I was having class one day and in the front row was a veteran of several combat tours in Iraq. The class got into a spirited discussion about a woman’s time of the month and the things you can buy like tampons and pads to help with that very common malady.
My combat veteran laid his head on the desk, covered his ears with his hands and tried to make the subject go away. I doubt if he was successful. We were friends, probably still are, haven’t heard from him in some years. I respected his service and gave him class time to talk about it.
Not everyone is going to be comfortable with every topic brought up in class. And I understand that.
But removing the phrase, “Climate Change” is different in a major and important way.
Climate Change is real, observable, and needs to be dealt with. And our government is supposed to dealing with it.
Before we go any further, let me give you a link and a quote from the current topic:
“Please ensure that every member of your team is aware that this is the latest list of words to avoid — and continue to be conscientious about avoiding any terminology that you know to be misaligned with the Administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the directive from acting director of external affairs Rachel Overbey said.
“Misaligned with the administration’s perspectives and priorities,” the weasel words for pitiful stupidity from the reality denying loons that currently form our ruling regime.
(Admiring the latest delusion at the Dept. of Energy.)
Tell me, do you think that covering your ears and making racket will drop the earth’s temperature? Because I don’t.
What are these idiots doing? Well, they are completely devoted to chasing fossil fuel money, billions of dollars, and in pursuit of that money, there is no action no matter how obviously moronic and stupid that they won’t do.
And this is one of the stupid and moronic decisions that these people are embracing in the hope of stalling effective action against climate change so that fossil fuel companies can rake in the cash.
It is wrong. It is immoral. It is pathetic. And I hope and pray for the time when these fools are driven from the government, polite society and any hope of profit.
I haven’t written for several days and I try very hard to write every day. So, what gives?
I heard the President’s speech at the United Nations.
Let me explain.
From the time that I was in my early teens, I read speeches. I found this enormous book of famous speeches everything from Hitler to Churchill I practiced Patrick Henry, Robert Ingersoll and Woodrow Wilson among many others.
I grew up in rural Northeastern Oklahoma and I would go out in the woods and practice public speaking. The art of setting the mood and driving home your point, I studied with relish.
I’ve probably given several hundred speeches in my life and if you count lectures, several thousand.
So, what is it about our current regime’s leader that has me upset?
His speech was crazy, unhinged and total nonsense. I wracked all my knowledge, all my experience and every memory trying to think of anything like it I have ever heard and came up empty, that is, for the first day. The second day, it came to me – where I had heard that speaking style before. It was Uganda’s Idi Amin.
I went and pulled some of Amin’s speeches and there are some similarities although Amin appears to use much more complex sentences and is able to maintain a central theme for entire paragraphs. So, while they share a common theme of despising ethnic minorities and imagined enemies and a certain delight in cruelty, it is fairly obvious that as speech making go, Idi Amin is the superior speaker.
So, the worst speaker I can think of in the history of humankind is not as bad a our current leader. In my estimation no speaker have ever been this bad. I am sure he will be pleased to hear that he is best at something.
I am unhappy about this. I am depressed about the state of this nation that our leader sounds like an escaped mental patient with truly legendary delusions.
If this wasn’t upsetting enough, watching coverage of this speech on various news outlets ,I saw that they “sane washed” this monstrous presentation.
Let me repeat that. A madman uttered completely insulting and cruel nonsense to an international audience and much of American media attempted to explain what he meant as if he was expressing some kind of coherent thought.
So, I haven’t written for a few days.
I read the other day that we have some 400 days to save our democracy. It seems to me that I should write as often as possible during that period. I have a duty to my nation to not take these horrors in silence and I will not.
I am very unhappy today. I haven’t posted very much lately because I have some ideas percolating in my mind.
I have been wanting to write a major piece on the fact that everyone in politics seems to talk up the “free market” while working very hard to make sure that there is little or no free market activity in countless fields of ende3avor. I wanted to talk about the necessary elements for a free market and how government action is necessary to prevent combinations and price fixing.
