Business & Commercial

I Foment Defiance On My Airplane Trip In The Name Of Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 25 Comments

airplane-baggage-overhead-I know I’ve written about this at least once, but it continues to gripe my cookies.

I had settled into my seat on the US Air flight from Boston to Washington when I watched the young woman who was soon sitting in the center seat next to me be curtly informed by a flight attendant that her medium-size bag needed to go under her seat, so passengers with rollerboards and other large pieces of luggage could store them  in the bins. She sat down, stuffing the bag under the seat in front of her, and looked uncomfortable.

“I refuse to do that, you know,” I said. “I pay to check my large bag so that I can have leg room and not have to stow my briefcase in front of me. Why can’t I use the overhead bins for the one small bag I have, because other passengers won’t pay the fee–like I have— to  check their large bags?”

“Well, the attendant told me I couldn’t put my bag up there,” she said.

“Yeah, and as long as you do what they say, they’ll never change a stupid and unfair policy. Get up, put your bag overhead, and if you are challenged, say, “Look, I paid 50 bucks to check my rollerboard, and for that sum I get to take up my foot space so someone who wouldn’t pay can put a rollerboard in the overhead bins? That’s absurd and wrong, and I’m not doing it.”

That’s exactly what she did. And she even made the speech I scripted, and a few people applauded! Then a late-comer with a huge rollerboard was told that she had to check her bag, because there was no room.

Heh, heh, heh…

The Lone Ethicist strikes again.

Ethics Quiz: Sexy Safety In The Air

/ Jack Marshall / 46 Comments

This one’s simple. Watch this New Zealand Air safety video. It was recently pulled, possibly in part because of objections that it sexually objectified women. The video, shown to passengers before take-off, was even the target of a Change.org petition, which one again shows that many U.S. citizens don’t comprehend freedom of speech, and think that the U.S. is a monarchy, perhaps because the President often seems to be under that delusion himself. Now the video:

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz for a slow week in ethics (so far):

Is this video disrespectful to women, in bad taste, vulgar or inappropriate?

In the succinct words of Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich: “They’re called boobs, Ed.”

And they are everywhere, and a lot more gratuitously displayed than here. Airlines have a problem getting passengers to pay attention to the safety instructions ( here’s Jerry Seinfeld making some trenchant observations on the dilemma), and having beautiful women in bikinis do the chore is as good a solution as any. Even the critics, prudes and boob-o-phobes must have been paying attention. Harm: minimal to none. Benefits: enough. The video passes utilitarian muster.

It’s also funny. I particularly like the Hawaiians in the dugout demonstrating the crash position.

________________________
Pointer: Fred

Facts: ABC

 

Euphemisms, Manipulation And Deceit On Illegal Immigration

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments
Not that it isn't illegal for you to be here, but come on in anyway...

Not that it isn’t illegal for you to be here, but come on in anyway…

The U.S. needs to fix its illegal immigration policies, and deal with the millions of underground, and not so underground, illegals currently in the country, having children, getting benefits, often being abused and exploited while not integrating into U.S. society. This has been true for decades, and both parties, as well as the U.S. business community, Mexico, and the illegal immigrants themselves, share responsibility for allowing a major problem to metastasize into a crisis.

The proclivity of journalists to isolate blame to one participant in this fiasco to the exclusion of the others compounds the problem, by making a bi-partisan solution impossible and giving individuals a pass on accountability who deserve none. Even worse is the habit of the news media to adopt the misleading and dishonest terminology of open-border advocates and illegal immigrant activists. Attempting to use deceptive language, exaggerations and outright misrepresentations to make ethically dubious policies seem benign to the public has become standard practice among Democrats and progressives in the Obama era (Republicans and conservatives too, but at least at the present, less flamboyantly and with less success.) Abortion is promoted in terms that leave out any mention of the act at the center of the controversy: it’s about “choice.” Life? What life? As for the issue of how a nation maintains its security and rule of law when foreign citizens are entering the country in violation of those laws at will, the news media, like the President and others, works to make the central issue invisible. Continue reading →

Some Ethics Comments On The SCOTUS Hobby Lobby Decision

/ Jack Marshall / 71 Comments

Hobby-Lobby1. First, read the decision, here. When you do, you will be disgusted at the blatant exaggerations and outright misrepresentations by various pundits, advocates, activists and reporters. In the case of the latter, this is incompetence and a breach of duty to the public. In the case of the rest, it is either dishonesty and willful deception, or stupidity. For example, as an exercise, count the number of misrepresentations and misstatements inherent in this tweet, from MSNBC ‘s Cenk Uygur:

 “I love that conservatives are now on the record as against contraception. Brilliant move to be against 99% of women!”

