Dick DeVos and his Great Lakes Education Project along with owners of the for-profit charters are actively buying political influence, it is very difficult to get the legislature to regulate what is an out of control charter school marketplace.

Student Loan Disaster

Making a long story short, the federal government enabled banks and private equity companies to monetize the federal student loan program, enabling them to make significant profits from the loans and fees. Because many state governments embraced an ideology of selfishness and opposition to public goods, these governments significant cut their support for state colleges and universities, thus increasing the cost of tuition. At the same time, university administrations were growing both in number of administrators and their salaries, thus increasing costs as well. There was also an increase in infrastructure costs due to new technology as well as a desire to market campuses as having amenities such as rock climbing gyms. The result is $1.3 trillion in debt for 42 million Americans. On the “positive” side, the government makes about 20% on its 2013 loans and the industry is humming along at $140 billion a year.

Malaga island and Eugenics

“Eugenics really took hold in both education reform and reform of social service practices in the state by the 1910s,” says Kate McMahon, a doctoral candidate at Howard University who has been researching Malaga Island, “Those who were poor were also institutionalized and many were forcibly sterilized.” With the growth of this social movement, an increase in sentiment of racism within the state, along with a fear that the black faces of Malaga would interfere with tourist’s vision of the picturesque Maine ideal, it was only a matter of time before the residents of Malaga Island became the center of these social policies and prejudicial fears.

Saving South Dakota from radiation

On July 22nd, an engineer is selling, er I mean, discussing, the underground nuclear waste dump…um, I mean, research laboratory.  It puts a nice spin on it, when you call it “research”, doesn’t it??  Clearly, this guy is going to market the idea to people–this is not about giving information to the public so that they can decide whether this is a wise decision or not.  The way that this project has been shoved through without much public input tells you that it is not what the public wants nor needs.

We have report after report on nuclear waste leaking at other sites:  New Mexico and Washington State.  Here’s another reporton it.

I don’t care about geology supporting it here in South Dakota.  It’s not natural and not supposed to be in the Earth.  It will come back to bite us in the arse…we have seen this over and over.  The arrogance is astounding.

Nine hundred million dollars in laundered drug money and they just paid a fine. 

What happens next at Fox News?

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The Neoliberalism Slam Edition

Back from the dead! (Go have a look! jp) 

Who is Fethullah Gulen and what is he doing in the charter school movement? 

Better Scientists through Philosophy.

 

Business Ethics Links 7-18-2016 It’s too damn hot edition!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

It’s too damn hot. 

Climate Central’s States at Risk project analyzed historic trends in summer temperatures since 1970 as well as projections for future extreme heat for hundreds of metro areas across the lower 48 states. Using several measures, our findings show that most U.S. cities have already experienced large increases in extreme summer heat and absolute humidity, which together can cause serious heat-related health problems.

We found that scores of U.S. cities home to tens of millions of people will face dramatic increases in dangerous and extreme heat days by the middle of this century if current greenhouse gas emissions trends continue.

NFL to chip balls!!

According to John Kryk of the Toronto Sun (h/t Seifert), the primary objective of the chips is to determine the prospective impact of shortening the distance between the goal posts. The NFL aims to measure how close extra-point and field-goal attempts come to the uprights.

Girls are born to stay at home – or die.

Less than 50% of American high schoolers get adequate sex education. 

The US does not enforce national standards for sex education and schools in many states are not required to teach it. Across the country, SIECUS estimates, only 50% of high school students receive sex education that meets the recommendations of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The other half of students receive anything from an incomplete sex education, to education that emphasizes abstinence, to abstinence-only education, with a focus on delaying sex until heterosexual marriage.

The End of Civilization? 

You can only get whiter than this with bleach!!!

It's too damn hot!
It’s too damn hot!

Wall Street Journal rates restaurants on liberal/conservative customer ratios. 

Pravda on the plains?

Canned wine now acceptable – (just like a beer!). 

A highway knows as the big worm – corruption in Brazil. 

Mental health care bill passes Congress. 

State sponsored doping? 

Politico Perishes? 

Is assassination by drone a war crime? 

One problem has, however, dogged the drone program from the beginning: just like conventional air strikes, remotely targeted missiles and bombs tend to kill the wrong people. Over the last seven years, the count of civilians killed by drones has been mounting. Actual figures are hard to come by, although a number of nongovernmental organizations and journalists have done a good job of collating information from a variety of sources and offering reasonable estimates.

