Does Refusing Rolling Stone Magazine's Use of a Criminal's Picture For Marketing Purposes Violate Corporate Social Responsibility?

In 2013, the editors at Rolling Stone must have been kicking themselves after several retail chains announced that they would not be selling the issue that displays Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a young hottie. Criminal charges had been made against him for the Boston marathon bombing that took place in April of that year. Selling a magazine by playing off the good looks of a terrorist was more than several—but not all—retailers could stand. Were the offended retailers being socially responsible, or is the matter of CSR not as clear-cut as has typically been assumed.

The full essay is at "CSR or Not: Refusing to Sell a Magazine Whose Marketing Includes Use of a Criminal."

Income Inequality: Natural or Artificial?

In the United States, the disposable income of families in the middle of the income distribution shrank by 4 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to the OECD.[1] Over roughly the same period, the income of the top 1 percent increased by 11 percent. In 2012, the average CEO of one of the 350 largest U.S. companies made about $14.07 million, while the average pay for a non-supervisory worker was $51,200.[2] In other words, the average CEO made 273 times more than the average worker. In 1965, CEOs were paid just 20 times more; by 2000, the figure peaked at 383 times. The ratio fell in the wake of the dot-com bubble and then in the financial crisis and its recession, but in 2010 the ratio began to rebound. According to an OECD report, rising incomes of the top 1 percent in the E.U. accounted for the rising income inequality in Europe in 2012, though that level of inequality was “notably less” than the one in the U.S.”[3]  Nevertheless, in both cases the increasing economic gap between the very rich and everyone else was not limited to the E.U. and U.S.; a rather pronounced global phenomenon of increasing economic inequality was clearly in the works by 2013.

The full essay is at "Natural vs. Artificial Income Inequality."

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1.Eduardo Porter, “Inequality in America: The Data is Sobering,” The New York Times, July 30, 2013.

2. Mark Gongloff, “CEOs Paid 273 Times More Than Workers in 2012: Study,” The Huffington Post, June 26, 2013.

3. Kaja B. Fredricksen, “Income Inequality in the European Union,” OECD, Economics Department Working Paper No. 952, 2012.

Inequality in Corporate Capitalism: Beyond Redistribution

I contend that a concern that too much income or wealth is concentrated “at the top” in the U.S. does not necessarily translate into a demand for redistribution; rather, the inequality itself may be thought dangerous to the viability of a representative democracy (i.e., a republic form of government) and inherently unfair. Even though redistribution may be entailed as large banks and business corporations are dismembered, ridding the system of the concentrations of wealth does not in itself mean that those “at the bottom” should or would necessarily become richer. For example, to say that CEOs should not be allowed to make millions of dollars, especially when their companies or banks lose money, does not imply redistribution because there is no claim that the compensation be directed to others for their benefit. The point is that the compensation itself is unfair. Indeed, saying that corporate capitalism is itself unfair because some people benefit beyond what they deserve is not to say that their benefits should be redistributed; rather, the point is simply that such benefits should not be allowed.

The full essay is at "Inequality in Corporate Capitalism."

Does Opportunity Justify Economic Inequality?

From 1993 to 2010, the incomes of the richest 1 percent of Americans grew 58 percent while the rest had a 6.4 percent increase.  In 2010, the first year of an economic recovery, the top 1 percent of Americans captured 93% of the income gains. Beyond the danger to the American republics in there being an economic elite so far removed from the vast majority of the population is the question of whether the trend is baleful, economically speaking. It is not clear that even such an income gain being snagged by so few registered in the minds of the general populous as a problem. The key to any concern would seem to be whether opportunity for the many is compromised as a result of extreme economic inequality.

The full essay is at "Economic Inequality."

Source:

Eduardo Porter, “Inequality Undermines Democracy,” The New York Times, March 21, 2012. 

Property Rights in China: On the Separation of Ownership and Control in the Stock Market

It is too simplistic to say that economies around the world converged as capitalistic after the collapse of the Soviet command-and-control economy. Even the notion that China’s communist party has embraced capitalism does not do justice to the ways in which China’s capitalist system is unique. This became particularly apparent in early July 2015, when the bubble burst in the Chinese stock market.

The full essay is at “Property Rights in China.”

Social Media Companies: Is Blocking Political-Protester Content a Political or Business Decision?

The question of the role of social media internet companies as protesters have used social-media platforms to communicate before and during protests exploded on the world stage in "Arab Spring" going in the Middle East in early 2011. Lest it be presumed that the companies' respective policies were relevant only in terms of what content (or users) was allowed and how that content could impact events on the ground, the policies themselves reflect the claim made by the West of what liberty means. In other words, if social media companies were (allowed to be) oppressive or otherwise not respectful of their customers, the overall message to the oppressed in the Middle East could not have been that greater freedom is indeed possible because it exists in the West. Lest our own private sector unwittingly undercut the words and efforts of the protesters, we might want to use this case to ask if we couldn’t be freer too.

The full essay is at "Social Media Companies and Political Content."