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."

Electing a U.S. President: What Is a Landslide?

A landslide electoral victory in representative democracy is typically limited to the criterion of the extent of the vote-spread between candidates for a given office. In regard to the U.S. presidency, the Electoral College presents an alternative criterion, especially as a significant difference in votes in the College may not be reflected in the popular vote. Although that vote is by member state, the totals from all of the states are typically used to assess whether a landslide has occurred and thus whether the winning candidate has a political mandate to implement campaign promises. Whether a landslide or not, winning an election legitimates a candidate implementing the platform on which a candidate has campaigned. So whether a candidate for U.S. president has a landslide has typically been over-emphasized by American journalists, as if not having a large spread in the popular vote—even if such a spread exists in the Electoral College vote (which is the vote that really matters in the election of a U.S. president)—means that the winner has no prerogative to enact one’s agenda. I contend that even under the assumption that an electoral landslide is important, there are alternative ways of assessing whether a landslide has occurred.

The full essay is at "Electing a U.S. President."

Greedy Grocers: Exploiting Customers and Workers with Impunity

Adam Smith theorized that price competition on products and labor would allow the self-interests of the buyers and sellers to result in unintended beneficial consequences. For one thing, price gouging would not happen because, assuming low barriers to enter the market to sell, competitors would quickly drop their prices and gain market share. That grocery prices did not fall after the supply-shocks, including in shipping and hiring workers, ended with the end of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2023 is a pretty good indication that the grocery (and meat producer) industry was not competitive. Oligarchic markets—those in which just a few, often times very large, sellers exist—are devoid of the competitive mechanism that would otherwise maintain prices that are fair to buyers. That is, not only do competitive markets efficiently allocate goods and services at prices that connect supply to demand; such markets can also satisfy the ethical virtue of justice as fairness. Smith was not shy in admitted that a government willing to stand up to big companies is necessary to keep a market from slipping into the decadence of an oligopoly and especially a monopoly. I contend that both Americans and their elected representatives were blind, perhaps conveniently so given the power of large companies in American governments, both during the coronavirus pandemic, which ran from roughly 2020 to 2022, and even afterwards as Kroger and Albertsons colluded at the expense (literally) of their respective customers and workers.  

The full essay is at "Greedy Grocers."

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?"

Territorial Economic Inequality: On the Impact of Ideological Category-Mistakes

Why do some countries have more inequality in terms of wealth or economic development, whether between big cities and urban areas, or just from region to region, than do other countries? I contend that in comparing the internals of one state/country to those of another, as much “all else equal” should be satisfied as possible. This can be accomplished to a large extent by resisting the error, or temptation, to make category mistakes, such as in comparing Singapore with China—a city-state to an empire-scale country—or in likening an E.U. state to the entire U.S. European scholars of comparative politics tend to make this category mistake, and non-European scholars are so used to the ideological aggrandizement that they do not typically even recognize the category mistake of treating an early-modern(rather than Medieval) kingdom-scale state of an empire-scale federal union as equivalent to another such union, as if a state in one such union, or a comparable sovereign state, were itself an empire-scale union. Resisting the ideologically-driven urge to begin with a category mistake would do wonders in studying comparative politics and political economy and providing more accurate and beneficial conclusions and recommendations.

The full essay is at "Economic Inequality."

The ICC Indicts Israeli and Hamas Officials: On the Perils of Absolutist National Sovereignty

The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Ben Netanyahu, former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, and the military commander of Hamas on November 21, 2024. With the world having had centuries wherein national sovereignty has been the basis of the international order, the heads of national governments could be expected to instantly bolt from just being indicted by an international court. Since the world woke up in 1945 to learn of the Nazi atrocities against Slavs (20 million), Jews (6 million), intellectuals and gays, whether murdered in concentration camps or on the proverbial street, as well as reading as years went by of Stalin’s mass-graves from his government’s mass-murders of Ukrainians, Poles, and even Russians, the hegemonic doctrine that the sovereignty of a state should be absolute has been barely subject to any resistance. So when the ICC has issued arrest warrants, it has been up to national governments around the world to enforce the warrants by arresting the heads of other governments charged with having violated international law. This weakness in the constraint on what would otherwise be absolutist national sovereignty attests to the marginal degree to which that doctrine has actually been questioned since 1945. In other words, the international order can be said to occupy a rather uncomfortable ‘betwixt and between’ position with respect to whether the sovereignty of countries should be constrained internationally. Not until international law comes complete with real enforcement powers will the world be able to say that heads of governments (and of state) are no longer in a state of nature as described by Thomas Hobbes in his tomb, Leviathan.   