(Our current national leadership.)
I also want to severely criticize business schools for their nonsensical devotion to the idea that in some strange way, the teachings of business are generally applicable in all industries and businesses. They are not. An understanding of how, why and a historical understanding of a business is absolutely essential to a successful leadership and day to day running of a company. Any examination of American movies and Boeing aircraft reveal the folly of a general business set of teachings applied where it simply does not belong. And I will get to it. It is a difficult subject.
No, today is a bad, bad day. Jimmy Kimmel has been removed from the air by a state sponsored form of censorship. The FCC threatened to pull broadcast licenses and the network complied with their demands.
These last twenty four hours have changed our futures. If this government, incompetent and pitiful as its is, can successfully tell media companies what is and is not acceptable, we have little chance of having fair election or even intelligent national discussion.
This is a nail in the coffin of democracy.
It is very painful for me to see the end of the American experiment in representative democracy, and I will be in mourning for some days.
I find it hard to believe that that coming elections in 2026 will be anything but a rigged farce and that will be the final act in America’s story.
After that we will live in some kind of 4th Reich.
I had whooping cough at six weeks old. I burst my belly I was coughing so hard. If you run your hand down the center of my abdomen you can still feel the place. I am an old man now and in those far off years there were no vaccine for that disease. I also got to experience measles, chicken pox, and mumps. The measles infection was very serious and they put me in a bedroom by myself and a doctor came and checked on me. I didn’t quite die. But I remember how it felt. I remember rolling back and forth in the bed trying to make the pain go away.
Florida’s Surgeon General is doing away with vaccine requirements.
He says requiring vaccines is a form of slavery.
So, my suffering and near death were celebrations of freedom? If I had been freed at birth from the dangerous diseases which diminished my life and didn’t quite kill me, I would have been in some larger sense “free?”
What about the millions upon millions of Americans who died from these diseases before vaccines were developed? Were they free? I don’t understand, is there some freedom resting beneath a tombstone that I am so devoid of understanding that I just don’t get it?
What would I say to the Florida Surgeon General given the opportunity? I would say “Do you know what I want to be free of, Mr. Ladapo?”
“Vaccine requirements don’t bother me, not only did I get all of mine, I made sure my son got his too. No, what bothers me is the explosion of charlatans and fools thinking they know better. And not just thinking they know better but demanding other people yield to their crackpot ideas. What I want is to be free of crazy people trying to run my life. ”
It would be nice to be free of the loonies spouting their nonsense. And comparing vaccine mandates to slavery is so repulsive and disgusting that I don’t feel I could do my anger on the subject justice in less that two or three thousand words. Suffice to say, slavery as practiced in the American South was vile beyond belief and a crime so terrible that we as a nation have not and are unlikely to ever finish paying for it
Below is a link to the story I quote from and a brief passage.
(Just another crank lost deep in his own foolishness.)
Aysha Bagchi writing for USA Today has the following story: Florida surgeon general says he doesn’t need to study impact of ending vaccine mandate.
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo said he doesn’t need to study the potential impact of ending vaccine mandates for children before his state becomes the first to do so in 45 years.
“We do have outbreaks in Florida, just like every state, and we manage those,” Ladapo told host Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sept. 7. “So there are no new, special, you know, special procedures that need to be made.”
The Florida Surgeon General confesses he didn’t bother to study the effects of his decision.
What are the business ethics here?
Any decision made about Americans’ health should be taken with great consideration for the facts. To not even bother to collect the relevant facts is a complete and total dereliction of duty and a failure to conduct oneself in accordance with simple human intelligence.
I don’t see any need for further analysis.
It is painful to live in such times where these kinds of decisions are being made based on lunacy and stupidity.
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.
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.
We’ve been hearing a lot about our foolish leadership and his desire to limit the Smithsonian’s coverage of the history of slavery because he believes they talk too much about it.