Kaine PAIN!

Public College Presidents’ Pay Too High!

 

 

 

Business Ethics Links 7-17-2016

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics1 Comment

For every dollar loaned to a woman owned business, twenty-three dollars are loaned to male owned businesses. 

The journey of one bullet from the factory to the victim. 

Nine evictions in one day.

Donald Trump is part of the problem. 

Women earn far, far less than men in the medical profession. 

What is meant by carefully curated integration? 

Do mass killers start out hating women? 

Poverty is a punishable offense. 

Herbalife gets a thrashing from the government. 

 

 

Movement toward Female Equality?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Movement toward Female Equality?

I’ve written on more than one occasion that women’s rights are the most important business ethics issue before us. These last few days, there have been a series of news stories that suggest changes are happening. There is a tremendous range here in terms of importance. For symbolism, I would point to the Miss Teen USA’s abandonment of the swimsuit competition. For importance, I would point to the Marine Corp willingness to allow women to access combat positions. And for sheer practicality (and it is about time) the New York City Council has voted that women will have access to free tampons and pads in schools, prisons and shelters.

Here is a list of five items with the links and short quote from each:

The few, the proud, the fit: Women strive for combat jobs

Six months after the Pentagon ordered all combat jobs open to women, seven female Marines are either serving in those posts or waiting to serve, and 167 are performing noncombat duties in front-line units, according to new data obtained by The Associated Press.

‘Game of Thrones’ effect sees female knights jousting at English castles

Female knights will battle against male counterparts at Bolsover, Kenilworth, Pendennis and Carisbrooke castles.

The grand medieval joust competitions see the knights on horseback, dressed in full armour and armed with a lance.

Traditionally, no women took part in jousting tournaments as all the elite knights were male.

But following in the footsteps of Game of Thrones’ Brienne of Tarth, English Heritage said it had made the decision to allow visitors to see the “most accomplished knights on the circuit”.

New York City Council Approves Free Tampons and Pads in Schools, Prisons, and Shelters

The new bill, which passed 49-0, will establish tampon and pad dispensers in the bathrooms of public schools with female students in grades six through 12 in an extension of a pilot program launched last year. It will also require prisons and jails operated by the city to give inmates menstrual supplies as soon as possible after they ask for them. Current prison systems for tampons and pad distribution vary widely across states and facilities, but in many places, incarcerated women are given an insufficient monthly supply or must buy products with their own limited funds from the commissary.

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Movement toward Female Equality?

“Pinklining”: How women of color are disproportionately hurt by Wall Street’s predatory practices

“Pinklining: How Wall Street’s Predatory Products Pillage Women’s Wealth, Opportunities & Futures,” details how sexism and racism are “increasingly exploited and exacerbated by Wall Street and the financial sector.”

The report, which was written by scholar Suparna Bhaskaran, shows how “Wall Street takes advantage of women’s precarious economic position and marginalization to push them deeper into debt,” in a practice Bhaskaran calls “pinklining.”

Structural sexism and structural racism make women and people of color more susceptible to pinklining, the report stresses.

It looks at three primary financial practices in which these inequalities are visible: subprime home mortgage lending, payday lending and higher education lending.

Here is a link to the full report – https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/acceinstitute/pages/100/attachments/original/1466121052/acce_pinklining_VIEW.pdf?1466121052

Miss Teen USA Ditches The Swimsuit Competition It Should Never Have Had

Miss Teen USA just got a lot less creepy.

Teenage contestants will no longer compete wearing swimwear in the Miss annual competition, pageant officials announced Tuesday. Starting at this year’s event on July 30, the 14-18-year-old contestants will instead model athletic wear before judges.

The change is part of a commitment to “evolve in ways that celebrate women’s strength, confidence and beauty for years to come,” Miss Universe Organization president Paula Shugart wrote in a letter to the pageant’s state directors. 

“This decision reflects an important cultural shift we’re all celebrating that empowers women who lead active, purposeful lives and encourage those in their communities to do the same,” she continued. “Our hope is that this decision will help all of Miss Teen USA’s fans recognize these young women for the strong, inspiring individuals they are.”

These stories vary in importance and impact. If we compare the Civil Rights movement of the sixties to Women’s rights today, we are struck by the substantive changes in the law for the first and the miserable to and fro actions of the law in regard to the latter. Suddenly almost overnight the law changed to protect blacks in interstate commerce but for women the right to equal pay, to contraception and even to avoid victimization is a grueling backwards and forward fight with no permanent victories.