The full essay is at "The ICC Indicts Israeli and Hamas Officials."

Dorothy Day: Drawing on the Profane to Grasp the Sacred

Rather than spending her adult years in a convent, Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Workers Movement in the twentieth century, could distill religious experience through her activity in the world—the sacred essentially coming up through the profane. This is not to confound these two spheres, just as Christology has held since the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) that the two natures, human and divine, of Christ do not mix within his one essence. In fact, even within the religious sphere, Day could distinguish qualitative differences between God as personified and as impersonal in nature.

The full essay is at "Dorothy Day."

An Analysis of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election: On a Party's Self-Serving Elite

The 2024 U.S. Presidential election warrants a post-partem analysis, not so much to affix blame, but primarily so the electorate might grasp the perils when the elite of a political party refuses to apply self-restraint in order to keep the party-wide platform and campaign speeches from reducing to the elite’s own favorite ideology even though it is not held by a significant number of the “rank and file” members (i.e., voters), not to mention independents. In other words, running a massive political party to serve the ideological agenda of what Bertrand Russell calls “the inner ring” can cost a party dearly on election day. I contend that this applied to the Democratic Party, which had become a center-left party still dependent on its non-college, working-class, members, whose cultural values were not necessarily progressive. To be sure, substituting managerially-oriented political calculation for visionary leadership and broad policy proposals that are based on principles rather than particular political interests can easily be perceived generally as small, especially in the context of the horrific military attacks against civilians in Ukraine and Gaza. It is paradoxical that Harris lost working-class voters who were socially conservative, and thus “anti-woke” (e.g., against men in women’s bathrooms and playing in women’s sports) even as she lost some liberals who believed that Harris, in explicitly stating on The View that she would not deviate from Biden, was too timid in standing up to Russia’s Putin (e.g., by withholding long-range missiles) and Israel’s Netanyahu rather than enabling the horrific military crimes against humanity with continued shipments of weapons as if the UN’s court were irrelevant to international law.

The full essay is at "An Analysis of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election."

UN Climate Conferences Harbor an Institutional Conflict of Interest

Whereas people become instantly upset upon hearing that someone has self-aggrandized oneself by exploiting a conflict of interest, by, for example, embezzling funds for personal use, our species has the tendency to ignore the institutional variety of conflicts-of-interest. We don’t want to hear of another person incurring a privately-held benefit by ignoring the duties of one’s office, such as fiduciary responsibility, but we are fine with countries whose dominant industry is oil hosting the UN’s annual climate conferences. The sheer denialism entailed in assuming that the governments of such countries can be expected to steer a conference from the interests of the domestic oil companies is astounding. If there were ever a case of private benefits being at odds with the public benefit from mitigating climate change from carbon emissions by humans, this instance would be it. As had been the case of tobacco companies that promoted smoking even to minors while knowing that smoking kills or at least shortens a person’s lifespan, oil companies place their own profits, which are only a benefit to themselves, their managements, stockholders, and their external sycophants (i.e., governments) through more tax revenue and higher political contributions, above whether the planet warms more than 2C degrees—1.5, the prior limit, being passed in 2024. In other words, greed (i.e., the desire for more) can render board directors and managements oblivious to even forecasts of catastrophic impacts from global warming. In 2024, as COP29 was in progress in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, Al Gore, who had been the U.S. vice president during the eight-year Clinton administration in the 1990s, was astonished by how blatant (and undercutting relative to the conference’s goal) the institutional conflict of interest has been in allowing petro-states to be the hosts. I’m skeptical, given the lapse that seems to be inherent in the human brain when it comes to assessing and even recognizing such conflicts of interest, whether Gore’s “wake-up” call would make more than a ripple next to the power of the oil industry, given its private wealth.

