Anti-Social Facebook Managers Addicting Children on Social Media

Rowan Williams, formerly Archbishop of Canterbury, spoke out repeatedly on the innate social nature of human beings. Before we can talk, we are talked to. Social interaction is firmly rooted in human nature as well as how we are constituted in groups and societies. Whereas Williams called for more compassion to emerge out of our social nature, a political realist might point out that we don’t have to look very closely to find a power-dynamic existing in practically any group. Nietzsche argues in Genealogy of Morals that exploitation naturally exists in how we as a social species are constituted because the will for power is the strongest human instinct. This motive can operate stealthily as compassion and even altruism. The Jansenist priest, Pierre Nicole, wrote an essay in 1677 to point out that what we moderns call enlightened self-interest is nonetheless rooted in self-love even when it is extended in acts of compassion that appear to spring solely from other-regard. On August 26, 2026, a landmark settlement was announced to end a trial in which 47 U.S. member states sued Meta, which owns and operates Facebook. Regardless of whether Meta executives agreed to pay $17 billion just to get rid of the bad publicity or because the accusations were true, the dollar figure alone suggests that Facebook’s management had indeed been intending to manipulate children by addicting them to feeds.  In other words, the company had been short on compassion even under the rubric of social media. Nietzsche would not have been at all surprised at such power being played to extract value from human beings under stealth.

The full essay is at "Anti-Social Facebook Managers Addicting Children on Social Media."

Iván & Hadoum

As the protagonists in the film, Iván & Hadoum (2026), neither Iván nor Hadoum, who fall in love, are heterosexuals even though by all appearances, save the long surgical scares under Iván’s former breasts, the couple is a man and a woman, and indeed Iván psychologically identifies himself as a man and Hadoum is a woman both biologically and in how she sees herself. To claim that Hadoum is heterosexual simply because Iván views himself as being a man, even though Hadoum is sexually attracted to Iván’s vagina, would be utter ideological nonsense. Besides being gay or bisexual, and thus easy targets for discrimination by agriculturalists in southern Spain, the two people are of different national origins, for Iván was born in Spain whereas Hadoum’s family hails from Morocco. Additionally, Iván is Caucasian whereas Hadoum is an Arab, and Iván is Christian whereas Hadoum is Islamic. Even in terms of labor-management relations, the couple is ripe for division by other people, for Iván is on a management tract—the warehouse being still owned by his uncle Manuel—whereas Hadoum is a greenhouse/warehouse worker, and a disgruntled one at that. It would seem that Ian de la Rosa has written and directed a film in which many ethical tropes are in play; which one is subject to the most unethical harm goes unanswered. Even so, by including unethical conduct on all of them, the film takes a step in the direction wherein audiences can think philosophically in weighing the ethical harms relative to each other.

The full essay is at "Iván & Hadoum."

Managerial Capitalism: Being and Becoming

At first glance, Friedrich Nietzsche’s pro-capitalist stance on private property and the process of accumulating profit (or wealth) may seem to extend a vote of confidence to the business manager as a type. After all, managers manage the private property of stockholders (which can include themselves) with a fiduciary duty to do so to increase shareholder value by maximizing profit. The notion of profit-seeking by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost is arguably too simplistic. Squeezing a workforce too much, for example, can backfire in the long term. Nietzsche was concerned about such a thing happening even though he claims that the vast majority of laborers must be kept to subsistence wages for culture to be possible. He castigates petty, short-sighted managers who do not look out for the spiritual and economic welfare of workers, and yet holds that those workers must be slavish in the sense of being exploited by employers so culture can emerge and be sustained by the rich. To be for such exploitation and yet against petty cost-cutting managers renders Nietzsche’s socioeconomic philosophy interesting as well as useful in terms of keeping a capitalist economy from being reduced to the mentality of its bottom-feeder producers. I first discuss the matter of exploitation and then turn to how Nietzsche addresses his wider socio-economic philosophy more specifically to human-resource management. Within the wider subject-heading of exploitation, very different approaches, or mentalities, to human resource management can be discerned. In dichotomous terms, there can be said to be a pathos of distance between enlightened self-interest and selfish, short-sighted greed.

The full essay is at "Managerial Capitalism."

