Hidden Warnings of Climate Change: A Paralyzed Species Looks On

Global warming has been so difficult to slow down through political means at least in part due to the fact that most of the action has been going on in the Arctic Ocean and the surrounding permafrost land (which, it turns out, is not so permanently frozen after all), far from almost all of the world’s population. In short, what is occurring in that region is both dwarfing the impact of human-released carbon and serving as the canary in the coal mine. The implications are truly astonishing.

The full essay is at "Hidden Warnings."

Protecting Minority Stockholder Rights: On a Conflict of Interest at Revlon

The principle of majority rule is a staple of democratic theory. Typically the victor of a close election is quick to proclaim that “the people” have spoken. That “the people” corresponds to 51% of those who voted is beside the point. What about the 49% who voted against the victor? What about the minority’s rights? In the U.S. Senate, the fact that it takes 60 out of 100 votes to end a filibuster means that a large minority can halt a majority’s bill. In the European Council, the qualified majority rule means that for a bill to pass, the states in the majority must be at least 55% of the total number of states and must have at least 55% of the E.U.’s population between them.  A large minority can therefore stop a small majority. In both of these “intergovernmental” bodies, the implication is that 51% of a vote is not as significant as the principle of majority rule suggests. What about the rights of a minority of shares of stock in corporate governance? When a majority stockholder has control of management, the interests of the minority stockholders can be shirked. This is particularly true when a majority stockholder proposes a going-private transaction with the aid of management.

The full essay is at "Protecting Minority Stockholders."

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1. Peter Lattman, “To Perelman’s Failed Revlon Deal, Add Rebuke From S.E.C.,” The New York Times, June 14, 2013.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

On the Particular Kind of Love Evinced by Jesus: A Better Criterion for Christianity?

The film, Paul: The Apostle of Christ (2018), carries great weight theologically in that Paul describes a very particular kind of love that Jesus preaches and lives out in the Gospels. In so doing, the film shows an overlooked criterion by which people who claim to be Christian can be ascertained as such or not. One implication from the film is that Christianity has contained (and still contains) a number of nominal Christians who are not in fact Christian. A related implication is that the historically (and modern) criteria by which people are considered (and consider themselves) Christian is not as useful (and valid) as the overlooked criterion that is so salient in the film.

The full essay is at "Paul: The Apostle of Christ"

Corporate Social Responsibility: Too Often a Weapon

Typically, responsibility is something that people working in a business typically presume applies not to their business, but instead to stakeholders, whether a customer, supplier or distributor. It is not uncommon for retail stores to hang signs indicating that the store is not liable for this and that. What if such a store is nonetheless at fault? To be so and even just claim not being liable for it reeks of selfish disregard for others. The idea, or mentlity, is that the other guy should pay for even problems for with someone working for the store caused.  Responsibility in this twisted sense means “I won’t pay; you must pay even though I'm at fault”  The underlying mentality can be said to come from a point of weakness rather than strength, for healthy companies can afford to shrug off any temptation to be small-minded and inconsiderate. In writing in this way, I am drawing on Friedrich Nietzsche, from whose theory it can be claimed that the store signs are actually weapons used by the weak out of resentment for the strong (i.e., customers). In comparing stores on Nietzsche's strong/weak spectrum, companies that are strong are naturally generous whereas the weak ones relish even being rude or even cruel to the stronger out of resentment. 

For more, see Skip Worden, On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management, available at Amazon.

A Critique of the Corporate Legal Persons Doctrine: The Case of Corporate Taxation

In his commentary in The Wall Street Journal in 2010, Michael Boskin went over the disadvantages in levying an income tax on corporations. Within his argument, he observes, “Of course, the corporation is a legal entity; only people pay taxes.”[1]  In so doing, he transcended, if only for a moment, his own approach that was oriented simply to giving the pros and cons of corporate taxation.  His observation is significant, and it gives us a launching pad of sorts by which we can approach the corporate income tax as a itself as a concept, rather than simply assessing its utility. In short, corporate taxation is an oxymoron if only humans pay tax. In fact, we can conclude from Boskin's remark that the doctrine that corporations are legal persons has been incorrectly construed.

