Tag: United States

Rational Choice Beats Patriotism?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Chuck Schumer Denounces Eduardo Saverin Defenders, Nazi Comparisons As ‘Appalling’ (UPDATE)

Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, said Schumer and Casey’s legislation was similar to laws the Nazis wrote before World War II to make Jews pay to leave the country. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German,” said Norquist, according to The Hill.

Schumer, taking to the Senate floor, called the comparison outrageous.

“I know a thing or two about what the Nazis did. Some of my relatives were killed by them,” he said. “Saying that a person who made their fortune specifically because of the positive elements in American society, in turn, has a responsibility to do right by America is not even on the same planet as comparing to what Nazis did to Jews.”

Chuck Schumer Denounces Eduardo Saverin Defenders, Nazi Comparisons As ‘Appalling’ (UPDATE)

I remember watching the film, Gettysburg. At the high water mark of the South, Pickett’s Charge, the confederates are almost to the top of the ridge, then the Union troops stand up to meet the charge, the American flag unfurled in the wind. I was so proud, my heart beat fast, and I wanted to be with those troops to fight that fight.

Eduardo Saverin is abandoning the United States. The United States has showered him with benefits and protections during all the time that he has lived here. He owes his enormous fortune to the opportunities and the laws found here.

This seems to be less than apparent to some commentators who have likened laws meant to punish those who discard their citizenship and duties as a form of Nazism. These men have also said that Saverin is merely exercising “rational choice” in his behavior.

I am enraged by this.

Memorial day is next week. Several hundred thousand Americans died often in the most ghastly ways so that this person could have the benefits of citizenship.

Every single day, he was protected by millions of serving Americans who live as soldiers, sailors and airmen.

Locally, he was protected by harm by police, fireman and ambulance services – all paid for directly or subsidized by taxes.

For all the time that he lived in this country, he drove on public roads, walked on public sidewalks, and benefitted from the kindness and law abiding nature of the good and great people that make up this country.

By his actions he makes it clear that these mean nothing to him – they are responsibilities that get in the way of profit and profit is the only “rational” choice.

In this kind of morality, patriotism is merely a burden, an inconvenience, an obstacle on the path of financial maximization.

This person has renounced his American citizenship, an honored status for money.

There is no sum worth giving up being an American. Not now – not ever.

James Pilant

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America’s Financial Sector, Infested with Criminals?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

Charles Ferguson: How Financial Criminalization Crashed the Economy, and the Culprits Got Off Scot-Free

It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the American (and global) financial sector has become criminalized, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behavior that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

It is important to understand that this behavior really is seriously criminal. We are not talking about neglecting some bureaucratic formality. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in concealment of criminal assets and activities by others; and directly committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.

Charles Ferguson: How Financial Criminalization Crashed the Economy, and the Culprits Got Off Scot-Free

I agree with Charles Ferguson. I’ve been following our financial disasters over the last five years and they are in many ways criminal enterprises, not that the Obama Administration seems to care.

We live in a nation with two standards of justice, one for the little people and one for a privileged elite.

I do not think I need to tell you of the horrible effects of injustice. The criminals will break the law again. The criminals will gain in power. The criminals will become even richer.

That is quite the lesson for our children and the larger society. Don’t work. Don’t labor. Steal. That’s the way of American Investment banking.

James Pilant

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Zach from http://www.studentloandebtforgivenesshelp.com/ comments on a previous post.

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

The post commented on was Student Loan Debt a Lifetime Burden for Middle Class but Major Money Maker for Goldman Sachs.

Here’s Zack!

While the student loan problem needs to be addressed in some way, I don’t think giving student loans dischargeability in bankruptcy is the right way. I think bankruptcy courts should be able to modify student loans, but not completely whipe them out. Whiping out student loans would lead to just a lot of abuse. All of us would pay in the way of higher interest rates and fewer students would qualify for loans. I could get a full education without paying a cent knowing I can just declare bankruptcy and by the time I would have paid off my student loans (10 years), the bankruptcy would be off my credit report by then.

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What Do Our College Students Learn?

