Tag: mental health

Fact Based Living

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure

(Indeed it does! An Illustration from the book, “The Wonder Clock.”)

There was once an older woman who was asked to invest in a gold mine. She did so and lost all of that money. Her attorney asked her why she didn’t ask him about the deal before investing as he was on retainer and it cost nothing to ask his opinion. And she said, “I was afraid you’d tell me not to do it.”

Facts keep us from doing all kinds of things. For instance, countless young beautiful women want to be my friend on Facebook. The facts of online scamming and the reuse and actual theft of pictures would lead one to believe that there is usually a financial angle to these beautiful women. And all of life is like that. Many things that appear at first glance to be attractive and seductive are in the long term deeply painful.

We want to do stuff but facts prevent it because we would be injured. We also use them to make decisions and these decisions are often criticized as “cold-blooded.” Sometimes I suppose that is so. For instance I once had a girl friend who was pretty and smart and crazy. I ended the relationship in spite of the good looks and intelligence because crazy (and it wasn’t a little crazy) is bad. I am sure I was right but I do miss her from time to time.

Often we are given permission to act and think on our worst impulses. The Internet outrage machine is opposed to facts and human judgment and intelligence in general. What do I mean by the internet outrage machine? Well, many web sites like Facebook are designed around rage and anger as the most effective ways of getting clicks.

So, if you search for “Angry Karens,” you will get first a few and then a flood of angry Karen posts. They want you angry because anger is a strong emotion that enables you to act in foolish and counterproductive ways in voting and buying.

I want you know that Facebook or any other web site where people can post content could just as easily have been designed around love, strong relationships, artistic merit and peace keeping. But there was more money in rage and hatred. And if you were to suggest that the originators of these sites must have been very cold blooded. You are right. They still are.

Manipulating people with emotion and conspiracy theories is very profitable and even though profitable, very wrong. Nevertheless, based on emotion people buy the most awful useless things and are ripped off on a truly epic scale and it is happening right now, moment by moment.

Not only are we manipulated by the Internet and a variety of scammers and conspiracy theorists we have actual totalitarians who have an extreme contempt for facts. They live in a world of feelings that they believe supersede facts. Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin and Tojo all had a very high level of contempt for facts. They essentially lived like a good many American politicians in a world of myth and legend (not the good ones). The current hideous myths are the foolish ideas of a mythic American past particularly the glorification of the 1950’s. And so, when we do things like multi-culturalism which runs against the values of the “Jim Crow” era, they react with unreasoning hatred and rage.

I am a member of the reality based community. I admit right now that I do not understand why everyone doesn’t rely on facts to make decisions and live their lives. It seems to me obvious that this is the most likely path to lead to success.

Right now, our current national leadership appears to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown, bragging about imaginary accomplishments and threatening to arrest and destroy his domestic enemies. He lives in a world of lies and nonsense which he is forcing on the rest of us.

He might succeed. There are a great many people who see monetary benefits from this set of lies and fake mythology. But the facts, the ones they have not managed to obscure and distort, remain. And we who have lived and want to live in a reality based world are still here.

So, the struggle continues.

May truth and righteousness prevail.

James Alan Pilant

TikTok Leads Youth to Porn?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

As an expert on business ethics, each day is another dreary ride into greed and evil. Today is Friday and just another day in the exploration of greed when we find that an internet platform leads children to porn. Yes, just another day.

TikTok leads teenagers to porn after a few clicks. The internet being the cesspool that it is, we shouldn’t be too surprised but I am. What surprises me is that this was in “restricted” mode.

That’s right. The fake accounts used in the study were not just teenagers, they were supposed to be operating in restricted mode but still after a few clicks they began leading these example children to adult topics and pornography. A parent doing due diligence could be fooled be this thing and that was probably the intent.

Let me get the news article that leads to my content out of the way as well as the usual quote.

(Internet Porn breaching the home’s defenses.)

