Ethics F
Review the attachments. All references have been provided!
You will answer in a question-answer format (only the question number as a heading and not the scenario).
For each of the following questions, prepare a response that addresses all questions asked, fully supported with concepts from the course materials including the course eBook. You are required to draw from the course materials unless indicated. All source materials must be properly cited using APA. Not using the course materials will negatively impact the grade.
Step 1: Answer the following questions using the course materials to support the reasoning.
QUESTION 1 Environmental Issues
The text, Business Ethics, Chapter 14 provides several models and frameworks for a business approach to the environment and sustainability including;
· accelerate and innovate
· monetize and count
· express corporate responsibility
Using the perspective of a business owner of a mid-size manufacturer, select the approach/approaches you would recommend for this company (mid-size manufacturer). Support the selection by explaining the approach, describing which of the five (5) environmental positions you espouse, and how the approach and positions relate to key ethical theories we have studied.
(5 positions are the following: 1: The environment shouldn’t be protected. 2: The environment should be protected in the name of serving human welfare. 3: The environment should be protected in the name of serving future generations’ welfare. 4: The environment should be protected in the name of serving animal welfare. 5: The environment should be protected for its own sake.)
QUESTION 2 Data Security
For this question, please select one of the breaches listed in the Business Insider Biggest Hacks article, research it (beyond the Business Insider article), and prepare your response to the following questions.
Business Insider Biggest Data Hacks of 2018
https://www.businessinsider.com/data-hacks-breaches-biggest-of-2018-2018-12
1. Discuss the nature of the breach in terms of WHO was harmed.
Use a stakeholder orientation as we studied to evaluate the harmed.
2. Define and explain the overarching ethical issues demonstrated by the data breaches.
Refer to our course text to define the issues.
Explain how such breaches prevail?
3. Discuss the level of governance that you espouse for the industry? Be sure to support your position with
information from our course learning
and other well researched reliable sources.
QUESTION 3 Government Regulation
The two (2) crashes of Boeing Airlines’ 737 Max 8 present an opportunity for examining the interaction of regulators (Government), industry and society. The ongoing examination of the crashes include investigation of the Boeing/FAA relationship and the role of regulators including whether the airline manufacturing industry can / should self-govern. The following articles provide background information on the Boeing Airlines case.
How Did the F.A.A. Allow the Boeing 737 Max to Fly? | The New Yorker
www.newyorker.com Retrieve April 17 from:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-did-the-faa-allow-the-boeing-737-max-to-fly
Boeing’s Not Alone In Companies That Government Agencies Have Let Self-Regulate | NPR Heard on
All Things Considered
Retrieved May 20 from:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/02/709203191/boeings-not-alone-in-companies-that-government-agencies-have-let-self-regulate
For this question, you will consider the relationship of Government, Business and Society and specifically the concept of Government Regulation of Business, using the Boeing case presented as an example. SELECT A POSITION ON THE REGULATION CONTINUUM AS DEMONSTRATED BELOW.
1. Define and discuss the type of regulation espoused using concepts from the eBook and examples from the case to support your recommendations. When referring to a concept, you must include the definition from the eBook to establish its meaning.
2. Applying the regulation continuum selection and reasoning as a guide, answer the following specific questions.
· Explain the arguments for and against airline manufacturers being allowed to self-regulate airplane’s safety testing and features? Which arguments support your position on the continuum?
· Explain the arguments for privately owned companies being allowed to lobby against safety regulations? Which arguments support your position on the continuum?
· What examples, beyond Boeing support your selection and recommendations? Be specific. This question will require research.
QUESTION 1: Environmental Issues
Theme 1: Ethical Issues Related to the Environment
MANDATORY
The Business Ethics Workshop (2012) Washington, DC: The Saylor Foundation
·
Chapter 14: The Green Office: Economics and the Environment (pages 627-664)
·
What is Environmental History
·
Environmental Ethics?
·
Perdue Farms Changes Rules for Chicken Care
·
When some US firms move production overseas, they also offshore their pollution
·
Fracking Is Dangerous To Your Health — Here’s Why
·
Global Scarcity: Scramble for Dwindling Natural Resources
·
The Needs of 7 Billion People
·
Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects
·
Environmental Racism
Theme 2: Sustainable Business Practices
·
Stepping Towards Sustainable Business: An Evaluation of Waste Minimization Practices in US Manufacturing
·
A Corporate Model of Sustainable Business Practices
·
Environmental Sustainability in Business
Ethical Theories
The Business Ethics Workshop (2012) Washington, DC: The Saylor Foundation
· Chapter 3: Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business When the Ends Justify the Means (pages 91-125)
·
Utilitarianism
The Business Ethics Workshop (2012) Washington, DC: The Saylor Foundation
· Chapter 4: Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism (pages 137-176)
·
Aristotle & Virtue Theory
·
Kantian Ethics in a Nutshell: The Moral Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
QUESTION 2: Data Protection & Privacy
MANDATORY
https://www.businessinsider.com/data-hacks-breaches-biggest-of-2018-2018-12
Theme 2: Data Protection
·
The Complicated Ethics of Data-Breach Disclosure
·
Equifax Breach Exposed More Consumer Data Than First Disclosed
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The cost of data security: Are cybersecurity investments worth it?
·
The ethics of Hacking 101
·
US v Europe – a cultural gap on the right to be forgotten
·
Tracking The Trackers
·
What happens to your digital assets when you die?
Theme 3: Privacy
·
Technology as a Threat to Privacy: Ethical Challenges to the Information Profession
·
FDA medical device plan zeros in on cybersecurity, public-private partnership
·
Ethics and advanced medical devices: Do we need a new approach?
Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights—not the law
·
European Union hits Google with record $5 billion fine in Android antitrust case
·
The 10 Largest Data Security Breaches of 2018 (So Far)
QUESTION 3: Government Regulation
MANDATORY
How Did the F.A.A. Allow the Boeing 737 Max to Fly? | The New Yorker
www.newyorker.com Retrieve April 17 from:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-did-the-faa-allow-the-boeing-737-max-to-fly
MANDATORY
Boeing’s Not Alone In Companies That Government Agencies Have Let Self-Regulate | NPR Heard on
All Things Considered
Retrieved May 20 from:
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/02/709203191/boeings-not-alone-in-companies-that-government-agencies-have-let-self-regulate
·
Ethical Issues, Ethical Dilemmas, & Legal Issues
Theme 2: Why Ethics Matters?
·
Culture: The Key to Corporate Governance
·
Corporate culture: The second ingredient in a world-class ethics and compliance program
·
The Firm’s Stakeholders
OTHER REFERENCES
Week 5: Marketing, Brand Protection, Food Production, Agribusiness & Obesity
Theme 1: Ethical Issues Related to Marketing
The Business Ethics Workshop (2012) Washington, DC: The Saylor Foundation
Chapter 12: The Selling Office: Advertising and Consumer Protection (pages 529-566)
Offensive/Exploitive/Insensitive/Violent—short of illegal
·
The Most Offensive Urban Outfitters Products to Ever Exist
·
Sorry About That: Wells Fargo to End Ads Suggesting Science Over Arts
·
Update: Hyundai Apologizes For Car Ad Depicting Attempted Suicide
·
Ikea apologises over removal of women from Saudi Arabia catalogue
False Claims to Making One Healthier, Richer, Younger–illegal
·
14 False Advertising Scandals That Cost Brands Millions
·
Controversial Lollipop Ad Goes Up in Times Square
·
FTC to Crack Down on Deceptive Weight-Loss Ads
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The fall of “anti-aging” skin care
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FTC Action Puts Deceptive Marketer Out of the Debt Relief Business
·
Federal Trade Commission Act Section 5: Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices
Exploitive/Dangerous to Children & Vulnerable Populations
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Exploitative Advertising Campaigns are Targeting our Children
·
Monster drinks: Are the energy drinks marketed to children?
·
E-Cigarette Ads Target Millions of Kids, CDC Says
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Study eyes candy-flavored e-cigarette ads targeted to kids
Stealth Advertising/Conflicts of Interest/Biased Reviewers
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Astroturfing: Government shills are flooding the web
·
The Never-Ending War on Fake Reviews
·
The Real Problem with Mommy Bloggers
Theme 2: Ethical Issues Related to Brand Protection
Controversial Ingredients and Testing of Ingredients
·
Controversial caffeinated products
·
5 Lessons Learned From Mattel’s Lead Paint Crisis
·
Doing Well By Doing Good
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Choking Hazards: Are Current Product Testing Methods for Small Parts Adequate?
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Animal Antibiotics
Assembly & Manufacturing Problems
·
An Empirical Examination of a Multinational Ethical Dilemma: The Issue of Child Labor
·
Ethical diamonds: What Conscientious Consumers Need to Know
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Conflict Minerals and Firms’ Ignorance Over Their Supply Chains
Consumer Privacy
·
Tim Cook to talk consumer privacy and data ethics at European data protection conference later this month
Pricing
·
Uber’s Surge Pricing: Is it Ethical?
Theme 3: Ethical Issues Related to Food & Drink Production
·
At sentencing, cantaloupe growers apologize for deadly listeria outbreak
·
For first time, company owner faces life sentence for food poisoning outbreak
·
Business Ethics Alive: Blue Bell vs Peanut Corporation of America
·
2.5 million pounds of taquitos recalled for salmonella, listeria concerns
Week 8: Global Business Issues
Theme 1:
Global Business Ethics
· Global Business Ethics
Theme 2: Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
·
US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Summary
·
US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) Full Text
·
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act: An Overview
Sub Theme 1: Operating in China
·
The Ten Principles For Doing Business In China
·
A Pocket Guide to Doing Business in China
·
The Compromises That Companies Make to Do Business in China
Sub Theme 2: Operating in India
·
Doing Business in India
·
How To Do Business In India
·
20 Essential Tips for Doing Business with India
Sub Theme 3: Operating in Latin America
·
Doing Business in Latin America
·
What are the top risks to doing business in Latin America?
·
Doing Business in Latin America Handbook
Sub Theme 4: Operating in Russia
·
Comparing Business Ethics in Russia to the US
·
Navigating the Complexities of Doing Business in Russia
·
Overseas Business Risk – Russia
Sub Theme 5: Operating in Africa
·
16 Challenges of Doing Business in Africa… Oh Man!
·
Ethical challenges for South African business – Mark Lamberti
·
Business in Africa: The risks, rewards And challenges
·
Role of Government in Regulating Business Ethics
·
The Ethics of Redistribution
Theme 1: What is Ethics?
Ethics is concerned with distinguishing between good and evil in the world, between right and wrong human actions, and between virtuous and non-virtuous characteristics of people. Ethics is the study of basic concepts and fundamental principles of decent human conduct. It includes the study of universal values such as the essential equality of all men and women, human or natural rights, obedience to the law of land, concern for health and safety, and, increasingly, also for the natural environment. Similarly, business ethics is the study of how businesses and individuals define and construct values and moral behavior in the conduct of business.
Read/View:
The Business Ethics Workshop (2012) Washington, DC: The Saylor Foundation
Chapter 1: What Is Business Ethics? (pages 4-32)
Week 2: Ethical Theories/ Wall Street, Banks and Financial Fairness
Theme 1: The Importance of Ethical Theory to Making Ethical Decisions in Business
The study of concepts such as justice, good and evil behavior, moral right and wrong, values and mores have been the fodder of theologists, philosophers and legal scholars for centuries. Understanding some of the major theories will help to answers ethical dilemmas that occur in the workplace today.
[For additional information on ethical theories, see Course Resources under Content]
Theme 2: Ethical Issues Surrounding Banking & Investment Activity
·
The two-year Wells Fargo horror story just won’t end
·
Tippee Insider Trading after Newman and Salman : Why Knowledge Is Not Always Your
·
U.S. Supreme Court Clarifies Standards for “Tippee” Insider Trading Liability
·
60 Minutes Flash Boys – High Frequency Trading
·
Socially-Responsible Investing for Long Term Safety and Returns: Tom Van Dyck at TEDxNewWallStreet
·
Why Creating Wealth Is Not Exploitative
·
What’s in a Name? Regulation Best Interest v. Fiduciary
Week 3: Ethical Treatment of Employees – Workplace Culture
Theme 1: Safety/Civility
Your Person
·
OSHA’s Wall of Shame: Agency Targets ‘Severe Violators’
·
The Top 10 Bizarre Workers’ Compensation Cases for 2015
Your Psyche
·
Kareem Hunt faces more than baseline six-game suspension
·
The silent killer of workplace happiness, productivity, and health is a lack of basic civility
·
Chris Porath – “Mastering Civility: A Manifesto in the Workplace,” WJLA Interview
Your Money
·
Thinking About Using Payroll Debit Cards? Read This First
·
New Overtime Rules Suspended for Now
·
Are ESOPs Good Retirement Plans?
Theme 2: Freedom From Discrimination
Illegal Discrimination
·
The Pregnancy Discrimination Act and the Supreme Court: A Legal Analysis of Young v. U nited Parcel S ervice
·
Legal discrimination in four letters: BFOQ
·
The strange loophole that lets Hooters hire only female servers
·
Is it okay to hire cooks to match the cuisine? (part I)
·
Resources Legal Alerts Newsletters Articles Blogs Mobile Apps Subject-Matter Booklets State Law Guides Newsletter PDF EEOC Settles Beef With Restaurant
Legal Discrimination
·
The Hidden Obstacle to Great Corporate Culture: Unconscious Bias
·
Former Hooters Waitress Awarded $250,000 in Racial Discrimination Case
·
Lifestyle Discrimination: Is it Legal?
·
8 Ways Employers Can Discriminate Against Workers – Legally
·
Anne Arundel Medical Center Won’t Hire Smokers In The Future
·
Pay Transparency Is The Solution To The Pay Gap: Here’s One Company’s Success Story
·
If a Law Bars Asking Your Past Salary, Does It Help or Hurt?
·
Employers Must Use Caution When Basing Pay Decisions On Prior Salary History
·
Schumpeter: ESOP – When Workers Are Owners
·
Employee Rights When Working for Multinational Employers
·
EU to push for 40% quota for women on company boards
·
EU workplace headscarf ban ‘can be legal’, says ECJ
Week 4: Patents and the Pharmaceutical Industry, Products of Liability & the Role of Whistleblowers
Theme 1: Pharmaceutical Industry
·
The Importance of Patents: It Pays to Know Patent Rules
·
Why Patent Protection In The Drug Industry Is Out Of Control
·
Is a Patent a Monopoly? —Antitrust Considerations
·
First-To-File Patent Law Is Imminent, But What Will It Mean?
Theme 2: Products of Liability
·
The Danger Of Loosely Regulated Supplements
·
Unregulated supplements send thousands to hospital each year
·
The ethics of global clinical trials In developing countries, participation in clinical trials is sometimes the only way to access medical treatment. What should be done to avoid exploitation of disad
·
IRB Considerations for Investigator – Initiated Research
·
Supreme Court lets pay-to-delay ruling against pharma stand
·
Appendix K Antibiotics In Animal Feeds
·
Ethical dimensions of the prescription opioid abuse crisis
·
The War on Opioids: An Ethical Perspective
Theme 3: Whistleblowing
·
What’s Ethical About Whistleblowing?
·
5 famous whistleblowers who risked everything
·
Our Successful Whistleblower Cases
Chapter 14: The Green Office: Economics and the Environment from The Business Ethics
Workshop was adapted by Saylor Academy and is available under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license without attribution as requested by
the work’s original creator or licensor. UMGC has modified this work and it is available under
the original license.
http://www.saylor.org/site/textbooks/The%20Business%20Ethics%20Workshop
https://creativecommon
s.
org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
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Chapter 14
The Green Office: Economics and the Environment
Chapter Overview
Chapter 14 “The Green Office: Economics and the Environment” explores the multiple relations linking
business, the environment, and environmental protection. The question of animal rights is also
considered.
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14.1 The Environment
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Consider damage done to the environment in a business context.
2. Delineate major legal responses to concerns about the environment.
Cancun
Cancun, Mexico, is paradise: warm climate, Caribbean water, white sand beaches, stunning landscapes,
coral reefs, and a unique lagoon. You can sunbathe, snorkel, parasail, shoot around on jet skis, and drink
Corona without getting carded.
Hordes of vacationers fill the narrow, hotel-lined peninsula—so many that the cars on the one main street
snarl in traffic jams running the length of the tourist kilometers. It’s a jarring contrast: on one side the
placid beaches (until the jet skis get geared up), and on the other there’s the single road about a hundred
yards inland. Horns scream, oil-burning cars and trucks belch pollution, tourists fume. Cancun’s problem
is that it can’t handle its own success. There’s not enough room for roads behind the hotels just like there’s
not enough beach in front to keep the noisy jet skiers segregated from those who want to take in the sun
and sea quietly.
The environment hasn’t been able to bear the success either. According to a report,
The tourist industry extensively damaged the lagoon, obliterated sand dunes, led to the
extinction of varying species of animals and fish, and destroyed the rainforest which surrounds
Cancun. The construction of 120 hotels in 20 years has also endangered breeding areas for
marine turtles, as well as causing large numbers of fish and shellfish to be depleted or
disappear just offshore.
[1]
For all its natural beauty, environmentally, Cancun is an ugly place. Those parts of the natural world that
most tourists don’t see (the lagoon, the nearby forest, the fish life near shore) have been sacrificed so a few
executives in suits can make money.
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From its inception, Cancun was a business. The Mexican government built an airport to fly people in, set
up rules to draw investors, and made it (relatively) easy to build hotels on land that only a few coconut
harvesters from the local plantation even knew about. From a business sense, it was a beautiful
proposition: bring people to a place where they can be happy, provide new and more lucrative jobs for the
locals, and build a mountain of profit (mainly for government insiders and friends) along
the way.
Everything went according to plan. Those who visit Cancun have a wonderful time (once they finally get
down the road to their hotel). College students live it up during spring break, young couples take their
children to play on the beach, and older couples go down and remember that they do, in fact, love each
other. So fish die, and people get jobs. Forests disappear, and people’s love is kindled. The important
questions about business ethics and the environment are mostly located right at this balance and on these
questions: how many trees may be sacrificed for human jobs? How many animal species can be traded for
people to fall in love?
What Is the Environment?
Harm to the natural world is generally discussed under two terms: the environment and the ecosystem.
The words’ meanings overlap, but one critical aspect of the term ecosystem is the idea of interrelation. An
ecosystem is composed of living and nonliving elements that find a balance allowing for their
continuation. The destruction of the rain forest around Cancun didn’t just put an end to some trees; it also
jeopardized a broader web of life: birds that needed limbs for their nests disappeared when the trees did.
Then, with the sturdy forest gone, Hurricane Gilbert swept through and wiped out much of the lower-level
vegetation. Meanwhile, out in the sea, the disappearance of some small fish meant their predators had
nothing to feed on and they too evaporated. What makes an ecosystem a system is the fact that the various
parts all depend on each other, and damaging one element may also damage and destroy another or many
others.
In the sense that it’s a combination of interdependent elements, the tourist world in Cancun is no
different from the surrounding natural world. As the traffic jams along the peninsula have grown, making
it difficult for people to leave and get back to their hotels, the tourists have started migrating away,
looking elsewhere for their vacation reservations. Of course Cancun isn’t going to disappear, but if you
took that one road completely away, most everything else would go with it. So economic realities can
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resemble environmental ones: once a single part of a functioning system disappears, it’s hard to stop the
effects from falling further down the line.
What Kinds of Damage Can Be Done to the Environment?
Nature is one of nature’s great adversaries. Hurricanes sweeping up through the Caribbean and along the
Eastern Seaboard of the United States wipe out entire ecosystems. Moving inland, warm winters in
northern states like Minnesota can allow some species including deer to reproduce at very high rates,
meaning that the next winter, when conditions return to normal, all available food is eaten rapidly at
winter’s onset and subsequent losses to starvation are massive and extend up the food chain to wolves and
bears. Lengthening the timeline, age-long periods of warming and cooling cause desertification and ice
ages that put ends to giant swaths of habitats and multitudes of species.
