Tag: James Pilant

Ethics Blog Roundup – 07/24/10

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics

David Gebler writing on the blog, Business Ethics, discusses safety violations, codes of silence and what not to do when advancing safety practices.

Shel Horowitz begins his latest blog post (Principled Profit) with these words: As my Boomer generation ages, and as our parents move well into the elder category, I reflect often on something I learned as a young organizer with the Gray Panthers (1979-80): the idea that society had best learn how to incorporate people with disabilities into active daily life, because most of us were going to grow into that category sooner or later.

Horowitz writes that today, his entry is part of an event, Worldwide BloggersUnite, Empowering People with Disabilities. I’d give it a read and take a look at the idea behind the event.

I would like to call attention to two Chris MacDonald postings. A few days ago, Professor MacDonald posted an interview with the author of the “The Authenticity Hoax.” Since then the posting has had some comments (skip past mine) and they have been interesting. Chris gets pretty tough there in that last one. So, I recommend a read of the comments section.

The second MacDonald posting concerns British Petroleum’s faked photographs. MacDonald implies that he has been willing to give BP the benefit of the doubt in the past (I firmly believe this is true. I thought he was too fair) but he is increasingly doubtful of their motives and honesty.

A new business ethics blog has appeared. I give it a warm welcome and a hope of many postings!

Wall Street Overpays!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure

“Stop me before I overpay again,”might be scratched on the wall of Goldman Sachs’, if the firm had any insight or shame. But they don’t. Reuters News Agency reports that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Citibank are among the firms who will be cited by the Obama administration pay czar Kenneth Feinberg for having made “ill-advised” payments. (For ill-advised read unearned) The payments in the 17 institutions cited total over one billion dollars. This was in 2008 when the firms were awash with taxpayer money from the bailout.

You see it doesn’t matter what scrutiny they are under, whether or not the public is angry, whether an action is right or wrong as long as the money flows. Money, Money, Money, the arbiter of all decision making on Wall Street, the great green god that supplants the real God and any of sense of responsibility. They know that the only important thing in the world is money. It buys happiness, sex, influence and immunity from the duties that the rest of us take for granted as part of our lives. They live in separate communities with separate education systems and when our children serve in the military, become teachers, policeman or firemen, they snicker at our stupidity.

Or they decide we are unworthy, take a look at this excerpt from Ben Stein’s article in the American Spectator:

The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say “generally” because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work.

That’s right, the millions of unemployed their lives in tatters because of casino capitalism, aren’t there because of a savage recession (depression). No, they’re just lazy.

By the way, the article just oozes with Ben Stein’s concern for his poor friends who made bad investments. I can’t help but be curious where he would meet the unemployed. Maybe he’s just confused. Maybe he’s really thinking about his upper crust friends who don’t know how to do an honest day’s work or exercise a workable personality.

I shouldn’t be so angry. Right? Why should the fact that there is one job for every five applicants bother me? Why should an economic elite that moves every job humanly possible to some distant shore where they can ignore those annoying work place laws like child labor, wage and hour, and most annoyingly of all, worker safety, bother me? Why should I be upset? After all, there are a lot of workers, a lot of surplus population that needs culling.

I want justice. I want hard working American to reap the benefits of their hard work, their devotion to this country and their willingness to go the extra mile to do what’s right.

James Pilant

Ethics Blog Roundup 7/21/10

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Shel Horowitz is back from vacation with a posting on confronting racism, a topic much in the news.

The Engineering Ethics Blog discusses education and the importance of experience, ability and education in different ways in different times. He is particularly upset with President Obama for his over emphasis on college as opposed to other kinds of learning. There is a lot of societal comment here. I quote:

The natural tendency of our society, unfortunately, is to look up to people who (1) have lots of money, (2) have lots of people working for them, or (3) manipulate symbols instead of real things.

I agree with him pretty much across the board but I am an advocate for education other than just credential education, that is, an education that enriches the many aspects of a person’s life as opposed to simply a note on the wall, a permission slip for employment often with no more intellectual importance than a postage stamp.

Gael O’Brien takes on the ethics of brand identity in the aftermath of so much corporate wrong doing. She points out much more kindly than me that their brand identities of quality and concern for clients were less than real. The article asks more questions than it answers but we as a people and a society will have to answer those questions. As corporations dominate every aspect of our lives, whether or not we have made a deal with concerned people or the devils’s acolytes is one that has to be dealt with.

