Why? Because I hate the mediocre crap! By and large it is pitiful poorly written garbage.
(My vision of the AI monster preparing to destroy all actual writing and all actual images.)
Last year I sat down to renew my Office 365 subscription. It usually ran about seventy dollars but not that time. It was a hundred dollars. They had added AI and they charged me an additional thirty dollars for it. No choice. I was in the middle of several projects so I couldn’t opt out of the service although I am really thinking about going over to WordPerfect on the next renewal date.
I did one experiment with it. I gave it five words and a topic. It wrote an essay. Not a very good essay but sort of C+ kind of high school essay. The content did not alarm me. What alarmed me was the entire process took about thirty seconds. In theory, I could generate 120 essays in an hour. And I could see in my mind’s eye, some person writing a blog online or doing school or college work or writing editorials for the local paper writing essay after essay after essay with the touch of a few buttons.
That was the last time I used the AI feature on Word. Every time I start the program, every single damn time, it starts with the AI program with the prompts to use it. I have to deliberately turn it off.
I write my blog myself. It is my thoughts, my ideas, my writing, my spelling, my punctuation and my phrasing. You, my readers, deserve nothing less.
I am considering putting some kind of “NO AI” label on the site. If one is not available online currently, I’m sure it will be soon.
I want you to know I am not the only one upset by the explosion of AI mediocrity.
Here is the magazine Scientific American’s published article linked to below by linguist Naomi S. Baron which discusses AI and writing :
But what happens to human communication when it’s my bot talking to your bot? Microsoft, Google and others are building out AI-infused e-mail functions that increasingly “read” what’s in our inbox and then draft replies for us. Today’s AI tools can learn your writing style and produce a reasonable facsimile of what you might have written yourself.
My concern is that it’s all too tempting to yield to such wiles in the name of saving time and minimizing effort. Whatever else makes us human, the ability to use words and grammar for expressing our thoughts and feelings is a critical chunk of that essence.
I was easily able to find numerous articles in a similar vein and to my dismay many cheerleading articles as well.
But I’ve made my decision.
I am a man hopefully a gentleman — and I do my own writing.
CEO’s will soon be gone. And when they are, it will be much better world and a much better economy.
When these preening fools with their enormous salaries, portfolio of stocks and out sized political power disappear, no one will lament and no one will care.
And right now they are firing people and replacing them with AI. They are so happy about it, talking about more profits and not having to deal with ungrateful and troublesome workers. You might think that they are acting like unfeeling and inhuman machines. And you would be right.
Over and over again, you see in the business press the worship of the cutthroat CEO putting the hammer down on the workers. You get the impression that they want a man who is completely free of the normal limitations on greed and wrong doing. They don’t look for Christians. They don’t look for human qualities like love, kindness and understanding. And above all a reverence for nation or an obedience to the law is a red line to be avoided.
So, what do stockholders and boards of directors want? They want a man shorn of human emotion.
However, they are often bitterly disappointed. Even the cold blooded specimens of humanity they can find sometimes slip. It is deeply regrettable. He might develop a love for a child. He might wander accidentally into a church. There is no telling what traps of morality, religion or family can do to even the best cold blooded psychopath.
At the moment, they are happily firing and destroying the human beings that get in the way of their vision. Don’t believe me??
Eric Vaughan, CEO of enterprise-software powerhouse IgniteTech, is unwavering as he reflects on the most radical decision of his decades-long career. In early 2023, convinced that generative AI was an “existential” transformation, Vaughan looked at his team and saw a workforce not fully on board. His ultimate response: He ripped the company down to the studs, replacing nearly 80% of staffwithin a year, according to headcount figures reviewed by Fortune.
Over the course of 2023 and into the first quarter of 2024, Vaughan said IgniteTech replaced hundreds of employees, declining to disclose a specific number. “That was not our goal,” he told Fortune. “It was extremely difficult … But changing minds was harder than adding skills.” It was, by any measure, a brutal reckoning—but Vaughan insists it was necessary, and says he’d do it again.
He got rid of eighty percent! Now, that is cold blooded! And he is so proud telling the press the he’d do it again and talking about his former employees as if they were some kind of disobedient pets! What a guy! The ideal CEO! Got a conscience, hell no, screw that! Ice water for blood.