While it’s true that damaging the natural world’s ecosystems is one of nature’s great specialties, evidence
also indicates that the human contribution to environmental change has been growing quickly. It’s
impossible to measure everything that has been done, or compare the world today with what would have
been had humans never evolved (or never created an industrialized economy), but one way to get a sense
of the kind of transformations human activity may be imposing on the environment comes from
extinction rates: the speed at which species are disappearing because they no longer find a habitable place
to flourish. According to some studies, the current rate of extinction is around a thousand times higher
than the one derived from examinations of the fossil record, which is to say, before the time parts of the
natural world were being severely trashed by developments like those lining the coast of Cancun,
Mexico.
[2]
In an economics and business context, the kinds of damage our industrialized lifestyles most extensively
wreak
include:
Air pollution
Water pollution
Soil pollution
Contamination associated with highly toxic materials
Resource depletion
Air pollution is the emission of harmful chemicals and particulate matter into the
air. Photochemical smog—better known simply as smog—is a cocktail of gases and particles reacting with
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sunlight to make visible and poisonous clouds. Car exhaust is a major contributor to this kind of pollution,
so smog can concentrate in urban centers where traffic jams are constant. In Mexico City on bad days, the
smog is so thick it can be hard to see more than ten blocks down a straight street. Because the urban core
is nestled in a mountain valley that blocks out the wind, pollutants don’t blow away as they do in many
places; they get entirely trapped. During the winter, a brown top forms above the skyline, blocking the
view of the surrounding mountain peaks; the cloud is clearly visible from above to those arriving by plane.
After landing, immediately upon exiting the airport into the streets, many visitors note their eyes tearing
up and their throats drying out. In terms of direct bodily harm, Louisiana State University environmental
chemist Barry Dellinger estimates that breathing the air in Mexico’s capital for a day is about the
equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes.
[3]
This explains why, on the worst days, birds drop out of
the air dead, and one longer-term human effect is increased risk of lung cancer.
Greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide released when oil and coal are burned, absorb and hold heat
from the sun, preventing it from dissipating into space, and thereby creating a greenhouse effect, a
general warming of the environment. Heat is, of course, necessary for life to exist on earth, but fears exist
that the last century of industrialization has raised the levels measurably, and continuing industrial
expansion will speed the process even more. Effects associated with the warming are significant and
include:
Shifts in vegetation, in what grows where
Rising temperatures in lakes, rivers, and oceans, leading to changes in wildlife distribution
Flooding of coastal areas, where many of our cities are located (Cancun could be entirely flooded by only a
small rise in the ocean’s water level.)
Another group of chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), threaten to break down the ozone layer in the
earth’s stratosphere. Currently, that layer blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation from getting through to the
earth’s surface where it could cause skin cancer and disrupt ocean life. Effective international treaties
have limited (though not eliminated) CFC emissions.
Coal-burning plants—many of which produce electricity—release sulfur compounds into the air, which
later mix into water vapor and rain down as sulfuric acid, commonly known as acid rain. Lakes see their
pH level changed with subsequent effects on vegetation and fish. Soil may also be poisoned.
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Air pollution is the most immediate form of environmental poison for most of us, but not the only
significant one. In China, more than 25 percent of surface water is too polluted for swimming or fishing.
[4]
Some of those lakes may have been ruined in the same way as Onondaga Lake near Syracuse, New York.
Over a century ago, resorts were built and a fish hatchery flourished on one side of the long lake. The
other side received waste flushed by the surrounding cities and factories. Problems began around 1900
when the fish hatchery could no longer reproduce fish. Soon after, it was necessary to ban ice harvesting
from the lake. In 1940, swimming was banned because of dangerous bacteria, and in 1970, fishing had to
be stopped because of mercury and PCB contamination. The lake was effectively dead. To cite one
example, a single chemical company dumped eighty tons of mercury into the water during its run on the
coast. Recently, the New York state health department loosened restrictions slightly, and people are
advised that they may once again eat fish caught in the lake. Just as long as it’s not more than one per
month. Those who do eat more risk breakdown of their nervous system, collapse of their liver, and teeth
falling out.
[5]
Like liquid poisons, solid waste can be dangerous. Paper bags degrade fairly rapidly and cleanly, but
plastic containers remain where they’re left into the indefinite future. The metal of a battery tossed into a
landfill will break down eventually, but not before dropping out poisons including cadmium. Cadmium
weakens the bones in low doses and, if exposure is high, causes death.
At the industrial waste extreme, there are toxins so poisonous they require special packaging to prevent
even minimal exposure more or less forever. The waste from nuclear power plants qualifies. So noxious
are the spent fuel rods that it’s a matter of national debate in America and elsewhere as to where they
should be stored. When the Chernobyl nuclear plant broke open in 1986, it emitted a radioactive cloud
that killed hundreds and forced the permanent evacuation of the closest town, Pripyat. Area wildlife
destruction would require an entire book to document, but as a single example, the surrounding pine
forest turned red and died after absorbing the radiation storm.
Finally, all the environmental damage listed so far has resulted from ruinous substance additions to
natural ecosystems, but environmental damage also runs in the other direction as depletion. Our cars and
factories are sapping the earth of its petroleum reserves. Minerals, including copper, are being mined
toward the point where it will become too expensive to continue digging the small amount that remains
from the ground. The United Nations estimates that fifty thousand square miles of forest are disappearing
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each year, lost to logging, conversion to agriculture, fuel wood collection by rural poor, and forest
fires.
[6]
Of course, most of those tree losses can be replanted. On the other hand, species that are driven
out of existence can’t be brought back. As already noted, current rates of extinction are running far above
“background extinction” rates, which are an approximation of how many species, would disappear each
year were the rules of nature left unperturbed.
Conclusion. Technically, there’s no such thing as preserving the environment because left to its own
devices the natural world does an excellent job of wreaking havoc on itself. Disruptions including floods,
combined with wildlife battling for territory and food sources, all that continually sweeps away parts of
nature and makes room for new species and ecosystems. Still, changes wrought by the natural world tend
to be gradual and balanced, and the worry is that our industrialized lifestyle has become so powerful that
nature, at least in certain areas, will no longer be able to compensate and restore any kind of balance. That
concerns has led to both legal efforts, and ethical arguments, in favor of protecting the environment.
The Law
Legal efforts to protect the environment in the United States intensified between 1960 and 1970.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in 1970 to monitor and report on the state of
the environment while establishing and enforcing specific regulations. Well known to most car buyers as
the providers of the mile-per-gallon estimates displayed on the window sticker, the EPA is a large agency
and employs a workforce compatible with its mission, including scientists, legal staffers, and
communications experts.
Other important legal milestones in the field of environmental protection include:
The Clean Air Act of 1963 and its many amendments regulate emissions from industrial plants and
monitor air quality. One measure extends to citizens the right to sue companies for damages if they aren’t
complying with existing regulations: it effectively citizenries’ law enforcement in this area of
environmental protection.
The Clean Water Act, along with other, related legislation, regulates the quality of water in the geographic
world (lakes and rivers), as well as the water we drink and use for industrial purposes. Chemical
composition is important, and temperature also. Thermal pollution occurs when factories pour heated
water back into natural waterways at a rate sufficient to affect the ecosystem.
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The Wilderness Act, along with other legislation, establishes areas of land as protected from development.
Some zones, including the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota, are reserved for minimal
human interaction (no motors are allowed); other areas are more accessible. All wilderness and national
park areas are regulated to protect natural ecosystems.
The Endangered Species Act and related measures take steps to ensure the survival of species pressed to
near extinction, especially by human intrusion. One example is the bald eagle. Subjected to hunting, loss
of habitat, and poisoning by the pesticide DDT (which caused eagle eggs to crack prematurely), a once
common species was reduced to only a few hundred pairs in the lower forty-eight states. Placed on the
endangered species list in 1967, penalties for hunting were increased significantly. Also, DDT was banned,
and subsequently the eagle made a strong comeback. It is no longer listed as endangered.
The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 requires that an environmental impact statement be
prepared for many major projects. The word environment in this case means not only the natural world
but also the human one. When a new building is erected in a busy downtown, the environmental impact
statement reports on the effect the building will have on both the natural world (how much new air
pollution will be released from increased traffic, how much water will be necessary for the building’s
plumbing, how much electricity will be used to keep the place cool in the summer) and also the civilized
one (whether there’s enough parking in the area for all the cars that will arrive, whether nearby highways
can handle the traffic and similar). Staying with the natural factors, the statement should consider
impacts—positive and negative—on the local ecosystem as well as strategies for minimizing those impacts
and some consideration of alternatives to the project. The writing and evaluation of these statements can
become sites of conflict between developers on one side and environmental protection organizations on
the other.
Two major additional points about legal approaches to the natural world should be added. First, they can
be expensive; nearly all environmental protection laws impose costs on business and, consequently, make
life for everyone more costly. When developers of downtown buildings have to create a budget for their
environmental impact statements, the expenses get passed on to the people who buy condos in the
building. There’s no doubt that banning the pesticide DDT was good for the eagle, but it made farming—
and therefore the food we eat—more expensive. Further, clean water and air stipulations don’t only affect
consumers by making products more expensive; the environmental responsibility also costs Americans
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jobs every time a factory gets moved to China or some other relatively low-regulation country. Of course,
it’s also true that, as noted earlier, around 25 percent of China’s surface water is poisonous, but for laid-off
workers in the States, it may be hard to worry so much about that.
Second, these American laws, regulations, and agencies don’t make a bit of difference in Cancun, Mexico.
Even though Cancun and America wash back and forth over each other (Cancun’s hotels were
constructed, chiefly, to host American visitors), the rights and responsibilities of legal dominion over the
environment stop and start at places where people need to show their passports. This is representative of
a larger reality: more than most issues in business ethics, arguments pitting economic and human
interests against the natural world are international in nature. The greenhouse gases emitted by cars
caught in Cancun traffic are no different, as far as the earth is concerned, from those gases produced along
clogged Los Angeles freeways.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Ecosystems are natural webs of life in which the parts depend on each other for their continued survival.
In a business context, the major types of pollution include air, water, soil, and contamination associated
with highly toxic materials.
Resource depletion is a type of environmental damage.
Numerous laws regulate the condition and use of the environment in the United States.
R E V I E W
Q U E S T I O N S
1. What is an example of an ecosystem?
2. Explain one way that an ecosystem can resemble an economic system.
3. What are some effects of smog?
4. What’s an environmental impact statement?
5. Why are the business ethics of the environment more international in nature than many other subjects?
[1] “Cancun Tourism,” TED, Trade & Environment Database, case no. 86, accessed June 8,
2011, http://www1.american.edu/TED/cancun.htm.
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[2] Kent Holsinger, “Patterns of Biological Extinction,” lecture notes, University of Connecticut, August 31, 2009,
accessed June 8, 2011,http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb310/lecture-notes/extinctions/node1.html.
[3] “Is Air Pollution Killing You?” Ivanhoe Newswire, May 2009, accessed June 8,
2011,http://www.ivanhoe.com/science/story/2009/05/572a.html.
[4] “More than 25% of China’s Surface Water Contaminated,” China Daily, July 26, 2010, accessed June 8,
2011, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2010-07/26/content_11051350.htm.
[5] The Upstate Freshwater Institute Onondaga Lake page, October 22, 2010, accessed June 8,
2011, http://www.upstatefreshwater.org/html/onondaga_lake.html; “2010–2011 Health Advisories: Chemicals in
Sportfish and Game,” New York State Department of Health, 2011, accessed June 8,
2011, http://static.ongov.net/WEP/wepdf/2009_AMP-
FINAL/Library/11_SupportingDocs/L11.10.11_HealthAdvisory2010-2011 .
[6] Rhett A. Butler, “World Deforestation Rates and Forest Cover Statistics, 2000–2005,”Mongabay.com,
November 16, 2005, accessed June 8, 2011,http://news.mongabay.com/2005/1115-forests.html.
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14.2 Ethical Approaches to Environmental Protection
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Outline five attitudes toward environmental protection.
2. Consider who should pay for environmental protection and cleanup.
The Range of Approaches to Cancun
Cancun is an environmental sacrifice made in exchange for tourist dollars. The unique lagoon, for
example, dividing the hotel strip from the mainland was devastated by the project. To construct the
roadwork leading around the hotels, the original developers raised the earth level, which blocked the
ocean’s high tide from washing over into the lagoon and refreshing its waters. Quickly, the living water
pool supporting a complex and unique ecosystem clogged with algae and became a stinky bog. No one
cared too much since that was the street side, and visitors had come for the ocean.
Still, one hotel developer decided to get involved. Ricardo Legorreta who designed the Camino Real Hotel
(today named Dreams Resort) said this about his early 1970s project: “Cancun is more water than land.
The Hotel Camino Real site was originally 70 percent water. It had been filled during the urbanization
process. I wanted to return the site to its original status, so we built the guest room block on solid rock
and the public areas on piles, and then excavated what was originally the lagoon. The difference in tide
levels provides the necessary water circulation to keep the new lagoon clean.”
[1]
Specific numbers aren’t available, but plainly it costs more to dig out the ground and then build on piles
than it does to just build on the ground. To save the lagoon, the owners of the Camino Real spent some
money.
Was it worth it? The answer depends initially on the ethical attitude taken toward the environment
generally; it depends on how much, and how, value is assigned to the natural world. Reasonable ethical
cases can be made for the full range of environmental protection, from none (total exploitation of the
natural world to satisfy immediate human desires) to complete protection (reserving wildlife areas for
freedom from any human interference). The main positions are the following and will be elaborated
individually:
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The environment shouldn’t be protected.
The environment should be protected in the name of serving human welfare.
The environment should be protected in the name of serving future generations’ welfare.
The environment should be protected in the name of serving animal welfare.
The environment should be protected for its own sake.
The Environment Shouldn’t Be Protected
Should individuals and businesses use the natural world for our own purposes and without concern for its
welfare or continuation? The “yes” answer traces back to an attitude called free use, which pictures the
natural world as entirely dedicated to serving immediate human needs and desires. The air and water and
all natural resources are understood as belonging to everyone in the sense that all individuals have full
ownership of, and may use, all resources belonging to them as they see fit. The air blowing above your
land and any water rolling through it are yours, and you may breathe them or drink them or dump into
them as you like. This attitude, finally, has both historical and ethical components.
The history of free use starts with the fact that the very idea of the natural world as needing protection at
all is very recent. For almost all human history, putting the words environment and protection together
meant finding ways that we could be protected from it instead of protecting it from us. This is very easy to
see along Europe’s Mediterranean coast. As opposed to Cancun where all the buildings are pushed right
up to the Caribbean and open to the water, the stone constructions of Europe’s old coastal towns are
huddled together and open away from the sea. Modern and recently built hotels obscure this to some
extent, but anyone walking from the coast back toward the city centers sees how all the old buildings turn
away from the water as though the builders feared nature, which, in fact, they did.
They were afraid because the wind and storms blowing off the sea actually threatened their existences; it
capsized their boats and sent water pouring through roofs and food supplies. Going further, not only is it
the case that until very recently nature threatened us much more than we threatened it, but in those cases
where humans did succeed in doing some damage, nature bounced right back. After a tremendously
successful fishing year, for example, the supply of food swimming off the coastlines of the Mediterranean
was somewhat depleted, but the next season things would return to normal. It’s only today, with giant
motorized boats pulling huge nets behind, that we’ve been able to truly fish out some parts of the sea. The
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larger historical point is that until, say, the nineteenth century, even if every human on the planet had
united in a project to ruin nature irrevocably, not much would’ve happened. In that kind of reality, the
idea of free use of our natural resources makes sense.
Today, at a time when our power over nature is significant, there are two basic arguments in favor of free
use:
1. The domination and progress argument
2. The geological time argument
The domination and progress argument begins by refusing to place any necessary and intrinsic value in
the natural world: there’s no autonomous worth in the water, plants, and animals surrounding us.
Because they have no independent value, those who abuse and ruin nature can’t be automatically accused
of an ethical violation: nothing intrinsically valuable has been damaged. Just as few people object when a
dandelion is pulled from a front yard, so too there’s no necessary objection to the air being ruined by our
cars.
Connected with this disavowal of intrinsic value in nature’s elements, there’s high confidence in our
ability to generate technological advances that will enable human civilization to flourish on the earth no
matter how contaminated and depleted. When we’ve drilled the last drop of the petroleum we need to
heat our homes and produce electricity to power our computers, we can trust our scientists to find new
energy sources to keep everything going. Possibly solar energy technologies will leap forward, or the long-
sought key to nuclear fission will be found in a research lab. As for worries about the loss of wildlife and
greenery, that can be rectified with genetic engineering, or by simply doing without them. Even without
human interference, species are disappearing every day; going without a few more may not ultimately be
important.
Further, it should be remembered that there are many natural entities we’re happy to do without. No one
bemoans the extinction of the virus called variola, which caused smallpox. That disease was responsible
for the death of hundreds of millions of humans, and for much of history has been one of the world’s most
terrifying scourges. In the 1970s, the virus was certified extinct by the World Health Organization. No one
misses it; not even the most devoted advocate of natural ecosystems stood up against the human abuse
and final eradication of the virus. Finally, if we can destroy one part of the natural world without remorse,
can’t that attitude be extended? No one is promoting reckless or wanton destruction, but as far as those
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parts of nature required to live well, can’t we just take what we need until it runs out and then move on to
something else?
To a certain extent, this approach is visible in Cancun, Mexico. The tourist strip has reached saturation
and the natural world in the area—at least those parts tourists won’t pay to see—has been decimated. So
what are developers doing? Moving down the coast. The new hotspot is called Playa del Carmen.
Extending south from Cancun along the shoreline, developers are gobbling up land and laying out luxury
hotels at a nonstop rate and with environmental effects frequently (not in every case) similar to those
defining Cancun. What happens when the entire area from Cancun to Chetumal is cemented over? There’s
more shoreline to be found in Belize, and on Mexico’s Pacific coast, and then down in Guatemala.
What happens when all shoreline runs out? There’s a lot of it around the world, but when the end comes,
it’ll also probably be true that we won’t need a real natural world to have a natural world, at least those
parts of it that we enjoy. Already today at Typhoon Lagoon in Disney World, six-foot waves roll down for
surfers. And visitors to the Grand Canyon face a curious choice: they can take the trouble to actually walk
out and visit the Grand Canyon, or, more comfortably, they may opt to see it in an impressive IMAX
theater presentation. There’s no reason still more aspects of the natural world, like the warm breezes and
evening perfection of Cancun, couldn’t be reproduced in a warehouse. Of course there are people who
insist that they want the real thing when it comes to nature, but there were also once people who insisted
that they couldn’t enjoy a newspaper or book if it wasn’t printed on real paper.
Next, moving on to the other of the two arguments in favor of free use, there’s the idea that we might as
well use everything without anxiety because, in the end, we really can’t seriously affect the natural world
anyway. This sounds silly at first; it seems clear that we can and do wreak havoc: species disappear and
natural ecosystems are reduced to dead zones. However, it must be noted that our human view of the
world is myopic. That’s not our fault, just an effect of the way we experience time. For us, a hundred years
is, in fact, a long time. In terms of geological time, however, the entire experience of all humanity on this
earth is just the wink of an eye. Geological time understands time’s passing not relative to human lives but
in terms of the physical history of the earth. According to that measure, the existence of the human
species has been brief, and the kinds of changes we’re experiencing in the natural world pale beside the
swings the earth is capable of producing. We worry, for example, about global warming, meaning the
earth’s temperature jumping a few degrees, and while this change may be seismically important for us, it’s
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nothing new to the earth. As Robert Laughlin, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, points out in an article
set under the provocative announcement “The Earth Doesn’t Care if You Drive a Hybrid,” six million years
ago the Mediterranean Sea went bone dry. Eighty-five million years before that there were alligators in the
Arctic, and two-hundred million years before that Europe was a desert. Comparatively, human
industrialization has changed nothing.
[2]
This geological view of time cashes out as an ethical justification for free use of the natural world for a
reason nearly the opposite of the first. The argument for free use supported by convictions about
domination and progress borders on arrogance: it’s that the natural world is unimportant, and any
problems caused by our abusing it will be resolved by intelligence and technological advance.