I count five, but I could be off by one or two. Is this genuine misunderstanding, or just intentional rabble-rousing? Who can tell, with shameless partisans like Cenk? Continue reading →

If This Chase Survey Is Real, Here Is How Employees Are Ethically Obligated To Respond To It…

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments
Did an intern snap???

Did an intern snap???

I was going to shut down the blog for today, but I’m alone in a hotel room in Lincoln Nebraska, and I just saw this, to which I must respond..

Over at Mirror of Justice, Robert George posts a report which he says is from a close friend: Continue reading →

Obnoxious, Offensive, And Unethical: Facebook “Research” Turning Users Into Guinea Pigs

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

guinea-pig

Facebook apparently has been manipulating the feeds that some users get to see in order to measure how it the content affects the tone of their own posts.

You can read about the research here; I’m not publicizing it, because the Facebook’s research is an abuse of users and their trust. I don’t mind them reading my posts, for they own the service, and the service is in their name. I assume they will use my data and content to make money, but I didn’t agree to allow them to manipulate me, or what I write, feel, or think. I’m also not especially optimistic about the uses the results of such research might be applied to.

The researchers claim that the research is ethical because a computer program scanned for words that were considered either “positive” or “negative,” but the Facebook content wasn’t actually read. Facebook  terms of service state that user data may be used “for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.”

Since Facebook users agree to the terms of service, the researchers argue that this constitutes “informed consent” for their experiment.

Wrong.

Also ridiculous.

Continue reading →

Warped Values and Perverse Incentives: Banning Employers From Asking Whether A Job Applicant Served Time

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
Sorry Hedley---it's unfair to ask a potential employees if they were rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers...and don't you dare ask if they are Methodists!

Sorry Hedley—it’s unfair to ask a potential employees if they were rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers…and don’t you dare ask if they are Methodists!

I was unaware that this was a trend: states and cities making it illegal for employers to ask job applicant’s whether they had been convicted of a crime and served jail time.

It is an unethical, foolish and illogical trend, an example of misplaced compassion being used to justify placing risks on law-abiding citizens for the benefit of those who are less trustworthy.

A news article regarding the problems faced by former prisoners re-entering society quotes Zach Hoover, executive director of LA Voice, a multiracial, faith-based organization working to get such a measure passed in Los Angeles:

“Sometimes people think of someone who’s been in prison and they think only of what they did instead of what they’re doing today. They’ve done their time. They served their sentence, and they’re looking for a job.It’s like double jeopardy. You’ve done your time, and now you get a life sentence of joblessness.”

What utter claptrap: Continue reading →

The Perfect Scam

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Victorias Victories

It appears that a family in Jackson, Mississippi has pulled off the perfect scam. Victoria Wilcher, 3, was mauled by her grandfather’s dogs, and needs extensive plastic surgery. A website, Victoria’s Victories, was put up the family to raise funds for her care, and really got a boost after the girl’s grandmother, Kelly Mullins, claimed that the child had been asked to leave a local Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise because, they were told, Victoria’s scarred face was upsetting patrons. The story went viral on the web, and more than $135,000 poured in from outraged and sympathetic Americans, including $30,000 from a frightened KFC.

Mission accomplished. Now it appears that a full-fledged hoax is unraveling. KFC, looking for someone to fire, can’t find any record of Victoria on surveillance footage for the day and time she was supposedly ejected. The girl’s grandmother and her aunt who runs the website can’t get their stories straight, citing varying dates and fingering various KFC stores, including one that has been shut down for months. The investigation is ongoing, but no confirming witnesses have come forward, and nobody can verify the socking tale of the cruelly-shunned little girl, who has already suffered so much.

Perfect! Since the object of the hoax is blameless, and the objective can be rationalized, and because the victim is just a mean old corporation that sells deadly fast food, the ends–getting money to repair a little girl’s damaged face–will certainly be regarded by many and perhaps most as justifying the means—lies, slander, libel, disparagement, and fraud. Continue reading →

The Irresponsible, Greedy 1% and the Hypocritical, Greedy .01% of the 1% Who Get Away With Attacking Them…That Is, Hillary Clinton

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments
...for less than an hour's work. But it's HARD work,..you know: talking.

