After I went through three News Networks I came up with twenty eight business ethics topics that merited my comment and analysis.
There are all current, happening now. There are not subjects on long term business ethics tragedies like global warming or the collapse of the moral order in the current administration or the cowardice of our major institutions and our ruling class.
For the love of a Merciful God, what has happened to this nation and the larger world?
When I started writing this blog almost twenty years ago, I could depend on two or three topics a day. This wasn’t a gradual collapse of national morality. It is tied directly to the 2016 election of Donald Trump and his unfortunate re-appearance in 2024. There was a massive acceleration in business ethics problems and it continues to accelerate.
Twenty-eight sounds like a lot of topic but you must understand I haven’t completed my usual gazette of news sources. I still have the financial news and the foreign press as well as some specialty publications on tech and science.
I can easily be looking at sixty to seventy-five topics after my usual examination of the news.
One of the parables in the New Testament is about the absence of the necessary workers to harvest the crops, a thinly veiled reference to spreading the word of God. It concludes with the exhortation to pray that the Lord sends more help.
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Well, we need a hundred business ethics writers to cover this amount of material.
If the United States and its democracy end as so much evidence indicate is happening, it will not matter if there are any writers or any concern over business ethics.
We will just have a gangster government. Money and influence will eclipse any moral values. Those at the Heritage Foundation and the writers of Project 2025 will have attained their goals in creating a nation when a tiny minority of depraved self-interested ideologues make decisions for the rest of us.
If democracy survives, those of us who believe in the promise of the United States, the importance of actual Christ based Christianity and morality, will be more important than ever.
There will be much to repair, much to recover and many, many to be brought to the bar of justice and punished for their crimes.
A few days ago, there was an attack on the CDC by a gunman. Our current regime hardly bothered to take note but the CDC is home to scientists and highly professional experts in their fields. These are the dregs of humanity in the eyes of our oligarch managed masses of barely literate malcontents currently occupying the highest offices in Washington. And so, the shooting did not trouble our government.
But those who have spent their lives working to protect and improve the lives of all Americans resent being shot at by crazy people and disparaged by their current “leadership.” That is not surprising. What is also not surprising is that they are publicizing their discontent.
They have published a signed letter demanding change and one of the changes is for Kennedy to stop spreading misinformation.
That first paragraph quoted from the letter found below is a mountain of eloquence and it may find its way into the future history books once we escape the clutches of the current regime.
(A picture from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes showing Sherlock and a criminal.)
Below is a report from Time magazine entitled Hundreds of Public Health Workers Call on RFK Jr. to ‘Stop Spreading Inaccurate Health Information’ After CDC Shooting written by Chantelle Lee.
“The attack came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence,” public health workers said in the letter, which was also addressed to members of Congress. “CDC is a public health leader in America’s defense against health threats at home and abroad. When a federal health agency is under attack, America’s health is under attack. When the federal workforce is not safe, America is not safe.”
The public health workers went on to accuse Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, of being “complicit in dismantling America’s public health infrastructure and endangering the nation’s health by repeatedly spreading inaccurate health information.” They cited several statements and actions that Kennedy has made in recent months, pointing to his claim that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively” against upper respiratory infections such as COVID-19—despite years of research showing that the shots are both safe and effective—and his announcement that HHS would be winding down mRNA vaccine development. They also condemned his decision to remove all the experts from a critical vaccine advisory committee. And they said some of Kennedy’s past comments—such as claiming that there is a “cesspool of corruption at CDC”—were “sowing public mistrust” in the health agency.
Will Kennedy stop spreading lies and misinformation? Don’t be ridiculous! In this administration, lies and misinformation constitute the very core of their being. They are living evidence of an accumulation of half assed beliefs, ill formulated concepts and huge masses of things they would like to be true but aren’t. He isn’t going to change. He owes his office to craven subservience to the “great” leader.
What are the ethics here?
These aren’t hard calls. The health care workers who have labored long and with amazing success to protect all Americans are heroes.