Alternatively, and within the argument based on geological time, our lives, deeds, and abilities are so
trivial that it’s absurd to imagine that we could seriously change the flow of nature’s development even if
we tried. We could melt nuclear reactors left and right, and a hundred million years from now it wouldn’t
make a bit of difference. That means, finally, that the idea of preserving the environment isn’t nobility: it’s
vanity.
The Environment Should Be Protected in the Name of Serving Human
Welfare
The free-use argument in favor of total environmental exploitation posits no value in the natural world. In
and of itself, it’s worthless. Even if this premise is accepted, however, there may still be reason to take
steps in favor of preservation and protection. It could be that the ecosystems around us should be
safeguarded not for them, but for us. The reasoning here is that we as a society will live better and happier
when lakes are suitable for swimming, when air cleans our lungs instead of gumming them up, when a
drive on the freeway with the car window down doesn’t leave your face feeling greasy. Human happiness,
ultimately, hinges to some extent on our own natural and animal nature. We too, we must remember, are
part of the ecosystem. Many of the things we do each day—walk, breathe, find shelter from the elements—
are no different from the activities of creatures in the natural world. When that world is clean and
functioning well, consequently, we fit into it well.
Wrapping this perspective into an ethical theory, utilitarianism—the affirmation that the ethically good is
those acts increasing human happiness—functions effectively. For visitors to Cancun, it seems difficult to
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deny that their trip will be more enjoyable if the air they breathe is fresh and briny instead of stinky and
gaseous as it was in some places when the lagoon had decayed into a pestilent swamp. Understood in this
way, we could congratulate Architect Legorreta for his expensive decision to carve out a space for the tides
to reenter and refresh the inland lake. It’s not, the argument goes, that he should be thanked for rescuing
an ecosystem, but that by rescuing the ecosystem he made human life more agreeable.
Another way to justify environmental protection in the name of human and civilized life runs through a
rights-based argument. Starting from the principle of the right to pursue happiness, a case could be built
that without a flourishing natural world, the pursuit will fail. If it’s true that we need a livable
environment, one where our health—our breathing, drinking, and eating—is guaranteed, then
industrialists and resort developers who don’t ensure that their waste and contamination are controlled
aren’t just polluting; they’re violating the fundamental rights of everyone sharing the planet.
Bringing this rights-based argument to Cancun and Legorreta’s dredging of the lagoon, it’s possible to
conclude that he absorbed a pressing responsibility to do what he did: in the name of protecting the right
of others to live healthy lives, it was necessary to renew the dead water. Again, it must be emphasized that
the responsibility isn’t to the water or the animals thriving in its ecosystem. They’re irrelevant, and there’s
no obligation to protect them. What matters is human existence; the obligation is to human rights and our
dependence on the natural world to exercise those rights.
The Environment Should Be Protected in the Name of Serving Future
Generations’ Welfare
The idea that the environment should be protected so that future generations may live in it and have the
choices we do today is based on a notion of social fairness. Typically in ethics, we think of fairness in
terms of individuals. When applying for a job at a Cancun hotel, fairness is the imperative that all those
applying get equal consideration, are subjected to similar criteria for selection, and the selection is based
on ability to perform job-related duties. When, on the other hand, the principle of fairness extends to the
broad social level, what’s meant is that groups taken as a whole are treated equitably.
One hypothetical way to present this notion of intergenerational fairness with respect to the environment
and its protection is through the previously discussed notion of the veil of ignorance—that is, the idea that
you imagine yourself as removed from today’s world and then reinserted at some future point, one
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randomly assigned. You may come back tomorrow, next year, next decade, or a hundred years down the
line. If, the reasoning goes, that’s your situation, and then very possibly you’re going to urge
contemporary societies to protect the environment so that it’ll be there for you when your time comes
around, whenever that might be. Stated slightly differently, it’s a lot easier to wreck the environment when
you don’t have to think about others. Fairness, however, obligates us to think of others, including future
others, and the veil of ignorance provides one way of considering their rights on a par with the ones we
enjoy now.
What does this mean in terms of Cancun? We should enjoy paradise there, no doubt, but we should also
ensure that it’ll be as beautiful for our children (or any randomly selected future generation) as it is for us.
In this case, the re dredging of the lagoon serves that purpose. By helping maintain the status quo in
terms of the natural ecosystems surrounding the hotels, it also helps to maintain the possibility of
enjoying that section of the Caribbean into the indefinite future.
There’s also a utilitarian argument that fits underneath and justifies the position that our environment
should be protected in the name of future generations. This theory grades acts ethically in terms of their
consequences for social happiness, and with those consequences projected forward in time. To the extent
possible, the utilitarian mind-set demands that we account for the welfare of future generations when we
act today. Of course the future is an unknown, and that tends to weigh decisions toward their effects on
the present since those are more easily foreseen. Still, it’s not difficult to persuade most people that future
members of our world will be happier and their lives fuller and more rewarding if they’re born onto an at
least partially green earth.
The Environment Should Be Protected in the Name of Serving Animal
Welfare
One of the more frequently voiced lines of reasoning in favor of ecosystem preservation starts with a
fundamental shift from the previous arguments. Those arguments place all intrinsic value
in human existence: to the extent we decide to preserve the natural world, we do so because it’s good for
us. Preservation satisfies our ethical duties to ourselves or to those human generations yet to come. What
now changes is that the natural world’s creatures get endowed with a value independent of humans, and
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that value endures whether or not we enjoy or need to fit into a web of healthy, clean ecosystems. Animals
matter, in other words, regardless of whether they matter for us.
Ethically, the endowment of nonhuman animals with intrinsic worth is to treat them, to some extent, or in
some significant way, as human. This treatment is a subject of tremendous controversy, one orbiting
around the following two questions:
Are nonhuman animals worthy of moral consideration? What do they do, what qualities do they possess
that lead us to believe they should have rights and impose obligations on you and me?
Granting that nonhuman animals do hold value in themselves and impose obligations on humans by their
very existence, how far do the obligations go? If we’re given a choice on a speeding highway between
running over a squirrel and hitting a person, do we have a moral obligation to avoid the person (and run
down the squirrel)? If we do, then it seems that the intrinsic worth of an animal is less than that of a
human being, but how much less?
Questions about whether animals have rights and impose obligations are among the most important in
the field of environmental ethics. They will be explored in their own section of discussion that follows. In
this section, it will simply be accepted that nonhuman animals do, in fact, have autonomous moral
standing. It immediately follows that their protection is, to some extent, a responsibility.
In terms of an ethics of duties, the obligation to protect animal life could be conceived as a form of the
duty to beneficence, a duty to help those who we are able to aid, assuming the cost to ourselves is not
disproportionately high. Protecting animals is something we do for the same reason we protect people in
need. Alternatively, in terms of the utilitarian principle that we act to decrease suffering in the world
(which is a way of increasing happiness), the argument could be mounted that animals are, in fact,
capable of suffering, and therefore we should act to minimize that sensation just as we do in the human
realm. Finally, rights theory—the notion that we’re free and should not impinge on the freedom of
others—translates into a demand that we treat the natural world with respect and with an eye to its
preservation in order to guarantee that nonhuman animals may continue to pursue their own ends just as
we demand that we humans be allowed to pursue ours.
With the obligation for the protection of—or at least noninterference with—nonhuman animals
established, the way opens to extend the conservation to the natural world generally. Because animals
depend on their habitat to express their existence, because their instincts and needs suggest that they may
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be free only within their natural environment, the first responsibility derived from the human obligation
to animals is one to protect their wild and natural surroundings. As an important note here, that habitat—
the air all animals breathe, the water where fish swim, the earth housing burrowing animals—is not
protected for its own sake, only as an effect of recognizing the creatures of the natural realm as dignified
and worthy of our deference.
What does this dignity conferred on animal life mean for Cancun? The dredging and revivifying of the
lagoon by Legorreta fulfills an obligation under this conception of the human relation to the natural
world. It’s a different obligation from those developed in the previous cases, however. Before, the lagoon
was cleansed in the name of improving the Cancun experience for vacationers; here, it’s cleansed so that it
may once again support the land and aquatic life that once called the place home. As for whether that
improves the vacation experience, there’s no reason to ask; it’s only necessary to know that saving animals
probably requires saving their home.
The Entire Environmental Web Should Be Protected for Its Own Sake
The environment as a whole, the total ecosystem including all animal and plant life on Earth—along with
the air, water, and soil supporting existence—should be protected according to a number of ethical
arguments:
The least difficult to persuasively make is the case that the obligation flows from human welfare: we’re
happier when our planet is healthy.
It’s more difficult, but still very possible, to make a reasonable case that the obligation to protection
attaches to the autonomous value and rights of nonhuman animals. In order to protect all of them, the
reasoning goes, we should preserve all elements of the natural world to the extent possible because we
can’t be sure which ones may, in fact, play an important role in the existence of one or another kind of
creature.
Finally, the most difficult case to make is that humans are obligated to protect the total environment—all
water and air, every tree and animal—because all of it and every single part holds autonomous value. This
Earth-wide value translates into an Earth-wide obligation: the planet—understood as the network of life
happening above and under its surface—becomes something like a single living organism we humans
must protect.
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What distinguishes the third argument from the previous two is that we don’t save the greater natural
ecosystem in the name of something else (human welfare or habitat preservation for nonhuman animals)
but for itself.
It’s easy to trivialize the view that every element of the natural world demands respect and therefore some
degree of protection. Do we really want to say that a child experimenting out in the driveway with worms,
or pulling up plants to see the roots is failing a moral obligation to the living world? What about the
coconut trees felled to make room for Cancun’s hotels? Perhaps if they were unique trees, or if a certain
species of bird depended on precisely those limbs and no others for its survival, but do we want to go
further and say that the standard trees—a few hundred out of millions in the world—should give
developers pause before the cement trucks come wheeling in? For many, it will be easier to conclude that
if a good project is planned—if there’s money to be earned and progress to be made—then we can cut
down a few anonymous trees that happen to be standing in the way and get on with our human living.
On the other hand, sitting on the sand in Cancun, it’s difficult to avoid sensing a happening majesty: not a
reason to pull out your camera and snap, but a living experience that can only be had by a natural being
participating, breathing air as the wind blows across the beach, or swimming in the crisp water. There
may be a kind of aesthetic imperative here, a coherent demand for respect that we feel with our own
natural bodies. The argument isn’t that the entire natural ecosystem should be preserved because it feels
good for us to jump in the ocean water—it feels good to jump in the shower too—the idea is that through
our bodies we experience a substance and value of nature that requires our deference. Called
the aesthetic argument in favor of nature’s dignity, and consequently in favor of the moral obligation to
protect it, there may be no proper explanation or reasoning, it may only be something that you know if
you’re in the right place at the right time, like Cancun in the morning.
The response to the aesthetic argument is that we can’t base ethics on a feeling.
If We Decide to Protect the Environment, Who Pays?
Much of the stress applied to, and the destruction wrought on the environment around Cancun could be
reversed. That costs money, though. Determining exactly how much is a task for biologists and
economists to work out. The question for ethical consideration is, who should pay? These are three basic
answers:
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1. Those who contaminated the natural world
2. Those who enjoy the natural world
3. Those who are most able
The answer that the costs should be borne by those who damaged nature in the first place means sending
the bill to developers and resort owners, to all those whose ambition to make money on tourism got roads
paved, forests cleared, and foundations laid. Intuitively, placing the obligation for environmental cleanup
on developers may make the most sense, and in terms of ethical theory, it fits in well with the basic duty to
reparation, the responsibility to compensate others when we harm them. In this case, the harm has been
done to those others who enjoy and depend on the natural world, and one immediate way to compensate
them is to repair the damage. A good model for this could be Legorreta’s work, the expense taken to raise
a portion of a hotel and so once again allow tide water to freshen the lagoon. Similar steps could be taken
to restore parts of the ruined coral reef and to replant the forest behind the hotel area.
The plan makes sense, but there’s a glaring problem: times change. Back when Cancun was originally
being laid out in the 1960s, ecological concerns were not as visible and widely recognized as they are
today. That doesn’t erase the fact that most hotel companies in Cancun laid waste to whatever stood in the
way of their building, but it does allow them to note that they are being asked to pay today for actions that
most everyone thought were just fine back when they were done. It’s not clear, finally, how fair it is to ask
developers to pay for a cleanup that no one envisioned would be necessary back when the construction
initiated.
The proposal that those who enjoy and depend on the natural world should bear primary responsibility
for protecting and renewing it also makes good sense. This reasoning is to some extent implemented in
America’s natural parks where fees are charged for entry. Those revenues go to support the work of the
forestry service that’s required to ensure that visitors to those parks—and the infrastructure they need to
enjoy their time there—don’t do harm to the ecosystems they’re coming to see, and also to ensure that
harm done by others (air pollution, for example, emitted by nearby factories) is cleansed by nature’s
organic processes.
On a much larger scale, a global one, this logic is also displayed in some international attempts to limit the
emission of greenhouse gasses. The specific economics and policy are complicated and involve financial
devices including carbon credits and similar, but at bottom what’s happening is that governments are
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getting together and deciding that we all benefit from (or even need) reduced emissions of waste into the
air. From there, attempts are made to negotiate contributions various countries can make to the reduction
effort. As for the cost, most economists agree that the expense of pollution control measures will, for the
most part, be passed along as hikes in the cost of consumer goods. Everyone, in other words, will pay,
which matches up with the affirmation that everyone benefits.
Finally, the response that those most able to pay should bear the brunt of the cost for protecting the
natural world is a political as much as an environmental posture. One possibility would be a surtax levied
on wealthy members of society, with the money channeled toward environmental efforts. This strategy
may find a solid footing on utilitarian grounds where acts benefitting the overall welfare remain good even
if they’re burdensome or unfair to specific individuals. What would be necessary is to demonstrate that
the sum total of human (and, potentially, nonhuman animal) happiness would be increased by more than
the accumulated displeasure of those suffering the tax increase.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
The attitude that the environment shouldn’t be protected has both historical and ethical roots.
Confidence in the human ability to control the environment diminishes concerns about protecting its
current
state.
The power of nature viewed over the very long term diminishes concerns about protecting its current
state.
Environmental protection in the name of serving human welfare values the natural world because it’s
valuable for us.
Environmental protection in the name of serving future generations’ welfare derives from a notion of
social fairness.
Environmental protection in the name of serving animal welfare connects with a notion of moral
autonomy in nonhuman animals.
Environmental protection for its own sake values the entire set of the world’s ecosystems.
If the environment is protected, the costs may be made the responsibility of various parties.
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R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Briefly, what is the history of the free-use attitude toward the
natural
world?
2. How can technology make environmental protection a wasted effort?
3. How can the idea of geological time become an argument against taking expensive steps to protect the
natural world?
4. What are some reasons why our ethical obligations to ourselves may lead us to protect the natural
world?
5. What is the difference between protecting the natural world because we humans are valuable, and
because animals are valuable?
6. What kind of experiences with nature may result in the sensation that, as an interdependent whole, the
natural world holds value?
7. If the decision is made to protect nature, who are some individuals or groups that might be asked to pay
the cost?
[1] Ricardo Legorreta, Wayne Attoe, Sydney Brisker, and Hal Box, The Architecture of Ricardo Legorreta (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1990), 108.
[2] George Will, “The Earth Doesn’t Care: About What Is Done to or for It,” Newsweek, September 12, 2010,
accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/12/george-will-earth-doesn-t-care-what-is-done-to-
it.html?from=rss.
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14.3 Three Models of Environmental Protection for Businesses
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E
1. Outline three business responses to environmental responsibility.
The Role of Businesses in Environmental Protection
Protecting the environment is itself a business, and many organizations, especially nonprofits, take that as
their guiding purpose. The World Wildlife Fund, the Audubon Society, and National Geographic
exemplify this. Their direct influence over the natural world, however, is slight when compared against all
the globe’s for-profit companies chugging away in the name of earning money. Whether the place is
Cancun, or China, or the United States, the condition of the natural world depends significantly on what
profit-making companies are doing, the way they’re working, the kinds of goods they’re producing, and
the attitude they’re taking toward the natural world. Three common attitudes are
1. accelerate and innovate,
2. monetize and count,
3. express corporate responsibility.
4.
Business and Environmental Protection: Accelerate and Innovate
There’s a subtle difference between environmental conservation and protection. Conservation means
leaving things as they are. Protection opens the possibility of changing the natural world in the name of
defending it. One way for a business to embrace the protection of nature is through technological advance.
New discoveries, the hope is, can simultaneously allow people to live better, and live better with the
natural world. Looking at a stained paradise like Cancun, the attitude isn’t so much worry that we’re
ruining the world and won’t be able to restore a healthy balance, it’s more industrially optimistic: by
pushing the accelerator, by innovating faster we’ll resolve the very environmental problems we’ve created.
Examples of the progressive approach to environmental protection—as opposed to the conservative one—
include solar and wind power generation. Both are available to us only because of the explosion of
technology and knowledge the industrialized, contaminating world allows. Because of them, we can today
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imagine a world using energy at current rates without doing current levels of environmental damage.
Here’s a statement of that aim from a wind power company’s web page: “Our goal has always been to
produce a utility-scale wind turbine that does not need subsidies in order to compete in electricity
markets.”
[1]
The idea, in other words, is that electricity produced by this company’s windmills will be as cheap (or
cheaper) than that produced from fossil fuels, including coal. To reach that point, the development of very
strong yet lightweight materials has been necessary, along with other technological advances. If they
continue, it may be that American energy consumption can remain high, while pollution emitted from
coal-burning electricity plants diminishes. One point, finally, that the wind turbine company web page
doesn’t underline quite so darkly is that they’ll make a lot of money along the way if everything goes
according to plan. This incentive is also typical of an accelerate-and-innovate approach: not only should
industrialization go forward faster in the name of saving the environment, so too should
entrepreneurialism and profit.
In broad terms, the business attitude toward employing innovation to protect the environment
acknowledges that human activity on earth has done environmental damage, and that matters. The
damage is undesirable and should be reversed. The way to reverse, however, isn’t to go backward by doing
things like reducing our energy use to previous levels. Instead, we keep doing what we’re doing, just
faster. The same industrialization that caused the problem will pull us out.
Business and Environmental Protections: Monetize and Count
A cost-benefit analysis is, theoretically, a straightforward way of determining whether an action should be
undertaken. The effort and expense of doing something is toted on one side, and the benefits received are
summed on the other. If the benefits are greater than the costs, we go ahead; if not, we don’t. Everyone
performs cost-benefit analyses all the time. At dinner, children decide whether a dessert brownie is worth
the cost of swallowing thirty peas. Adults decide whether the fun of a few beers tonight is worth a
hangover tomorrow or, more significantly, whether getting to live in one of the larger homes farther out of
town is worth an extra half-hour in the car driving to work every morning.
Setting a cost-benefit analysis between a business and the environment means adding the costs of
eliminating pollution on one side and weighing it against the benefits of a cleaner world. The ethical
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theory underneath this balancing approach to business and nature is utilitarianism. The right act is the
one most increasing society’s overall happiness (or most decreasing unhappiness), with happiness
measured in this case in terms of the net benefits a society receives after the costs of an action have been
deducted.
The most nettlesome problem for businesses adopting a cost-benefit approach to managing
environmental protection is implementation. It’s hard to know exactly what all the costs are on the
business side, and what all the benefits are on nature’s side. Then, even if all the costs and benefits are
confidently listed, it’s equally (or more) difficult to weigh them against each other. According to a report
promulgated by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, North Carolina’s coal-fired electricity plants
could install smokestack scrubbers to significantly reduce contaminating emissions. The cost would be
$450 million. The benefits received as a result of the cleaner air would total $3.5 billion.
[2]
This seems like
a no-brainer. The problem is that when you dig a bit into the report’s details, it’s not entirely clear that the
benefits derived from cleaner air add up to $3.5 billion. More troubling, it looks like it’s hard to put any
price tag at all on them. Here are a few examples:
According to the report, “It is estimated that pollution from power plants triggers more than 200,000
asthma attacks across the state each year and more than 1,800 premature deaths.” The word estimated is
important. Further, how do you put a dollar total on an asthma attack or a death?
According to the report, “One should be able to see out 93 miles on an average day in the Smoky
Mountains, but now air pollution has reduced this to an average of 22 miles.” How do you put a dollar
total on a view?