But change is happening and I am heartened that in some sense progress is being made.

James Pilant

Basketball Self-destruct

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Basketball Self-destruct

Below is a brief selection from a very good piece of writing from Slate magazine. It explains how a “reverse order draft” encourages teams to lose undercutting the competitive nature of the sport and simple elementary fairness.

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/06/how_to_stop_tanking_in_the_nba.html

The NBA’s anti-competitive incentive problem is reaching a critical level. One of the things a person comes to know from a lifetime of competing in tabletop baseball games is that a reverse-order draft can rip a league apart. Competitiveness is essential to competition: A league cannot survive with teams actively trying to lose. A reverse-order draft gives the biggest prizes—that is, the best players coming into the league—to the teams with the worst records. This creates an incentive to lose. In an eight-team league in which the futures of players are known, a reverse-order draft will destroy the league. In any season, only two or three teams will have a real chance to win. The other teams are best served by losing as many games as possible. What will happen in an APBA league or a Strat-O-Matic league is that you will have two teams trying to win wind up with records like 53–7 and 48–12, and then you will have four teams wind up with records like 11–49 and 16–44. You have a lot of games that don’t mean anything and a large number of meaningless games absolutely will destroy a league, whether it is a baseball simulation league or a league with real athletes and real fans and really big money.

Elementary business ethics would suggest that when two teams in a for profit league compete both should be trying to win. But under current rules, losing can be an advantage to a team because the lower their ranking the better draft picks they get.

This system encourages cheating. That’s wrong. Let’s have real competition and real games.

James Pilant

Unleash the Pain Within?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Unleash the Pain Within?

It should be an axiom of standard business practice to do no harm to your customer. Most people would agree that killing or injuring your customer base will damage your long term prospects.

Unleash the Pain Within
Unleash the Pain Within

This weekend, thirty individuals suffered burns at a Tony Robbins seminar entitled “Unleash the Power Within.” According to press reports, there were some 7,000 participants so proportionally the casualty rates are fairly low. Nevertheless, I have been to various seminars over the course of my life and the burn injury rate has been very low.

There have been accusations that those who were burned were not in the proper frame of mind or lacked focus. I’m very sorry but being burned is a matter of science not faith. If you are exposed to a certain amount of heat over a long enough period, you will be burned. Most fire walking experiences involve brief exposure by walking quickly over a short distance on coals that have been allowed to cool.

Apparently, there is an idea that if you can do the “impossible” task of fire walking, you can shatter the mental barriers keeping you from success. Of course, if you are going to revolutionize your life in a three day seminar, probably some kind of dramatic activity is necessary. Three days out of your entire life is a pretty tight, small chunk of time. I tend to think that while you can change rapidly that it is better to focus on long term change such as mastering skills and new ways of thinking. Every day is a part of the process of change if you are thinking and learning.

What about expert advice and fire walking? Here’s a comment from a medical professional on the subject from the Dallas Morning News –

http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/2016/06/about-40-burned-walking-across-hot-coals-at-motivational-speaker-tony-robbins-dallas-event.html/

But a burn expert at Parkland Memorial Hospital says it’s no wonder five people were hospitalized and dozens more were treated at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center after the fire-walking session.

“Just don’t do it,” said Stephanie Campbell, the hospital’s burn program manager. “Coal-walking is not an activity that we would ever recommend. We don’t believe there is any safe way to do it.”

And from further down in the same article:

Campbell, however, said feet are no match for burning coals, no matter how focused the participant might be.

“The skin is our body’s major barrier against bacteria and fluid loss,” she said. “When it comes into contact with a heat source that is high enough to cause damage to the skin, it disrupts this barrier. … Full burns can actually require surgery with skin-grafting.”

Maybe we shouldn’t focus on short term revolutionary ways of changing? Maybe change is something we have to do to cope with changing circumstances and that change done with awareness over time may be healthier and more effective than the short term and dramatic? Maybe.

Whatever your feelings about change and the speed and drama of change, I think we can agree that all of us should avoid harming our customers.

James Pilant

tronc

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

tronc

The Tribune Publishing Company is now called tronc. Once again George Orwell is fully vindicated. Corporate speak has now dropped to such low levels of intelligence that company names bear strong similarity to minor Disney villains.

There is suspicion in some quarters that the name was changed to make a corporate buyout more difficult and I see the reasoning. Who wants to go their shareholders and say, “I just offered 425 million dollars for tronc?” It sounds like you tried to corner the market on a rare Malaysian spice.