Right now they are being lambasted for doing their jobs. Many, a great many, are right now being fired in the name of “efficiency.” This government’s idea of efficiency is the destruction of a government that works and not just that but an embrace of a radical anti-science, anti-rational, belief system more befitting a basement dwelling conspiracy theorist than a working 21st Century government. It is all such a damned shame.
What is happening is wrong to the very center of the bone. There is not rational defense for what the government is doing.
When will this end? When will good, competent people return to rule?
Well, we will see if we can ride these horrors out.
The struggle between Progressives and Corporate Democrats currently rages.
We live in what is often described as a free enterprise system, loftily described as free market. However, any examination reveals that we don’t do much free marketing in this country. There are many barriers to economic entry, a host of monopolistic segments of the economy, a horde of anti-capitalist non compete agreements and the list goes on an on. And then, of course, we could talk about a litany of economic villains evading the free market using government subsidies, tax breaks and regulatory capture besides the constant illegal dumping of pollutants, tax evasion and direct law breaking.
It is a wonder that you can look around at the American Business landscape and wonder how any intelligent human being could describe it as a free market.
But they do.
And now we come to the idea of a government, in this case, a city run grocery store. Shouldn’t we depend of the free market for groceries and much else?
Yeah, that would seem to be the general rule.
But what if capitalism, the free market, isn’t functioning correctly? One of the tenets of the free market is that when there is a need, the free market will adroitly jump in and fill it. Many people especially economists who are very often paid to maintain a fierce defense of free market principles. That is, they get paid to write free market propaganda and they often owe their jobs to the contributions and influence of the corporate elites and our corrupt and incompetent ruling class.
The truth of the matter, the facts of the matter, is that the free market fails on a regular bases in many areas of need and of necessity and generally speaking the powers that be don’t care.
Many parts of New York are “food deserts.” Large areas with no access within a reasonable distance to buy nourishing food.
Zohran Mamdani wants to change that. He wants to create number of stores where residents of the city can buy good food and a wide variety of food for themselves and their families. He wants to step in act on behalf of his constituents, the people of New York. He wants to help protect them from malnutrition and make sure they have a healthy diet. He wants the people of his city and their children to live long and fruitful lives.
Working for the people that elected you instead of your corporate donors is a very radical idea in the Democratic Party. And Mamdani has attracted the ire of what are very kindly called Corporate Democrats. I prefer other descriptive terms.
Is it a good idea? I think it probably is but as a man of some experience a lot depends on how the program is done, and the quality of the people creating and running it.
When I was a young man, I often wondered why a great program worked at the original site but no one could duplicate it. And then I understood. One visionary leader with capability and confidence can take what in hindsight is a not very good idea and make a roaring success of it. I’ve seen it done. Leadership and energy determine many things in this nation.
This sounds like a good idea. And when you have an innovative idea and young and energetic people willing to run it, it stands a good chance of success.
For a more in-depth view of this city run grocery idea, here is an essay linked to below.
In an article entitled: Here is everything you need to know about New York experimenting with city-run grocery stores, author Katalin Nagy discusses the Mayoral candidates idea for city run grocery stores.
In a recent interview with News 12 New York, Mamdani outlined the vision for a pilot program that would include launching one store in each of the city’s five boroughs. He also mentions that the plan would potentially be supported by $60 million in public funding.
These stores would be strategically placed in areas known as “food deserts.” These are neighborhoods where access to affordable, fresh groceries is scarce. The stores would primarily sell essential items at wholesale prices to help counter rising food costs.
Mamdani’s proposal is designed as a public option for groceries that would frame access to healthy food as a basic right. In campaign videos and public comments, Mamdani has stated that these stores would operate like a civic institution, similar to a fire station or public library, and would ideally eliminate middlemen to lower grocery prices.
Zohran Mamdani might be one of those leaders we so desperately need to replace the old tired face of the Democrats and to lead a better America where the wants and needs of the people come first.
Corporations find democracy at the very least inconvenient but in Missouri, the will of the people is not a problem. Pesky voters with weird ideas that would cost corporations money can be brought to heel with astonishing ease.
(We, the American people, suffer from unfettered corporate power. May vengeance live amongst us and justice return.)
In Missouri, corporate power clearly seen to undo and reverse democracy. Before I get into the details, let us discuss the right and wrong of it.