According to the report, “Air pollution contributes to significant declines in populations of dogwood,
spruce, fir, beech, and other tree species.” What is “significant?” What’s the dollar value of a dogwood?
[3]
The list of items goes on, but the point is clear. A cost-benefit analysis makes excellent sense in theory, but
it’s as difficult to execute as it is to assign numbers to human experiences. If the attempt is nonetheless
made, the technical term for the assigning is monetization.
A final set of hurtles to clear on the way to implementing a cost-benefit approach to business and the
environment involves formalizing mechanisms for paying the costs. Two common mechanisms are
regulation and incentives.
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Regulations are imposed by federal or local governments and come in various forms. Most directly, and
staying with electrical plants in Carolina, the plants could be required to install smokestack scrubbers.
Costs of the installation would, to some significant extent, be passed on to consumers as rate hikes, and
the benefits of cleaner air would be enjoyed by all. It’s worth noting here that the contamination
producers in question—coal-burning electricity plants—are pretty much stuck where they are in
geographic terms. You can’t produce electricity in China and sell it in the States. Other kinds of
businesses, however, may be able to avoid regulations by packing up and heading elsewhere. This, of
course, complicates the already knotted attempt to tote up the benefits and costs of environmental
protection.
A more flexible manner of regulating air and other types of pollution involves the sale of permits. There
are multiple ways of mounting a permit trade, but as a general sketch, the government sets an upper limit
to the amount of air pollution produced by all industry, and sells (or gives) permits to specific operating
businesses. In their turn, these permits may be bought and sold. So an electric company may find that it
makes economic sense to install scrubbers (limiting its pollution output) and then sell the remaining
pollution amount on its license to another company that finds the cost of limiting its emissions to be very
high. One advantage of this approach is that, while it does limit total contamination, it allows for the fact
that it’s easier for some polluters than others to cut back.
As opposed to regulations that essentially force businesses to meet social pollution goals, incentives seek
the same results cooperatively. For example, tax incentives could be offered for environmental protection
efforts; money paid for the scrubbers a company places in their smokestacks may be deducted from taxes
at a very high rate. Similarly, matching funds may be offered by government agencies: for every dollar the
company spends, the government—which in this case means you and I and everyone who pays taxes—
chips in one also.
Alternatively, government agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency may provide public
recognition to anti-contamination efforts undertaken by a business, and in the hands of a strong
marketing department those awards may be converted into positive public relations, new consumers, and
extra profits that offset the original pollution control costs.
Specific awards tied to government agencies may not even be necessary; the incentive can be drawn from
a broad range of sources. A good example comes from the Washington Post. A long and generally quite
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positive news story recounts Wal-Mart’s efforts to encourage suppliers in China to increase energy
efficiency while decreasing their pollution output. Basically, Wal-Mart told suppliers that they need to
clean up or they’ll get replaced. According to the account, not only is the effort bearing fruit, but it’s
working better than government regulations designed to achieve similar ends: “In many cases, Wal-Mart
is first trying to bring firms up to government standards. Suppliers may not care about government fines,
but they care about orders from the buyers.”
[4]
As for Wal-Mart, their cause is served by the free publicity of the story when it’s distributed to almost a
million newspaper readers in the Washington, DC, area and then projected broadly on the Internet.
Further down the line, the good publicity ended up getting cited here. Going back to the specific
newspaper story, it finishes with a clear acknowledgment of the public relations dynamic. These are the
article’s last lines: “Wal-Mart sees this not just as good practice but also good marketing. ‘We hope to get
more customers,’ said Barry Friedman, vice president for corporate affairs in Beijing. ‘We’re not doing it
solely out of the goodness of our hearts.’”
[5]
One notable problem with the incentive approach is identical to its strength: since participation is
voluntary, some heavy polluters may choose not to get involved.
As a final point about incentives, many industrial plants already receive incentives to not protect the
environment. To the extent they’re allowed to simply jet sulfur and other contamination into the air, they
are, in effect, forcing society generally to pay part of their cost of production. Every time someone in
Carolina falls ill with an asthma attack, the consequences are suffered by that individual while the profits
from electricity sales go to the electric company. As previously discussed, these externalities—these costs
of production borne by third parties—actually encourage businesses to follow any route possible to make
outsiders pay the costs of their operations. One route that’s frequently possible, especially for heavy
industry, involves letting others deal with their runoff and waste.
Business and Environmental Protections: Corporate Social Responsibility
The third posture an organization may adopt toward environmental protection falls under the heading of
corporate social responsibility. The attitude here is that companies, especially large, public corporations,
should humanize their existences: an attempt should be made to see the corporation, in a certain sense, as
an individual person. Instead of being a mindless machine built to stamp out profits, the business is re-
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envisioned as a seat of economic and moral responsibility. Responding to ethical worries isn’t someone
else’s concern (say, the government’s, which acts by imposing regulations), instead, large companies
including Wal-Mart take a leading role in addressing ethical issues.
The Washington Post’s flattering presentation of Wal-Mart in China fits well here. The story actually
presents Wal-Mart as transitioning from a vision of itself as a pure profit enterprise to one exercising
corporate citizenship. Originally,
Wal-Mart only cared about price and quality, so that encouraged suppliers to race to the
bottom on environmental standards. They could lose contracts because competition was so
fierce on price.
Now, however,
Wal-Mart held a conference in Beijing for suppliers to urge them to pay attention not only to
price but also to “sustainability,” which has become a touchstone.
[6]
Sustainability means acting to protect the environment and the people surrounding an operation so that
they may continue to contribute to the profit-making enterprise. As a quick example, a logging operation
that clear-cuts forests isn’t sustainable: when all the trees are gone, there’s no way for the company to
make any more money. Similarly in human terms, companies depending on manual labor need their
employees to be healthy. If a factory’s air pollution makes everyone sick, no one will be able to come in to
work.
For Wal-Mart in China, one step toward sustainability involved energy efficiency. A supplier installed
modern shrink-wrapping machines to replace work previously done by people wielding over-the-counter
hair dryers. In theoretical terms at least, the use of less energy will help the supplier continue to produce
even as worldwide petroleum supplies dwindle and energy costs increase. Steps were also taken, as the
newspaper story notes, to limit water pollution: “Lutex says it treats four tons of wastewater that it used to
dump into the municipal sewage line. That water was supposed to be treated by the city, but like three-
quarters or more of China’s wastewater, it almost certainly wasn’t.”
[7]
More examples of Wal-Mart suppliers making environmentally conscious decisions dot the newspaper
story, and in every case these actions may be understood as serving the long-term viability of the
supplier’s operations.
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Stakeholder theory is another way of presenting corporate social responsibility. The idea here is that
corporate leaders must make decisions representing the interests not only of shareholders (the
corporation’s owners) but also of all those who have a stake in what the enterprise is doing: the company
exists for their benefit too. Along these lines, Wal-Mart encouraged farmers in China to abandon the use
of toxic pesticides. The corporation contracted with farmers under the condition that they use only
organic means to kill pests and then allowed their products to be sold with a label noting their Wal-Mart-
confirmed clean production. The real lives of locals who eat that food and live on the now less-
contaminated land are markedly improved. As another farming-related example of dedication to the well-
being of the Chinese making up their manufacturing base, Wal-Mart sought “to help hundreds of small
farmers build rudimentary greenhouses, made of wood and plastic sheeting, in which they grow oranges
in midwinter to sell to Wal-Mart’s direct farm program. Zhang Fengquan is one of those farmers; he
gathers more than three tons of nectarines from more than 400 trees in his greenhouse. Asked what he
did during the winter before the greenhouse was built, he said he worked as a seasonal laborer. Or played
the popular Chinese board game mah-jongg.”
[8]
In both cases, Wal-Mart is not simply abandoning its workers (or its suppliers’ workers) once they punch
out. As stakeholders in the company, Wal-Mart executives feel a responsibility to defend employees’ well-
being just as they feel a responsibility to bring good products to market in the name of profit.
The fact that Wal-Mart’s recent actions in China can be presented as examples of a corporation expressing
a sense of responsibility for the people and their natural world that goes beyond immediate profit doesn’t
mean that profit disappears from the equation. Shareholders are stakeholders too. And while corporate
attitudes of social responsibility may well result in an increasingly protected environment, and while that
protection may actually help the bottom line in some cases, there’s no guarantee that the basic economic
tension between making money and environmental welfare will be resolved.
Conclusion. Businesses can react to a world of environmental concern by trusting in technological
innovation, by trusting in governmental regulation, and by trusting in a concept of corporate
responsibility. It is currently uncertain which, if any, of these postures will most effectively respond to
society’s environmental preoccupations.
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K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
One business response to concerns about the environment is to participate in the process of
technological innovation to produce cleaner, more efficient ways of living.
One business response to concerns about the environment is to participate in, and act on cost-benefit
studies of environmental protection.
One business response to concerns about the environment is to express corporate responsibility: to
make the business a seat of economic and ethical decisions.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. What’s the difference between environmental protection and environmental conservation?
2. How has industrialization caused environmental problems? How can it resolve those problems?
3. What is a cost-benefit analysis?
4. With respect to the environment, how can a cost-benefit analysis be used to answer questions about
business and environmental protection?
5. What is practical problem with the execution of a cost-benefit analysis strategy for responding to
environmental problems?
6. What’s the difference between a corporation guided by profit and one guided by a sense of social
responsibility?
7. Why might a stakeholder theory of corporate decision making be good for the environment?
[1] The Wind Turbine Company home page, accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.windturbinecompany.com.
[2] “The North Carolina Clean Smokestacks Plan,” Environmental Defense Fund, March 2001, accessed June 8,
2011, http://apps.edf.org/documents/700_NCsmokestacks.PDF.
[3] “The North Carolina Clean Smokestacks Plan,” Environmental Defense Fund, March 2001, accessed June 8,
2011, http://apps.edf.org/documents/700_NCsmokestacks.PDF.
[4] Steve Mufson, “Wal-Mart Presses Vendors in China to Meet Higher Standards,” Washington Post, February 26,
2010, accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603339_pf.html.
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[5] Steve Mufson, “Wal-Mart Presses Vendors in China to Meet Higher Standards,” Washington Post, February 26,
2010, accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603339_pf.html.
[6] Steve Mufson, “Wal-Mart Presses Vendors in China to Meet Higher Standards,” Washington Post, February 26,
2010, accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603339_pf.html.
[7] Steve Mufson, “Wal-Mart Presses Vendors in China to Meet Higher Standards,” Washington Post, February 26,
2010, accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603339_pf.html.
[8] Steve Mufson, “Wal-Mart Presses Vendors in China to Meet Higher Standards,” Washington Post, February 26,
2010, accessed June 8, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/02/26/AR2010022603339_pf.html.
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14.4 Animal Rights
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Elaborate arguments in favor of and against the proposition that animals have
ethical rights.
2. Distinguish questions about animal rights from ones about animal suffering.
Do Animals Have Rights?
Were these a textbook in environmental ethics, two further questions would be added to this subsection’s
title: which rights, which animals? It’s clear that chimps and dolphins are different from worms and, even
lower, single-cell organisms. The former give coherent evidence of having some level of conscious
understanding of their worlds; the latter seem to be little more than reactionary vessels: they get a
stimulus, they react, and that’s it. Questions about where the line should be drawn between these two
extremes, and by what criteria, fit within a more specialized study of the environment. In business ethics,
attention fixes on the larger question of whether animals can be understood as possessing ethical rights as
we customarily understand the term.
There are two principal arguments in favor of understanding at least higher-order nonhuman animals as
endowed with rights:
1. The cognitive awareness and interest argument
2. The suffering argument
And there are three arguments against:
1. The lack of expression argument
2. The absence of duties argument
3. The anthropomorphism suspicion argument
The cognitive awareness and interest argument in favor of concluding that animals do have ethical
rights begins by accumulating evidence that nonhuman animals are aware of what’s going on around
them and do in fact have an interest in how things go. As for showing that animals are aware and
interested, in higher species evidence comes from what animals do. Most dogs learn in some sense the
rules of the house; they squeal when kicked and (after a few occurrences) tend to avoid doing whatever it
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was that got them the boot. Analogously, anyone who’s visited Sea World has seen dolphins respond to
orders, and seemingly understand that responding well is in their interest because they get a fish to eat
afterward.
If these deductions of animal awareness and interest are on target, the way opens to granting the animals
an autonomous moral value and standing. Maybe their ethical value should be inferior to humans who
demonstrate sophisticated understanding of their environment, themselves, and their interests, but any
understanding at all does bring animals into the realm of ethics because determinations about whose
interests should be served in any particular situation are what ethical discussions concern. The reason we
have ethics is to help those who have specific interests have them satisfied in ways that don’t interfere
with others and their attempts to satisfy their distinct interests. So if we’re going to have ethical principles
at all, then they should apply to dogs and dolphins because they’re involved in the messy conflicts about
who gets what in the world.
Putting the same argument slightly differently, when the owner of a company decides how much of the
year-end profits should go to employees as bonuses, that’s ethics because the interests of the owner and
the employees are being weighed. So too when decisions are made at Sea World about how often and how
intensely animals should be put to work in entertainment programs: the interests of profits (and human
welfare) are being weighed against the interests of individual dolphins. As soon as that happens, the
dolphins are granted an ethical standing.
The suffering argument in favor of concluding that animals do have ethical rights fits neatly inside
utilitarian theory. Within this ethical universe, the reason we have ethical rules is to maximize happiness
and minimize suffering. So the first step to take here is to determine whether dogs and similar animals do,
in fact, suffer. Of course no dog complains with words, but no baby does either, and no one doubts that
babies suffer when, for example, they’re hungry (and whining). When dogs would be expected to suffer,
when they get slapped in the snout, they too exhibit clear signs of distress. Further, biological studies have
shown that pain-associated elements of some animal nervous systems resemble the human version. Of
course dogs may not suffer on the emotional level (if you separate a male and female pair, there may not
be any heartbreak), and it’s true that absolute proof remains elusive, but for many observers there’s good
evidence that some animals do, in fact, feel pain. If, then, it’s accepted that animals suffer, they ought to
be included in our utilitarian considerations by definition because the theory directs us to act in ways that
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maximize happiness and minimize suffering. It should be noted that the theory can be adjusted to include
only human happiness and suffering, but there’s no necessary reason for that, and as long as there’s not,
the establishment of animal suffering is enough to make a reasonable case that they are entities within the
ethical world, and ones that require respect.
On the other side, the arguments against granting animals a moral standing in the world begin with
the lack of expression argument. Animals, the reasoning goes, may display behaviors indicating an
awareness of the world and the ability to suffer, but that’s not enough to merit autonomous moral
standing. To truly have rights, they must be claimed. An explicit and demonstrated awareness must exist
of what ethics are, and why rules for action are attached to them. Without that, what separates animals
from a sunflower? Like dogs, sunflowers react to their environment; they bend and twist to face the sun.
Further, like dogs, sunflowers betray signs of suffering: when they don’t get enough water they shrivel.
Granting, finally, animals rights based on their displaying some reactions to their world isn’t enough to
earn a moral identity. Or if it is, then we end up in a silly situation where we have to grant sunflowers
moral autonomy. Finally, because animals can’t truly explain morality and demand rights, they have
none.
Another way to deny animal rights runs through the absence of duties argument. Since animals don’t
have duties, they can’t have rights. All ethics, the argument goes, is a two-way street. To have rights you
must also have responsibilities; to claim protection against injury from others, you must also display
consideration before injuring others. The first question to ask, consequently, in trying to determine
whether animals should have rights is whether they have or could have responsibilities. For the most part,
the answer seems to lean toward no. Were a bear to escape its enclosure in the zoo and attack a harmless
child, few would blame the bear in any moral sense; almost no one would believe the animal was guilty of
anything other than following its instincts. People don’t expect wild animals to distinguish between their
own interest and instinct on one side, and doing what’s right on the other. We don’t even expect that
they can do that, and if they can’t, then they can’t participate in an ethical world any more than trees and
other natural creatures that go through every day pursuing their own survival and little more.
The last argument against granting moral autonomy or value to animals is a suspicion of
anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human qualities to nonhuman things.
When we look at dogs and cats at home, or chimpanzees on TV, it’s difficult to miss the human
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resemblance, the blinking, alert eyes, and the legs stretching after a nap, the howls when you accidentally
step on a tail, the hunger for food, the thirst and need to drink. In all these ways, common animals are
very similar to humans. Given these indisputable similarities, it’s easy to imagine that others must exist
also. If animals look like we do (eyes, mouth, and nose), and if they eat and drink as we do, it’s natural to
assume they feel as we do: they suffer sadness and boredom; they need affection and are happy being
cuddled. And from there it’s natural to imagine that they think as we do, too. Not on the same level of
sophistication, but, yes, they feel loyalty and experience similar inclinations. All this is false reasoning,
however. Just because something looks human on the outside doesn’t mean it experiences some kind of
human sentiments on the inside. Dolls, for example, look human but feel nothing.
Transferring this possibility of drawing false conclusions from superficial resemblances over to the
question about animal rights, the suspicion is that people are getting fooled. Animals may react in ways
that look like pain to us but aren’t pain to them. Animals may appear to need affection and construct
relationships tinted with loyalty and some rudimentary morality, but all that may be just us imposing our
reality where it doesn’t actually exist. If that’s what’s happening, then animals shouldn’t have rights
because all the qualities those rights are based on—having interests, feeling pain and affection—are
invented for them by us.
Corresponding with this argument, it’s hard not to notice how quickly we rush to the defense of animals
that look cute and vaguely human, but few seem very enthusiastic about helping moles and catfish.
Dividing Questions about Animal Rights from Ones about Animal Suffering
The debate about whether animals should be understood as possessing rights within the ethical universe
is distinct from the one about whether they should be subjected to suffering. If animals do have rights,
then it quickly follows that their suffering should be objectionable. Even if animals aren’t granted any kind
of autonomous ethical existence, however, there remains a debate about the extent to which their
suffering should be considered acceptable.
Assuming some nonhuman animals do, in fact, suffer, there are two major business-related areas where
the suffering is especially notable:
Research
Consumer goods
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The case of research—especially medical and drug development—provides some obvious justification for
making animals suffer. One example involves a jaw implant brought to market by the firm Vitek. After
implantation in human patients, the device fragmented, causing extensive and painful problems. Later
studies indicated that had the implant been tested in animals first, the defect would’ve been discovered
and the human costs and pain avoided.
[1]
From here, it’s easy to form an argument that if significant
human suffering can be avoided by imposing on animals, then the route should be followed. Certainly
many would be persuaded if it could be proven that the net animal suffering would be inferior to that
caused in humans. (As an amplifying note, some make the case that testing on humans can be justified
using the same reasoning: if imposing significant suffering on a few subjects will later help many cure a
serious disease, then the action should be taken.)
The case of animal testing in the name of perfecting consumer goods is less easily defended. A New York
Times story chronicles a dispute between the Perdue chicken company and a group of animal rights
activists. The activists got enough money together to purchase a newspaper ad decrying poultry farm
conditions. It portrayed chickens as crowded together so tightly that they end up fiercely attacking and
eating each other. Even when not fighting, they wallow in disease and convulse in mass
hysteria.
[2]
Though Perdue denied the ad’s claims, many believe that animals of all kinds are subjected to
extreme pain in the name of producing everything from cosmetics, to dinner, to Spanish bullfights. When
animals are made to suffer for human comfort or pleasure—whether the result is nice makeup, or a tasty
veal dish, or an enthralling bullfight—two arguments quickly arise against subjecting animals to the
painful treatment. The utilitarian principle that pain in the world should be minimized may be applied.
Also, a duty to refrain from cruelty may be cited and found persuasive.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Cognitive awareness and directed interest by animals may be sufficient to grant them autonomous
ethical rights.
Accepting that animals suffer may be sufficient to grant them autonomous ethical rights.
The fact that animals do not explicitly claim ethical rights may be sufficient to deny them those rights.
The fact that animals don’t have duties may be sufficient to deny them ethical rights.
Anthropomorphism may lead to erroneously seeing animals as possessing autonomous ethical value.