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

I wrote a three part series (part 1) (part 2) (part 3) on the latest study showing that college students are not learning critical thinking skills. I pointed out that the study was another in a series of little publicized media events. In truth, the public, the colleges and the business world have little desire for critical thinking.

But what do students learn in college?

A faculty member once had a class of students who were not wealthy, not even close. Not all of the students in his class were able to afford textbooks. So, given a choice of textbooks for the next year’s class, he chose one that cost about seventy dollars. The next year, all of his students had the textbook. The very next semester the price of the textbook rose to one hundred and ten dollars. And then two more years slid by and it went up to one hundred and fifty dollars.

This is not an unusual situation with textbook prices. It is, in fact, the common, everyday experience of teachers and students in colleges and universities all over the United States.

Students may not be learning as much critical thinking as some would like, they may not get that much cultural literacy, and they may have only the vaguest concept of the term “civic duty”, but they do know about pricing. I get it in class essays, “You charge as much as you can get.” To them, it is an ethical rule – You must pursue the highest return possible under any circumstance. The students don’t know any other rule. The deeper philosophical concepts of just price and two thousand years of contrary philosophy are not factors here.

I believe I am a good teacher but there is no amount of teaching skill that can equal the cutting edge of another textbook price increase every year. They may not grasp the “statute of frauds” in my business law class but they understand the phrase, “what the market will bear” with perfect clarity.

What are we teaching our students?  Is there any lesson more naked about the nature of the American idea of free enterprise than what students endure each year at the bookstore?

James Pilant

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Benjamin Franklin, Business Ethics And How To Approach An Opponent!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

An excerpt from The True Benjamin Franklin

Author: Sydney George Fisher

Franklin was by nature a public man; but the beginning of his life as an office-holder may be said to have dated from his appointment as clerk of the Assembly. This took place in 1736, when he had been in business for himself for some years, and his newspaper and “Poor Richard” were well under way. It was a tiresome task to sit for hours listening to buncombe speeches, and drawing magic squares and circles to while away the time. But he valued the appointment because it gave him influence with the members and a hold on the public printing.

The second year his election to the office was opposed; an influential member wanted the place for a friend, and Franklin had a chance to show a philosopher’s skill in practical politics.

“Having heard that he had in his library a certain very scarce and curious book, I wrote a note to him, expressing my desire of perusing that book, and requesting he would do me the favour of lending it to me for a few days. He sent it immediately, and I return’d it in about a week with another note, expressing strongly my sense of the favour. When we next met, in the House, he spoke to me (which he had never done before), and with great civility; and he ever after manifested a readiness to serve me on all occasions, so that we became great friends and our friendship continued to his death. This is another instance of the truth of an old maxim I had learned, which says ‘He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.’” (Bigelow’s Franklin from his own Writings, vol. i. p. 260.)

Some people have professed to be very much shocked at this disingenuous trick, as they call it, although perhaps capable of far more discreditable ones themselves. It would be well if no worse could be said of modern practical politics.

I confess to have done similar things myself having been a student of Franklin since I was in high school. (It took me an age to figure out what venery was!) 

There was a mail service in the building where I worked. The mail often contained items of some confidentiality so I asked the our version of a postman to give the letters only to me. Well, a few days passed and the office gossip brought in the letters after having gone through them. I was enraged and decided to go out and tell off the guy. Fortunately this thought passed away instantly as I realized that the busybody would have the letters from then on.

So, the next day I went over and told him how much I appreciated his giving the mail to me only, how it helped me with my work and how few people who did his work would have realized its importance and helped me in the matter. The office busybody never got the mail again. (And the postman and I were buddies from then on.)

Needless to say, I don’t consider Franklin’s action a mean trick. I think it is just a good way to get to know someone.

James Pilant

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Benjamin Franklin, Business Ethics and Bearing Grudges

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

An excerpt from Benjamin Franklin by John Torrey Morse, Jr.