The Omen

Released in 1976, The Omen reflects the pessimism in America in the wake of the OPEC gas shortage and President Nixon’s Watergate cover-up, both of which having occurred within easy memory of the two notable assassinations in 1968. Additionally, the drug culture had come out in the open in the anti-Vietnam War hippie sub-culture, and the sexual revolution, which arguably set the stage for the spread of AIDS beginning in the next decade, was well underway, both of which undoubtedly gave evangelical, socially-conservative Christians the sense that it would not be long until everything literally goes to hell. The film provides prophesy-fulfillment of a birth-narrative (i.e., myth) and a supernatural personality known biblically as the anti-Christ, who as an adult will set man against man until our species is zerstört. It is as if matter (the Christ) and anti-matter (the anti-Christ) finally cancel each other out at the end of time. Economically during the 1970s, inflation and unemployment were giving at least some consumers and laborers the sense of being in a jet trapped in a vertical, free-fall dive of stagflation that not even fiscal and/or monetary policy could divert. The pessimistic mood was captured in another way in another film, Earthquake (1974), in which a natural disaster plays off the mood of utter futility throughout the decade. It is no wonder that Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” resonated so much as a presidential-campaign slogan in 1979 as Jimmy Carter was mired in micro-management inside the White House.  The optimism of a resurgence in political energy overcame the decade’s sense of pessimism. That Damien, the anti-Christ in The Omen, survives the attempt on his life by Robert Thorn, his adoptive father resonates with that pessimism. Satan’s plan is still “game on” as the film ends, and this ending fits the mood in America during the decade. With this historical context contemporaneous with the film laid out, a very practical, manifestation of evil subtly depicted in the film and yet easily recognized by customers frustrated with corrupt and inept management of incompetent employees will be described in the context of pessimism from utter frustration. Such frustration survived the squalid decade of the 1970s at least decades into the next century.

The full essay is at "The Omen."

 

Amid Scandal and Political Protests: A University President Goes Down

Beyond legitimately taking credit and assuming blame for a myriad of things, a university president ought first of all to be an academic scholar, which comes with the credential of a doctorate in a field or school of knowledge. Rather than a specific body, or school, of knowledge subject to research (and thus growth) being directly applicable to the position, I contend that the process, which includes being enculturated in academia as a scholar, of getting a doctorate is valuable and thus should be requisite to a candidate being selected to lead a college or university. In short, a university president is not just a manager. It would be expedient, in line with committing the “sin of omission,” to have a corporate executive, or, even more expedient, a lawyer, run a university. The governing board of Northwestern University in Illinois committed this “sin” in hiring Michael Schill, a law instructor, as president of that university. Just three years after assuming the position in September, 2022, he abruptly resigned. A memo to that board upon his resignation announcement could read: “Memo to the Board: Yale Law School trains lawyers, not university presidents.”

The full essay is at "Amid Scandal and Political Protests."

Deflating Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail: Barnes and Noble at Yale

Atrocious human-resources management, even regarding in-store employees of a sub-contractor, can easily be understood to detract from repeat customers; a refusal to hold such employees accountable can be a reflection of a sordid managerial attitude towards customers, especially in relation to employees. In cases in which the refusal is explicitly stated to an already-offended customer, the slogan, “adds insult to injury” is applicable, with disastrous effects in terms of repeat business, and thus revenue. That management is in some cases so bad reflects on the primitive condition of the “science” of management in business schools. That a case in point occurred in Yale’s (Barnes and Noble) bookstore, not far from Yale’s School of Management, suggests the sheer distance between the “science” and practice of management.

The full essay is at "Bloated Self-Entitlement in Retail."

Bad Management as Unethical: On Reckless Bus Drivers in Boston

The corruption of an individual manager or non-supervisory employee, or even a government official can be distinguished between the collusion of multiple levels, as I contend has been the case at least as of 2023 in Boston, Massachusetts in regard to the government and the Commonwealth’s most populous region’s mass transit system—in particular, its bus service. I contend that the government has been looking the other way as the management of the local bus transit has held off from firing reckless bus drivers, who thus sordidly feel entitled to ignore the training—assuming it is not deficient—by driving recklessly by riding the accelerator pedal before stomping down on the brake pedal at the last minute, literally, in stopping. With positions to fill, the company’s management treats such driving at best with a slap on the wrist, with the government looking on rather than divesting the management of its disincentive to fire even dangerous drivers. Such corruption is systemic in nature, and thus is much worse than the corruption of an individual. Ultimately, it is the public—which includes the electorate—which goes unprotected while bus riders have to put up with jolting rides.

The full essay is at "Bad Management as Unethical: On Reckless Bus Drivers."

Should Philosophers Sell Out to Business?