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The question about whether animal treatment causing suffering is ethically acceptable may be managed
independently of the question about whether animals possess rights.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. What are the basic steps of the cognitive awareness and interest argument?
2. What are the basic steps of the suffering argument?
3. What are the basic steps of the lack of expression argument?
4. What are the basic steps of the absence of duties argument?
5. What are the basic steps of the anthropomorphism suspicion argument?
6. In ethical terms, how is animal suffering for research reasons distinct from the suffering of a Spanish
bullfight?
[1] Lauren Myers, “Animal Testing Necessary in Medical Research,” Daily Wildcat, November 6, 2007, accessed
June 8, 2011, http://wildcat.arizona.edu/2.2255/animal-testing-necessary-in-medical-research-1.169288.
[2] Barnaby Feder, “Pressuring Perdue,” New York Times, November 26, 1989, accessed June 8,
2011, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/26/magazine/pressuring- perdue.html.
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14.5 Case Studies
Yahoo! Answers: Why Should We Save the Planet?
Some people argue that there’s no ethical requirement to protect the environment because the natural
world has no intrinsic value. Against that ethical posture, here are four broad justifications for
environmental protection. Each begins with a distinct and fundamental evaluation:
1. The environment should be protected in the name of serving human welfare, which is intrinsically
valuable.
2. The environment should be protected in the name of serving future generations because they’re valuable
and merit intergenerational fairness.
3. The environment should be protected to serve animal welfare because there’s an independent value in the
existence and lives of animals.
4. The entire environmental web should be protected for its own sake because the planet’s collection of
ecosystems is intrinsically valuable.
On a Yahoo! forum page, a student named redbeard_90 posts the question “why should we save the
planet?” and partially explains this way: “With the entire constant talk of ‘saving the planet’ and stopping
global warming, should we actually try to stop it? Perhaps in a way, this is humans transforming the
planet to better suit us?”
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Q U E S T I O N S
1. It sounds like redbeard_90 might think that humans doing damage to the environment is OK
because it’s just a symptom of “humans transforming the planet to better suit us.”
o Where is redbeard_90 placing value?
o What might redbeard_90’s attitude be toward the free use conception of the human relation
with the environment?
o What is the domination and progress argument against worrying about saving the planet? How
could that argument fit together with what redbeard_90 wrote?
2. The response by a woman named Super Nova includes this reasoning: “We should try to save
the planet because there would be less people with health problems. Did you know that there
are more people with respiratory problems because of all the air pollution contributing to it?
Also, we should think about future generations on Earth and how it would affect our future.
Also, global warming is affecting our essential natural resources like food and lakes are drying up
and it is causing more droughts in the world.”
The overall tone of her answer is strong with conviction.
o It sounds like Super Nova wants to save the planet. What values sit underneath her desire? Why
does she think environmental protection is important?
o Does it sound like she believes nature in itself has value? Why or why not?
3. The poster named Luke writes an animated response, including these sentences:
The first thing we need to do is help make some changes in our national mind set from
one that lets us believe that our earth can recover from anything, to one that lets us
believe that our earth could use a little help.
Developing cleaner ways to produce electricity is not going to hurt a thing; if it does
nothing but make the air we breathe cleaner it works for me.
Developing alternative fuels to power our transportation needs, again won’t hurt a thing,
reduce the demand for oil you reduce the price we pay for it, I think everyone can say
“that works for me” to this.
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I’m a global warming advocate but, not because of some unfounded fear of Doomsday
but (as you may have guessed by now) because it won’t hurt a thing to help our earth
recover from years of industrial plunder.
o Some people are worried about human welfare, some people care a lot about the welfare of the
planet, some people mix a little of both. Where would you say Luke comes down? Justify by
specific reference to his words.
o Some people who are concerned about the earth’s welfare are most interested in helping
nonhuman animals; others are more interested in the natural world in its totality. Where would
you say Luke comes down here? Why?
o Environmental conservation efforts can be conservative in the sense that they try to undo
damage to the earth by limiting industrialization. The idea of environmental protection leaves
open the possibility of using industrial advances—the same forces that have been contaminating
the earth—to help resolve the problem. Does Luke sound more like a conservationist or a
protector? Explain.
4. The poster named scottsdalehigh64 is the most intense. He’s also fairly experienced: assuming
his username is true and he graduated high school in 1964, he’s about retirement age now. He
writes, “There is an alternate question: Why do we think we have a right to be so destructive to
other life forms on the planet? Perhaps the best answer is that we want to leave a good place to
live for the species that are left when we go extinct.”
Unlike most of the other posters, he doesn’t include any personal note or “best wishes” type
line in his response. He’s focused and intense.
o How much value does scottsdalehigh64 place in human existence?
o Where does he place value? What does scottsdalehigh64 think is worth aiding and protecting?
o Just from his words, how do you imagine scottsdalehigh64 would define “a good place to live?”
5. Scottsdalehigh64 doesn’t seem to like those who are “destructive to other life forms on the
planet.”
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o Could an argument be built that, in preparing for our own eventual extinction, we should make
sure that we eliminate all life-forms that are destructive to other life forms? What would that
elimination mean? What would need to be done? How could it be justified?
o In a newspaper column, the philosopher Jeff McMahan appears to tentatively endorse
scottsdalehigh64’s vision. He proposes that we “arrange the gradual extinction of carnivorous
species, replacing them with new herbivorous ones.”
[2]
If, in fact, we decided to wipe out meat-
eating animals and leave the world to plants and plant eaters, would we be valuing most highly
ourselves? Nonhuman animals? The entire natural world? Something else? Explain your
response.
6. An excited poster, KiRa01, announces, “Just live like there’s no tomorrow!!!!”
With respect to the environment, justify his attitude in ethical terms.
Going Green
Fifty years ago airports were designed to reward fliers with architecture as striking as the new experience
of flight was rare and exciting. From those early days, only a few airports remain unspoiled by renovation
and expansion. The Long Beach Airport south of Los Angeles is a survivor. The low lines of midcentury
modern architecture captivate today’s visitors just as they did the first ones. The restaurant overlooking
the tarmac remains as elegant and perfectly simple as always. Walking the concourse, it’s easy to imagine
men in ties and women and children in their Sunday clothes waiting for a plane while uniformed porters
manage their suitcases.
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Flying is different today—no longer exciting and rare, it’s just frustrating and crowded. Recognizing that
reality, when the large European nations combined to form an airplane manufacturer, they didn’t choose
a distinguished and elevated name for their enterprise, they just called it Airbus: a company that makes
buses that happen to go up and down.
Airplanes are tremendously polluting. In the United States, large passenger flights account for about 3
percent of released greenhouse gasses. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you compare the number
of flights with car trips, it’s clear that each airplane is billowing massive carbon dioxide. And the problem
is only getting worse, at least on the tourism front. Over the course of the next decade, global tourism will
double to about 1.6 billion people annually.
Tourists aren’t the only fliers. Planes are also taken by people heading to other cities to talk about tourism.
One of them, Achim Steiner, is the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program. At a
recent conference in Spain, he said, “Tourism is an extraordinary growth industry, it’s the responsibility of
operators—from hoteliers to travel companies—as well as governments to ensure that sites are
sustainable.”
[3]
Sustainability has at least two sides. On one side, there’s the economic reality: revenue provided by
visitors pays for needed services. An example comes from the Masai Mara park reserve in Kenya. In
villages surrounding the park, schools were forced to close when political unrest scared away the tourists
and their money. On the other side, sustainability also means environmental protection. According to
Steiner, there’s the possibility that “Masai Mara could be overused to the point where it loses its value.”
Q U E S T I O N S
1. According to Steiner, “Hoteliers, travel companies, and governments are responsible” for
ensuring the sustainability of sites including Masai Mara. In most discussions about paying the
costs of a clean environment, three groups are signaled:
o Those who contaminate the natural world
o Those who enjoy the natural world
o Those who are most able to pay
How do each of these three fit into Steiner’s vision?
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2. Airplane exhaust contributes significantly to the damage currently being done to the
environment. Steiner rode an airplane to a city to talk about that damage.
o What is a cost-benefit analysis?
o How could a cost-benefit analysis be used to show that his boarding the plane and going was
actually an environmentally respectable act?
3. Fifty years ago, airplanes contributed almost no pollution to the environment because so few
could afford to fly. One way to limit the amount of pollution into the air is through incentives. In
the airplane case, a large tax could be attached to an airline ticket, thus providing an incentive to
tourists to stay home or use alternate sources of transportation. Of course, for the very wealthy,
the tax will be more absorbable and, presumably, airplane travel would tend toward its origins:
flying would be something the rich do.
How could a utilitarian analysis be used to justify the action of, in essence, reserving plane flying
for the rich in the name of helping the environment?
4. The airport at Long Beach is a low-ranking historical treasure. Tourists will never flock to see it,
but it does incarnate and vivify a time in the recent past. The airport at Long Beach is also a
business. That may lead its directors to initiate remodeling and expansion plans that will destroy
the airport’s original essence.
o Is preserving the natural world like the preservation of a historical architectural treasure? If so,
why? If not, why not?
o Using standard arguments against the business responsibility to preserve the natural world (free
use, domination and progress, geological time), make the case that progress should be allowed
to destroy the Long Beach Airport’s historical authenticity if that course of action is profitable.
o Using standard arguments in favor of the business responsibility to preserve the natural world
(preservation for human welfare, for future generations, for the sake of the thing itself), make
the case that the Long Beach Airport should be preserved.
o If the airport is preserved, who should pay? Why?
5. In ethical terms, make the case that it’s more important to preserve the Masai Mara park reserve in
Kenya than the Long Beach Airport.
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IBM and IBM
Bernadette Patrick moved away from her home in Endicott, New York, saying this about the town: “It was
very neighborly and well kept, with lots of kids and families. Then all of a sudden it seemed like they put a
skull and crossbones on all the doors. It was like a scene from a science fiction movie.”
[4]
The science fiction part is the large, white metal boxes attached to Endicott homes. With tubes burrowing
down in the earth and shooting up high into the air, they’re wired to pump air from below and jet it above.
The idea is to disperse toxic vapors rising up through the ground. The vapor’s source is industrial solvents
poured down drains and dripped out of leaky pipes at the local IBM factory over the course of its seventy-
five-year history.
Those seventy-five years have otherwise been good ones. IBM money and jobs drove the small town
forward. As Wanda Hudak put it, “The IBM plant paid for a lot of college educations and cottages at Perch
Pond.”
[5]
The good feelings ended when a company IBM hired started showing up at people’s homes to
test the air and offer to install the mechanical ventilation systems.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. IBM is paying millions for cleanup efforts. They’re installing air cleaners on homes and pumping
contaminated groundwater to the surface for safe disposal. An IBM spokesman said this about
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the toxic pollution, “None of it was done intentionally, but we still are sticking around to take
care of it. We feel obligated legally, ethically. We are not going anywhere.”
[6]
o Make the ethical case that those who contaminated the environment—IBM—should pay all the
cleanup costs.
o Make the case that those who benefit from a clean environment—the locals who work at the
company and those who don’t—should pay for the cleanup.
2. When the extent of the environmental pollution became clear, it was also evident that the cleanup
would be tremendously expensive. In general terms, how could a cost-benefit analysis be mounted to
decide between going forward with the environmental cleanup or closing the factory, shuttering the
town, and moving on?
3. One critical element of the notion of corporate social responsibility is the idea of sustainability.
o In both environmental and economic senses, what is sustainability?
o What would be sustained by a cleanup in this case? How?
4. One critical element of the notion of corporate social responsibility is the idea of stakeholder
theory.
o Who are the obvious stakeholders in this case?
o Thinking about the situation from the directorship of IBM, what are the company’s
responsibilities to each of the stakeholders?
5. The IBM of Endicott, New York, is an IBM of the past, one focused on factories and making
business machines like typewriters and photocopiers. The IBM of today leaves most hard
manufacturing to foreign firms in low-cost countries. What IBM now wants to do now, according
to their advertising, is “build a smarter planet.” That means solving problems like this one
reported by CNN:
Stockholm bogs down in rush-hour traffic. A series of bridges connecting Sweden’s capital
creates bottlenecks that cause gridlock and air pollution, waste millions of gallons of fuel,
hamper public transportation, and endanger pedestrians.
[7]
The solution? Swede governmental officers decided on a congestion fee, on charging vehicles
money for entering the city at peak traffic times. The aim was to seriously reduce the number of
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cars downtown at rush hours. That’s easier said than done, however. Stopping people at toll
booths would just make the problem worse: it would add yet another air-polluting stop to the
traffic through town. So IBM was hired to produce camera technology allowing license plate
numbers to be recorded and recognized automatically. Then monthly bills were generated and
mailed out to the car owners. As CNN reported, these were the results:
Traffic fell 35 percent almost immediately and stayed down 22 percent—and not just at
peak times or solely downtown. Emissions also dropped by 14 percent. The streets
became more pedestrian friendly, and the buses began finishing their routes so quickly
that the city had to rewrite the schedules. The fee schedule makes it obvious when traffic
will be the worst, so drivers who trek in during peak hours know they’ll pay more for what
will probably be a maddening experience. As a result, people seem to be cutting out
unnecessary trips: bundling afterschool pickups, say, with visits to the grocery store. In
short, Swedes are driving smarter.
[8]
When IBM protects the environment by cleaning up Endicott, they’re losing money; when IBM
protects the environment by selling smart systems to the Swedes, they’re profiting.
o Make the case that, ethically, IBM’s actions in Endicott are nobler than the actions in Sweden.
o Make the case that, ethically, IBM’s actions in Sweden are nobler than the actions in Endicott.
6. In the world of business ethics and the environment, one of the more spirited debates is this:
should we slow down technology and industrialization to use less and pollute less, or speed up
industrialization and technology in the hope that we’ll discover solutions to the environmental
problems caused by industrialization and technology?
o How does the case of IBM incarnate that debate?
o Does the decision about where you come down depend on where you place value (human
welfare versus environmental welfare)? Explain.
7. With respect to the environment and money, there are two formulas for thinking about IBM’s
project in Sweden:
a. The aim was to clean up the environment, and money happened to be made along
the way.
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b. The aim was to make money, and cleaning up the environment happened to be a good strategy
for profit.
In terms of basic values and ethics, outline the difference between these two visions.
Thinking about ethics and IBM in Endicott and in Sweden, what’s more important: the intentions of
a company when it acts, or the consequences of the actions? Explain.
Windmills and Condors
The wind farms of Northern California produce clean electricity. Every light bulb illuminated by the giant
turbines represents less destruction of the earth by mining and drilling operations and less contamination
of the air by coal- and oil-fired power plants. It also represents fewer California Condors.
The spinning blades of the windmills erected in spots including the Altamont Pass are proving deadly for
the rare birds, which are a kind of vulture. Here’s a reaction by the environmental writer and activist Jim
Wiegand: “For all the ‘green energy’ believers out there, this is a video you have to see. Each year across
America thousands of eagles, hawks, owls, falcons, vultures and condors perish at green energy wind
farms. This video will open your eyes and your mind when you see how easily a soaring vulture is smashed
by the innocent looking blades of a prop wind turbine.”
[9]
Fatal Accident with Vulture on a Windmill
The video shows a large and calm vulture cycling slowly around a modern wind turbine and then getting
struck by one of the spinning blades. The bird drops out of the air. Left on the ground beside the towering
contraption, it drags and struggles to flap its broken wing.
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Q U E S T I O N S
1. Unlike single-cell creatures, vultures seem to have awareness and interest in their environment.
They notice distressed animals, circle patiently, and in the end descend to eat the carcass.
o How can this behavior be translated into an argument that animals have
ethical rights?
o How can the claim that aware and interested vultures have independent ethical rights be
mustered into an argument against installing wind turbines in areas that threaten vultures, no
matter how much clean electrical energy they may generate?
2. If you have a chance to see the video and watch the fallen bird struggling and dying on the
ground, do the images change your feelings about the importance of protecting this creature?
o Assume the bird writhing on the ground is, in fact, suffering in a way not completely unlike
human suffering. How can this behavior be translated into an argument that animals have
ethical rights?
o Make the case that the video doesn’t allow the conclusion that birds suffer.
3. Assume that, for whatever reason, you’re convinced that those condors being cut down by
California wind turbines have ethical rights comparable with the ones we deposit in human
animals. Can you nonetheless outline an argument in favor of continued windmill use because of
the clean energy it provides?
o Make your case by appeal to a utilitarian argument.
o Make your case by appeal to a cost-benefit analysis.
o Make your case by appealing to the idea that the environment should be protected in its
entirety because, as an interlocked set of ecosystems, it holds autonomous value.
4. If you can make the case that some nonhuman animals that have autonomous ethical rights should be
allowed to meet their end in the name of clean energy, could you make the same argument for human
animals? Imagine, for example, that actually constructing these wind turbines leads to high worker
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fatalities, say, 10 times higher than any other kind of work. Could those deaths be justified ethically in
the name of clean energy? Why or why not?
The PETA Homepage
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are possibly the most active animal-rights organization in the
United States. On the day this case study was written, the organization’s home page featured pictures of a
sad-eyed Dalmatian, a noble elephant, and a cuddly rabbit. There was also a tease to a story set
underneath a picture of smiling, former President Clinton. It read, “What’s the secret behind this former
president’s newly trim waistline, enhanced energy, and improved cardiovascular health? A vegan diet!
Read more.”
[10]
Q U E S T I O N S
1. A vegan diet excludes all products derived from animals and promotes plant-based eating. In this PETA
ad, what values probably underlie the strategy (is the appeal to protect animals made in the name of
human welfare, animal welfare, or general environmental welfare)? Justify.
2. What is anthropomorphism? How could the phenomenon of anthropomorphism lead someone to posit
autonomous ethical dignity, and rights, in nonhuman animals that really shouldn’t be considered worth
protecting any more than trees?
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3. From the description provided of the PETA home page, how could it be described as inviting
anthropomorphism?
4. Were you in charge at PETA, an organization fighting for animal an right that depends on
donations, would you use the phenomenon of anthropomorphism to boost your organization’s
revenue?
o What is an argument in favor of the strategy?
o What is an argument against the strategy?
[1] “Why Should We Save the Planet?,” Yahoo! Answers, accessed June 8,
2011,http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080610193018AA7IQt2.
[2] Jeff McMahan, “The Meat Eaters,” New York Times, September 19, 2010, accessed June 8,
2011, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/the-meat-eaters.
[3] James Kanter, “How Do You Measure Green Tourism?,” New York Times, October 6, 2008, accessed June 8,
2011, http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/is-there-any-such-thing-as-green-tourism.
[4] Janet Gramza, “Life in the Plume: IBM’s Pollution Haunts a Village,” Post-Standard, January 11, 2009, accessed
June 8, 2011,http://www.syracuse.com/specialreports/index.ssf/2009/01/life_in_the_plume_ibms_polluti.html.
[5] Janet Gramza, “Life in the Plume: IBM’s Pollution Haunts a Village,” Post-Standard, January 11, 2009, accessed
June 8, 2011,http://www.syracuse.com/specialreports/index.ssf/2009/01/life_in_the_plume_ibms_polluti.html.
[6] Janet Gramza, “Life in the Plume: IBM’s Pollution Haunts a Village,” Post-Standard, January 11, 2009, accessed
June 8, 2011,http://www.syracuse.com/specialreports/index.ssf/2009/01/life_in_the_plume_ibms_polluti.html.
[7] Jeffrey M. O’Brien, “IBM’s Grand Plan to Save the Planet,” CNN Money, April 21, 2009, accessed June 8,
2011,http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/20/technology/obrien_ibm.fortune/index.htm.
[8] Jeffrey M. O’Brien, “IBM’s Grand Plan to Save the Planet,” CNN Money, April 21, 2009, accessed June 8,
2011,http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/20/technology/obrien_ibm.fortune/index.htm
[9] C. Taibibi, “California Condors, Wind Farms on Collision Course,” Examiner.com, August 30, 2009, accessed June
8, 2011, http://www.examiner.com/wildlife-conservation-in-national/california-condors-wind-farms-on-collision-
course.
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[10] Peta.org, “Try Bill Clinton’s New Diet!,” accessed June 8,
2011,https://secure.peta.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3315.