The article is called – TikTok ‘directs child accounts to pornographic content within a few clicks’

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/03/tiktok-child-accounts-pornographic-content-accessible

Global Witness set up fake accounts using a 13-year-old’s birth date and turned on the video app’s “restricted mode”, which limits exposure to “sexually suggestive” content.

Researchers found TikTok suggested sexualised and explicit search terms to seven test accounts that were created on clean phones with no search history.

The terms suggested under the “you may like” feature included “very very rude skimpy outfits” and “very rude babes” – and then escalated to terms such as “hardcore pawn [sic] clips”. For three of the accounts the sexualised searches were suggested immediately.

The article was written by Dan Milmo writing for the online version of the Guardian.

The inevitable question here is why would anyone do this. The money is very good. Teenagers have a lot of spending power and these villains want to tap into it.

How many ways can I say that this terribly wrong and people shouldn’t make money this way? Close to infinity. So moral persuasion is useless. If you want to stop children watching and buying porn, people have to pay fines and go to jail.

There is no other choice. We’ve had the kind words and tried to reason with them and yet here we find a process designed to fool a cautious parent but still get the child as a customer. That speaks to a massive amount of intent. They are playing the government and the people of this nation for fools pretending to regulate content while building a Swiss cheese of holes that any child can get through to get to the supposedly regulated content. It is not right.

Let me in closing state the facts about online regulation when it comes to the United States. We are failing as a regulator of the internet. The EU and Australia have long ago taken the lead in online regulation and we should be following their lead.

James Alan Pilant

Children’s Brains Changed by Inequality

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Editorial, Government Failure

Research finds that Inequality creates a toxic environment.

MRI scans of thousands of children found that those living in areas of higher inequality had measurable changes to the brain and it is believed that these changes may have long term effects on mental health.

This should be front page news.

I am not surprised with the results or the fact that this is not a major story. As a society we talk about children as important but when it comes to money and effort, we demonstrate a lack of concern. .

If you live in a society where basic unfairness is part of the life you lead, you are harmed. The study showed that children from different social classes, that is, the winners and losers, suffered just the same.

The old simple Biblical principle that doing evil and having evil done to you damages the soul.

Yes, it does.

What are we going to do about it. The standard playbook used by Big Tobacco and currently by the fossil fuels industry will be applied as it always is when social change threatens the established order. And so, the result will be —

Nothing.

The Right Wing media machine will spend tens of thousands of words explaining the results away. They are quite likely to produce several made up studies in which they decisively prove that inequality is good for everybody. They will endlessly discuss avoiding a culture of “dependence,” which is a scurrilous way of describing having people fed. There will be several hundred thousand bots posting derogatory attacks on the specific researches and on academics in general. And there will have to be some death threats to round out the mix. After all, the cruelty is the point.

After these attacks, politicians, public figures and regular people will consider the topic controversial and have “doubts.” that these doubts are cleverly manufactured by evil and well paid advocates will be irrelevant.

(It is possible by careful planning using God’s gift of intelligence to create great and wonderful things.)

Now, what would intelligent thinking and capable human beings do with this research?

Now, that is interesting. Obviously, we need more studies of children in societies with different levels of inequality. We also need to see if there are variations that can be achieved by different methods pf parenting and education.

We have information that leads us to see brain changes in children. So, what can we do and what are we doing now that has an effect on this process.

In other word, we as a society and a people take significant research and use it to improve our way of life.

That is what is supposed to happen.

But right now, the intelligent and cultured are under attack by an increasingly unhinged band of goons who are determined to impose their lack of breeding and intelligence on all of us.

We will see whether or not they succeed.

Here is the Guardian article explaining and linking to the research – along with a short quote.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/sep/30/study-links-greater-inequality-to-structural-changes-in-childrens-brains

A study of more than 10,000 young people in the US discovered altered brain development in children from wealthy and lower-income families in areas with higher rates of inequality, which were also associated with poorer mental health.