In Philadelphia Franklin soon found opportunity to earn a living at his trade. There were then only two printers in that town, ignorant men both, with scant capacity in the technique of their calling. His greater acquirements and ability, and superior knowledge of the craft, soon attracted attention. One day Sir William Keith, governor of the province, appeared at the printing-office, inquired for Franklin, and carried him off “to taste some excellent Madeira” with himself and Colonel French, while employer Keimer, bewildered at the compliment to his journeyman, “star’d like a pig poison’d.” Over the genial glasses the governor proposed that Franklin should set up for himself, and promised his own influence to secure for him the public printing. Later he=7= wrote a letter, intended to induce Franklin’s father to advance the necessary funds. Equipped with this document, Franklin set out, in April, 1724, to seek his father’s coöperation, and surprised his family by appearing unannounced among them, not at all in the classic garb of the prodigal son, but “having a genteel new suit from head to foot, a watch, and my pockets lin’d with near five pounds sterling in silver.” But neither his prosperous appearance nor the flattering epistle of the great man could induce his hard-headed parent to favor a scheme “of setting a boy up in business, who wanted yet three years of being at man’s estate.” The independent old tallow-chandler only concluded that the distinguished baronet “must be of small discretion.” So Franklin returned with “some small gifts as tokens” of parental love, much good advice as to “steady industry and prudent parsimony,” but no cash in hand. The gallant governor, however, said: “Since he will not set you up, I will do it myself,” and a plan was soon concocted whereby Franklin was to go to England and purchase a press and types with funds to be advanced by Sir William. Everything was arranged, only from day to day there was delay in the actual delivery to Franklin of the letters of introduction and credit. The governor was a very busy man. The day of sailing came, but the documents had not come, only a message from the governor that Franklin might feel easy at embarking, for that the papers should be sent=8= on board at Newcastle, down the stream. Accordingly, at the last moment, a messenger came hurriedly on board and put the packet into the captain’s hands. Afterward, when during the leisure hours of the voyage the letters were sorted, none was found for Franklin. His patron had simply broken an inconvenient promise. It was indeed a “pitiful trick” to “impose so grossly on a poor innocent boy.” Yet Franklin, in his broad tolerance of all that is bad as well as good in human nature, spoke with good-tempered indifference, and with more of charity than of justice, concerning the deceiver. “It was a habit he had acquired. He wish’d to please everybody; and, having little to give, he gave expectations. He was otherwise an ingenious, sensible man, a pretty good writer, and a good governor for the people…. Several of our best laws were of his planning, and passed during his administration.”

Governor Keith lied repeatedly to Franklin, mislead him into the dangerous and unnecessary journey to England, and decieved a great many others as well. Yet, Franklin’s account of him is kind, balanced, and gives the man full credit for the good things he did. Would any of us have been so kind?

But don’t take this as a compliment on Franklin’s generous personality. It is far more serious matter.

Franklin can take a step back from a situation and view it unemotionally. For an ethical man, this is critical. There is a tendency to assign all evil to an opponent, to never think of him positively, to never consider the situation from that person’s point of view. That tendency throws off judgment and turns the mind away from justice and morality.

A generous view of humanity is often the more accurate one. Viewing one’s enemies as devoid of value puts one surely in the wrong. Viewing with accuracy and balance ennobles the mind and gives substance to decision making.

James Pilant

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Sterling Hayden On “Career”

On By southwerkIn Philosophy

These wonderful paragraphs are by Sterling Hayden, a Hollywood actor. He was a man of many talents and I’ll think you’ll like the writing. This is from the Wikipedia entry to which I am indebted. JP

“The sun beats down and you pace, you pace and you pace. Your mind flies free and you see yourself as an actor, condemned to a treadmill wherein men and women conspire to breathe life into a screenplay that allegedly depicts life as it was in the old wild West. You see yourself coming awake any one of a thousand mornings between the spring of 1954, and that of 1958 ‑ alone in a double bed in a big white house deep in suburban Sherman Oaks, not far from Hollywood.

“The windows are open wide, and beyond these is the backyard swimming pool inert and green, within a picket fence. You turn and gaze at a pair of desks not far from the double bed. This is your private office, the place that shelters your fondest hopes: these desks so neat, patiently waiting for the day that never comes, the day you’ll sit down at last and begin to write.