Chris MacDonald is cruising into philosophical territory with an interview with Andrew Potter about his new book, The Authenticity Hoax. The book’s thesis is that authenticity, the seeking of an identity through consumer purchasing, is based on dubious claims and is inherently self defeating for too often the goal of the authentic is a societal story with little relation to the self but everything to do with the preoccupations of the society around us. The book sounds fascinating.

The Leading In Context Blog discusses green office supplies (something I didn’t know existed).

These gentlemen discuss green office supplies:

James Pilant

Vultures Circle Oil Spill!

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure

An article in the Business Insider explains that at least one investment firm believes that it’s time to invest in the discounted property along the Gulf. The investment group, Broyhill Asset Management, is pushing an investment in the St. Joe Company. Broyhill has a 31 page presentation extolling the virtues of this company and its current holdings along the gulf coast.

But this will just be the first of a flood of companies that will move in on the real estate bonanza that the gulf coast will become.

Naomi Klein explained in The Shock Doctrine how disasters can be made to profit economic elites. Here is a developing project. First, there will be requests for “tax free development zones.” Then there will be actual grants of federal, state, county and city money to encourage development. The properties along hundreds of miles of coastline devastated and devalued by the oil spill can be bought up for a song. And a happy tune it will be, as thousands of businesses escape paying taxes to support roads, schools, etc. and roam to the gulf where cheap land, no taxes and a subservient government desperate for jobs will do virtually anything to make them happy.

But think about the other possibilities. You can get the government to guarantee loans, waive wage and hour laws, postpone or do without environmental impact studies, and the list of goodies a company can get goes on and on.

And during all this, the people whose livelihoods and homes were destroyed or devalued will simply be setup for the chopping block. The government that should have protected them and aided them will be a conscious, skillful, relentless aid to the companies buying them out and replacing them.

Well, the vultures are circling. They are expecting meat on the table and plenty of it.

James Pilant

P.S. I want to thank Sue White who brought this to my attention. jp

No Firing Except For Cause!

On By southwerkIn Capitalism

Fair work Australia is a web site set up by the Australian government. It enforces a law that makes it illegal to fire an employee except for cause. The web site lists 8 elements which can be considered under the Unfair Dismissal Law. There is a wiki article on the whole act.

This law is in stark contrast to the American practice of “employment at will.” Under this doctrine, an employee can be fired for any reason or no reason. There have been occasional moves toward the doctrine of “firing for cause,” but these have come to nothing. The Australian act was adopted in 2009, and went into effect in January. It will be interesting to see how and if the law shapes opinion in the United States.

Here’s some video describing the process that resulted in the legislation –

In my mind this is food for thought. Let’s see how the act works out. Maybe we can learn from their example.

James Pilant

Are High Salaries Unethical?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

I guess like most things it depends on the situation. Well, let’s take a look at an unusual situation. Let us wander around the state of California until we arrive at the small town of Bell. No, it is not small by the standards of some western states but a population of 36,000 does put it in the average category. And this place is tough. I mean almost impossible to run. Because they have such difficulties getting skilled politicians that they pay the mayor about $800,000. This is not quite twice as much as the President of the United States, but the mayor of Bell must have tougher problems. Obviously.

However, the mayor is not the only one who makes a good salary. Let me quote from the article:

Residents, however, have no problem expressing what they think about their city’s budget, which pays the police chief — who oversees a 46-person department — $457,000 a year. By contrast, Los Angeles’ police chief oversees 12,899 people and earns $307,000.

My favorite part is the city council. To be a city councilman required a person to work part time and it’s must be really tough part time work because these guys get a $100,000 for their efforts.

Chief Administrative Officer Robert Rizzo (I refer to him as the mayor.) is not upset or sorry. He says he can make the same in the private sector. Of course, some wiseacre might point that he isn’t in the private sector and that since the private sector seldom owns and operates small cities, it might be hard to get a comparative number.

Now as always when people with real ability are rewarded for their skills and effort, there will be people who squawk and complain. Let me quote from another article on the same subject:

Bell resident Douglas Waugh said he was infuriated when he learned that city officials in his small city had some of the highest salaries in the nation. “They think we’re stupid,” Waugh said standing outside of his home. “They get into power and talk to us like little kids and they think we’re ignorant, but we’re not.”