The full essay is at "A Critique of the Corporate Legal Persons Doctrine." 

1. Michael Boskin, "Time to Junk the Corporate Tax," The Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2010.

Self-Delusion Enabled by Religion: Former U.S. House Minority Leader Tom Delay and Monopolist John D. Rockefeller

It is hardly news that religion, even one based on divine love reaching down to “love thy neighbor,” can be stretched or simply ignored as needed by the desires for power and money. When these two are both engaged, religious rationales may be attempted nonetheless. I have in mind here the cases of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and the monopolist John D. Rockefeller. Just in evoking their Christian faith to justify their sordid conduct in politics and business, respectively, these two men may be seen as astounding cases of the length to which adherents can go in using religion even in spite of obvious hypocrisy.

The full essay is at "Self-Delusion Enabled by Religion."

Climate Change: An Outsider in Democracies

The U.S. House of Representatives was created in part as an outlet for the immediacy of a people’s passions; other governmental institutions at the federal level provide a check. The term of a House representative is only 2 years, whereas that of a U.S. senator is 6 years and that of the U.S. president is four. So presumably societal  or even global  problems requiring immediate action find pressing representation in the House, whereas the perspectives of U.S. senators and presidents, being limited to six and four years respectively, are not long-term-oriented enough for problems that could blow up in decades. To register in the crowded minds of House representatives, a long-term problem yet in need of immediate attention must trigger the immediate passions of the constituents unless the representatives value principled leadership (i.e., acting in the best interests of the constituents and the country). Yet passions demanding immediate action tend, I submit, to involve anger. Climate change is thus excluded, and the long-term forecasts do little to impress upon a people how urgent rectifying action really is. Even if the scientific reports of current conditions emphasize extant dramatic changes (not to mention future forecasts with disastrous implications for humanity generally and particular regions, immediate passion is not sufficiently stirred for the U.S. House at least to prioritize addressing the problem.

The full essay is at "Climate Change: An Outsider in Democracies.

News to the Wall Street Journal: The E.U. Has a Common Market

The European Union has a common market. This would seem to be news to The Wall Street Journal, at least back in 2010. This is not to say that the E.U. is a common market, for the E.U. is much more than an economic market. For instance, the Union has governmental institutions, including a parliament, a senate (i.e., the European Council), an executive branch (i.e., the Commission), and a supreme court (i.e., the ECJ).  So it is surprising when journalists forget that the E.U. even has a common market by treating each of the States as having its own economy. To be sure, regions of the E.U. perform differently economically.  In the U.S., the States in New England, as well as New York, and California tend to have much higher GDPs than say South Carolina, Wyoming, and Iowa. Therefore, I contend that The Wall Street Journal erred in applying the concept of contagion to the E.U. financial crisis of 2010. 

The full essay is at "The E.U. Has a Common Market."

Wall Street Snuffed Out President Clinton's Goal of Homeownership for the Poor

It is one thing for the head of a government (or a government’s executive arm) to set a praiseworthy goal that is in the public interest, and quite another thing to rely on the financial sector to implement it. Finance has its own means tied to its own goals, with plenty of greed in the mix. Governmental officials may tend to minimize the potential damage from ego-laden greed to the goals of public policy. Such policy ideally strives for the good of the whole, whereas the goals of a private sector of a part. This could account, at least in part, for the financial crisis of 2008 and the continuing bear market in housing in much of the U.S.

The full essay is at "How Wall Street Snuffed Out Clinton's Goal."

Corporate Ethics Codes: A Waste of Time?