They don’t talk to much about it. What has happened is that historians are really coming to grips with the history of slavery and its long term effects. At various points in my life I have attended college winding up with thirteen and a half years of full time attendance as well as another twelve years or so teaching. In that time, I have seen the teaching of Reconstruction and slavery changing dramatically.
After the Civil War, the defeated confederates did everything possible to make states rights the center of the war’s cause rather than slavery. However, a very casual examination of the issue and a quick look at the newspapers of the revolutionary South demonstrate conclusively that slavery was the principle factor in the rebellion.
After the war, superhuman efforts were made to write a new and highly fictionalized history of the war, the “lost cause” narrative was created and emblazoned across novel after novel and many motion pictures as well. The shock of my white students upon seeing “Judge Priest” with Will Rogers and its utter and complete embrace of the lost cause I found fascinating. My minority students were well aware of that narrative.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy labored for years to sanitize history books, build statues and monuments and to attack any attempt at an accurate depiction of the Civil War. Their statues of traitors and subversives who killed their fellow Americans in the pursuit of the right to enslave others are all over the United States but principally in the South.
Historians are no longer buying into the Confederate sympathizers historical revision. The horrors of slavery began to be discussed honestly in the classroom. I had some of those classes. Slaves were very often maimed to mark them as property. They were murdered for defiance. They were bred like cattle for muscles and size so they could work the land. They were denied education as well as virtually any human right recognized by American law. The idea that they were vital and cherished members of the family is pitiful nonsense.
But above all, the greatest and most significant failure of American history was the fact that the confederate traitors were not punished after the war. Their evil acts and continued defiance had dire results which continue to this day.
And among those dire effects are the desire to censor American history of everything that might detract from a heroic narrative. Nations should not be a subject of worship. A nation is something that a people develop and if they do right be proud of and if they do wrong own up to it.
The glory of America is that we learned from our mistakes. Not only did we abolish slavery, we became leaders in the struggle to end colonialism and many other worldwide evils. Until this year we were the most important nation on earth in the struggle to end hunger and fight disease all thought this has been ended by the pitiful and immoral current regime. In many ways we have learned from our history and become a better and greater people.
That we do right is our glory and our legacy not some nonsensical made up history where everything was good and great in spite of facts and knowledge.
The United States is a great nation because it learns from its mistakes not by denying them.
In one of the greatest, if not the greatest, scientific disaster in this nation’s history, the head of the CDC was fired followed by the resignations of some of the finest scientific minds in the nation.
On one side of this firing and these resignations we have an unhinged conspiracy theorist. On the other we have seasoned scientists with decades of experience in dealing with vaccines and disease.
In any other administration, science would prevail.
But we have this administration.
(A picture from the book, An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800. It was published in the 19th Century. It seems to carry an appropriate ambience for the current situation. jp)
In many business ethics disasters people die, nations are severely harmed, land become barren and toxic. What do you say about this one? This is a situation where a nation’s defense against disease is being compromised. It is possible that millions will die, certainly thousands.
Why this massive shake up? Why are these people being gotten rid of?
What possible rationale could there be to remove these medical and scientific experts from the defense of our nation?
Apparently, the worst and the least of the internet conspiracy theories.
On that basis a great nation goes naked in an environment where new diseases are evolving moment to moment?
Well, yes.
Have we as a nation gone completely mad? Are our leaders a band of unhinged lunatics?
Certainly, there are times when that seems to be the case. The District of Columbia is infested with the National Guard of several states. The President is trying to fire people he is directly prohibited by law from firing and the Supreme Court using a thing called a “Shadow Docket” finds that the President can do pretty much what he wants in spite of the clear English language meaning of the law.
So, the government is in a real way crazy right now.
But people dying because of this craziness? Not just dying but dying when we have the vaccines to prevent it? Are you sure that these people should be allowed to go this far?
You know and I know that this is madness.
Once, we’ve come to agreement on the fact that these people are crazy, we arrive at a new problem.