The top officials in Bell receive a 12% pay hike every July. The mayor has been working in that position since 1993. At that rate he will be earning $2,446,680 in the year 2020. Did you know that the city has been cutting back on services and laying off employees? But these guys have their priorities straight. Right?

James Pilant

Did Not Take Pilant’s Ethics Class Award 7/17/10

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching

Parents Shocked By Swimming Instruction Techniques reads the article title. The technique involved tying a child’s shoes and throwing him into the pool. This was to teach him how to float even in “dangerous conditions.”

Ethically, just where do you start? If the purpose of swimming instruction techniques is to teach the child to swim, an overwhelming fear of the water caused by your own actions might be a detriment. Secondly, it does not appear from the article that parents were aware of this aspect of training.

As a parent I think I would like to be aware if the class had taken a turn toward training my child what to do if a comic book villain ties his shoes together and throws him into water.

I ran an internet search to see if this practice was common but had no luck. It’s possible it happens elsewhere. But search terms like “tie shoes together” and “swimming instruction” just don’t seem to get any hits.

James Pilant

Man Believed Clowns Were Attacking Home

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

Sometimes after expressing my anger in an article I feel like relaxing a little bit and sometimes want to amuse myself. This little gem from the Twin Cities, Pioneer Press, concerns one 40 year old man who successfully repelled an attack on his mother’s home by shotgunning attacking clowns and their dog companions(apparent reinforcements to the clown insurgents). That is, if you believe his side of the story. The police version is that he shot up his mother’s home (22 shots) while under the effects of a hallucinogenic drug. After successfully bombarding an apparently inoffensive home with shotgun pellets, he faced a large number of police who surrounded the clown killing vigilante’s defensive position. The man the emerged on the porch shotgun in hand, extra ammunition in a bag around his neck, and failing to respond to police commands fell down and rendered himself unable to continue his valiant struggle against hallucinogenic odds. His saga ends in the local jail. His name has not been released.

(I am deeply, deeply impressed by the police force here. I am astonished under the circumstances that they didn’t fill him full of lead but acted with commendable restraint in a dangerous situation.)

More Killer Clowns! (If he would have killed imaginary mimes I would have been more sympathetic.)

James Pilant

Screwing The Public With “Financial Restraint”

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Economic measurement, Government Failure1 Comment

Keith Chrostowski at the Kansas City Star provides a good summary of the arguments for fiscal restraint during this economic disaster while calling for extension of unemployment benefits. I find the arguments for such restraint to be ridiculous. Chrostowski only summarizes these arguments and I have no problem with his views but the arguments for fiscal restraint during this crisis border on the bizarre.

Where were all those people when the Bush tax cuts were put in place? Where were all these people when during a period of massive public approval and unity, George Bush asked for no tax to finance the war? Where were all these people when Congress approved an enormous expansion in Medicaid? Is it only when the crisis concerns the basic middle class American that we discover we are in a crisis?

Where were all these economists when the estate tax (fortunately only for a while) was repealed? Where were all these formerly employed politicians (Alan Simpson, are you reading this?) now shouting “fiscal restraint?”

It is hard to describe my anger at these “born again” budgeteers. My students suffer. The people I know suffer. This economy is damaging lives and destroying the hopes and dreams of tens of millions of Americans. And now, only now, do these cowardly wretches find the fortitude to challenge spending. It seems you can make wars, cut taxes and do every kind of strange appropriation until the American people are hurting and then and only then, must we become “tough minded” and fiscally concerned.

We exercise fiscal restraint according to Keynes when the economy is healthy. This one isn’t. We labor under intense levels of unemployment, a little under 10%. If we count those who have simply given up looking for work, the number climbs toward 16% which is roughly the same as in the great depression. I tell you with conviction that this recession is becoming and may already be a depression and our leaders are unable and unwilling to meet that challenge.

We are rapidly moving toward desperate times. Each day I drive to work and see businesses closing. Each day I see nothing to give me hope for my students and confidence in the economy. Each day I wait and hope and pray that the leadership of this country will do the simple and basic things necessary to employ the great and good American people. This people who have astonished the world with their achievements and can do so once again if only given the opportunity.

But I know this is not going to happen. This people do not appear to be worth a second glance. When fiscal pain must in the eyes of these unsought comedians, these fact distant fools, be felt, it is only when the great mass of Americans are enduring the pain and suffering of evil economic times brought on by the rapacious stupidity of the financial elite.