“Why did you never write? Why, instead, did you grovel along, through the endless months and years, as a motion‑picture actor? What held you to it, to something you so vehemently professed to despise? Could it be that you secretly liked it—that the big dough and the big house and the high life meant more than the aura you spun for those around you to see?

“‘Hayden’s wild,’ they said. ‘He’s kind of nuts‑but you’ve got to hand it to him. He doesn’t give a damn about the loot or the stardom or things like that—something to do with his seafaring, or maybe what he went through in the war . . .'”[2]:151

I believe we all tussle with the issue of whether to write or not to write. I have erred on the side of writing. There may be those of you who think it would have been better if I had remained silent. But here I am. I feel very much like he did some of the time. I think many of you do too.

James Pilant

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Will the Government Ever Attempt to Enforce the Law Against the Bank of America?

On By southwerkIn White Collar Crime1 Comment

Bank of America is teetering on the edge of collapse. It has received enormous aid from the federal government in bailouts, loans and preferential treatment to the tune of trillions of dollars of government guarantees. To add further injury to the insults already suffered, the federal government, that is, the Obama Justice Department has okayed a settlement protecting Bank of America from lawsuits for its practice of filing false affidavits and inventing ownership of property in American Courts. Yet even with this help, the bank is run so badly that it is still failing.

How long does this go on?

Is the government going to bailout this bank one more time?

What crimes do they have to commit? What incompetence do they have to display? What greed in the form of enormous executive bonuses do they have to display? – before enough is enough and they are allowed to perish?

James Pilant

Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail | Politics News | Rolling Stone

In a pure capitalist system, an institution as moronic and corrupt as Bank of America would be swiftly punished by the market – the executives would get to loot their own firms once, then they’d be looking for jobs again. But with the limitless government support of Too Big to Fail, these failing financial giants get to stay undead forever, continually looting the taxpayer, their depositors, their shareholders and anyone else they can get their hands on. The threat posed by Bank of America isn’t just financial – it’s a full-blown assault on the American dream. Where’s the incentive to play fair and do well, when what we see rewarded at the highest levels of society is failure, stupidity, incompetence and meanness? If this is what winning in our system looks like, who doesn’t want to be a loser? Throughout history, it’s precisely this kind of corrupt perversion that has given birth to countercultural revolutions. If failure can’t fail, the rest of us can never succeed.

Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail | Politics News | Rolling Stone

 

 

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Ethics Bob has a book out!!

On By southwerkIn Business Ethics

The Ethics Challenge

The newspapers (and our blog) are full of unethical politicians; the sports pages full of rule-breaking players and parents; the business news full of sleazy companies and greedy CEOs; the education pages full of students who cheat on exams.  What’s a person to think?
Perhaps you really do have to cheat to win.  Perhaps you need to shade the truth to get ahead.  Good people hear that “everybody does it,” and wonder.

The Ethics Challenge

It is a great pleasure for me to offer a plug for Ethics Bob’s book. Please go the web site (click the link above) and consider buying a copy.

James Pilant

This is a video from the same author –

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An Examination of the Political and Economic Crisis in Ireland

On By southwerkIn Economic Justice

I very much enjoyed this documentary. I find it insightful. A citizen of Ireland who worked as a foreign correspondent returns home and looks at his country with some perspective.

It’s easy to see the very similar problems in both the United States and Ireland. In both cases, the government baled out the banks without asking any serious questions nor taking into account the actual value of the bank loans. In both cases, a real estate bubble that was clearly propelled by speculation was considered to be a safe and continuing source of prosperity for the country. And in both cases, the taxpayers wound up footing the bill, while unemployment doubled and services were reduced.

In other words, the well connected walked away and discussed with great seriousness their loss of reputation and minor financial irritations, while the great majority of the nation’s citizen’s suffered for their crimes.

James Pilant

Ireland The Rise and Fall of the Economy, Real Estate, Development – YouTube

 

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