This is the same kind of thinking that produces Hollywood sequels and short term profit seeking like stock buybacks.

Some people are amused – Tronc: The 30 best jokes about Tribune Publishing’s new name

http://mashable.com/2016/06/03/tronc-funniest-jokes/#WMZt9LqJJSq7

Some are not – Tronc May Make Journalists Snicker, but Shareholders Aren’t Laughing – Fortune

http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tronc-shareholders-journalists/

What are the business ethics here? I can’t help but feel that taking a historical reputation that took a lot of work to make and turning it into a lame joke may be a dis-service and an insult to everyone involved. That probably constitutes a serious ethical violation. I also can’t help but think that when you can only talk in meaningless corporate jargon that the mental equivalent of five year olds have way too much influence in this economy and the larger nation around it.

James Pilant

From Around the Web –

On #Tronc, Journalism, and Its Value | First Draft on WordPress.com – 3rd solution

http://www.3rd-solution.com/2016/06/on-tronc-journalism-and-itsvalue-first.html

(I am starting to think one should always vet one’s corporate strategies through Twitter. Just throw ideas out there. See which ones immediately combust in a conflagration made of 4chan and Anonymous and Gamergate.)

I laughed along with the rest of them, but: I know good people at Tribune Publishing. Friends, and ex-friends, people I know to be decent whatever assholes they happen to presently work near. I know lots and lots of good journos, and they deserve better than to watch the place they put their hands and their minds and their blood and their days turn into a national fucking joke.

What’s in a brand? A tronc (Tronc) by any other name … | The Buttry Diary

https://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2016/06/03/whats-in-a-brand-a-tronc-tronc-by-any-other-name/

When we announced TBD’s name, the Washington Post mocked it as “totally brain dead.” As though you should want a brand name the competition would like. Others liked it.

I may blog someday about the branding of TBD, but I’ll tease a bit now with some of the names we didn’t choose (that people actually recommended): WashDay, MonumentaList, IMBY. I’m serious. Branding isn’t easy (unless you already have a long-established brand such as Tribune Publishing …).

But here’s something I said when we were trying to choose a name for TBD (and blogged here when the St. Petersburg Times rebranded itself in 2011): The name doesn’t make the brand, the company’s performance in the marketplace makes

Should College Professors Assign Papers to Improve Content on Wikipedia? (The Ethics Sage)

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

(Today is a guest post from my friend and colleague Steven Mintz, The Ethics Sage.)

Should College Professors Assign Papers to Improve Content on Wikipedia?

Should college professors assign Wikipedia content reviews and edits for course credit? It is an important question because traditionally most college freshmen are told that they shouldn’t use Wikipedia. It’s an unacceptable source for term papers and to assign students a project to check the accuracy and reliability of information on such a site makes me wonder whether professors in their ivory towers have lost perspective on what the purpose of writing is.

The Ethics Sage
The Ethics Sage

In a recent example, students at Emerson College are responsible for Wikipedia’s “theatre and disability” page. The encyclopedia article on minor depressive disorder was revamped by a student at North Dakota State University. And if you ever look up the Wikipedia page on vaccination policy most of what you’re reading comes from a sophomore-level chemistry class at the University of Michigan.

It has been reported that more than 14,000 students have created or edited 35,000 Wikipedia articles as part of a program run by the Wikipedia Education Foundation. The three-year-old nonprofit, a spin-off of the Wikimedia Foundation funded in part by the Stanton Foundation and Google, is determined to convince professors and students that — counter to everything they have ever been told — Wikipedia actually belongs in schools.

In a L.A. Times article on June 20, 2016, Susan Alberts, a biology professor at Duke University who has used Wikipedia in her classroom for the last five years is quoted as saying: “It’s so much better than a term paper, from a student’s perspective. This way, when students write something, someone besides their teacher actually reads it.”

This sounds like a rationalization for a questionable act from my point of view. To say someone else reads it and mean the Wikipedia people makes me wonder what these universities get in return. Is there a financial relationship between those universities that assign Wikipedia projects and the Wikipedia Foundation?

Wiki Ed has developed a program that makes it easier for new classrooms to join up and for hundreds of classes to participate at once. The organization takes care of training students on Wikipedia’s expectations and interface. After that, it works with professors to oversee students as they draft, edit and submit articles, often over several weeks.