Why am I discussing this in a business ethics blog? Because it is wrong for corporations to run the government be it city, county, state or federal. “We the People of the United States,” in the preamble of the United States Constitution enshrines in law the power of the citizens, not corporate or monopoly power or even worse, our newly minted oligarchs.
The people of Missouri voted for paid time off for illness or illness in the family like that of a child. It wasn’t a narrow win, it was a big margin. The people had spoken.
But the legislature and the governor nullified the will of the people. Can you think of a sadder sentence? The men elected to do the will of the people, at the very least, the very least protect them. And they failed. They directly defied the expressed will of the people of their state.
It was evil and wrong of the legislature and the governor to do this. In a democracy the people rule. But not in Missouri.
The corporations and businesses that defeated the people’s will are in the wrong and they should suffer fro what they did. But the Republican super majority in the legislature protect them from the repercussions of their pitifully evil acts.
But there are currents in the lives of men, and the haughty attitude of the bought (should I say “rental”) men in the Republican Party will get their comeuppance in time.
Are there good people in Missouri who will not stand idly by and take this injustice? Where are the heroes who would reverse this evil act? Time will tell if they appear.
Here is the story from my friends at the Progressive Magazine authored by Eleanor J. Bader.
When 58 percent of Missouri voters approved Proposition A in November 2024, they assumed that the ballot measure’s passage would finally grant private sector workers the ability to take paid time off when they were sick or needed to care for an ailing family member. But they were wrong.
Although the paid sick leave policy took effect on May 1, 2025, allowing workers in companies with fifteen or more employees to earn one hour of paid leave for every thirty hours worked, the state’s Republican-dominated legislature opted to override the popular vote and overturn key parts of the measure just two weeks later. Governor Mike Kehoe signed the repeal into law on July 10.
(This picture is borrowed from dear friends at Wikipedia (they deserve donations and support!) and they got the picture from NASA which being a government agency places it in the public domain.)
Social media, the internet, broadcasts almost infinite amounts of lies, misinformation and abuse. It causes severe and lasting harm to our society. And yet our political system seems unable to cope in anyway, not even able to curb the international scams that plague the elderly and the young.
The other day I was reading Al Jazeera, probably the best source of information about the war in the Ukraine, (they have daily coverage), and noticed an interesting editorial. Mercy Mutemi is the managing partner at Nzili & Sumbi Advocates, a law firm. She wrote a very fine editorial about efforts in African Courts to rein in the abuses of the Internet.
In April 2025, the Human Rights Court in Kenya issued an unprecedented ruling that it has the jurisdiction to hear a case about harmful content on one of Meta’s platforms. The lawsuit was filed in 2022 by Abraham Meareg, the son of an Ethiopian academic who was murdered after he was doxxed and threatened on Facebook, Fisseha Tekle, an Ethiopian human rights activist, who was also doxxed and threatened on Facebook, and Katiba Institute, a Kenyan non-profit that defends constitutionalism. They maintain that Facebook’s algorithm design and its content moderation decisions made in Kenya resulted in harm done to two of the claimants, fuelled the conflict in Ethiopia and led to widespread human rights violations within and outside Kenya.
Further down in the article she very eloquently explains the significance of the court’s decision thusly:
The ultimate goal of the Bill of Rights, a common feature in African constitutions, is to uphold and protect the inherent dignity of all people. Kenya’s Bill of Rights, for example, has as its sole mission to preserve the dignity of individuals and communities and to promote social justice and the realisation of the potential of all human beings. The supremacy of the Constitution also guarantees that, should there be safe harbour provisions in the laws of that country, they would not be a sufficient liability shield for platforms if their business decisions do not ultimately uphold human rights.
I would have liked to summarize the findings about this case but I unable to approach the level of her eloquence. She states the principle in question very well indeed.
The Internet is a world wide phenomenon and while we here in the United States suffer terribly from its abuses, we are only a small proportion of its victims.
And that means that justice systems all over the world have jurisdiction when their citizens are harmed. The argument here is that a internet provider has immunity provided its business decisions do not result in the diminishment of guaranteed human right.