Now of course, there has to be a down side. Carping critics like me. I, a pitiful liberal, with my weird and out of date beliefs in the sanctity of the law, Christian obligations devised and stated clearly by Jesus Christ and a devotion to the ideals of the United States. Those beliefs lead me to believe that this CEO is doomed to Hell where many others like him dwell.
But as these CEO’s fire and proclaim their delight in cruelty, they don’t realize the bitter irony.
Let me tell you a story. There was once an episode of the Twilight Zone called “The Brain Center at Whipple’s.”
Let me Quote that master of television writing, Rod Serling’s intro:
These are the players — with or without a scorecard. In one corner a machine; in the other, one Wallace V. Whipple, man. And the game? It happens to be the historical battle between flesh and steel, between the brain of man and the product of man’s brain. We don’t make book on this one and predict no winner….but we can tell you for this particular contest, there is standing room only — in the Twilight Zone.
In the story, a company manager replaces all the workers with machines and then is replaced by a machine himself. and this fictional and cautionary event is about to happen in real life.
(Film screen-shot of 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Intended to support film’s plot description. I include this picture because in the Twighlight episode discussed above, our friend robbie here was the one who replaced the boss – but he was uncredited, the fate of the robot.)
In an article written by Emma Burleigh in Fortune, Google X’s former chief business officer Mo Gawdat is quoted in the following article.
But executives shouldn’t celebrate their efficiency gains too soon—their role is also on the chopping block, Gawdat, who worked in tech for 30 years and now writes books on AI development, cautioned.
“CEOs are celebrating that they can now get rid of people and have productivity gains and cost reductions because AI can do that job. The one thing they don’t think of is AI will replace them too,” Gawdat continued. “AGI is going to be better at everything than humans, including being a CEO. You really have to imagine that there will be a time where most incompetent CEOs will be replaced.”
“Better at everything than humans, including being a CEO.” I love the irony and have a certain sense that this is finally real justice at these self-proclaimed masters of the economy.
But you say, “Stop James, that is merely one voice among many. I’m sure it is not true.”
Don’t be quite so sure, I have some other sources.
And this article from Inc – EXPERT OPINION BY JOE PROCOPIO.
Let me add here just above the link that this is a very delightfully written article. You should read the whole thing. This guy is just a great writer. jp
Corporate and unicorn CEOs have never had a stellar reputation. These aren’t men and women of the people by nature. But over the last 10 or so years, the CEO role has been further marred by alleged thieves (FTX), alleged liars (Theranos), and alleged cults of personality (WeWork), among many, many more problematic abuses of the position.
So, in my opinion, the days of the CEO are numbered. It probably should have happened a long time ago.
Soldiers who regularly play video games are transferring those skills to flying drones, making them top pilots, a US Army captain told Business Insider.
Top Pilots!
Wow. When I was playing Pong in the early 1970’s, the idea that a video gamer might have a useful skill was very far fetched.
And yet here we are. Video games using their skills to defend the nation. Not a movie, not a cartoon but solid reality.
Here let quote some more from the article linked to above:
Transferable skills include the kind of hand-eye coordination that a gamer would have from playing with a controller and looking at a screen, which isn’t unlike flying a drone via a monitor or operating a first-person-view drone. The latter requires pilots to wear goggles similar to many of the commercially available virtual reality/augmented reality headsets. These present the world from the perspective of the camera on the drone.
Other skills include the ability to multitask, recognize patterns, maintain situational awareness, and comfortably interact with digital interfaces. Some studies have also shown that gamers have quicker reaction times and do well making decisions under pressure, potentially critical in high-stakes drone warfare.
So, the skills developed playing video games have direct practical benefits. What was once generally considered a waste of time is now in the right hands a valuable skill.
What are the business ethics implications?
At one time, it was revered wisdom that video gaming was an addictive habit that led nowhere and there was an implication that those who sold the games and wrote them were preying on the childish and weak minded among us.
That belief system, the idea that video games are an addictive and poisonous waste of time is still very much with us. I did a search on the Internet using Bing and got many, many sites claiming just that. Then I did a search on You Tube and got quite the variety of acidic anti-gaming sites that allege a dizzying variety of just awful consequences for playing these games.
(As a matter of honest disclosure, I regularly play Skyrim, Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4 and Civilization Five. I don’t just play them, I add online content to change the nature and form of the game. I extensively mod the first three and currently have 238 active mods on Fallout 4. It doesn’t very much look like the same game.)