Should philosophers at universities, by which I mean scholars who hold a Ph.D. in philosophy, try to be relevant?  Nietzsche wrote that no philosopher is a person of one’s own day, but Adam Smith saw in philosophers the potential as observers rather than doers to observe occupations rather than Plato’s eternal moral verities or Aristotle’s prime mover way up high. Opinions on this question can reasonably differ, but under no circumstance should someone holding a MBA and DBA or Ph.D. in business claim to be a philosopher. This is especially true in North America, where doctoral students in business have not typically even taken ethics courses in philosophy. Indeed, I turned down a doctorate in business in part because my area would have been business ethics sans any coursework in philosophy, including ethics. I attempted to take the core graduate course in ethics, but the professor, Kurt Baier, announced at the end of the first class session that only philosophy students could enroll. Baier had the countenance of Schopenhauer, and both, ironically, focused on ethics academically. To be sure, doctoral students in business who already have a Ph.D. in philosophy may be counted as philosophers, and the dual degrees fit an orientation to observing and thinking about occupations rather than just on metaphysics or ontology.

The full essay is at "Should Philosophers Sell Out to Business?"

Starbucks Bucks Its Workers’ Labor Union

Even though more than 500 Starbucks shops had unionized by the end of 2024, it seems that the company’s management did not respect the new union very much. Unfortunately for the company, one implication that can be drawn is that the company’s management didn’t respect federal labor law very much too. For in not respecting its union enough to negotiate it on reducing employee work hours, the company violated federal law. The “smoking gun,” I submit, was that the management used dissimulation to respond to the government, rather than address the complaint directly.

The full essay is at "Starbucks Bucks Its Workers' Labor Union."

On the Birth of Corporate Social Responsibilty in 1869

Referring to the speculation in gold that was engineered by Jay Gould and others in 1869 to enrich themselves and the Erie Railroad, Henry Adams (1838-1918), a grandson of John Quincy Adams and great grandson of John Adams, wrote at the time:

“For the first time since the creation of these enormous corporate bodies, one of them has shown its power for mischief, and has proved itself able to override and trample on law, custom, decency, and every restraint known to society, without scruple, and as yet without check. The belief is common in America that the day is at hand when corporations far greater than the Erie [Railroad] — swaying power such as has never in the world’s history been trusted in the hands of mere private citizens  . . . — will ultimately succeed in directing government itself. Under the American form of society, there is now no authority capable of effective resistance.” (1)

The full essay is at "The Birth of Corporate Social Responsibility."

1. Henry Adams, “The New York Gold Conspiracy,” in Charles F. Adams, Jr. and Henry Adams, Chapters of Erie (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1956), pp. 135-36.

Wall Street

Oliver Stone’s film, Wall Street (1987) was filmed in the midst of U.S. President Reagan’s push for financial deregulation. As a MBA student at the time, I volunteered to help a professor with his paper on financial deregulation. The theory behind why the NASD (the National Association of Securities Dealers) could self-regulate its members seemed solid enough to this idealistic youngster (i.e., me); I had yet to witness human nature in the field, and over decades. Similar to Marx overlooking the human need for economic compensation as an incentive to work on a daily basis (though I overlook it too in posting free essays online), I was blind to human nature in that I did not see that the NASD itself would protect even its most sordid members so to safeguard the reputation of the profession and, even more realistically, stick up for other “members” of the “club.” The Newtonian-like automatic mechanism whereby industry self-regulation would work was too beautiful to let human nature interfere. Similarly, when I worked in public accounting, I saw the “check mark” indicating that, “as per comptroller, discrepancy resolved,” was just one of several technical points in conducting an audit. The illusion of technique as somehow objective in the business world can shield practitioners from the ethical content. In case you’re wondering how this relates to Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, the antagonist Gordon Gekko is the poster child for greed, and thus the reason why the public should not rely on industry self-regulation to police Wall Street. Bud Fox goes headlong into being Gekko’s insider-trading protégé, easily ignoring conscience personified by Lou Mannheim even though he and Bud work in the same brokerage office. In Freudian terms, the id easily defeats the superego. It’s not even a close fight.

The full essay is at "Wall Street."

Starbucks: A Racist Company Against Racism

In June, 2023, Starbucks had to face a unanimous jury decision in favor of a regional manager whom Starbucks' upper management had fired because she had resisted the company's racist policy of punishing innocent Caucasian managers for good public relations, which the CEO felt was needed and appropriate after a store manager had legitimately called the police on two Black people in a Starbucks restaurant who presumed the right not only to sit in a restaurant without ordering anything (before Starbucks allowed this),  but also to ignore the authority of the store's manager. Starbucks cowered to the unjust negative publicity, and thus showed a lack of leadership, and went on to act unethically in wanting to show the world that the company can go after Caucasian employees. This racism is ironic, for several years earlier, Starbucks' CEO had ordered employees at the store level to discuss racism with customers. Interestingly, the anti-racist ideology being preached was partial, and thus contained a blind spot wherein racism such as the company's upper management would exhibit is acceptable. 

