(Presumably over the last dime of profit just like our tech bros.)
Billionaire bosses scoff at the concept of work life balance. Squeezing every conceivable sacrifice from the pitiful workers they exploit mercilessly is embedded in their DNA. The cruelty is the purpose. The cruelty is to instill fear and obedience in their worker drones.
You might say, “James, you don’t seem to like them very much?”
“No, I don’t.”
And I will tell you why. These individuals with their enormous wealth larger than most of the world’s nations’ annual budgets have it in their power to make their workplaces worker friendly, a paradise and continuing benefit to the nation. They could provide day care, scholarships, travel and most importantly, a guarantee of employment as a reward for loyalty. Instead they impose pain and hardship as a means of getting every last dime even thought they have billions upon billions of those “last dimes.”
When I was a young man I read a lot of history. I still do. There is the story of George Pullman. He created the Pullman Car. It is a train car that allows passengers to travel in comfort and sleep while traveling. He made many millions of dollars. Like today’s billionaire bosses, he wanted every last dime. So, he built a “model community” for his workers where they had to live and where every action and every expenditure could be controlled. A horrible cruel dictatorships that demanded moment by moment obedience punishable by immediate dismissal for any failure. He could have built a paradise just like our beyond all human understanding levels of greedy tech bros could but they won’t.
I think they relish the power. The idea of doing good of doing what is right is repugnant to their openly fascist belief systems. They take and they take and they take — and that is all the rationale they need. They want and have created a nationwide atmosphere of fear to keep wages and worker demands low. And in case, we forget for a moment their power they sail their yachts before us, fly their planes above us and buy our politicians cheap.
Am I wrong?? Show me the kindness of these men. Show me at any time where their workers were a priority. Show me.
We should expect more of the wealthy. We should expect more of Americans. We all have duties to each other as citizens and as members of human kind.
It is painful to write about business ethics when the prevailing mood in the business world is crass exploitation.
And I’ll tell you something else. Right now in the halls of power both in business and government, the idea of obeying the law is greeted with merriment and scorn.
But verily, verily I say unto you, they have their reward and it may well be coming sooner than they think.
James Alan Pilant
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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