What’s the academic view point on this disaster you might ask. Well, one sign is this professor’s comments from the University of Georgia. It’s a brief comment and there are no commercials. Enjoy –
James Pilant
Tag: James Pilant
I’m At 400 Posts
I am immensely grateful to my readers. Writing 400 posts sounds like a lot of effort but knowing that there was an appreciation of my words whether or not you agreed made it a pleasure.
Thank you all!
James Pilant
Competitor Sites!
I don’t have any. Anyone who fights for business ethics is my friend and ally, not my competitor. If you are out there and I can help you with my web site, you let me know. If you are more famous, more read, more educated, more experienced, more moneyed, more anything, – so much the better. Our chances for making a difference in a society where a philosophy of relativism and amorality have become the rule of business are improved by your success.
For it is written –
From the Bible – Luke 10:2 Therefore said he to them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.
From the Koran – And from among you there should be a party who invite to good and enjoin what is right and forbid the wrong, and these it is that shall be successful. {Qur’an: Chapter 3 (Aale-Imraan – Family of Imraan): Verse 104}
Whoever joins himself (to another) in a good cause shall have a share of it, and whoever joins himself (to another) in an evil cause shall have the responsibility of it, and Allah controls all things. {Qur’an: Chapter 4 (An-Nisa – The Women) : Verse 85}
I want more laborers, more warriors, more friends, more allies, more people with guts and talent, to fight and to make a difference. I call you to work in this field – to make your voice heard. I call upon you to do the impossible, to fight a hopeless battle against unimaginable odds – and I call upon you to win that battle. All successful struggles begin with one thought and one person eventually joined by one and then another. Slowly surely, the impossible becomes implausible, hopeless, ridiculous, unlikely, controversial, maybe, probably, inevitably, and finally: what is normal, expected and the law of the land.
Let us make a good start. Let’s make some racket. Let us be heard.
James Pilant
I Have Done 350 Postings On This Web Blog!
I have written 350 posts in over a little less than a year. That’s a lot of work. But you, my readers, have made it much more a pleasure than a labor. Because, your praise, your criticisms, have allowed me to adapt as time has gone by, and far more importantly, made me feel that what I had to say had some validity and importance.
Thank You!
James Alan Pilant
A Wrap Up Of Today’s Google-Verizon Deal News
Google and Verizon issue net neutrality proposal.
That’s the news today. After denying there was going to be a deal, Google and Verizon made one. Goodness, you might think corporations could lie with a straight face.
Very bad. Very, very bad. Essentially, if you are a “carrier” and I mean a giant corporate one, you’re going to make a bundle of money. I mean you’re going to have to go to a hardware store and buy snow shovels just to get the small denominations out of the way. (Maybe you’ll burn them for heat?)
If on the other hand you are a consumer, you are going to have a different deal. Now probably at this very moment you are expecting some satirical jab at trying to encompass the amount of money you are going to have to spend, right? Wrong. You and I already know what’s going to happen. A tiered market like they want to establish is just like your cable service. That’s right, you know that cheap service you get in your house, the one that requires you to pay for extra hookups and offers you hundreds of channels most of which no sane human being could subject himself to without a frontal lobotomy, that one. The cable service which finds new and more interesting ways to charge you for services that used to be free and raise the charges on the ones you get now. That’s the one!
I bet you feel good right now. You look at your monthly hook up for internet and see a bill of what is probably in the neighborhood of fifty dollars but in a few years you could be offered a cornucopia of services (that you used to get for free) running in the hundreds of dollars. But get a load of this, with cable you order stuff you want, with the internet you might have to pay to get sites unblocked. Won’t that be neat? I don’t know what it might be aside from political content, art, films, foreigners (especially news services like Al Jazeera), and a bunch of stuff.
But they’d never censor the internet, right? In 2002, Google censored sites critical of Scientology. Oceana, a non profit advertised against the big cruise lines dumping of sewage, so in February, 2003, Google pulled their ads. I could go on (and on and on). There are a lot of examples of internet censorship, stuff most people would be surprised anybody would want to take off but they do and they have.
Google was once in favor of net neutrality. Apparently, earlier this year they were in favor of neutrality. Guess a dollar sign punched them in the head.
Is Google’s upcoming new service challenge to Facebook part of what’s going on? I’m a little curious about this. If Google is challenging Facebook’s dominance, there is nothing like a little additional purchased web priority, is there?
Google’s public policy blog (where you can go to complain and I recommend you do!) has the details on the result of their secret negotiations with Verizon.
James Pilant
P.S. A little pep talk.
Well, here we are looking at a mass of money, organization and greed. They intend to take and take and take. Well, you want to give them a fight or what? You want to crawl or beg? You want to hand them your money, one dime at a time until there is nothing left?
Don’t be afraid of these people. They have rationalized away human values for a philosophy of greed. Human beings astonish and surprise them. We speak a language of morality and honor. They simply do not understand. If it isn’t money or you can’t swap it for money, they don’t believe it’s there. When we talk of duty, they laugh. When we speak of sacrifice, they say, “Yes, you must, ” and give up nothing themselves.