Ethics codes are not enough; that is to say, making applications of ethical principles explicit is not sufficient, even where they are grilled into employees in recurrent training sessions. Indeed, individuals or a dominant coalition can use a code’s existence as window-dressing. For example, in his letter on July 1, 2000 announcing Enron’s new and improved 65 page Code of Ethics, Ken Lay wrote, “Relations with the Company’s many publics . . . will be conducted in honesty, candor, and fairness.” If Ken Lay could get away with trumpeting a code of ethics, who’s to say who is out there now acting unethically in business under the cover of an effervescent code?

The full essay is at "Corporate Ethics Codes: Oxymorons?"

A Gay Judge on California's Anti-Marriage Proposition in 2010: A Judicial Conflict of Interest?

In 2010, Chief Federal District Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling that declared Proposition 8 (against gay marriage) an unconstitutional violation of gay Californians’ civil rights. After retiring in February of the next year, the judge revealed that he was in a 10-year-old relationship with a same-sex partner. The question is whether a reasonable belief that the judge would stand to benefit from the ruling means that there was a personal conflict of interest sufficient to have the judge’s ruling vacated. Amid the emotions swirling around issues such as gay marriage that involve the uneasy mix of personal matters and public scrutiny, an urgent need exists for ethicists and jurispruds to isolate the pernicious problems inherent in the conflict of interest phenomenon so we all can have faith that such issues are decided impartially in substance as well as appearance.

The full essay is at "Are Judges above Personal Conflicts of Interest?"

On the Value of Creating a Hybrid Industry by Appropriating High Tech: The Case of Borders and Amazon

From the ten-year chart of Amazon.com's stock, a clear upward trajectory can be discerned from the days of financial panic in the last quarter of 2008 even in spite of the plateau in mid-2010. On May 10, 2011, AMZN was trading at around $204 a share. At the time, Amazon's new "cloud music" service was said to be behind the surge. In general, the general uplift since late 2008 can be ascribed to the company being on the right side of the computer technology changes that were transforming not only industries, but modern society itself. As Amazon.com was benefiting from its move into music, Microsoft was buying Skype for $8.4 billion in order to get into communications. The hefty price tag can itself be taken as a confidence vote in the continuance of the technological shift as well as the value in moving to a new, hybrid industry model rather than limiting the company to its existent industry model. In other words, even in companies facing a serious technological threat in the business-environment, even top managers can fail to adopt a broader perspective within which the threat can be seen as an opportunity to change the company and even its own "micro-climate," or immediate industry. Hence by 2019, Borders no longer existed whereas Amazon was still profiting. Even the dinosaur McDonalds had tried to shift into a hybrid coffee-shop/restaurant industry model. 



10 year Amazon.com stock chart from Investorguide.com

The full essay is at "Borders: A Hybrid Industry?"

The U.S. Government Spying on Americans: Was It Ethical?

In early June, 2013, while Barak Obama was still the U.S. president, Americans learned of the U.S. Government’s domestic surveillance program, under which the Verizon Business Network Services subsidiary had been turning over call logs “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency[1] The order, signed by a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April of that year, was "lawful,” U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein contended.[2] The program analyzed time and number logs that did not include the calls’ content. According to U.S. Senator Chambliss, “All of these numbers are basically ferreted out by a computer, but if there’s a number that matches a [suspicious] number that has been dialed . . . , then that may be flagged. And they may or may not seek a court order to go further on that particular instance. But that’s the only time that this information is ever used in any kind of substantive way.”[3] Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate at the time, added that the phone-data program had “worked to prevent” terrorist attacks.[4] Does it make any difference. ethically speaking, that the program had helped stop a domestic attack? Shortly after The Guardian broke the story on Verizon’s subsidiary serving corporate customers, The Wall Street Journal reported, “[T]he initiative also encompasses phone-call data” from AT&T and Sprint, as well as from Verizon itself (i.e., beyond its business subsidiary).[5] Does this revelation on the vast scale of the program make any difference ethically? Moreover, does a positive collective consequence--or the lack of a negative harm to the public good--justify forays into the privacy of a vast number of individuals? 