Our enforcement in the United States has been lacking because of legal complexity and the horrible unsustainable influence of the Tech Bros, our wannabe Oligarchs.
Their time is coming.
We have to rise up as a nation and end this constant stream of bots, foreign influence, etc. It is an open decaying sewer of utter evil and it harms all of us.
The good guys, the guys in the white hats, our modern Hop-Along Cassidy’s, do not win many victories these days what with the scoundrels running the government but sometimes the good guys win one. And today is one of those days.
Here is the headline, the link and a quote.
Conservative network Newsmax agrees to pay $67M in defamation case over bogus 2020 election claims
The conservative network Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of defaming a voting equipment company by spreading lies about President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, according to documents filed Monday.
The settlement comes after Fox News Channel paid $787.5 million to settle a similar lawsuit in 2023 and Newsmax paid what court papers describe as $40 million to settle a libel lawsuit from a different voting machine manufacturer, Smartmatic, which also was a target of pro-Trump conspiracy theories on the network.
If you have a genuine enjoyment of humor, go down further in the article and read how Newsmax claims that they did nothing wrong. “We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism.” I can’t help but think that paying sixty-seven million dollars certainly gives one the impression that someone did some wrong-doing.
Will the Right Wingers ever accept the 2020 elections as legitimate after an unbroken stream of court losses of which this one is just the latest? Not a chance. Their self identity demands victimhood and not just victimhood but giant international conspiracies to justify their foul language and overwrought histrionic emotions.
It is a real pity that the court results have a limited effect in this strange world of politics we live in.
But still a good win, a great victory.
You can make a strong argument that those who had to pay out all this money are being punished although Newsmax claims otherwise. I would bet you real money they are more judicious in their language in the future.
He is famous for many reasons among them his self-deprecating humor, his creation of the television situation comedy and immense continuous charity work. I learned studying his career that when it came to comedy, he was very learned when it came to his craft and he discussed the books and authors he valued as a comedian.
He started in vaudeville and renamed himself so as not be branded as a Jewish comedian, a dangerous thing in that now far off era. His family like so many today were immigrants. His father came to the United States from Poland and his mother from Lithuania.
Civilization manifests in many ways. Benny was a comedian who drew upon the earlier currents of American writing for ideas. He started on the stage in vaudeville but as technology developed he became a success in radio and films. And then when television became a reality he became a huge success there as well once again adapting to a new medium.
Cultures are enriched propelled by infusions of not just new ideas but the thoughts and customs of other and older cultures.
Benny was born in the United States but his ancestry combined elements of Polish and Ukrainian backgrounds. And, of course, he was Jewish, a considerable handicap at a time when Jews were often thought of as subversives and criminals particularly prone to organized crime.
Ideas develop and spread through cultural mediums like Vaudeville. I live in a small Oklahoma town, yet the local historians tell me there were no fewer than three theaters where entertainers plied their craft. They sang, they danced and told jokes. There were dog acts and family acts and old-fashioned melodrama.
I live in an apartment building which was once a hotel just off the rail line and here Vaudevillians stayed. Jack Benny, George and Gracie Burns and countless other famous entertainers may very well have occupied the same space I live in now.
Of course, those cultural mediums evolve and change. Vaudeville is now regional and little theatre. And our main cultural impetus may well be social media and streaming services.
We live in a river of ideas, cultures and peoples. Few nations have as much movement and excitement as the United States.
But our development is under threat from a foolish movement to create a white majority dominant theme, a movement that seeks to mute the differences that add value to our culture and remake all historical knowledge in the image of white cultural supremacy. And that is wrong and damaging.
It may seem harmless for conservatives to say that it is obvious that Santa Claus is white, to call a mixed race woman, Pocahantas, to ridicule her very real cultural background, to claim a non-existent “War on Christmas,” but these are all techniques to push the idea of a single culture without development or nuance that makes the doddering elderly and the foolish feel comfortable in their prejudices and cultural poverty.
It is important and right that we appreciate and cultivate our developing civilization. It is vital that we actively oppose attempts to limit cultural development like book banning and limits on what can be taught and discussed in the classroom.