The data was gathered from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study and published in the journal Nature Mental Health.

Researchers at King’s College London, Harvard University, and the University of York then measured inequality within a particular US state by scoring how evenly income is measured. States with higher levels of inequality included New York, Connecticut, California and Florida, while Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Vermont were more equal.

This article was written by Tobi Thomas for the Guardian.

The Cowardice of Disney

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism, code of ethics, Government Failure, moral philosophy, morality

When I was a little boy I used to watch “The Wonderful World of Disney,” and they had heroes. There was Fess Parker playing Davy Crockett. There was Zorro, the Swamp Fox and the Scarecrow. They fought against tyranny.

(The kind of Americans we use to have.)

They did what was right at great risk.

I was a little boy in those far off days. Those characters were my heroes.

So, I have to ask. Do the people running Disney every watch their own programs? Do they care what kind of example they set? Do they look in the mirror and wonder where it all went wrong because wrong it is?

They gave into evil.

They surrendered to an orange make up covered villain. And they did it knowing that they will be bullied again and again. Once the bad guys understand what brought fear and collapsed the spines of the management at Disney, they will do it again and again. Surrender and appeasement never stop. The crawling abasement of the defeated and the cowardly continues forever.

It is said the coward dies a thousand deaths, the hero just one. Well, Disney is on one death among many. I almost pity them.

What happened to doing what was right? What happened to facing the threat of tyranny with courage and resolve?

Was it just programming? They portrayed heroic behavior to beguile children into buying merchandise? Was that all it was, just a con? Or did they at one time believe that Americans had to stand up for what was right?

We’ll never know. For what can they say that we can trust? What can they say that we will believe?

If you don’t have a spine or courage, what won’t you say? What won’t you do to give yourself one more day, one more minute of hiding from the bully, one more desperate plea, “Please don’t hit me! I’ll do anything you want me to!”

Courage is necessary right now. Many Americans are standing up against what is happening.

But not everyone is up to the standard of men and women of courage. They prefer to crawl and we should pity them but never forget that when the time came to take a stand, they ran like hell.

James Alan Pilant

Worked to Death.

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics, Capitalism

The story referenced below is a sad tale but a common one.

A young man feeling pressured by his employer worked long hour days for a long period of time and as a result died.

A small sacrifice for predatory capitalism.

I believe in righteousness but there is small part of me that admires the complete ruthlessness of working people to death for maximum profit.

If you can work a human being for forty hours a week, you get the benefit of a regular employee but if you can classify his job as not being covered by hourly limits, you can get him to work eighty hours a work, two workers for the price of one. My understanding is that a hundred hours is the current popular number.

Do I need to tell you that this is a cruel from of exploitation?

We live in a society that worships mammon. The fact that the Bible expressly prohibits the worship of money does not seem to have any traction at all.

Of course any sort of Christian based belief system parted ways with American capitalism long ago.

So, people are being sacrificed to the bottom line. In this case, worked extreme hours for long periods ot time. Dying young saves the company from the problems of paying retirement and there are many other benefits besides.

I remember studying child labor in the late 19th Century. They worked six days a week, 12 hour days. Of course, that is only 72 hours. One could be impressed at the kindness of management.

It is well understood that when huge multi-national corporations mistreat their workers, that they have little individual recourse. They are an atom alone in the universe to paraphrase one of predatory capitalism’s most revered leaders, Margaret Thatcher. Alone and helpless against politically influential and in the case of the United States, politically invulnerable.

Overworking people is just a corporation and its leadership mistreating and exploiting human beings. It is simple abuse.

Why hasn’t anything been done about this?

Because we have two political parties, one dominated by oligarchs and the other has a thing called corporate Democrats which means they attempt at times to appear to be friends of the working class but their abject corporate servility and devotion to corporate contributions are so ingrained they find that any action that might benefit common workers is in their view unrealistic and radical.

In fact, it is quite clear that corporate Democrats find voters a bit intimidating and troublesome. That is why they employ think tank and professional to avoid contact with the teaming masses praying for help.

