Business Ethics Roundup 6 10 2016

Item one –

House financial committee chair to propose overhaul of Dodd-Frank law

If you read, overhaul, and instead saw the word, abolish, in your mind, you are reading the article correctly. The House Financial committee lives in a world where the virtuous capitalist bankers who came within a hair of destroying the world economy in 2007 are being victimized by (well, people like me) regulators when in reality, they are the engines of wealth who if liberated will make us all happy and free.

The house would recreate the conditions that produced the disaster. It appears that facts and history have no place in this discussion. The idea that the “free market, “ a myth similar to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, will right all wrongs and make us free has many adherents in the House of Representatives.

 

Item two –

 

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/07/as-a-worker-on-the-great-barrier-reef-im-ashamed-to-look-my-children-in-the-eye

This is a very sad article about the degradation of the one of the world’s natural wonders and the Australian government’s role in the ecological disaster. I recommend you read it in full.

 

Item three

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/koch-brothers-charles-blahous_b_10325224.html

 

The Koch Brothers Are Trying To Handpick Government Officials. We Have To Stop Them. – is the title of the article. It explains how the Koch Brothers are using the influence to choose candidates for various government posts. It’s a damning indictment of a government being primed to run for the benefit of billionaires and their lackeys.

 

Item four

 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/06/3785278/dc-pension-divests/

 

Entitled – Another Giant Pension Fund Divested From Oil, Coal, And Gas Companies, this article talks about the surprising and growing success of the effort to divest funds from fossil fuels. This is a form or opt out shareholder democracy similar in some ways to the South African economic boycott of thirty years ago. Is there a strong moral element in this movement? I think so and it is vital if capitalism is to survive along with societies that use those means of running an economy that a solid conception of right and wrong be returned to decision making.