James Pilant

Are Businessmen Smarter Than Children?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics10 Comments

When I was in law school we were taught that when a business had to decide whether or not to break the law, if the penalty was a simple fine, you would just decide which was least expensive and pay that cost. So, if the fine were cheaper than your profits, break the law and pay the fine. I was always troubled by that, the assumption that a fine was just a part of doing business.
My perception is that this is major current of thought in modern business. Profit makes right, not as catchy as might makes right, but still probably what a great many businessmen have been taught, believe and put into action.
What does this have to do with my title? Excellent question. According to the research of Lawrence Kohlberg, children at around the age of ten progress to a higher level of moral understanding moving from consequence thinking to considering the intent behind the action. I quote:
At approximately the same time–10 or 11 years–children’s moral thinking undergoes other shifts. In particular, younger children base their moral judgments more on consequences, whereas older children base their judgments on intentions. When, for example, the young child hears about one boy who broke 15 cups trying to help his mother and another boy who broke only one cup trying to steal cookies, the young child thinks that the first boy did worse. The child primarily considers the amount of damage–the consequences–whereas the older child is more likely to judge wrongness in terms of the motives underlying the act (Piaget, 1932, p. 137).
So, catch my thought? When a businessman considers the costs of performing illegal or unethical acts only in the sense of money, he is reverting to the very first stage of moral development, that of less than a 10 year old child.
Now, there are six stages in Kohlberg’s theory:
1) Obedience and Punishment Orientation
2) Individualism and Exchange
3) Good Interpersonal Relationships
4) Maintaining the Social Order
5) Social Contract and Individual Rights
6) Universal Principles
Now, you could make a good argument that this kind of business thought (Milton Friedman, etc) actually falls into the second level where self interest and avoidance of punishment become primary concerns. However, making moral decisions at the second level of Kohlberg’s six stages is just about as insulting as reasoning at the first.
My second point is when business is considered only as a money making endeavor, all the other levels of moral development don’t just become irrelevant, they become a block and a hazard to making maximum profit.
People who hold values from the other four stages might very well have difficulty succeeding in a corporation.
Let’s look at level 3, Good Interpersonal Relationships.
They believe that people should live up to the expectations of the family and community and behave in “good” ways. Good behavior means having good motives and interpersonal feelings such as love, empathy, trust, and concern for others.
It might be difficult to evade taxes, shift jobs overseas, to fire employees who are too old, if you try to live up to these expectations. Now, that generally that is not much of a problem, because if you want to do these things, you can get people (once again, Milton Friedman) to tell you that what you are doing is right and true. Not only is doing these things not wrong, they are in the long term good for everybody and in the long term will contribute to a more successful and happier society.
Now, as someone who professes and teaches ethics, I might point out that using wrong doing and “ends justify the means” thinking is more likely to produce more wrong doing and “ends justify the means thinking” than it is to produce a “good” or “successful” society.
Level 4 thinking means a person begins to consider “society as whole” as a factor in moral decision making. Breaking the law, damaging the environment, treating people badly, acting in the interest of a foreign government or corporation or trading partner to the detriment of your own country, etc. are acts that damage society as a whole. A businessman willing to maximize profit at all costs with this level of moral development has to believe that the long term benefits of illegal and unethical actions will produce in the long term a better society or embrace simple villainy as a way of life.
At level 5, you are essentially talking a language modern business on the Friedman model may have serious difficulty understanding. A “good society” might very well be one where real people with real influence might seriously believe that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. What makes for a good society might in some people’s minds to be things other than money. If the “free market” solves all societal problems in the long term, other thought is just childish rubbish that must be tossed aside as part of the debris of history.
One of the reasons for the absence and continuing decline of moral values in American business is the lack in this society of individuals at the 6th level of moral development. Nothing could be more detrimental to the profit model of societal success than the proposition that there are universal principles by which a society should function. I read a lot and I promise you that the great thinkers, leaders and holy men of history have not been friendly to profit as a primary goal of the good society.
Kohlberg’s six levels of moral development give us insight into how we might consider thinking about ethical problems. Presumably it is better to think at a higher level than a lower one. If you accept that thought than an alarm bell should go off anytime a belief system calls for ignoring higher values and using the earlier ones.
(The quotes for this article are from W.C. Crain. (1985). Theories of Development. Prentice-Hall. pp. 118-136.) With my grateful thanks!