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Chapter 14: The Green Office: Economics and the Environment from The Business Ethics Workshop was adapted by Saylor Academy and is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensor.
Chapter3: Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business
when the Ends Justify
the Means
from The Business Ethics Workshop was adapted by Saylor
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Unported license without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensor.
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Chapter 3
Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for
Making Decisions in Business when the Ends Justify
the Means
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Chapter Overview
Chapter 3 “Theories of Consequence Ethics: Traditional Tools for Making Decisions in Business when the
Ends Justify the Means” examines some theories guiding ethical decisions in business. It considers ethics
that focuses on the consequences of what is done instead of prohibiting or allowing specific acts.
3.1 What Is Consequentialism?
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E
1. Define consequentialism in ethics.
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Consequentialism Defined
What’s more important in ethics—what you do or what happens afterward because of what you did?
People who believe ethics should be about what happens afterward are labeled consequentialists. They
don’t care so much about your act; they want to know about the consequences.
If someone asks, “Should I lie?,” one answer is, “No, lying’s wrong. We all have a duty not to lie and
therefore you shouldn’t do it, no matter what.” That’s not the consequentialist answer, though.
Consequentialists will want to know about the effects. If the lie is about Bernie Madoff assuring everyone
that he’s investing clients’ money in stocks when really he plans to steal it, that’s wrong. But if a
defrauded, livid, and pistol-waving client tracks Madoff down on a crowded street and demands to know
whether he’s Bernie Madoff, the ethically recommendable response might be, “People say I look like him,
but really I’m Bill Martin.” The question, finally, for a consequentialist isn’t whether or not I should lie,
it’s what happens if I do and if I don’t?
Since consequentialists are more worried about the outcome than the action, the central ethical concern
is what kind of outcome should I want? Traditionally, there are three kinds of answers: the utilitarian,
the altruist, and the egoist. Each one will be considered in this chapter.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y
Consequentialist ethicists focus on the results of what you do, not what you do.
R E V I E W
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Under what scenario could a consequentialist defend the act of stealing?
2. Could a consequentialist recommend that a toy company lie about the age level a toy is designed for?
What would be an example?
3.2 Utilitarianism: The Greater Good
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Define utilitarian ethics.
2. Show how utilitarianism works in business.
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3. Distinguish forms of utilitarianism.
4. Consider advantages and drawbacks of utilitarianism.
The College Board and Karen Dillard
“Have you seen,” the blog post reads, “their parking lot on a Saturday?”
[1]
Its packed. The lot belongs to
Karen Dillard College Prep (KDCP), a test-preparation company in Dallas. Like the Princeton Review,
they offer high schoolers courses designed to boost performance on the SAT. Very little real learning goes
on in these classrooms; they’re more about techniques and tricks for maximizing scores. Test takers
should know, for example, whether a test penalizes incorrect answers. If it doesn’t, you should take a few
minutes at each section’s end to go through and just fill in a random bubble for all the questions you
couldn’t reach so you’ll get some cheap points. If there is a penalty, though, then you should use your time
to patiently work forward as far as you can go. Knowing the right strategy here can significantly boost
your score. It’s a waste of brain space, though, for anything else in your life.
Some participants in KDCP—who paid as much as $2,300 for the lessons—definitely got some score
boosting for their money. It was unfair boosting, however; at least that’s the charge of the College Board,
the company that produces and administers the SAT.
Here’s what happened. A KDCP employee’s brother was a high school principal, and he was there when
the SATs were administered. At the end of those tests, everyone knows what test takers are instructed to
do: stack the bubble sheets in one pile and the test booklets in the other and leave. The administrators
then wrap everything up and send both the answer sheets and the booklets back to the College Board for
scoring. The principal, though, was pulling a few test booklets out of the stack and sending them over to
his brother’s company, KDCP. As it turns out, some of these pilfered tests were “live”—that is, sections of
them were going to be used again in future tests. Now, you can see how getting a look at those booklets
would be helpful for someone taking those future tests.
Other stolen booklets had been “retired,” meaning the specific questions inside were on their final
application the day the principal grabbed them. So at least in these cases, students taking the test-prep
course couldn’t count on seeing the very same questions come exam day. Even so, the College Board
didn’t like this theft much better because they sell those retired tests to prep companies for good money.
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When the College Board discovered the light-fingered principal and the KDCP advantage, they launched a
lawsuit for infringement of copyright. Probably figuring they had nothing to lose, KDCP sued back.
[2]
College Board also threatened—and this is what produced headlines in the local newspaper—to cancel the
scores of the students who they determined had received an unfair advantage from the KDCP course.
As Denton Record-Chronicle reported (and as you can imagine), the students and their families freaked
out.
[3]
The scores and full application packages had already been delivered to colleges across the country,
and score cancellation would have amounted to application cancellation. And since many of the students
applied only to schools requiring the SAT, the threat amounted to at least temporary college cancellation.
“I hope the College Board thinks this through,” said David Miller, a Plano attorney whose son was
apparently on the blacklist. “If they have a problem with Karen Dillard, that’s one thing. But I hope they
don’t punish kids who wanted to work hard.”
Predictably, the episode crescendo with everyone lawyered up and suits threatened in all directions. In the
end, the scores weren’t canceled. KDCP accepted a settlement calling for them to pay $600,000 directly to
the College Board and provide $400,000 in free classes for high schoolers who’d otherwise be unable to
afford the service. As for the principal who’d been lifting the test booklets, he got to keep his job, which
pays about $87,000 a year. The CEO of College Board, by the way, gets around $830,000.
[4]
KDCP is a
private company, so we don’t know how much Karen Dillard or her employees make. We do know they
could absorb a million-dollar lawsuit without going into bankruptcy. Finally, the Plano school district in
Texas—a well-to-do suburb north of Dallas—continues to produce some of the nation’s highest SAT score
averages.
One Thief, Three Verdicts
Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethics—the outcome matters, not the act. Among those who focus on
outcomes, the utilitarian’s distinguishing belief is that we should pursue the greatest good for the
greatest number. So we can act in whatever way we choose—we can be generous or miserly, honest or
dishonest—but whatever we do, to get the utilitarian’s approval, the result should be more people
happier.
If that is the result, then the utilitarian needs to know nothing more to label the act ethically
recommendable. (Note: Utility is a general term for usefulness and benefit, thus the theory’s name. In
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everyday language, however, we don’t talk about creating a greater utility but instead a greater good or
happiness.)
In rudimentary terms, utilitarianism is a happiness calculation. When you’re considering doing
something, you take each person who’ll be affected and ask whether they’ll end up happier, sadder, or it
won’t make any difference. Now, those who won’t change don’t need to be counted. Next, for each person
who’s happier, ask, how much happier? Put that amount on one side. For each who’s sadder, ask, how
much sadder? That amount goes on the other side. Finally, add up each column and the greater sum
indicates the ethically recommendable decision.
Utilitarian ethics function especially well in cases like this: You’re on the way to take the SAT, which will
determine how the college application process goes (and, it feels like, more or less your entire life). Your
car breaks down and you get there very late and the monitor is closing the door and you remember
that…you forgot your required number 2 pencils. On a desk in the hall you notice a pencil. It’s gnawed and
abandoned but not yours. Do you steal it? Someone who believes it’s an ethical duty to not steal will
hesitate. But if you’re a utilitarian you’ll ask: Does taking it serve the greater good? It definitely helps you
a lot, so there’s positive happiness accumulated on that side. What about the victim? Probably whoever
owns it doesn’t care too much. Might not even notice it’s gone. Regardless, if you put your increased
happiness on one side and weigh it against the victim’s hurt on the other, the end result is almost certainly
a net happiness gain. So with a clean conscience you grab it and dash into the testing room. According to
utilitarian reasoning, you’ve done the right thing ethically (assuming the pencil’s true owner isn’t coming
up behind you in the same predicament).
Pushing this theory into the KDCP case, one tense ethical location is the principal lifting test booklets and
sending them over to his brother at the test-prep center. Everything begins with a theft. The booklets do
in fact belong to the College Board; they’re sent around for schools to use during testing and are meant to
be returned afterward. So here there’s already the possibility of stopping and concluding that the
principal’s act is wrong simply because stealing is wrong. Utilitarian’s, however, don’t want to move so
quickly. They want to see the outcome before making an ethical judgment. On that front, there are two
distinct outcomes: one covering the live tests, and the other the retired ones.
Live tests were those with sections that may appear again. When students at KDCP received them for
practice, they were essentially receiving cheat sheets. Now for a utilitarian, the question is, does the
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situation serve the general good? When the testing’s done, the scores are reported, and the college
admissions decisions made, will there be more overall happiness then there would’ve been had the tests
not been stolen? It seems like the answer has to be no. Obviously those with great scores will be smiling,
but many, many others will see their scores drop (since SATs are graded on a curve or as a percentile). So
there’s some major happiness for a few on one side balanced by unhappiness for many on the other. Then
things get worse. When the cheating gets revealed, the vast majority of test takers who didn’t get the edge
are going to be irritated, mad, or furious. Their parents too. Remember, it’s not only admission that’s at
stake here but also financial aid, so the students who didn’t get the KDCP edge worry not only that maybe
they should’ve gotten into a better school but also that they end up paying more too. Finally, the colleges
will register a net loss: all their work in trying to admit students on the basis of fair, equal evaluations gets
thrown into
question.
Conclusion. The theft of live tests fails the utilitarian test. While a few students may come out better off
and happier, the vast majority more than balances the effect with disappointment and anger. The greater
good isn’t served.
In the case of the theft of “retired” tests where the principal forwarded to KDCP test questions that won’t
reappear on future exams, it remains true that the tests were lifted from the College Board and it remains
true that students who took the KDCP prep course will receive an advantage because they’re practicing the
SAT. But the advantage doesn’t seem any greater than the one enjoyed by students all around the nation
who purchased prep materials directly from the College Board and practiced for the exam by taking old
tests. More—and this was a point KDCP made in their countersuit against the College Board—stealing the
exams was the ethically right thing to do because it assured that students taking the KDCP prep course
got the same level of practice and expertise as those using official College Board materials. If the tests
hadn’t been stolen, then wouldn’t KDCP kids be at an unfair disadvantage when compared with others
because their test practices hadn’t been as close to the real thing as others got? In the end, the argument
goes, stealing the tests assured that as many people as possible who took prep courses got to practice on
real exams.
Conclusion. The theft of the exams by the high school principal may conceivably be congratulated by a
utilitarian because it increases general happiness. The students who practiced on old exams purchased
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from the College Board can’t complain. And as for those students at KDCP, their happiness increases since
they can be confident that they’ve prepared as well as possible for the SAT.
The fact that a utilitarian argument can be used to justify the theft of test booklets, at least retired ones,
doesn’t end the debate, however. Since the focus is on outcomes, all of them have to be considered. And
one outcome that might occur if the theft is allowed is, obviously, that maybe other people will start
thinking stealing exam books isn’t such a bad idea. If they do—if everyone decides to start stealing—it’s
hard to see how anything could follow but chaos, anger, and definitely not happiness.
This discussion could continue as more people and consequences are factored in, but what won’t change is
the basic utilitarian rule. What ought to be done is determined by looking at the big picture and deciding
which acts increase total happiness at the end of the day when everyone is taken into account.
Should the Scores Be Canceled?
After it was discovered that KDCP students got to practice for the SATs with live exams, the hardest
question facing the College Board was, should their scores be canceled? The utilitarian argument
for not canceling is straightforward. Those with no scores may not go to college at all next year. This is
real suffering, and if your aim is to increase happiness, then counting the exams is one step in that
direction. It’s not the last step, though, because utilitarian’s at the College Board need to ask
about everyone else’s happiness too: what’s the situation for all the others who took the exam but has
never heard of KDCP? Unfortunately, letting the scores be counted is going to subtract from their
happiness because the SAT is graded comparatively: one person doing well means everyone getting fewer
correct answers sees their score drop, along with college choices and financial aid possibilities. Certainly
it’s true that each of these decreases will be small since there were only a handful of suspect tests. Still, a
descent, no matter how tiny, is a descent, and all the little bits add up.
What’s most notable, finally, about this decision is the imbalance. Including the scores of KDCP students
will weigh a tremendous increase in happiness for a very few against a slight decrease for very many.
Conversely, a few will be left very sad, and many slightly happier. So for a utilitarian, which is it? It’s hard
to say. It is clear, however, that this uncertainty represents a serious practical problem with the ethical
theory. In some situations you can imagine yourself in the shoes of the different people involved and,
using your own experience and knowledge, estimate which decision will yield the most total happiness. In
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this situation, though, it seems almost impossible because there are so many people mixed up in the
question.
Then things get still more difficult. For the utilitarian, it’s not enough to just decide what brings the most
happiness to the most individuals right now; the future needs to be accounted for too. Utilitarianism is a
true global ethics; you’re required to weigh everyone’s happiness and weigh it as best as you can as far into
the future as possible. So if the deciders at the College Board follow a utilitarian route in opting to include
(or cancel) the scores, they need to ask themselves—if we do, how will things be in ten years? In fifty?
Again, these are hard questions but they don’t change anything fundamental. For the utilitarian, making
the right decision continues to be about attempting to predict which choice will maximize happiness.
Utilitarianism and the Ethics of Salaries
When he wasn’t stealing test booklets and passing them on to KDCP, the principal in the elite Plano
school district was dedicated to his main job: making sure students in his building receive an education
qualifying them to do college-level work. Over at the College Board, the company’s CEO leads a
complementary effort: producing tests to measure the quality of that preparation and consequently
determine students’ scholastic aptitude. The principal, in other words, is paid to make sure high schoolers
get an excellent education, and the CEO is paid to measure how excellent (or not) the education is.
Just from the job descriptions, who should get the higher salary? It’s tempting to say the principal.
Doesn’t educating children have to be more important than measuring how well they’re educated?
Wouldn’t we all rather be well educated and not know it than poorly educated and painfully aware of the
fact?
Regardless, what’s striking about the salary that each of these two actually receives isn’t who gets more;
it’s how much. The difference is almost ten times: $87,000 for the principal versus the CEO’s $830,000.
Within the doctrine of utilitarianism, can such a divergence be justified?
Yes, but only if we can show that this particular salary structure brings about the greatest good, the
highest level of happiness for everyone considered as a collective. It may be, for example, that objectively
measuring student ability, even though it’s less important than instilling ability, is also much harder. In
that case, a dramatically higher salary may be necessary in order to lure high-quality measuring talent.
From there, it’s not difficult to fill out a utilitarian justification for the pay divergence. It could be that
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inaccurate testing would cause large amounts of unhappiness: students who worked hard for years would
be frustrated when they were bettered by slackers who really didn’t know much but managed to score well
on a test.
To broaden the point, if tremendous disparities in salary end up making people happier, then the
disparities are ethical. Period. If they don’t, however, then they can no longer be defended. This differs
from what a libertarian rights theorist might say here. For a libertarian—someone who believes
individuals have an undeniable right to make and keep whatever they can in the world, regardless of how
rich or poor anyone else may be—the response to the CEO’s mammoth salary is that he found a way to
earn it fair and square, and everyone should quit complaining about it. Generalized happiness doesn’t
matter, only the individual’s right to try to earn and keep as much as he or she can.
Can Money Buy Utilitarian Happiness? The Ford Pinto Case
Basic questions in business tend to be quantitative, and money is frequently the bottom line: How many
dollars is it worth? What’s my salary? What’s the company’s profit? The basic question of utilitarianism
is qualitative: how much happiness and sadness is there? Inevitably, it’s going to be difficult when
businesses accustomed to bottom-line number decisions are forced to cross over and decide about general
happiness. One of the most famous attempts to make the transition easier occurred back in the 1970s.
With gas prices on the rise, American car buyers were looking for smaller, more efficient models than
Detroit was manufacturing. Japanese automakers were experts in just those kinds of vehicles and they
were seizing market share at an alarming rate. Lee Iacocca, Ford’s president, wanted to rush a car into
production to compete. His model was the Pinto.
[5]
A gas sipper slated to cost $2,000 (about $12,000 today); Ford rushed the machine through early
production and testing. Along the way, unfortunately, they noticed a design problem: the gas tank’s
positioning in the car’s rump left it vulnerable to rear-end collisions. In fact, when the rear-end hit came
faster than twenty miles per hour, not only might the tank break, but gasoline could be splattered all the
way up to the driver’s compartment. Fire, that meant, ignited by sparks or anything else could engulf
those inside.
No car is perfectly safe, but this very scary vulnerability raised eyebrows. At Ford, a debate erupted about
going ahead with the vehicle. On the legal end, the company stood on solid ground: government
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regulation at the time only required gas tanks to remain intact at collisions under twenty miles per hour.
What about the ethics, though? The question about whether it was right to charge forward was
unavoidable because rear-end accidents at speeds greater than twenty miles per hour happen—every day.
The decision was finally made in utilitarian terms. On one side, the company totaled up the dollar cost of
redesigning the car’s gas tank. They calculated
12.5 million automobiles would eventually be sold,
eleven dollars would be the final cost per car to implement the redesign.
Added up, that’s $137 million total, with the money coming out of Pinto buyers’ pockets since the added
production costs would get tacked onto the price tag. It’s a big number but it’s not that much per person:
$11 is about $70 today. In this way, the Pinto situation faced by Ford executives is similar to the test
cancellation question for the College Board: one option means only a little bit of suffering for specific
individuals, but there are a lot of them.
On the other side of the Pinto question—and, again, this resembles the College Board predicament—if the
decision is made to go ahead without the fix, there’s going to be a lot of suffering but only for a very few
people. Ford predicted the damage done to those few people in the following ways:
Death by burning for 180 buyers
Serious burn injuries for another 180 buyers
Twenty-one hundred vehicles burned beyond all repair
That’s a lot of damage, but how do you measure it? How do you compare it with the hike in the price tag?
More generally, from a utilitarian perspective, is it better for a lot of people to suffer a little or for a few
people to suffer a lot?
Ford answered both questions by directly attaching monetary values to each of the injuries and damages
suffered:
At the time, 1970, US Government regulatory agencies officially valued a human life at $200,000. (That
would be about $1.2 million today if the government still kept this problematic measure.)
Insurance companies valued a serious burn at $67,000.
The average resale value on subcompacts like the Pinto was $700, which set that as the amount lost after a
complete burnout.
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The math coming out from this is (180 deaths × $200,000) + (180 injuries × $67,000) + (2,100 burned-
out cars × $700) = $49 million. The result here is $137 million worth of suffering for Pinto drivers if the
car is redesigned and only $49 million if it goes to the streets as is.
Ford sent the Pinto out. Over the next decade, according to Ford estimates, at least 60 people died in fiery
accidents and at least 120 got seriously burned (skin-graft-level burns). No attempt was made to calculate
the total number of burned vehicles. Shortly thereafter, the Pinto was phased out. No one has final
numbers, but if the first decade is any indication, then the total cost came in under the original $49
million estimate. According to a utilitarian argument, and assuming the premises concerning dollar
values are accepted, Ford made the right decision back in 1970.
If every Pinto purchaser had been approached the day after buying the car, told the whole Ford story, and
been offered to change their car along with eleven dollars for another one without the gas tank problem,
how many would’ve handed the money over to avoid the long-shot risk? The number might’ve been very
high, but that doesn’t sway a utilitarian conclusion. The theory demands that decision makers stubbornly
keep their eye on overall happiness no matter how much pain a decision might cause certain individuals.
Versions of Utilitarian Happiness
Monetized utilitarianism attempts to measure happiness, to the extent possible, in terms of money. As the
Ford Pinto case demonstrated, the advantage here is that it allows decisions about the greater good to be
made in clear, objective terms. You add up the money on one side and the money on the other and the
decision follows automatically. This is a very attractive benefit, especially when you’re dealing with large
numbers of individuals or complex situations. Monetized utilitarianism allows you to keep your happiness
calculations straight.