The full essay is at "UN Climate Conferences: An Institutional Conflict of Interest."

Why a Stronger E.U. Is Needed in International Affairs

As 2023 and the following year made clear, the world still faced additional challenges in rebuffing incursions that violate human rights, including crimes against humanity. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military incursion into Gaza both demonstrate how easy it had become, especially with advanced military technology, to kill civilians so as to decimate an entire population so the land could be filled with the people of the aggressors. If this sounds like Hitler’s policy to make room for the German people in Eastern Europe, you are not far from touching on the real motives behind the aggression. It would be a pity were such motives to become the norm while the world looks on. I contend that the U.S. enabling of Israel has unwittingly contributed to the establishment of such a norm, and that therefore a stronger E.U. was needed not only domestically, but also internationally, as a counter-weight in defense of the human rights of civilians in Gaza.

The full essay is at "Why a Stronger E.U. Is Needed."

Advancing the E.U.’s Strategic Autonomy: Beyond Security by Regulation

Faced with the return of Donald Trump as U.S. president in early 2025, the European Parliament debated on November 13, 2024 how the E.U. should respond and, if needed, protect its strategic interests with respect to Russia’s continuing invasion of Ukraine. “In their debate, MEPs considered hw to engage with the new administration to address challenges and leverage opportunities for both regions as the E.U. seeks stable transatlantic relations.”[1] The possibility of the incoming U.S. President pulling back on NATO and with respect to contributing military supplies and money to Ukraine, and issuing protectionist tariffs on imports from the E.U. had added urgency for the E.U. to come up with ways of countering those external threats from the West just as Russia’s latest forays into Ukraine were external threats from the East. On the same day, Josep Borrell, the E.U.’s secretary of state/foreign minister/foreign policy “chief” “proposed to formally suspend political dialogue with Israel over the country’s alleged violations of human rights and international law in the Gaza strip.”[2] This alone put the E.U. at odds with Israel’s stanchest defender/enabler, the U.S., and with its incoming president, Donald Trump. From a human rights standpoint alone, both with respect to the governments of Russia and Israel, the trajectory of the E.U. in incrementally increasing its competencies (i.e., enumerated powers delegated by the state governments) in foreign policy and especially in defense (given the new post of Defense Commissioner) was in motion. The question was perhaps whether the E.U.’s typical incrementalism would be enough to protect the E.U.’s strategic interests, which includes protecting human rights at home and abroad. Fortunately, on the very same day, Kaija Shilde, Dean of the Global Studies school at Boston University, spoke at Harvard on the very question that I have just raised. I will present her view, which will lead to my thoughts on how viewing the E.U. inaccurately as a mere alliance harms the E.U.’s role internationally from within. That is to say, the continuance of the self-inflicted wound, or category-mistake on what the E.U. is, was compromising the jump forward in defense that the E.U. needed at the time to more competently address the crisis in Ukraine.

The full essay is at "Advancing the E.U.'s Strategic Autonomy."

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1. Euronews, “MEPs Debate Future E.U.-U.S. Relations Against Backdrop of U.S. Administration Change,” Euronews.com, November 13, 2024.
2. Shona Murray and Jorge Liboreiro, “Borrel Proposes to Suspend E.U.-Israel Political Talks over Gaza War,” Euronews.com, November 13, 2024.

Transcending Seductive Masks of Eternity: Thérèse of Lisieux

Marie Martin (1873-1897), known to the world as the Carmelite nun, Thérèse of Lisieux as well as Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face, was a mystic who centered her devotional love on Jesus. Pope Pius X called her “the greatest saint of modern times”[1] and Pope John Paul Il made her a doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, it is worth investigating whether her devotional love sublimated (i.e., looking upward) with Jesus as the object of the love was in fact humble, and thus more like divine than human love. Although psychological analyses of Thérèse exist in the secondary literature on her, we can both acknowledge her psychological challenges and put psychological couch aside as it is exogenous to the domain of religion, which has its own criteria; I will focus on and critique from a religious standpoing the distinctly religious meaning that Thérèse continues to provide in the West during the twenty-first century even though the wider secular culture in the West saturates modernity under the supervision of the tall, steel, and bewindowed edifices to wealth and worldly power.