And so the abuse of workers, unpaid overtime, illegal firings, union busting and sometimes simply working a human being to death is beneath the concern of those running our government.

In the United States corporate profits are superb even magnificent.

Do you know why?

It is hard to fail as an American corporation because you pay few or any taxes, you can legally treat your workers as little more than cattle, and largely exist outside all the rules — and if rules get in your way, you can get them fixed.

It is a very comfortable place for a corporation to exist, not so much for the worker though or the citizen or any human being with moral fiber.

Read the story below and realize that he died for corporate profits.

James Pilant

Madison E. Goldberg writing for People Magazine has a article: Microsoft Engineer Dies at Work at 35 as His Family Warns of Overworking Employees.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/microsoft-engineer-dies-35-family-134823435.html

A 35-year-old Microsoft engineer died at work in Silicon Valley last month and his family is now warning companies of overworking their employees.

Pratik Pandey was “found face-down” at 2 a.m. local time on Aug. 20 in Mountain View, Calif., on Microsoft’s campus, according to the Palo Alto Daily Post.

Should Police be Doing Mental Health Calls?

On By southwerkIn Government Failure

(One of Dante’s visions of Hell.)

No. It is a bad idea and has always been a bad idea.

Police are trained to respond to crimes and have resort to various means of restraint and violence. People with mental health problems are seldom criminals and often have no intent to cause a disruption but they lack the ability to discern the effects of their actions.

Police departments are ill equipped to handle mental health emergencies. These aren’t crimes. These are social problems we no longer treat in facilities because state legislatures got rid of the facilities in the half-baked loony idea that serious mental health problems could be handled on an outpatient basis. This was a massive failure and now the mentally ill wander our streets, are often homeless and provided continuous challenges for states, cities and counties. We’ve known this for years. When you are dealing with the mentally ill, untrained responses can result in death and injury.

This is wrong. The mentally ill should be dealt with by people trained and educated to do so.

Here is New York Mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, suggesting that police no longer bear the burden of mental health calls.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/zohran-mamdani-tells-audience-nypd-020500302.html

(Quoted from the article linked to above.) Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani — who has faced heat lately over years-old social media posts critical of the police — came face-to-face with an audience of NYPD officers Tuesday night and told them he would, if elected, spare them the responsibility of responding to most mental health calls.

“We must stop asking them to respond to nearly every single failure of the social safety net,” Mamdani said at Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza as a contingent of cops from the nearby 78th Precinct flanked him for an annual “National Night Out” event. “We must stop making it impossible for them to do their jobs by asking them to do every other job we can think of.” (End quote.)

He’s right and I’ve written about this before. Police should not be doing this. If we are going to throw these people onto the streets we should create an organization with facilities to deal with the problems they make.

What is the ethics here?

How about the idea that when a heavily armed (militarized) police force is asked to deal with mental health calls without training or preparation that people are going to die?

Is that a moral problem? You bet.

Let’s build a better nation by dealing with mental health problems like these intelligently and capably.

James Alan Pilant

White Collar Crime Pays Well?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/20/man-steals-277k-autism-research-gets-5k-fine/

Man Steals $277k From Autism Research, Gets $5k Fine

stillifeLook, if this had been a once-off, or a first offense for Searls I might not be as upset. But, it wasn’t, and it’s not. He worked his con three times over the course of two years. That’s not making a mistake, or a single offense. He intentionally targeted people in and around the autism community. Let’s face it, autism research just isn’t sexy. The people who typically buy fund-raising raffle tickets are those with loved ones diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, or someone who knows someone like that. These are people who are already financial stretched. And he did this with the promise that the proceeds would go to fund autism research. Which also gives false hope to those buying the tickets, as well as to the charity expecting the money.