…for less than an hour’s work. But it’s HARD wor…you know: talking.

Robert Samuelson accurately categorizes America’s CEOs as a new economic aristocracy in his most recent column. Why CEO salaries are so absurdly high is caused by many factors, some of which the columnist lists, but that fact is inescapable that the salaries cannot be defended by rational arguments. This is in stark contrast, by the way, to similarly high-salaried entertainers and sports figures, who tend to really earn their money. There is, after all, only one LeBron James, Tiger Woods, or Jon Stewart. Corporate CEOs, though they would like to think they are unique talents, seldom are. Could you replace most of them for considerably less than the going rate of 20 million dollars a year? Absolutely.

Thus continuing to accept such absurd salaries and attendant benefits while the economy stutters, their companies restrict hiring and the gap between worker salaries and executive compensation widens is unethical, pure and simple. Doing so is based on greed and willfully ignoring the consequences of the conduct, as Samuelson points out, though he hardly needs to, so obvious should it be to corporate executives and outside observers alike:

“Americans dislike aristocracies. Unless companies can find a more restrained pay system, they risk an anti-capitalist public backlash. This is the ultimate danger. For all the flaws of today’s system, government regulation of pay — responding to political needs and pandering to popular prejudices — would be much worse.”

Just as irresponsible as these gorging, selfish, unrestrained and greedy executives are the class-dividing hypocrites who try to exploit public resentment and pander to those popular prejudices while profiting from the same irrational system of misaligned resources that make those CEOs the equivilent of sultans. I know I have been critical of Hillary Clinton regularly of late, but I am not responsible for flaunting her in  front of my wincing eyes and abused ears on a daily basis. How dare she try to pose as an advocate of a rational system of wealth distribution? And how pathetic that her tone-deaf and logic-free supporters tolerate it!

In a weekend interview with the  Guardian, Clinton pronounced herself a fit champion of populism and a credible agent of reform for skewed income levels because progressives “don’t see me as part of the problem because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.”

Ah.

Those progressives are gullible and naive idiots then!

Thanks for that clarification. Continue reading →

Passenger List On The Deadly General Motors Ethics Train Wreck

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
"Oops! There goes G.M again!"

“Oops! There goes G.M again!”

That great, big, all-American motor car company that the Obama Administration took bows for saving five years ago has been revealed as a thoroughly corrupt, incompetent and deadly enterprise. As the full extent of the General Motors safety scandal unfolds—and it could get worse—this is a good time to take stock of the ethics lessons and miscreants involved, on the off chance that we are interested in learning something.

Did that sound bitter? It is. There is little in this terrible story of corporate ineptitude and corruption that wasn’t known and understood decades ago. Yet here we are again.

The manifest:

  • G.M. management. It pursued the policy of paying large settlements with confidentiality agreements to those injured by ignition switch defects in their cars, never fixing the defect itself. This is the old Pinto calculation, reasoning that if it is cheaper to pay for the deaths and injuries from a design defect than to fix the defect itself, then it makes good business sense to keep doing that, indefinitely. There are three problems with this logic, of course. First, it kills people. Second, it is stupid: eventually the facts will get out, and the whole company will be endangered. Third, it is wrong.
  • The plaintiffs’ attorneys. The trial lawyers association, way back when I worked for it two decades ago, adopted the unofficial position that the practice of accepting settlements from large corporations in product liability cases that included agreements not to reveal the damages and the defects involved to regulators, the news media, and endangered consumers was unethical. Members were urged to make a rejection of such terms a condition of agreeing to represent injured parties. Speeches were given, pledges were made. All agreed that the practice undermined the mission of the plaintiffs’ bar to make America safer through the civil justice system. What happened? Greed, that’s what. Just as every plaintiff has a price, so do many trial attorneys, who received up to 40% of those secret settlements. Every single one of the lawyers who guided their clients to accepting hush money in exchange for letting unsuspecting owners of G.M. cars risk their lives and those of their families were members of the American Association for Justice, which changed its name from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America because a survey showed the term “trial lawyers” was too negative. This is why the term is negative.

Continue reading →