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates were alarmed at the sheer scope of the program. Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the N.S.A. wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration.[6] Her statement raises the question of whether the fact that the Obama administration had confined itself to court orders makes the program ethical.

Whereas the content of the phone conversations, including the parties’ names, were said to be not included in the trove of data turned over to the government, internet companies had been providing the contents of emails, online chats, Facebook accounts, Skype video calls, and web searches to the government as per court orders (i.e., not through direct access).[7] Does the inclusion of content make any difference, ethically speaking? Applying a few ethical theories may get us closer to some answers.

The analysis of the ethical theories is at "The U.S. Government Spying on Americans."

1. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls,” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.

2. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Maintains Vast Database of Phone Calls, Lawmakers Say,” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.

3. Ibid.

4. Siobhan Gorman, Evan Perez, and Janet Hook, “U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove,” The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2013.

5. Ibid.

6. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls,” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.

7. Siobhan Gorman, Evan Perez, and Janet Hook, “U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove,” The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2013.

Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders: The Case of Paterno at Penn State University

In January 2011, the illustrious football coach at Penn State University, Joe Paterno, learned that prosecutors were investigating his longstanding assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, for sexually assaulting young boys in the football team’s locker room. Paterno even testified before a grand jury on the matter that month. He had been informed of the rapes back in 1998, yet he had kept the pedophile on even though additional boys would be at risk in doing so. 

That same month—January 2011—Paterno also began negotiating to amend his contract that would not expire until the end of 2012. By August 2011, Paterno and the president of Penn State reached an agreement in spite of the fact that both were by then embroiled in the Sandusky investigation. “Paterno was to be paid $3 million at the end of the 2011 season if he agreed it would be his last. Interest-free loans totaling $350,000 that the university had made to Mr. Paterno over the years would be forgiven as part of the retirement package. He would also have the use of the university’s private plane and a luxury box at Beaver Stadium for him and his family to use over the next 25 years.” 

The university’s board was kept in the dark. Directors who raised questions were “quickly shut down.” In the end, the board gave the family virtually everything it wanted. The board even threw in free use of specialized hydrotherapy message equipment at the university for Paterno’s wife. In other words, Paterno (and his surviving family, following his death in January 2012) got an even better deal as the scandal came to include Paterno himself.

 Joe Paterno, head football coach at Penn State, viewed by a student as "Pa" in PA        Matt Rourke/AP

The full essay is at "Enabling Non-Empathetic Leaders."

Nissan's CEO Caught in the Crosshairs of Business and Society in Japan

Ordinarily, courses that include business & society (with business & government, and business ethics material also included as if the three fields were somehow one) have been relegated to the periphery in American business schools. Perhaps the business sector and its sycophantic deans have simply assumed that little actual cost comes from business managements deviating from societal norms and values. Admittedly, such a schism decreases reputational capital, a long-term intangible asset. Even so, the long-term-oriented and intangible can manifest as immediate jolts to such capital, with actual, measurable financial costs kicking in. They are triggered by news-worthy incidents in which a company or even one high-level manager, such as a CEO, are perceived societally as being in the wrong. The general perception of wrongness in turn depends on how far a company or manager have deviated from societal norms and values. Crucially but typically ignored, even though societal norms and values can absorb certain ethical principles or theories, business ethics is a distinct field because reasoning from or to ethical principles or theories lies at the core there. That is, no philosophical reasoning is involved in business & society; rather, the norms/values of a business sector, industry, or company are compared or contrasted with relevant societal norms and values. In this essay, I analyze the case of Carlos Ghosn, who was CEO of Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi on November 19, 2018 when he was arrested “on allegations that for years he had withheld millions of dollars in income from Nissan’s financial filings.”[1]

The full essay is at "Nissan's CEO in Japan."

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1. Amy Chozick and Motoko Rich, “The Rise and Fall of Carlos Ghosn,” The New York Times, December 30, 2018.