Like many other elements in our culture particularly those continually changed by an evolving technology, what games are and what they mean is subject to change.
I think many individuals, both players and observers, are stuck at some point in the past.
Gaming is now divided in a wide variety of categories. There is the online novel where you live in a story and try to live it in the best way possible. The Japanese seem to write a lot of these. There is a long history of shooter games which hearken back to the very beginnings of video games, that is, the arcade machines. There are strategy games like the huge collection of Sid Meier’s Civilization games, as well as tactical and historical versions by the many copycats. And I could go on for some time, but that is another and much longer essay. The implications of this are simple, “Yes, video games can have harmful effects but they are also and often learning devices that provide real and substantial entertainment and sometimes skills.”
To further my teaching I have toyed for years with the idea of taking a gaming engine like the one in the Fallout series and writing a script in which a person searches the community for a business to build, a restaurant, a repair shop, a furniture store, etc., then has to find a location and financing, then they seek customers and eventually a positive monetary balance and a place in the community. I was planning on using real legal documents, businesses modeled on modern franchises and a litany of common business problems from employment difficulties to natural disaster to keep the story and give the flavor of reality to the game. I am firmly convinced this is how we will teach the basic concepts of business law and contracts in the near future.
In conclusion, video game skills are useful and transferable in the right circumstance. There are not too many of them right now. But technology is pushing us toward more gaming and more applications. A healthy amount of gaming might lead one to gainful employment or just useful skills.
You might get online and look at the incredible selection of video games and see if there is something that will help you build some skills or just some positive entertainment. It is a big world.
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.
You would think that in a democracy what a majority of the people want would matter. You’d think. But very often it seems that the distance between what Americans wish for and want to happen and what our government does is wider than the Grand Canyon.
Can I give you an example? Quite a few but let us do just one. Do Americans want subsidies for solar energy?
(Quote from the article above.) An Instagram Reel by EnergySage — a platform that helps homeowners save up to $10,000 on rooftop solar panels — shared the stunning results of a recent study.
“Nearly 90% of Americans are in favor of government programs to help homeowners go solar,” the video says. “That includes 78% of 2020 voters for President Donald Trump.”
The clip also cites a survey from 2019, in which 92% of respondents said America should expand solar power. The lack of partisan split was equally encouraging: 86% of Republicans and 96% of Democrats backed the idea. The clip finishes with a map of the United States, highlighting the states that installed the most solar power in 2023, the year the Inflation Reduction Act went into full effect. Seven of the 10 backed the Republican candidate in 2024. (End quote.)
Those number would seem to suggest with great certainty that the American people want solar energy to be subsidized and it implies that they believe the future is going to be one of sustainable energy. So, how are their views reflected in the actions of their “democratically” elected government.
The federal government abolished a major tax credit for solar energy. See the link below.
President Trump signed the “Big Beautiful Bill” into law on Independence Day, cutting the 30% residential solar tax credit by December 31, 2025—nearly a decade ahead of schedule.
But that wasn’t the only thing cut. The current administration used its power to destroy a solar energy program of quite a large size in Ohio. Note the link below.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to end the “Solar for All” grant program – created by the Biden administration – has eliminated cash that would have provided solar power to over 900,000 homes nationwide. For Ohio, the impact is severe.
But don’t the American people want solar energy? What’s happening here? What happened to the a government “of the people, for the people?”
According to the report, Big Oil’s total known spending in the last election cycle amounted to “an astounding $445 million.”
“Importantly, however, the oil and gas industry also routes undisclosed funds through dark money groups that do not have to reveal their donors, making it nearly impossible to understand the full scope of their impact,” the report notes.
So, not so much a government of the people as a government purchased and operated for the benefit of giants corporations like the associated group know as “Big Oil.”
That explains a lot.
It explains why the President and his crawling minions in the House and Senate are entirely comfortable with defying the will of the people.
In terms of business ethics, it is a catastrophe. Morally wrong, it not only subverts democracy, it has the government enacting laws that results in policies that make money for contributors but in the long term are disastrous for the nation and the larger planet as well.
And it is a symbol to every student in the United States who sees that human beings educated in the finest institutions and elected by the American people sell themselves, their honor and their votes for money.
(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.
Hardcore Culture, a shift away from company loyalty to a “market based” culture. That doesn’t sound too bad, does it? Market based: Yeah, based on market forces, that’s okay, right? Or is it?