The full essay is at "Starbucks"

See also: Bucking Starbucks’ Star

A Professional Misnomer: Self-Proclaimed Professionals

By the turn of the twenty-first century, the term, "professional" had become such a cherished word in the American lexicon that every American had decided that he or she is one. Evincing the Lake Wobegon effect—the tendency of most people to describe themselves or their abilities as above average—nearly everyone is wont to say, “I am a professional.” On housing listings on Craigslist, for example, people routinely use the word to signify that they are not students. In fact, even some students characterize themselves as professionals (though not as professional students!). Such common usage belies the term's claim to having a specific meaning. Moreover, the tendency of non-professions to deem themselves as professions nonetheless may evince one of the downsides of democracy—namely, its proclivity to excess in terms of self-entitlement. This is particularly likely to ensue from a citizenry that is lacking in self-discipline, virtue and knowledge. 

The full essay is at "A Professional Misnomer."

Corona Crisis: Arizona in a “Free Fall” and “Out of Control”

On July 7, 2020, NBC News reported that Arizona had a record number of cases (105,094) and of deaths (1,927), with a four percent daily increase in reported cases. Also, coronavirus hospitalizations and related ventilators being used were also at record highs. A reporter with MSNBC stated, “Arizona is in crisis.” On the previous day, on MSNBC television, that same reporter had said, “Arizona is in free fall,” in that the number of cases was rising so fast. It had taken three months for the first 50,000 cases and only 23 days for the next 50,000. Observing that people were not wearing masks in downtown Scottsdale, he reported that “Arizona is out of control.” People there were not taking precautions, and the local and state authorities were not on top of the crisis. On June 22, 2020, a physician with the University of Arizona-Phoenix interviewed on The 11^th Hour show on MSNBC asserted that the Arizonans who were saying, “No one is going to order me to wear a mask,” were being selfish because refusing to wear a mask, say on a bus or in a store or restaurant/bar puts other lives at risk. Also a salient ingredient of the crisis in Arizona was the anti-science contingent of the population. In an interview at the time, Alan Alda (of the TV show, MASH) pointed to “pockets of people who still think science is just another opinion” as having a mindset that “puts us all in danger.”[1] The rigors of scientific experiment, such as the use of control groups and random selection, render science closer to knowledge than are mere opinions based on ideology and a person’s own experience. Privileging one’s own ideology and experiences counts as self-embellishing, and perhaps even self-idolatry. Such people are not likely to accept knowledge that contradicts their respective opinions and experience. Living in Phoenix at the time, I had encountered a lot of anti-intellectualism and incompetence along with refusals to enforce virus-deterring policies and even laws. Just one year earlier, Arizona’s education system through High School (K-12) had been rated as 49 out of the 50 States, but this does not explain the sordid attitude that is pervasive there.

The full essay is at "Arizona Out of Control."

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1. David Hochman, “Alan Alda Is Obsessed with the Power of Science,” AARP: The Magazine, June/July, 2020.

Major Cracks in Human Resources and Management in the American Grocery Industry Exposed during the Coronavirus Pandemic

For a certain personality-type, character, or mentality, it is easy to blame other people while remaining silent on one’s own mistakes (and mentality). This approach can be particularly harmful during a pandemic, for one’s own mistakes could be passing on the infectious illness. Such mistakes include refusing to maintain a physical distance from other people in public places and retail stores. As noxious as the blaming is, a more significant anthropological point may be that as a social and habitual animal, the human being may not be mentally advanced enough to keep a distance from other such animals even for self-preservation. I don’t think the instinctual urge for socializing exhausts the explanation, for the failure (and even refusal) to respect others enough to keep at a distance even when they ask surely involves weakness that manifests psychologically beyond merely having a bad attitude. Not even the artificial organizational-management systems our species has established are a match for the toxicity of a weakness that is even just passively aggressive toward other people. I contend that American management is susceptable to an even more severe weakness; one that foists organizational power as a club even on customers. 

The full essay is at "Human Resources and Management in the American Grocery Industry."

A Grocery Store Company Lobbies for Special Status during the Coronavirus Pandemic While Falling Short

In early April, 2020, Albertsons Companies, which at the time owned Safeway, ACME Markets, Jewel-Osco, Vons, Pavilions and Albertsons grocery stores, joined with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) to get American governments to designate the workers as first responders. The joint statement reads in part, “The temporary designation of first responder or emergency personnel status would help ensure these incredible grocery workers access to priority testing, have access to personal protection equipment, like masks and gloves, as well as other workplace protections necessary to keep themselves and the customers they serve safe and healthy.”[1] Although keeping grocery workers healthy was important, the focus on testing and equipment can be viewed as problematic in that the company’s management was falling short on more crucial safety measures to protect the employees (and customers) from becoming infected.