In addition to Searles’ scam not being an isolated incident, this isn’t the fist time he’s been caught with his hands in the proverbial cookie jar. According to the Olympian article, “ In 2011, Searles was the subject of a court order in Washington barring him from acting as a mortgage broker because he violated the Mortgage Broker Practices Act.” He was also issued a cease and desist order in regards to any kind of solicitation in the state of Washington.

I’m unhappy with the sentence in this case, 90 days home confinement and a $5,000 dollar fine. He’s a repeat offender and he gathered up 277 thousand dollars with this scam. I have seen white collar crime punished more lightly than virtually any other crime imaginable over the course of my life. It is so unfair. Shouldn’t penalties be assessed in some measure on the harm done and less on the social class of the perp?

James Pilant

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Hospitals Mock the Free Market

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

 

Changing memory
Changing memory

Hospitals Mock the Free Market

Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences

When a patient arrives at Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey requiring treatment for the respiratory ailment known as COPD, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, she faces an official price tag of $99,690.

Less than 30 miles away in the Bronx, N.Y., the Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center charges only $7,044 for the same treatment, according to a massive federal database of national health care costs made public on Wednesday.

Americans have long become accustomed to bewilderment and anxiety when confronting health care bills. The new database underscores why, revealing the perplexing assortment of prices for medical care, with the details of bills seemingly untethered to any graspable principle.

Even within the same metropolitan area, hospitals charge prices that differ by staggering degrees for the same procedures. People without health insurance pay vastly higher costs for care when less expensive options are often available nearby. Virtually everyone who seeks health care winds up paying inflated prices in one form or another as these stark disparities in price sow inefficiencies throughout the market.

Hospital Prices No Longer Secret As New Data Reveals Bewildering System, Staggering Cost Differences

Given the opportunity to charge without oversight, hospitals developed a byzantine pricing system that was favorable to them in every way. I am shocked. I want the free market fundamentalists to come here and take a long good look. This is reality. Market actors misusing the system to cruelly abuse their customers and our only hope of salvation, the much maligned government. That is, unless, you want to wait for the hospitals to wake up and realize that the free market is better for everybody? Maybe their profits blind them to the unearthly beauty of your doctrine? What do you think?

James Pilant

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Camp Lejeune Whistleblower Fired

On By southwerkIn Uncategorized

Few ethical dilemmas are as gut wrenching as to whether or not to blow the whistle on unethical, inefficient or stupid practices by your employer. The personal cost is often very high. For Dr. Manion, it was the loss of his job and the high likelihood that no one else will hire a “trouble maker” like him.

There is no doubt in my mind that Dr. Manion fulfilled his duty to his country and his profession. There is no doubt in my mind that the government here was intent not on the care of veterans but on covering its thoroughly incompetent butt.

Let’s not mince words. Firing conscientious workers is a clear and distinct message to leave your morals at the door, that if you are asked to participate in crimes, you’d better participate. It is the last refuge of the employer scoundrel, unless you consider murdering the employee a possibility. The Navy failed in its duty to the nation, to its members and to any semblance of moral responsibility.

THE STORY

Dr. Kernan Manion was terminated by his contractor. His contractor said the Navy asked for him to be terminated.

Manion was made aware by his clients that many on base were suffering severe psychological problems that were going untreated because the system wasn’t working properly due to neglect and because superior officers penalized those who sought treatment.

The soldiers told him that they felt it was likely someone would snap and there would be a mass shooting on the base. Manion wrote memos warning of the problem and provided documentation supporting his findings.  The navy did not want to see these memos.

On June 24, a supervisor for the contractor warned Manion to stop making trouble. “Kernan Manion, it is requested that you cease and desist all further correspondence with the government,” the supervisor with NiteLines, Pamela Friend, wrote to Manion.

After his firing, Manion wrote to President Obama:

“Frankly, in my more than 25 years of clinical practice, I’ve never seen such immense emotional suffering and psychological brokenness — literally a relentless stream of courageous, well-trained and formerly strong Marines deeply wounded psychologically by the immensity of their combat experience,”