Virtually every cultural element of our lives has come under attack at one point or another. Look at the history of Ragtime, Jazz, Rock and Roll and even Country music. Virtually every kind of book and publication has been assaulted by the right wing media machine at one time or another. Motion pictures once had to submit to a code that pretended that all crimes were punished, that all marriages were forever and that single people were always chaste. They pretended that child abuse didn’t exist and that there was nothing but racial harmony in the United States. And now teachers, professors, colleges and universities are under organized assault because of what are obviously the needs and wants of a greedy and prejudiced white majority.
It is more important to speak and live the truth than to engage with a fantasy of what life should be.
It is more important to understand and appreciate the people of this nation and their varied backgrounds and talents. It is a wonderful truth, a wonderful reality, a powerful and motivating history that continues to build.
We live in a nation that has been and continues to come to grips with its racist past and now the present. We live in a nation that ever more thinks in terms of the varied cultures that thrive within it. We live in a nation where free inquiry and scientific methods have produced a massive amount of profit and technological change.
That is a lot to be proud of and it gives me some comfort to think that the strength of those currents may well survive our current regime.
That is exactly what Trump means when he talks about institutions aligning with his vision of American history.
Sanitizing American history of critical thinking and historical fact to make the right wing loonies happy is a six lane highway to a fraudulent account of American History.
It would be nice if peaceful Native Americans had not had their land stolen or been murdered. It would be just lovely if the savage crime of slavery and its associated murder, rape and theft of labor were not part of American history but it is.
It would be nice if American corporations hadn’t sold tobacco as a remedy for breathing disorders or put lead in gasoline poisoning tens of millions of Americans when they had better alternatives. It would be nice if there weren’t millions of miles of mining tunnels under the United States, unmaintained and unmapped or if we hadn’t annihilated a good number of plant and animal species but we did.
History is messy. It records the good and the bad.
We call that “telling the truth,” currently out of fashion with the current regime.
I have read a great deal of American history and I find and continue to find much that makes me proud. More and more I discover that people living their lives in communities all over the United States acted with courage and righteousness on behalf of their country.
But I am not so simple minded or foolish to believe that is the whole story. The truth marches on and we should march with it.
If we fail to act and do right as a people and a nation we deserve destruction. No amount of lies and misinformation will cover our crimes. It seems to me that currently the balance between righteousness and evil in America is in the positive zone but will that continue? It is easy to look at the wicked and self serving members of this administration and despair.
But let us have faith in the long arc of history and our nation even in this our lowest and worst point in history.
Let us do what is best and hope that history vindicates us.
Let us tell the truth and live by it.
And that means allowing our historical institutions to actively seek and present the truth.
Thomas Lecaque writing for the Bulwark has some strong words for what the Administration is demanding.
I recommend you read the full article. He has a lot to say.
And here is the Huffpost talking about the chilling effect of this regimes attacks on our learning institutions. Read what Jennifer Bendery has to say:
Staff are censoring content they fear could upset President Donald Trump. Volunteers are angry and mulling quitting, even as they work for free. Employees are repeatedly warned not to talk to the press.
And the message from on high is that if you care about the Smithsonian Institution and its 17 museums in Washington, D.C., and if you care about your colleagues keeping their jobs or keeping your own, you’ll keep your mouth shut about the chilling effects of Trump’s efforts to erase art and rewrite American history in the ways that he wants.
Here is a CNN report on the subject – but do not expect it to be up very long. They don’t like their video’s on other platforms – so read it while you can.
(An 17th Century version of me? Perhaps, but in any case a public domain picture from a book of the 19th Century.)
This blog, Pilant’s Business Ethics, will soon be twenty years old, and I have hardly published in it for some years now.
Why is that? Well, I had retired from teaching and had many other projects going. I actually worked hard on a number of novels. And writing about business ethics day after day continually exposes you to the undersides of human endeavor. In other words, it was a depressing subject.
So, why would I, much older now and very much retired, return to a blog once very popular and now seldom seen? Especially at at time when I just want to be left alone with my books and my studies. I was expecting to gradually fade away, an old college professor who had done his duty and earned his rest. But I am coming back to write and to fight — why?