What are we going to do about it?
Right now we can vaccinate a large proportion of the population against the latest version of COVID. Kennedy has limited those vaccinations to people over 65, a small proportion of the population that can be protected. COVID is infecting people right now in large numbers.
People are going to die who don’t need to die.
That offends me. Doesn’t that offend you?
What are we going to do?
How long can this government go on doing these kinds of things?
Below are a couple of news stories and some quote that relate to this story.
James Pilant
MIKE STOBBE writing for the Associated Press has an article that I have linked to below and quotes a few lines from.
When the White House fired Susan Monarez as director of the premier U.S. public health agency, it was clear to two of the scientific leaders at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the political meddling would not end and it was time to quit.
“We knew … if she leaves, we don’t have scientific leadership anymore, ” one of the officials, Dr. Debra Houry, told The Associated Press on Thursday.
“We were going to see if she was able to weather the storm. And when she was not, we were done,” said Houry, one of at least four CDC leaders who resigned this week. She was the agency’s deputy director and chief medical officer.
And then I have this.
Sarah Fortinsky writing for The Hill in an article: Biden White House official on RFK: ‘This is wacky, flat-earth, voodoo stuff’
The health secretary (Kennedy) reflected on the children he’s encountered since arriving in Texas, saying at the event, “I know what a healthy child is supposed to look like.”
“I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation,” Kennedy said.
“You can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection,” he continued. “And I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”
This is the man in charge of the nation’s health. He believes that he can tell if a child is “overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation” by looking at them. (My words, my emphasis.)
We don’t see a lot of courage these days. In the last few months in the United States, law firms, whole industries and universities have bent the knee to the new regime. The American elites that have dominated our society for decades when put to the test of loyalty to nation or self-interest proved themselves to be cowards and curs.
It has been very disappointing. I was under the illusion that I lived in a robust democracy when what I actually live in is a society where many of the most influential and well placed people simply want their money and power without any responsibility to the people and heritage of the United States. They are self-interested, greedy cowards.
(In an Alice in Wonderland world, all ideas are equal. But we live in the real world where ideas have consequences.)
And so we have the current situation where democracy itself may disappear in this nation.
But not everyone has surrendered. Not yet.
RFK, Jr. demanded that “Annals of Internal Medicine” retract a study whose results call into question his ridiculous fringe and conspiracy laden beliefs.
I will not dignify or give any credence to the anti-science ravings of this man. To pretend, that he “might have something,” is another way to assist people in their leap down the rabbit hole of internet nonsense.
I stand on the side of reason, logic and science.
I firmly believe that the study questioned by Kennedy is well founded and provides substantial evidence that anyone who is rational should take into consideration when making decisions about vaccine safety.
But the wonderful part of this sad nonsense is what the Danish researchers did when Kennedy issued his demand.
When confronted by Kennedy’s demands, they said no.
When confronted by the demands of the American federal government that they give way to conspiracy minded nonsense, they said no.
When asked to give up their integrity and surrender to opinions of the foolish and ill informed, they said no.
They stand in defiance to our current nonsensical government. They have backbone and courage.
I wish we had more of these kinds of people here in the United States.
RFK, Jr., Demanded Study on Vaccines and Aluminum Be Retracted—The Journal Said No
The study in question, published in Annals of Internal Medicine in July, is one of the largest of its kind, looking at 1.2 million children born over more than two decades in Denmark. The authors reported that no significant risk of developing autoimmune, allergic or neurodevelopmental disorders was associated with exposure to aluminium compounds in vaccines.
…
Annals of Internal Medicine says it stands by the study and has no plans to retract it. Christine Laine, editor in chief for the journal, wrote in a comment on the study’s web page on 11 August that “retraction is warranted only when serious errors invalidate findings or there is documented scientific misconduct, neither of which occurred here”.
A published response was made and I recommend you read all of it.