John Stankey has been making people “return to the office.”
(Quoted directly from the article linked to below.) The increasingly strict return-to-office mandate that AT&T has rolled out in phases over the past year has also resulted in further reductions, multiple employees have told Business Insider, and Stankey signaled in his memo that he’s fine with more people leaving if they’re not on board with the company’s new direction. (End quote.)
The information that we have, that is, the facts, say that working from home and other such flexible work ideas have led to greater employee satisfaction and productivity. So, why would you make people return to the office. It’s pretty clear, isn’t it. It is a return to the dictator style boss, the kick them in the teeth style boss epitomized by the yuppies in the 1980’s.
Apparently the investors are eating this stuff up. They love reduced work forces, corporate mandates and divesting the company from previous endeavors. And none of it has to make any sense, they are like toddlers strapped in a car seat, they enjoy the motion of the vehicle and that is enough. Thinking logically, critically or even trying to protect their money is hard while reacting positively to the supposedly alpha male characteristics of hard charging decisions, commands rather than cooperation, lots and lots of forced resignations and an emphasis on the perceived toughness of the CEO, well, that’s easy.
If you get the impression I don’t think much of the investment community, you would be right. But there is something far more alarming here but first let me quote my article about our star of a CEO.
(Quoted from article above.) As the company moves to sunset most of its copper network in the US by the end of 2029, Stankey has also instituted a broad cultural shift internally. He’s moved away from prioritizing 20th-century corporate values like loyalty and tenure in favor of a tech-style, “more market-based culture,” the AT&T CEO wrote in a sweeping memo last week that was first reported by Business Insider. (End quote.)
So, here’s my concern. Where are Western Values in all of this? A giant corporation like this one is also a political and cultural entity. In this article, there is an almost complete absence of any issue or topic related to Western Values save capitalism and market economics, and then only in its cruelest and simplest form.
What are Western Values? They fall into six categories: (From Wikipedia with my thanks!)
Does AT&T have any stance on obeying the law or participating in democracy or pledging to pay its taxes like a good citizen?
Why is a bald statement celebrating naked power and greed a positive for investors? And at the same time, the absence of any commitment to a better society, a greater nation or an improved civilization, and this absence does not trouble the investors at all. In face, I think they regard the evasion of human and moral values as a positive.
I think every corporation in the United States has a duty to the law and to its fellow citizens. I think we should all be invested with the responsibility of creating and maintaining a civil society and a program for human and cultural development because that is what a great people do and we should above all things strive to be a great people.
(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
Christina Chapman became a front, that is, a “facilitator,” for a North Korean Operation in the United States. She found jobs for thousands of workers. The companies hiring thought they were hiring American citizens, instead they were hiring North Koreans. The money these workers earned was used for such things as the North Korean nuclear program.
Thousands of identities were stolen to make this fraudulent and illegal practice work. Chapman knew she was committing crimes but the money was very good.
(Quoted from the article linked to above.) To run the schemes, the North Koreans need facilitators in the United States, because the companies “aren’t going to willingly send laptops to North Korea or even China”, said Adam Meyers, head of counter-adversary operations for CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm.“They find somebody that is also looking for a gig-economy job, and they say, ‘Hey, we are happy to get you $200 per laptop that you manage,’” said Meyers, whose team has published reports on the North Korean operation.Chapman grew up in an abusive home and drifted “between low-paying jobs and unstable housing”, according to documents submitted by her attorneys. In 2020, she was also taking care of her mother, who had been diagnosed with renal cancer.About six months after the LinkedIn message, Chapman started running what law enforcement officials describe as “laptop farms”. (End Quote.)
She ran the scheme for about three years and it generated roughly seventeen million dollars for the North Koreans. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments. She was sentenced to more than eight years in prison and to pay fines.
Of course, the money the North Koreans made was one thing but the value of the information they got as employees of major American companies will never be known.
This was a betrayal, and COVID and hard times are not much of an excuse for committing massive fraud on behalf of a foreign nation.
What’s the business ethics analysis here? This is a set of crimes and the perpetrator was well aware that she was committing federal crimes. Breaking the law particularly in cooperation with a foreign power is an obvious ethics failure. No deeper reasoning is merited here. This was wrong and there is no defense merely a relative handful of mitigating circumstances.
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