The full essay is at "Transcending Seductive Masks of Eternity."

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1. Pierre Descouvemont, Therese and Lisieux (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 1996).

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Among the classic biblically-based films out of Hollywood, and the first to show Jesus’ face, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) is a highly idealized rather than realistic depiction of the Gospel story. Only when Jesus is on the cross does emotion show on Jesus’ visage; even the horrendous suffering from the torture leading up to the crucifixion is not shown. The Christology is thus idealized, with Jesus’ divine nature impacting his human nature even though the two natures are theologically distinct. Because the film was the first to show Jesus’ face, it could be that depicting Jesus’ human nature in its fullness, absent sin of course, would be too much for a film made before the social upheaval that began in 1968 in the West to depict. The main drawback in depicting Jesus in such highly idealized terms is that it may be difficult for Christians to relate to Jesus in emulating him by carrying their own proverbial crosses in this fallen world. The main upside of the almost Gnostic idealization is that the theological point that the Incarnation is of the divine Logos, which in turn is the aspect of God that created the world, is highlighted. Reflecting David Hume’s concern, I submit that transcending (rather than denying) the anthropomorphic “God made flesh” to embrace God as Logos—God’s word that creates—more fully captures the insight of Pseudo-Dionysius, a sixth-century theologian, that God goes beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotions. 

The full essay is at "The Greatest Story Ever Told."

Resolved: The E.U. Should Join NATO

I contend that the European Union rather than its states should be in NATO. Besides eliminating duplication from the E.U. having a nebulous observer status while the states are formally in the alliance, the increasing role in defense being played by the Commission, including there being a Defense commissioner (secretary/minister), calls for being formally in the alliance. Whereas the U.S. began as a military alliance of sovereign states, the E.U. can trace its beginnings to the European Economic Community. Both unions have since incorporated powers or competencies beyond the respective starting points. For the E.U. this has meant moving beyond economics and trade to include social policy and, last but not least, defense. It is in NATO’s interest to adapt to this change. Lastly, that the E.U. and U.S. are both instances of (early) modern federalism, which at its core has the attribute of dual-sovereignty wherein both the federal and the state levels enjoy at least some governmental sovereignty, whereas NATO, as an international alliance, is confederal in that all of the sovereignty resides in the members of the alliance, justifies the E.U. being a member of NATO rather than being misinterpreted as a comparable international organization as the state-rights Euroskeptics like to believe.

The full essay is at "The E.U. in NATO."

Hindu Mysticism: Transcending Deities

In his religiosity, Ramakrishna (1836-1885), a Hindu mystic and priest at a temple of the goddess Kali, the goddess of death, drew on the Bhakti (devotee), (Advaita) Vedanta, and Tantra aspects of Hinduism, as well as on Islam and Christianity to a much lesser extent, toward his goal of realizing God, which can also be put in terms of achieving self-knowledge of one’s true nature (atman). In the Bhavagad-Gita, Arjuna demands to see the god Krishna as he really is, but Krishna has to hold himself back, showing himself in (human) bodily form, albeit with a myriad of heads. Even a distended form such as this is too much for Arjuna. Moreover, ignorance cannot take in reality or awareness itself without it being adorned in anthropomorphic (i.e., having human characteristics) ornaments that Hume discusses in his Natural History of Religion. Krishna’s promise in the Gita is relevant, in “that, through His Maya, He will assume a human body and manifest His powers whenever religion declines, and will help [people] to obtain peace.”[1] It is through illusion that a deity assumes the likeness of a human form because seeing a deity’s essence in Brahman is simply too much for mere mortals.

The full essay is at "Hindu Mysticism: Ramakrishna."

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1.  Swami Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna: The Great Master, Jagadananda, trans. (Madras, IN: Sri Ramakrishna Math Mylapore, 1952), p. 16.