Anders Hviid, the senior author and an epidemiologist at the Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark’s public-health agency responds in the following post:
Data vs. Doubt: Danish Scientist Responds to U.S. HHS Secretary Critique of Aluminum Vaccine Study
In conclusion, I maintain that our study does not provide support for the hypothesis that aluminum used as adjuvants in vaccines are associated with increased risks of early childhood health conditions. None of the critiques put forward by the Secretary is substantive. Currently, the best way to evaluate this hypothesis is to use observational data and methods. This is what we have done using transparent and rigorous statistical analysis. I categorically deny that any deceit is involved as implied by the Secretary.
Our current regime is an enemy of science, logic and reason. They don’t like to be disagreed with and the idea of independent judgement and actual research fills these liars and mountebanks with fear and trembling.
Their deadliest enemy is the truth.
If we come out of this crisis and return to democratic principles, truth must be the light that guides us.
Well, not quite so many as 1.4 million, at least not yet. That is the implied number. There have been 414 reports of engine failure and these are significant. They imply that we could be looking at an endemic problems that is only now be revealed.
(Mythological beasts from a lower plane of Hell, that may also require a probe into their warranties.)
So, I give you my usual advice. That is – let the story and the investigations develop and over time the truth will be revealed.
Now, I must admit we live in strange times. Our current regime is very pro-corporation and this inquiry and its possible legal consequences could simply disappear.
You might say – “James, that is a horrible libel on our elected current regime. They wouldn’t sell their honor or the lives of their fellow Americans for money.” As of this date a very large number of investigations have already ceased, and in many more situations, the rules changed to favor industry. Even now selling or renting or drilling on the precious resource of the American people, public lands and our parks, has become more and more a reality.
Well, we will see what happens.
(But if the investigation is stopped or disappeared, I will report it on this site. jp)
In an article published in Reuters, entitled: US probes into more than 1.4 million Honda vehicles over engine failure, there seems to be some concern over faulty engines in Honda vehicles.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a probe into more than 1.4 million Honda vehicles sold in the United States over concerns that connecting rod bearing failures in their engines could lead to complete engine failure.
In a letter dated August 20, the regulator said it received 414 reports of the issue in various Honda and Acura vehicles’ 3.5-liter V6 engine.
…
The investigation covers 2018-2020 model year Acura TLX, 2016-2020 Acura MDX, 2016-2020 Honda Pilot, 2018-2020 Honda Odyssey, and 2017-2019 Honda Ridgeline vehicles.
In 2024, the agency probed 1.4 million Honda vehicles on reports of serious engine issues following the Japanese automaker recalling 249,000 vehicles in November 2023.
Let’s hope it is just a few engines.
What are the business ethics here? It is wrong to sell defective vehicles. Those who have made purchased by mischance such defective vehicles should be made whole by repairs, new vehicles or money damages. There is no need for an in-depth analysis of Shareholder rights or Corporate citizenship, our laws on defective sales are sufficient for this situation.
Elon Musk just canceled a spacecraft launch, settled a lawsuit over paying ex-twitter employees for what must have been at minimum hundreds of millions of dollars and federal judges in California and Maryland certified separate class action lawsuits against the carmaker and its CEO personally.
(An illustration from Dante descent into the nine planes of hell. It seems appropriate. JP)
But there is more, much more.
One of the reasons people buy particular models of car is the resale value. The idea that you might get back a high proportion of your purchase prize is a compelling one.
The resale price of a Tesla is collapsing, at least, according to Mike Taylor, writing for the Cool Down. He suggests the collapse might be do to the many controversies, some of them political, surrounding the controversial figure.
Mike Taylor writing for The Cool Down in article entitled: New report reveals stunning trend in used Tesla vehicle prices: ‘Quite exceptional’ reports that the value of used Teslas is collapsing.