The full essay is at "Grocery Store Employees as First Responders."

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1. Aine Cain and Hayley Peterson, “A Major Grocer Is Pushing to Classify Its Employees as First Responders, Giving Them Priority for Testing and Protective Gear,” Business Insider, April 7, 2020 (accessed April 8, 2020).

Undermining Progress: Power Enforcing Infallible Ignorance

Bleeding to heal. The Earth is flat. Earth is at the center of the solar system. Zeus lives on Mount Olympus. The divine right of kings to act even as tyrants (e.g., Henry VIII of England). Hitler died in his bunker. Turning the heater on in a local bus kills coronavirus. These are things that were thought in their respective times to be uncontrovertibly true. In some of these cases, the power of the establishment was not subtle in enforcing them even when they should have been questioned. How presumptuous this finite, mortal species is! If ignorance on stilts is bliss, then why is it such in need of power? Subconsciously, the human mind must realize that its assumption of not being able to be wrong is flawed. We are subjective beings with instinctual urges—one of which manifests in the unquestioned assumption that what we know cannot be wrong, and furthermore that we are entitled to impose our “facts” on others. As the homo sapiens (i.e., wise) species, we are too sure, and too proud, concerning our knowledge and especially beliefs. We would like to have the certainty and objectivity that computers have, but we are subjective biological animals, not inert machines.

The full essay is at "Power Enforced Infallible Ignorance."

Strong and Weak Management: The Case of American Bus Companies and Regional Transit Authorities

By the end of the 2010’s, city officials in several American cities were rethinking bus service in a fundamental way; the passenger-fare revenue model was being questioned, and in some cases replaced with a model that fit better with serving poor people and changed local business environments. Yet the downside effects on the bus companies of trends, especially regarding ridership, may have been the result of internal organizational factors immune to a change in the revenue model. I contend that city officials and the managers of bus companies should resist the temptation to view a new model as a cure precisely because some problems, internal to the companies, could go on and silently undermine analysis of the new model such that it could erroneously be discontinued. To be sure, being willing to question a longstanding model is a mark of managerial strength. Indeed, it is precisely the managers of bus companies and regional authorities who are mired in longstanding assumptions who would tend to have the most difficulty in dealing with troublesome internal problems. 

The full essay is at "Strong and Weak Management: Bus Companies."

Goodwill Dismisses a Solid Societal Norm: A Mentality beyond Unethical Conduct

When managers of a business or non-profit interact with a societal norm by openly rejecting any obligation to act in accord with the norm, the reaction from stakeholders can be utter disbelief. The refusal to act in accordance with the norm as it impacts the organization can be beyond bad management and even unethical conduct. The refusal to acknowledge a societal norm even as its impact on the business and stakeholders has been arranged by the business is beyond, though it can include, unethical conduct. Norms are not in themselves ethical, for as David Hume wrote, you can’t get an ought from an is; rational justification by ethical principles must be added before we can get to, “You ought to do X” from “X is the practice.” Yet ethical principles can be in norms, in which case we can say, “You ought to act in accordance with the norm because it is ethical.” In some cases, the norm-business relationship (i.e., Business and Society) can be more salient than an ethical principle in the norm itself. A managerial practice at Goodwill, a non-profit retailer based on donations for the poor, serves as a case in point.

The full essay is at "Goodwill Dismisses a Solid Societal Norm."

NASA and Its Contractors: The Challenger Disaster

Roger Boisjoly was a booster rocket engineer at a NASA contractor, Morton Thiokol. Boisjoly blew the whistle both within the company and to NASA regarding the danger of the rubber in the o-rings, which seal the connections in the shuttle’s rockets, being insufficiently elastic in cold weather. Although The Challenger Disaster (2019) is not a documentary, the film’s narrative, which centers on Roger, or "Adam," is oriented to understanding why the Challenger space shuttle exploded after being launched on January 28, 1986. In other words, although some names are different and the conversations are not verbatim in the film, the factors that contributed to the actual explosion are presented. In fact, the film leans too much on technical details before the disaster and legal arguments afterwards without adequate entertaining elements to make the film enjoyable. However, the film's political function in informing a mass market of why part of the government-business system was broken is valuable. In fact, this mission demonstrates that the medium of motion pictures is capable of aiding in social, political, economic, and religious awareness and education, and thus development.

The full essay is at "The Challenger Disaster."