Two further varieties of utilitarianism are hedonistic and idealistic. Both seek to maximize human
happiness, but their definitions of happiness differ. Hedonistic utilitarian’s trace back to Jeremy Bentham
(England, around 1800). Bentham was a wealthy and odd man who left his fortune to the University
College of London along with the stipulation that his mummified body be dressed and present at the
institution. It remains there today. He sits in a wooden cabinet in the main building, though his head has
been replaced by a wax model after pranking students repeatedly stole the real one. Bentham believed
that pleasure and happiness are ultimately synonymous. Ethics, this means, seeks to maximize the
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pleasures—just about any sensation of pleasure—felt by individuals. But before dropping everything and
heading out to the bars, it should be remembered that even the most hedonistic of the utilitarian’s believe
that getting pleasure right now is good but not as good as maximizing the feeling over the long term.
(Going out for drinks, in others words, instead of going to the library isn’t recommendable on the evening
before midterms.)
A contemporary of Bentham, John Stuart Mill, basically agreed that ethics is about maximizing pleasure,
but his more idealistic utilitarianism distinguished low and highbrow sensations. The kinds of raw, good
feelings that both we and animals can find, according to Mill, are second-rate pleasures. Pleasures with
higher and more real value include learning and learnedness. These aren’t physical joys so much as the
delights of the mind and the imagination. For Mill, consequently, libraries and museums are scenes of
abundant pleasure, much more than any bar.
This idealistic notion of utilitarianism fits quite well with the College Board’s response to the KDCP
episode. First, deciding against canceling student scores seems like a way of keeping people on track to
college and headed toward the kind of learning that rewards our cerebral inclinations. Further, awarding
free prep classes to those unable to pay seems like another step in that direction, at least if it helps get
them into college.
Versions of Utilitarian Regulation
A narrow distinction with far-reaching effects divides soft from hard utilitarianism. Soft utilitarianism is
the standard version; when people talk about a utilitarian ethics, that’s generally what they mean. As a
theory, soft utilitarianism is pretty laid back: an act is good if the outcome is more happiness in the world
than we had before. Hard utilitarianism, on the other hand, demands more: an act is ethically
recommendable only if the total benefits for everyone are greater than those produced by any other act.
According to the hard version, it’s not enough to do well; you must do the most good possible. As an
example, think about the test-prep company KDCP under the microscope of utilitarian examination.
When a soft utilitarian looks at KDCP, the company comes out just fine. High schoolers are learning test-
taking skills and tricks that they’ll only use once but will help in achieving a better score and leave behind
a sense that they’ve done all they can to reach their college goals. That means the general happiness level
probably goes up—or at worst holds steady—because places like KDCP are out there.
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When a hard utilitarian looks at KDCP, however, the company doesn’t come off so well. Can we really say
that this enterprise’s educational subject—test taking—is the very best use of teaching resources in terms
of general welfare and happiness? And what about the money? Is SAT prep really the best way for society
to spend its dollars? Wouldn’t a hard utilitarian have to recommend that the tuition money collected by
the test-prep company get siphoned off to pay for, say, college tuition for students who otherwise wouldn’t
be able to continue their studies at all?
If decisions about businesses are totally governed by the need to create the most happiness possible, then
companies like KDCP that don’t contribute much to social well-being will quickly become endangered.
The demands of hard utilitarianism can be layered onto the ethical decision faced by the College Board in
their courtroom battle with KDCP. Ultimately, the College Board opted to penalize the test-prep company
by forcing it to offer some free classes for underprivileged students. Probably, the result was a bit more
happiness in the world. The result wasn’t, however, the most happiness possible. If hard utilitarianism
had driven the decision, then the College Board would’ve been forced to go for the jugular against KDCP,
strip away all the money they could, and then use it to do the most good possible, which might have meant
setting up a scholarship fund or something similar. That’s just a start, though. Next, to be true to hard
utilitarianism, the College Board would need to focus on itself with hard questions. The costs of creating
and applying tests including the SAT are tremendous, which makes it difficult to avoid this question:
wouldn’t society as a whole be better off if the College Board were to be canceled and all their resources
dedicated to, for example, creating a new university for students with learning disabilities?
Going beyond KDCP and the College Board, wouldn’t almost any private company fall under the threat of
appropriation if hard utilitarian’s ran the world? While it’s true, for example, that the money spent on
steak and wine at expensive Las Vegas restaurants probably increases happiness a bit, couldn’t that same
cash do a lot more for the general welfare of people whose income makes Las Vegas an impossibly
expensive dream? If it could, then the hard utilitarian will propose zipping up Las Vegas and rededicating
the money.
Finally, since utilitarianism is about everyone’s total happiness, don’t hard questions start coming up
about world conditions? Is it possible to defend the existence of McDonald’s in the United States while
people are starving in other countries?
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Conclusion. In theory, there’s not much divergence between soft and hard utilitarianism. But in terms of
what actually happens out in the world when the theory gets applied, that’s a big difference. For private
companies, it’s also a dangerous one.
Two further versions of utilitarian regulation are act and rule. Act utilitarianism affirms that a specific
action is recommended if it increases happiness. This is the default form of utilitarianism, and what
people usually mean when they talk about the theory. The separate rule-based version asserts that an
action is morally right if it follows a rule that, when applied to everyone, increases general happiness.
The rule utilitarian asks whether we’d all be benefitted if everyone obeyed a rule such as “don’t steal.” If
we would—if the general happiness level increases because the rule is there—then the rule utilitarian
proposes that we all adhere to it. It’s important to note that rule utilitarian’s aren’t against stealing
because it’s intrinsically wrong, as duty theorists may propose. The rule utilitarian is only against stealing
if it makes the world less happy. If tomorrow it turns out that mass stealing serves the general good, then
theft becomes the ethically right
thing to do.
The sticky point for rule utilitarian’s involves special cases. If we make the rule that theft is wrong,
consider what happens in the case from the chapter’s beginning: You forgot your pencil on SAT test day,
and you spot one lying on an abandoned desk. If you don’t take it, no one’s going to be any happier, but
you’ll be a lot sadder. So it seems like rule utilitarianism verges on defeating its own purpose, which is
maximizing happiness no matter what.
On the other hand, there are also sticky points for act utilitarian’s. For example, if I go to Wal-Mart
tonight and steal a six-pack of beer, I’ll be pretty happy. And assuming I don’t get caught, no one will be
any sadder. The loss to the company—a few dollars—will disappear in a balance sheet so huge that it’s
hard to count the zeros. Of course if everyone starts stealing beers, that will cause a problem, but in
practical terms, if one person does it once and gets away with it, it seems like an act utilitarian would have
to approve. The world would be a happier place.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Utilitarian Ethics in Business
Basic utilitarianism is the soft, act version. These are the theory’s central advantages:
Clarity and simplicity. In general terms, it’s easy to understand the idea that we should all act to
increase the general welfare.
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Acceptability. The idea of bringing the greatest good to the greatest number coheres with common and
popular ideas about what ethical guidance is supposed to provide.
Flexibility. The weighing of individual actions in terms of their consequences allows for meaningful and
firm ethical rules without requiring that everyone be treated identically no matter how different the
particular situation. So the students whose scores were suspended by the College Board could see them
reinstated, but that doesn’t mean the College Board will take the same action in the future (if, say, large
numbers of people start stealing test booklets).
Breadth. The focus on outcomes as registered by society overall makes the theory attractive for those
interested in public policy. Utilitarianism provides a foundation and guidance for business regulation by
government.
The central difficulties and disadvantages of utilitarianism include the following:
Subjectivity. It can be hard to make the theory work because it’s difficult to know what makes happiness
and unhappiness for specific individuals. When the College Board demanded that KDCP give free classes
to underprivileged high schoolers, some paying students were probably happy to hear the news, but
others probably fretted about paying for what others received free. And among those who received the
classes, probably the amount of resulting happiness varied between them.
Quantification. Happiness can’t be measured with a ruler or weighed on a scale; it’s hard to know
exactly how much happiness and unhappiness any particular act produces. This translates into confusion
at decision time. (Monetized utilitarianism, like that exhibited in the case of the Ford Pinto, responds to
this confusion.)
Apparent injustices. Utilitarian principles can produce specific decisions that seem wrong. A quick
example is the dying grandmother who informs her son that she’s got $200,000 stuffed into her mattress.
She asks the son to divide the money with his brother. This brother, however, is a gambling alcoholic
who’ll quickly fritter away his share. In that case, the utilitarian would recommend that the other
brother—the responsible one with children to put through college—just keep all the money. That would
produce the most happiness, but do we really want to deny grandma her last wish?
The utilitarian monster is a hypothetical individual who really knows how to feel good. Imagine that
someone or a certain group of people were found to have a much greater capacity to experience happiness
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than others. In that case, the strict utilitarian would have no choice but to put everyone else to work
producing luxuries and other pleasures for these select individuals. In this hypothetical situation, there
could even be an argument for forced labor as long as it could be shown that the servants’ suffering was
minor compared to the great joy celebrated by those few who were served. Shifting this into economic and
business terms, there’s a potential utilitarian argument here for vast wage disparities in the workplace.
The utilitarian sacrifice is the selection of one person to suffer terribly so that others may be pleasured.
Think of gladiatorial games in which a few contestants suffer miserably, but a tremendous number of
spectators enjoy the thrill of the contest. Moving the same point from entertainment into the business of
medical research, there’s a utilitarian argument here for drafting individuals—even against their will—to
endure horrifying medical experiments if it could be shown that the experiments would, say, cure cancer,
and so create tremendous happiness in the future.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Utilitarianism judges specific decisions by examining the decision’s consequences.
Utilitarianism defines right and wrong in terms of the happiness of a society’s members.
Utilitarian ethics defines an act as good when its consequences bring the greatest good or happiness to
the greatest number of people.
There are a variety of specific forms of utilitarianism.
Theoretically, utilitarianism is straightforward, but in practical terms it can be difficult to measure the
happiness of individuals.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. What is a utilitarian argument in favor of a college education? How does it differ from other reasons you
might want to go to college or graduate school?
2. How could a utilitarian justify cheating on an exam?
3. What is a “global ethics”?
4. What practical problem with utilitarianism is (to some degree) resolved by
monetized utilitarianism?
5. What are two advantages of a utilitarian ethics when compared with an ethics of duties?
6. What are two disadvantages of a utilitarian ethics when compared with an ethics of duties?
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7. What’s an example from today’s world of a utilitarian monster?
8. What’s an example from today’s world of a utilitarian sacrifice?
[1] “CB-Karen Dillard Case Settled-No Cancelled Scores,” College Confidential, accessed May 15,
2011, http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/501843-cb-karen-dillard-case-settled-no-cancelled-
scores.html.
[2] Paulina Mis, “College Board Sues Test-Prep Company, Countersuit Filed,” Scholarships.com, February 26, 2008,
accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.scholarships.com/blog/high-school/college-board-sues-test-prep-company-
countersuit-filed/161.
[3] Staci Hupp, “SAT Scores for Students Who Used Test Prep Firm May Be Thrown Out, “Denton Record Chronicle,
February 22, 2008, accessed May 15, 2011.
[4] “AETR Report Card,” Americans for Educational Testing Reform, accessed May 15,
2011, http://www.aetr.org/college-board.php.
[5] Case facts taken from Manuel Velasquez, Business Ethics, Concepts and Cases, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006), 60–61.
3.3 Altruism: Everyone Else
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Define altruistic ethics.
2. Show how altruism works in and with business.
3. Consider advantages and drawbacks of altruism.
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TOMS Shoes
There is no Tom at TOMS Shoes. The company’s name actually came from the title for its social cause:
Shoes for Tomorrow. Tomorrow shoes—TOMS Shoes. The shoes are given away to needy children in
Argentina at a one-to-one rate: for every pair bought in the United States, TOMS delivers a pair down
there.
They’re needed in Argentina’s poverty-stricken regions to prevent the spread of an infectious disease, one
that flourishes in the local soil and rises up through the feet. A pair of shoes is all that’s needed to block
the problem.
The project started when young Texan entrepreneur Blake Mycoskie vacationed in Argentina. Not the type
to luxuriate in the hotel pool, he got out and learned about the country, good and bad, the food, the
sweeping geography, the poverty and diseases. The foot infection, he discovered, was so devastating yet so
easy to block that, according to his company’s website, he decided he had to do something about
it.
[1]
Initially, he contemplated a charitable fund to buy shoes for the needy children, but that left his
project subject to the ebb and flow of others’ generosity. It’d be better and more reliable, he determined,
to link the community-service project with private enterprise and use revenues from a company to fund
the charity. Quickly, Mycoskie determined that he could make the whole machine work most efficiently by
starting a shoe company. Simultaneously, he could produce shoes for donation and shoes for sale to
finance the effort. So we have TOMS Shoes.
Next, a kind of shoe to produce and sell was required. Mycoskie found inspiration in Argentina’s
traditional alpargata. This is a cheap, workingman’s shoe, a slip-on made from canvas with rope
soles.
[2]
For the American adaptation, Mycoskie strengthened the sole, styled and colored the canvas, and
added a brand label. The price also got jacked up. The originals cost a few dollars in Argentina; the
adaptations cost about forty dollars here.
They’re a splashy hit. You find TOMS Shoes at trendy footwear shops, at Whole Foods grocery stores, and
all over the Internet. At last check, about half a million pairs have been sold and an equal number
donated. Total sales in seven figures aren’t far off, and the company was recently featured on a CNBC
segment as an American business success story. Notably, TOMS achieved recognition on national TV
sooner after its inception than almost any other enterprise in the program’s history. It all happened in
fewer than four years.
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Question: how did it get so big so fast? How did some guy transform from a wandering tourist to a captain
of the shoe industry in less time than it takes to get a college degree? Answer: celebrities.
Blake Mycoskie’s got a warm, round face and a perfect smile. He’s got money from his pre-shoe projects
and he’s smart too. He’s also got that contemporary bohemian look down with his bead necklace and
wavy, shoulder-length hair. There’s no letdown beneath the chin line either; he’s fit (he was a tennis pro
until nineteen). You get the idea. He commands attention from even Hollywood women, and he ended up
coupled with the midrange star Maggie Grace. He introduced her to his TOMS Shoes concept, gave her a
few pairs to wear around and show friends, and the ball started rolling.
[3]
A few parties later, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire, Sienna Miller, and
Karl Lagerfeld were parading around in TOMS Shoes. There was no stopping it.
[4]
Today, when Blake Mycoskie introduces himself, it’s not as the CEO of his company; he says he’s the Chief
Shoe Giver at TOMS Shoes, reflecting the idea that charity drives the thriving business, not the other way
around.
Is TOMS Shoes Altruistic?
An action is morally right according to the altruist, and to the ethical theory of altruism, if the action’s
consequences are more beneficial than unfavorable for everyone except the person who acts. That means
the actor’s interests aren’t considered: the altruist does whatever can be done so that others will be
happier.
It’s common to imagine the altruist as poverty stricken and self-sacrificing. When you live for everyone
else as the altruist does, it’s no surprise that you can end up in pretty bad shape. You might get lucky and
run into another altruist like yourself, but if you don’t, there’s not going to be anyone particularly
dedicated to your well-being. On the positive side there’s nobility to the idea of dedicating everything to
everyone else, but the plain truth is not many of us would choose to live like Gandhi or Mother Teresa.
It doesn’t have to be that way, though. A suffering life may be an effect of altruism, but it’s not a
requirement. Living for others doesn’t mean you live poorly, only that there’s no guarantee you’ll live well.
You might, however, live well. Blake Mycoskie demonstrates this critical element at the heart of altruism:
it’s not about suffering or sacrificing; it’s about making clear-eyed decisions about the best way to make as
many others as happy as possible. If you happen to live the good life along the way—partying with Maggie
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Grace, Sienna Miller, and friends because that’s the fastest route to publicize the TOMS Shoes
enterprise—that doesn’t count against the project. It doesn’t count in favor either. All that matters, all that
gets tallied up when the question gets asked about whether the altruist did good, is how things ended up
for everyone else.
In the case of TOMS Shoes, the tallying is easy. The relatively wealthy shoe buyers in the United States
come off well; they get cool, politically correct footwear to show friends along with a psychological lift
from knowing they’re helping the less fortunate. On the other side, the rural Argentines obviously benefit
also.
Some Rules of Altruism
Altruism is a consequentialist ethics. Like utilitarianism, no specific acts are prohibited or required; only
outcomes matter. That explains why there aren’t lifestyle requirements for the altruist. Some live stoically
like Gandhi while others like Mycoskie get the high life, but they’re both altruists as long as the goal of
their lives and the reason for their actions is bringing happiness to others. Similarly, the altruist might be
a criminal (Robin Hood) or a liar (see Socrates’ noble lie).
Like the utilitarian, most of the hard questions altruists face concern happiness. They include:
The happiness definition. Exactly what counts as happiness? In the case of TOMS donating shoes to rural
Argentines, the critical benefit is alleviation of disease and the suffering coming with it. Happiness, in
other words, is defined here as a release from real, physical pain. On the other hand, with respect to the
shoes sold in the States, the happiness is completely different; it’s a vague, good feeling that purchasers
receive knowing their shopping is serving a social cause. How do we define happiness in a way that ropes
in both these distinct experiences?
Once happiness has been at least loosely defined, another question altruist’s face is the happiness
measure: how do we know which is worth more, the alleviation of suffering from a disease or the warm
happiness of serving a good cause? And even if the answer to that question is clear, how great is the
difference, how can it be measured?
Another altruism difficulty is happiness foresight. Even if donating shoes helps in the short term, are the
recipients’ lives really going to be happier overall? Conditions are hard in the abandoned regions of the
third world, and alleviation of one problem may just clear the way for another. So TOMS Shoes saves
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poverty-stricken Argentines from suffering a debilitating foot disease, but how much good are you really
doing if you save people only so that they’re free to suffer aching hunger, miserable sickness in places
lacking antibiotics, and hard manual labor because there’s no other work?
Altruism is a variety of selflessness, but it’s not the same thing; people may deny themselves or they may
sacrifice themselves for all kinds of other reasons. For example, a soldier may die in combat, but that’s not
altruism; that’s loyalty: it’s not sacrificing for everyone else but for a particular nation. The same may go
for the political protestor who ends up jailed and forgotten forever. That’s self-sacrifice, but she did it for
the cause and not for all the others. The fireman may lose his life rescuing a victim, but this is because he’s
doing his job, not because he’s decided to live for the sake of others. All altruists, finally, are selfless, but
not all those who sacrifice themselves are altruists.
Personal versus impersonal altruism distinguishes two kinds of altruists: those who practice altruism on
their own and leave everyone else alone and those who believe that everyone should act only to benefit
others and without regard to their own well-being.
The Altruist in Business and the Business That Is Altruistic
TOMS Shoes shows that a business can be mounted to serve the welfare of others. A company aiming to
serve an altruistic purpose doesn’t have to be organized altruistically, however. An individual truly
dedicated to everyone else could start a more traditional company (a real estate firm, for example), work
like a dog, turn massive profits, and in the end, donate everything to charity. It may even be that during
the profit-making phase the altruist CEO is ruthless, exploiting workers and consumers to the maximum.
All that’s fine as long as the general welfare is served in the end when all the suffering is toted up on one
side and the happiness on the other. A business operation that isn’t at all altruistic, in other words, can be
bent in that direction by an altruistic owner.
Going the other way, the business operation itself may be altruistic. For example, this comes from the
College Board’s website, the About Us page: The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association
whose mission is to connect students to college success and opportunity.
[5]
That sounds like a good cause. The company doesn’t exist to make money but to implement testing that
matches students with their best-fit colleges. It is, in other words, an altruistic enterprise, and the world,
the argument could be made, is a better place because the College Board exists. But—and this is the
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important distinction—that doesn’t mean everyone who works at the College Board is selfless. Far from it,
the CEO takes home $830,000 a year. That money would buy a lot of shoes for the poverty-stricken in
Argentina. So, there can be altruistic business organizations driven by workers who aren’t altruists.
A church is also a business organization with cash flows, budgets, and red and black ink. The same goes
for Goodwill. Here’s their mission statement: “Goodwill Industries International enhances the dignity and
quality of life of individuals, families and communities by eliminating barriers to opportunity and helping
people in need reach their fullest potential through the power of work.”
[6]
So, the Salvation Army fits into
the group of altruistic enterprises, of organizations that exist, like the College Board, to do public good.