Because I’m enraged. I’m angry. I’m disgusted.
Every single day I look at the news and find myself in an America I don’t recognize governed by mediocrities, criminals and the very dregs of the world of the internet conspiracy mongers.
I can’t stand to sit by idly and watch while morality and goodness are endlessly ridiculed by the President and his crawling lickspittles.
Business ethics is everywhere in the world a joke, a subject to be despised. Everyone knows in America, from the smallest child to the most morally challenged CEO that the way to make money is to cut deals with the government after finding some convenient way to grease the skids by contributing to a new ballroom, the desecration of the Rose Garden, or buying worthless crypto currency.
The idea that human beings act the part of citizens and patriots is melting away like snow on a hot summer’s day. And I firmly believe in patriotism and in what it means to be an American, And my vision of what it means to be an American doesn’t include criminal activity or a craven obedience to the current administration.
Well, I’m not going to sit and take it. I am returning to blogging, enraged and fully of fiery condemnation for the incompetent, the crooks, the grifters and above all, the confident neo-fascists who intend the destruction of American democracy.
(Quoted directly from the article above.) The statistics are surprising. While psychopathy affects about 1% of the general population, the numbers are significantly higher in the business world. According to research cited in “Philonomist,” psychopathy affects 4% to 20% of employees, with a particular concentration in leadership positions. Simon Croom, a professor and researcher at the University of San Diego, claims that about 12% of senior corporate leaders exhibit psychopathic traits, meaning “psychopathy is up to 12 times more common among executives than in the general population.” Recent studies suggest an even higher percentage: about 20% of CEOs may exhibit psychopathic traits. This overrepresentation is not accidental – psychopaths are attracted to power, and some of their personality traits can actually aid in advancing through the corporate hierarchy.
Twenty percent of CEO’s is a very high proportion of working CEO’s with a serious personality disorder. What are the implications? I have had the misfortune to encounter psychopaths in my work in criminal justice. As you might imagine they were wrongdoers, remorseless liars and miscreants without a shred of human feeling. It was best to lock them up and remove them from the larger population. And while we have this choice when their behavior results in criminality, what choices do we have when their behavior produces corporate success?
Not many. We live in a CEO worshiping culture where it is assumed that CEO’s are geniuses and swashbuckling entrepreneurs. I do find any of this to be true and my opinion of American CEO’s is barely printable or speakable in polite company. But in a culture where CEO’s are given free rein to commit economic havoc (and they do), the psychopathic CEO and all others are well protected from interference or any form of justice. I could point to hundreds of examples but Boeing’s decisions resulting in the crashes of two aircraft with more than three hundred dead resulted in no criminal charges.
You might say a psychopath functioning as a CEO has found his natural environment much like a lion on the plains of the Serengeti.
America’s wars have been a study of mine for some years. In the military it often said that you learn a great deal about a nation by the people who serve, their willingness to act bravely and on behalf of others. I can’t help but believe that our willingness as a nation to use psychopaths to run important organizations says a lot about us as a nation.
A sort of a post religious world sort of decision would be one conclusion. An utter emphasis on success measured in dollar amounts would be another.
It would seem that for much of our leadership in the United States, any consideration of religion, patriotism, or any other human quality like empathy or kindness is simply irrelevant. The only thing that matters is narrowly defined set of personal economic goals, you know, so much money, so many houses, the trophy spouse and the political influence. It creates and maintains a cruel and rapacious word where spouses age and must be replaced, neighborhoods go out of style so you have to move and friends and allies are little more than simple pawns to be discarded when convenient.
And of course, the planet itself is to squeezed like an orange for every last bit of use without any regard for sustainability or our posterity. In the world of the psychopath, things and people exist only for use.
From my point of view entrusting societal resources to the mentally ill is a bad idea. But apparently for many of our “leadership” class, they are too useful to give up.
I will return to the topic of psychopaths in business in later posts. The subject fascinates me and should concern you.
James Alan Pilant
The article above that was linked to and quoted from is entitled:
Is Psychopathy an Asset in Business? Facts and Myths About Ruthless Leaders
Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
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