I dislike having someone from the organization that is the beneficiary of the writings review those writings as part of the editing process. I believe objectivity may be lost – in appearance if not factually. It’s like having an academic journal work with professors as they write research papers and later decide whether to accept them for publication.

The Wiki Ed website says their Wiki Ed program creates a world where any learner can contribute to open scholarship and education for all and that writing for Wikipedia challenges students into analyzing and interpreting information for fairness, accuracy, and reliability.

I doubt the claim that scholarship improves mainly because, as a professor, I don’t see updating Wikipedia information for accuracy and completeness as a scholarly activity. There is no meaningful analytical dimension to such assignments. Divergent ideas on a subject matter are not analyzed for their relationships. Persuasive arguments are not made. This is the essence of creative writing. By its very definition it is not a creative exercise because the thoughts come initially from content on Wikipedia, not from the minds of the students.

Creative writing should help to stimulate “mental motivation” in which students complete a set of writing exercises that combine expressive writing with goal-setting. What is the goal of Wikipedia assignments? It’s a stretch to say it stimulates the minds of students as they go through the process of researching content they did not first identify. Instead, this is content already there. What meaning does it have for students? Perhaps they feel good about improving content on a major site that college students routinely use in their writings. If so, this is not enough to qualify for a rigorous writing assignment.

Other concerns that I have from an academic perspective are Wikipedia assignments should not replace traditional assignments where writing ability is a critical component of the grading process. In the end, Wikipedia assignments are geared toward adding or enhancing encyclopedic content. Contributions to Wikipedia do not contain original research.

To be fair, I suppose one valid way to use Wikipedia assignments could be to assign an independent research project that requires tight writing, neutral tone and relevant citations and then have students present their research in class. Students would write analytical papers and take that content and use it to update Wikipedia. Professors can then grade the paper and include a comparison with the updates to Wikipedia.

Writing at the college level is a process of writing, editing, revising, editing, re-writing, and so on. Writing pieces for Wikipedia fails to meet these standards although I concede that imaginative professors may be able to structure such an assignment in a useful way.

By Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage. Dr. Mintz is Emeritus Professor from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. He also blogs at http://www.workplaceethicsadvice.com.

Ordered to Dump these Barrels!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Ordered to Dump these Barrels!

This You-Tube video shows men dumping barrels of what appears to be industrial waste. They say they’ve been told to do it and they will lose their jobs if they don’t. “God, forgive us.” One of them says as they dump the barrels.

A voice explains that they have been ordered to dump them and then burn the last two inches of waste material in the bottom.

It is clear from the context that the men doing the work believe they are being ordered to perform an illegal act. If my recollection is correct, the date they give is March 4th.

If any of my kind readers know more about this – please let me know.

James Pilant

Illegal dumping by nv company

Hilary Clinton and History

On By southwerkIn Editorial8 Comments

Hilary Clinton and History

This week Hilary Rodham Clinton gained enough delegates to be the Democrat’s nominee for President of the United States. This is a truly historic moment but as far as I can tell it is being greeted with a subdued yawn in most circles.

Why isn’t there more positive response to these events? Why isn’t there wild enthusiasm for the first woman to helm a major party ticket?

I believe there are three reasons for this lack of enthusiasm.

First, we have her husband, Bill Clinton, whose baggage includes extra-marital affairs, the Marc Rich pardon, etc.

Second, Ms. Clinton is very much a “more of the same” candidate. She does not call for radical change and does little to appeal to those who believe that the system isn’t working for them. She is a creature of the system and her millions of dollars of income would tend to indicate that she believes the current system and works well.

And third, the Sanders campaign. The campaign for the democratic candidacy was plagued by Clinton favoritism. The scheduling of the democratic debates on weekends and against sporting events was designed to minimize other candidate’s exposure. Could she have beaten him in a straight up contest without super delegates and other nonsense? We’ll never know but it leaves a sour taste.

There can be no doubt that Clinton is hard, cold calculating politician. Certainly, there are many and I am one of them that hoped the first woman nominated by a major party for the presidency would be more of a transformational figure. But there is nothing radical or even original in her positions. Anyone who reads the beltway media like the Washington Post can predict her campaign positions with accuracy.

So, she is not a transformational figure and not much perceptible will change should she be elected in terms of woman and men and the United States. But a line will have been crossed; a change made that will echo across the centuries and its implications will have real effects. For the next woman in pursuit of power, position or just simple significance, the struggle will be easier; the goals more clearly marked and change more easy to effect.

James Pilant