These pawns, these caricatures of living things are passing phenomenon like pharisees and know nothings, royalists and brownshirts. This is their time but it won’t always be there time. They will slink off to the Cayman Islands where they can polish their gold in peace, while we human beings put our country back together and build a place where duty, honor and brotherhood are not jokes.
(Now watch a little film and relax, have a laugh. You may enjoy this. It’s a comedic take on inspirational movies speeches.)
Benjamin Franklin According To Walter Isaacson
This is Walter Isaacson: “Benjamin Franklin: An American Life”
In addition I found an article. This is Time magazine’s cover story on Benjamin Franklin from 2003. It is written by Mr. Isaacson.
Is emotional detachment an antidote for a nasty workplace? (via Minding the Workplace)
David Yamada is back discussing whether emotional detachment (withdrawel?) is an appropriate response to work place problems. He contrasts Roberts Sutton’s current view with that of a much older source, Albert O. Hirschman. Yamada concludes that it is a solution of a sort but a sad solution.
CEO of JP Morgan “tired” of Villification
Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan says –
“We do not have change-of-control agreements, special executive retirement plans, golden parachutes, special severance packages or merger bonuses,” he told a JP Morgan healthcare conference, adding that many of company’s employees are in client-facing jobs and work hard with small and mid-size businesses. “I am a little tired of the constant vilification of these people,” he said.
I am going to do my best to make this gentleman even more tired.
When I was a young man a very long time ago, there was all this talk of people refusing responsiblity. Usually there would be a seedy hippie sitting on the witness stand in a court room full of dignified justified middle class citizens. He would have done some readily apparent crime and would claim that it was society’s fault that he had committed this act to the derision of all concerned. I never really saw much of this actually taking place, old as I am.
But here I am in 2010 looking at the “villification” of these financial workers. These huge financial institutions through a form of complex transactions that essentially mimic gambling at a casino did damage to this country that will take decades to repair. My favorite part of his defense is that his obvious claim that most of his workers are innocent and shouldn’t be villified. We of the general public have a difficult time perceiving on a case by case basis who destroyed much of the American economy and therefore wind up distrustful of the entire industry. He is surprised by this.
The villification has just begun. You see I do not believe this economic crisis is over and I definitely do not believe the damage done by these institutions is going to stop or abate.
James Pilant
Ethics Newspaper Columnists – Round Up 7/30/10
Keith Chrostowski writing for the Kansas City Star has an article contemplating the likelihood of deflation, an economic malady, an unknown experience for Americans as the last time it happened was before our generation and the generation before that were born. He hopes that optimism in the minds of consumers will avert this but looking at his story I am more struck by the enormous cash reserves held by major corporations and their unwillingness to invest it in this country.
Edward Lotterman writing for Twin Cities has a wonderful article explaining a basic concept of economics, comparative advantage. It is also used as an argument for free trade. Whether you believe in free trade or not it is a good read by a very competent teacher of economics. (Warning – Lotterman’s Twin Cities web site does not allow me to link you to the individual articles just to his columns as a whole, so you may have to work your way into the archives unless you are reading this before he writes his next column.)
Jon Talton writing for the Seattle Times explains the concept of indigenous innovation rules. Read his explanation but it all boils down to they can sell to us but we can’t sell to them.
Barry Ritholtz writing for the web site, The Big Picture, explains that we are really just pants wearing monkeys (really) and that knowing and understanding that can keep us out of trouble. (He may be writing provocatively here.)
Goldman Sachs And Patriotism?
Goldman Sachs in the true spirit of duty to country paid one percent of its profits in taxes. That’s right, you may have paid a little more but reflect that 14 million dollars is still a good piece of change. Of course, they did hold on to the other 2 billion dollars in profit. That might upset you. It made me feel uncomfortable. What am I lacking that they have?
It’s tax havens. There are places they can go to register their business and pay little or no taxes. Now, you might think that businesses obtaining heavy and continued benefits (like the bailout and cheap borrowing from the Federal Reserve) from being (actually) in the United States would feel an obligation to support the country that has given them so much (you know, little things, blood of our soldiers, etc.). But they don’t feel that way.
The following quote is from a report available here. The report is entitled – Unfair Advantage, The Business Case Against Overseas Tax Havens.
In 2008, Goldman Sachs, with 29 subsidiaries located in offshore tax havens, reported profits of over $2 billion and paid federal taxes of $14 million, an effective tax rate of just one percent, and less than one third what they paid their CEO Lloyd Blankfein ($42.9 million).
The report estimates that America loses minimally 37 billion in tax revenues due to tax havens. Fifty years ago, corporations paid almost a quarter of the tax revenues of the federal government. Today it is less than a tenth.
So, I return to my question, do businesses have a duty to patriotism or is the only duty a corporation has to its shareholders to advance profits? Should we expect business organizations to advance the welfare of the citizens of their country and the nation itself?
I have the duty to tell you that the current doctrine practiced in “American” corporations is that there is no national duty whatever. What is taught is a fervent loyalty to shareholders and profits.
I do not believe that a pursuit of profit should be the only goal of an organization like a corporation. I worry that one day this nation will be in terrible danger and these enormous behemoths of business will simply find another place to go.
James Pilant
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