The cost of a used Cybertruck has dropped the most over the last year: 30.4% to $83,963. The Model S is down 22.6% to $26,534, the Model X is down 16.8% to $37,747, and the Model Y is down 12% to $29,216. The most affordable offering is the Model 3, which is down 8% to $23,318.
“The fact that its average used car sale price would dip below the industry average, which includes inexpensive mass-market vehicles, is quite exceptional,” Electrek reported, noting used Tesla prices are down 4.6% year over year, while the market is up 1.2%.
Why is this important?
“It’s proof that the Tesla brand has taken a massive reputational hit and there’s no clear recovery in sight,” Electrek stated. (My emphasis. jp)
The other day I was reading an article in which Elon Musk claimed that if you want to be amazingly rich, all you have to do is work 120 hour weeks. I immediately discarded the nonsense classifying it as one of those ridiculous screeds where wealthy people attempt to appear virtuous against all actual evidence. (I will not link to it – if that kind of braggadocio is your cup of tea, you can look it up.)
However, we do have an insight into how he makes money from an investigation by CNN and discussed in an article from The Cool Down.
Cody Januszko writing for The Cool Down has an article entitled: Small businesses forced into bankruptcy after multimillion-dollar deal with Tesla: ‘It’s been horrible’
CNN’s recent investigation sheds new light on Tesla’s business practices. Many of the small businesses that Tesla contracted were not paid for their labor or products, forcing at least two of them into bankruptcy.
“It’s been horrible. If I didn’t have my family, I don’t think I would have made it,” Jennifer Meissner, one of the business owners who went bankrupt, said.
Unpaid contractors have filed liens against Musk’s companies. Liens are legal claims against property that allow a creditor to take the property if the debt isn’t paid.
CNN’s financial analysis shows that more than $110 million in liens have been filed against Tesla over the past five years, with a potential $24 million still owed.
It would appear to me that if you don’t pay your bills, you can accumulate a lot of money. These small businesses, at least the ones still surviving, are making legal claims against Tesla, so something about payments that is very bad is happening. Let us see what develops.
In international news surrounding the fellow, Elon Musk, we have this burst of disaster journalism. Musk’s AI, Grok, has been superseded in China by the local’s AI system. What do you think? Several hundred million in losses? That is just a guess. I would think providing an AI system for cars produced in China would be in the tens of billions of dollars but I might be mistaken.
Joe Wilkins writing for Futurism has an article entitled: Elon Musk Just Suffered a Humiliating Defeat in China
And now, more than a month after Musk promised to roll Grok out to Teslas “next week,” it turns out a Chinese AI model will be taking the chatbot’s place.
According to Bloomberg, Tesla’s Chinese division is planning to introduce in-car voice assistance via DeepSeek and Bytedance’s AI models at some point in the near future.
It would seem that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are falling with intensity upon Musk and his empire. Of course, there are many critics who might find the barrage just and fair. Well, there are a lot of points of view out there.
What are the business ethics issues here? Corporate citizenship would be a good call. Tesla does not seem interested in paying taxes or benefiting the nation to whom it owes so much.
Of course, we could do Stakeholder analysis. The government, it could be argued always seems to come up on the short end of the stick on these deals with Elon Musk, — cars, spacecraft and DOGE all seem a bit problematic. What about the American People? Elon Musk seems to me more of a well paid parasite than any kind of benefit. But we could do the full shareholder analysis. How would we classify Elon Musk with his enormous wealth and powerful connections purchased for many millions of dollars? Would we call him a Super Stakeholder? His needs seem at times to outweigh citizens, nations and economic systems. All these appear as little more than pawns to our class of oligarchs.
Sometimes, it seems like we are reading a new and cruel version of the Iliad and the Odyssey where the gods of Greek mythology walk the earth and interfere with the destinies of men. These billionaires seem every bit as capricious as Hera and Zeus, and their depredations are equally cruel.
We cannot escape reading about these people, however godlike they think they are. The news will continue to roll in.
Let us see what happens to him and his empire next week. I’m sure it will be interesting.
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.