It’s distinct from the College Board, however, in that a very healthy percentage of those working inside the
organization are themselves altruists—they’re working for the cause, not their own welfare. Think of the
Salvation Army red kettle bell ringers around Christmas time.
Conclusion. Altruism connects with business in three basic ways. There are altruists who use normal,
profit-driven business operations to do well. There are altruistic companies that do good by employing no
altruistic workers. And there are altruistic organizations composed of altruistic individuals.
Advocating and Challenging Ethical Altruism
The arguments for and against an altruistic ethics overlap to a considerable extent with those listed under
utilitarianism. The advantages include:
Clarity and simplicity. People may disagree about exactly how much good a company like TOMS Shoes
is really doing, but the overall idea that the founder is working so that others can be happier is easy to
grasp.
Acceptability. The idea of working for others grants an ethical sheen. No matter what you might think of
someone as a person, it’s very difficult to criticize them in ethical terms if they really are dedicating
themselves to the well-being of everyone else.
Flexibility. Altruists have many ways of executing their beliefs.
The disadvantages of altruism include:
Uncertainty about the happiness of others. Even if individuals decide to sacrifice their own welfare
for the good of others, how do they know for sure what makes others happy?
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Shortchanging yourself. Even though altruism doesn’t require that the altruist live a miserable life,
there doesn’t seem to be any clear reason why the altruist shouldn’t get an at least equal claim to
happiness as everyone else (as in a utilitarian approach). Also, some critics suspect that altruism can be a
way of escaping your own life: if you spend all your time volunteering, could it be that deep down you’re
not a good soul so much as just afraid of going out into the competitive world and trying to win a good
place for yourself?
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Altruism defines ethically good as any act that ends up increasing net happiness (or decreasing net
unhappiness) when everything is taken into account except the actor’s increased or diminished happiness.
Altruism doesn’t require living a miserable life.
Altruism intersects with the business world in various ways.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Theoretically, could the most devoted altruist in a society also be its richest and happiest member? How?
2. Does Blake Mycoskie have to be an altruist for TOMS Shoes to be considered an altruistic enterprise?
3. Does TOMS Shoes have to be an altruistic enterprise for Mycoskie to be considered an altruist?
4. What are some other motives that may lead someone to live the life of an altruist?
[1] TOMS Shoes, “One for One Movement,” accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.toms.com/our-movement.
[2] TOMS Shoes, accessed May 15, 2011,http://cdn2.tomsshoes.com/images/uploads/2006-oct-vogue .
[3] Sharon_b, December 14, 2008 (5:24 p.m.), “Blake Mycoskie—he’s handsome, rich and helps children in the
Third World,” Gossip Rocks, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.gossiprocks.com/forum/news/90958-blake-
mycoskie-hes-handsome-rich-helps-children-third-world.html.
[4] Lesley M. M. Blume, “You Are What You Wear,” Huffington Post, July 30, 2008, accessed May 15,
2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lesley-m-m-blume/you-are-what-you-wear_b_65967.html.
[5] “About Us,” College Board accessed May 15, 2011, http://about.collegeboard.org.
[6] “Our Mission,” Goodwill Industries International, Inc., accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.goodwill.org/about-
us/our-mission.
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3.4 Egoism: Just Me
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Define ethical egoism.
2. Show how egoism works in and with business.
3. Consider advantages and drawbacks of egoism.
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Ethical Egoism
Ethical egoism: whatever action serves my self-interest is also the morally right action. What’s good for
me in the sense that it gives me pleasure and happiness is also good in the sense that it’s the morally right
thing to do.
Ethical egoism mirrors altruism: If I’m an altruist, I believe that actions ought to heighten the happiness
of others in the world, and what happens to me is irrelevant. If I’m an egoist, I believe that actions ought
to heighten my happiness, and what happens to others is irrelevant.
Could someone like Blake Mycoskie—someone widely recognized as an altruistic, social-cause hero—
actually is an egoist? Yes. Consider things this way. Here’s a young guy and he’s out looking for money,
celebrity, good parties, and a jaw-dropping girlfriend. It wouldn’t be the first time there was a guy like
that.
Put yourself in his shoes and imagine you’re an ethical egoist: whatever’s good for you is good. Your
situation is pretty clear, your moral responsibility lists what you should be trying to get, and the only
question is how can I get it all?
That’s a tall order. Becoming a rock star would probably work, but there are a lot of people already out
there going for it that way. The same goes for becoming a famous actor. Sports are another possibility;
Mycoskie, in fact, made a run at pro tennis as a younger man, but like most who try, he couldn’t break into
the upper echelon. So there are paths that may work, but they’re hard ones, it’s a real fight for every step
forward.
If you’re smart—and Mycoskie obviously is—then you might look for a way to get what you want that
doesn’t force you to compete so brutally with so many others. Even better, maybe you’ll look for a way that
doesn’t present any competition at all, a brand new path to the wish list. The idea of a celebrity-driven
shoe company that makes a profit but that also makes its founder a star in the eyes of the Hollywood stars
is a pretty good strategy.
Obviously, no one can look deep into Mycoskie’s mind and determine exactly what drove him to found his
enterprise. He may be an altruist or an egoist or something else, but what’s important is to outline how
egoism can actually work in the world. It can work—though of course it doesn’t work this way every time—
just like TOMS Shoes.
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Egoism and Selfishness
When we hear the word egoist, an ugly profile typically comes to mind: self-centered, untrustworthy,
pitiless, and callous with respect to others. Some egoists really are like that, but they don’t have to be that
way. If you’re out to maximize your own happiness in the world, you might find that helping others is the
shortest and fastest path to what you want. This is a very important point. Egoists aren’t against other
people, they’re for themselves, and if helping others work for them, that’s what they’ll do. The case of
TOMS Shoes fits right here. The company improves the lives of many; it raises the level of happiness in
the world. And because it does that, the organization has had tremendous success, and because of that
success, the Blake Mycoskie we’re imagining as an egoist is getting what he wants: money, great parties,
and everyone loving him. In short, sometimes the best way to one’s own happiness is by helping others be
happier.
That’s not always the way it works. Bernie Madoff destroyed families, stole people’s last dimes, and lived
the high life all the way through. For an ethical egoist, the only blemish on his record is that he got caught.
Madoff did get caught, though, and this too needs to be factored into any consideration of egoists and how
they relate to others. Just as egoists may help others because that serves their own interests, so too they
may obey social customs and laws. It’s only important to note that they obey not out of deference to others
or because it’s the morally right thing to do; they play by the rules because it’s the smart thing to do. They
don’t want to end up rotting in jail.
A useful contrast can be drawn in this context between egoism and selfishness. Where egoism means
putting your welfare above others’, selfishness is the refusal to see beyond yourself. Selfishness is the
inability (or unwillingness) to recognize that there are others sharing the world, so it’s the selfish person,
finally, who’s callous and insensitive to the wants and needs of others. For egoists, on the other hand,
because working with others cooperatively can be an excellent way to satisfy their own desires, they may
not be at all selfish; they may be just the opposite.
Enlightened Egoism, Cause Egoism, and the Invisible Hand
Enlightened egoism is the conviction that benefitting others—acting to increase their happiness—can
serve the egoist’s self-interest just as much as the egoist’s acts directly in favor of him or herself. As
opposed to altruism, which claims that it’s our ethical responsibility to serve others, the enlightened
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egoist’s generosity is a rational strategy, not a moral imperative. We don’t help others because we ought
to: we help them because it can make sense when, ultimately, we only want to help ourselves.
One simple and generic manifestation of enlightened egoism is a social contract. For example, I agree not
to steal from you as long as you agree not to steal from me. It’s not that I don’t take your things because I
believe stealing is morally wrong; I leave you alone because it’s a good way to get you to leave me alone.
On a less dramatic level, all of us form mini social contracts all the time. Just think of leading a group of
people through one of those building exits that makes you cross two distinct banks of doors. If you’re first
out, you’ll hold the door for those coming after, but then expect someone to hold the next door for you.
Sure, some people hold the door because it’s good manners or something like that, but for most of us, if no
one else ever held a door open for us, pretty soon we’d stop doing them the favor. It’s a trivial thing, of
course, but in the real world people generally hold doors open for others because they’ve agreed to a social
contract: everyone else does it for me; I’ll do it for them. That’s enlightened egoism, and it frequently
works pretty well.
TOMS Shoes can be understood as a more sophisticated version of the same mentality. It’s hard to discern
exactly what the contract would look like if someone tried to write it down, but it’s not hard to see the
larger notion of enlightened egoism. Shoes are donated to others not because of a moral obligation but
because serving the interests of others helps Blake Mycoskie serve his own. As long as shoe buyers keep
holding up their end of the bargain by buying his product, Mycoskie will continue to help them be
generous and feel good about themselves by donating pairs to people who need them.
Cause egoism is similar to, but also distinct from, enlightened egoism. Enlightened egoism works from the
idea that helping others is a good way of helping me. Cause egoism works from the idea that giving
the appearance of helping others is a promising way to advance my own interests in business. As opposed
to the enlightened egoist who will admit that he is out for himself but happy to benefit others along the
way, the cause egoist claims to be mainly or only interested in benefiting others and then leverages that
good publicity to help him. Stated slightly differently, enlightened egoists respect others while pursuing
their own interests, while cause egoists just fake it.
Adam Smith (1723–90) is known for making a connected point on the level of broad economic trade and
capitalism. In the end, it usually doesn’t matter whether people actually care about the well-being of
others, Smith maintains, because there exists an invisible hand at work in the marketplace. It leads
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individuals who are trying to get rich to enrich their society as well, and that enrichment happens
regardless of whether serving the general welfare was part of the original plan. According to Smith, the
person in business generally
Intends only his own gain, but is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of
the original intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society and
does so more effectively than when he directly intends to promote it.
[1]
What’s the invisible hand? It’s the force of marketplace competition, which encourages or even requires
individuals who want to make money to make the lives of others better in the process.
The invisible hand is a central point defenders of egoism in business often make when talking about the
virtues of a me-first ethics. Egoism is good for me, but it frequently ends up being good for everyone else,
too. If that’s right, then even those who believe the utilitarian ideal of the general welfare should guide
business decisions may be forced to concede that we should all just become egoists.
Here’s a quick example. If you open a little takeout pizza shack near campus and your idea is to clear the
maximum amount of money possible to pay your tuition, what kind of business are you going to run?
Does it make sense to take a customer’s twelve dollars and then hand over an oily pie with cheap plastic
cheese and only three pepperonis? No, in the name of pursuing your own happiness, you’re going to try to
charge a bit less than Domino’s and give your customers something slightly better—maybe you’ll spread
richer cheese, or toss on a few extra pepperonis. Regardless, you’re not doing this for the reason an
altruist would; you’re not doing it because you sense an ethical obligation to make others’ lives better. As
an egoist, you don’t care whether your customers are happier or not. But if you want your business to
grow, you better care. And because you’re ethically required to help your business grow in order to make
tuition money and so make yourself happier, you’re going to end up improving the pizza-eating
experience at your school. Better food, less money. Everyone wins. We’re not talking Mother Teresa here,
but if ethical goodness is defined as more happiness for more people, then the pizza place is ethically
good. Further, anybody who wants to start up a successful pizza restaurant is, very likely, going to end up
doing good. If you don’t, if you can’t offer some advantage, then no one’s going to buy your slices.
Going beyond the quality-of-life benefits of businesses in society, Smith leaned toward a second claim
that’s far more controversial. He wrote that the entrepreneur trying to do well actually promotes society’s
well-being more effectively than when directly intending to promote it. This is startling. In essence, it’s
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the claim that for the most dedicated altruist the most effective strategy for life in business is…to act like
an egoist. Within the economic world at least, the best way for someone who cares only about the well-
being of others to implement that conviction is to go out and run a successful profit-making enterprise.
Clearly, this is a very powerful argument for defenders of ethical egoism. If it’s true that egoists beat
altruists at their own game (increasing the happiness of everyone else), then egoism wins the debate by
default; we should all become egoists. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to prove this claim one way or the
other. One thing is clear, however: Smith’s implicit criticism of do-gooders can be illustrated. Sometimes
individuals who decide to act for the good of others (instead of seeking profit for themselves) really do end
up making the world a worse place. Dr. Loretta Napoleoni has shown how attempts by Bono of U2 to help
the destitute in Africa have actually brought them more misery.
[2]
Bono threw a benefit concert and
dedicated the proceeds to Africa are most needy. The intention was good, but the plan wasn’t thought all
the way through and the money ended up getting diverted to warlords who used it to buy guns and bullets.
Still, the fact that some altruistic endeavors actually make things worse doesn’t mean they’re all doomed.
Just as surely as some fail, others succeed.
The same mixed success can be attributed to businesses acting only for their own welfare, only for profit.
If it’s true that the pizza sellers help improve campus life, what about the entrepreneurial honor student
who volunteers to write your term paper for a price? It’s hard to see how a pay-for-grades scheme benefits
students in general, even though the writer may make a tidy profit, and that one student who paid for the
work may come out pretty well.
The invisible hand is the belief that businesses out in the world trying to do well for themselves tend to do
good for others too. It may even be that they do more good than generous altruists. It’s hard to know for
sure, but it can be concluded that there’s a distance between ethical egoism in reality and the image of the
egoist as a ruthless destroyer of broad social happiness.
Some Rules of Egoism
Egoism, like altruism, is a consequentialist ethics: the ends justify the means. If an egoist were at the helm
of TOMS Shoes and he cared only about meeting beautiful people and making huge money, he’d have no
scruples about lying all day long. There’d be no problem with smiling and insisting that the reason TOMS
Shoes exists is to generate charitable shoe donations to the poor. All that matters for the egoist is that the
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lie works, that it serves the goal of making TOMS as attractive and profitable as possible. If it does, then
deviating from the truth becomes the ethically recommendable route to follow.
Personal egoism versus impersonal egoism distinguishes these two views: the personal egoist in the
business world does whatever’s necessary to maximize his or her own happiness. What others do,
however, is considered their business. The impersonal egoist believes everyone should get up in the
morning and do what’s best for themselves and without concern for the welfare of others.
An impersonal egoist may find comfort in the invisible hand argument that the best way for me to do right
with respect to society in general is to get rich. Of course it’s true that there’s something crude in
shameless money grubbing, but when you look at things with rational eyes, it is hard to avoid noticing
that the kinds of advances that make lives better—cars affordably produced on assembly lines; drugs from
Lipitor to Chap Stick; cell phones; spill-proof pens; whatever—often trace back to someone saying, “I want
to make some money for myself.”
Rational egoism versus psychological egoism distinguishes two reasons for being an ethical egoist. The
rational version stands on the idea that egoism makes sense. In the world as it is, and given a choice
between the many ethical orientations available, egoism is the most reasonable. The psychological egoist
believes that, for each of us, putting our own interests in front of everyone else isn’t a choice; it’s a reality.
We’re made that way. Maybe it’s something written into our genes or it’s part of the way our minds are
wired, but regardless, according to the psychological egoist, we all care about ourselves before anyone else
and at their expense if necessary.
Why would I rationally choose to be an egoist? Maybe because I figure that if I don’t look out for myself,
no one will. Or maybe I think almost everyone else is that way, too, so I better play along or I’m going to
get played. (The Mexicans have a pithy phrase of common wisdom for this, “O te chingas, o te chingan,”
which means “either you screw everyone else, or they’ll screw you.”) Maybe I believe that doing well for
myself helps me do well for others too. The list could be drawn out, but the point is that there are
numerous reasons why an intelligent person may accept ethical egoism as the way to go.
As for those who subscribe to the theory of psychological egoism, obviously there’s no end of examples in
business and history to support the idea that no matter how much we may want things to be otherwise,
the plain truth is we’re made to look out for number one. On the other hand, one problem for
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psychological egoists is that there do seem to be examples of people doing things that are irreconcilable
with the idea that we’re all only trying to make ourselves happier:
Parents sacrificing for children. Any mom or dad who works overtime at some grinding job for cash to pay
their children’s college tuition seems to be breaking the me-first rule. Here, the psychological egoist
responds that, when you really think about it, there may be something there for the parents after all: it
could be the pride in telling friends that their children are getting their degrees.
Mother Teresa or similar religious-based advocates for the needy. Anyone spending their time and energy
making things better for others, while living painfully modestly, seems like a good candidate to break the
rule of psychological egoism. Here, the psychological egoist responds that perhaps they see a different
reward for themselves than earthly pleasures. They may believe, for example, that their suffering on this
earth will be more than compensated by paradise in heaven.
The Four Relations between Egoism and Business
Structurally, there are four possible relations between ethical egoism and business life:
1. You can have egoists in egoist organizations. This is mercenary capitalism. Individuals do whatever work
is required so long as it benefits them to the maximum. Naturally, this kind of person might find a good
home at a company entirely dedicated to maximizing its own health and success, which can mean one
looking to maximize profits without other considerations. A good example is executives at the
Countrywide mortgage firm. They OK’ed thousands of mortgages to clients who had no way to repay the
money. Then they bundled and sold these mortgages to banks and other financial institutions, making a
quick profit. When the loans later collapsed, those institutions fell into bankruptcy. The Countrywide
executives quickly formed a new company to buy those same loans back at pennies on the dollar, thus
once again turning millions in profits.
[3]
2. You can have egoists in nonegoist organizations. Possibly, the CEO of the College Board fits into this
category. His salary of just under a million dollars annually sounds pretty good, especially when you
consider that he gets it working for a nonprofit company that exists to help high school students find the
college best fitted to them. It’s also possible that Blake Mycoskie of TOMS Shoes fits this profile: he lives
an extremely enviable life in the middle of a company set up to help people who almost no one envies.
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3. You can have nonegoists in egoist organizations. Somewhere in the Countrywide mortgage company we
could surely find someone who purchased shoes from TOMS because they wanted to participate in the
project of helping the rural poor in Argentina.
4. You can have nonegoists in nonegoist organizations. Think of the red kettle bell ringers popping up
outside malls around the holiday season.
Advocating and Challenging Ethical Egoism
The arguments for an egoistic ethics include the following:
Clarity and simplicity. Everybody understands what it means to look out for them first.
Practicality. Many ethical theories claim to protect our individual interests, but each of us knows
ourselves and our own interest’s best. So doesn’t it make sense that we as individuals take the lead?
Further, with respect to creating happiness for ourselves, there’s no one closer to the action than us. So,
again, doesn’t it make sense that each of us should be assigned that responsibility?
Sincerity. For those subscribing to psychological egoism, there’s a certain amount of honesty in this
ethics not found in others. If our real motive beneath everything else is to provide for our own happiness
first, then shouldn’t we just recognize and say that? It’s better to be sincere and admit that the reason we
don’t steal is so that others don’t steal from us instead of inventing some other explanations which sound
nice but are ultimately bogus.
Unintended consequences. In the business world, the concept of the invisible hand allows egoists to
claim that their actions end up actually helping others and may help them more than direct charity or
similar altruistic actions.
Finally, there’s a broad argument in favor of egoism that concerns dignity. If you’re out in the world being
altruistic, it’s natural to assume that those benefiting from your generosity will be grateful. Sometimes
they’re not, though. Sometimes the people we try to help repay us with spite and resentment. They do
because there’s something condescending about helping others; there’s a message wrapped up in the aid
that those who receive it are incapable of taking care of them and need someone superior to look out for
them. This is especially palpable in the case of panhandlers. If you drop a dollar into their hat, it’s hard to
not also send along the accusation that their existence is base and shameful (you refuse to look them in
the eye; you drop the money and hurry away). To the extent that’s right, an egoism that expects people to
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look out for themselves and spurns charity may actually be the best way to demonstrate respect for others
and to acknowledge their dignity.
Arguments against ethical egoism include the following:
Egoism isn’t ethics. The reason we have ethics is because there are so many people in the world and in
business who care only about themselves. The entire idea of ethics, the reasoning goes, is to set up some
rules for acting that rescue us from a cruel reality where everyone’s just looking out for number one.
Egoism ignores blatant wrongs. Stealing candy from a baby—or running a company selling crappy
baby food—strikes most of us as unacceptable, but the rules of egoism dictate that those are
recommendable actions as long as you can be assured that they’ll serve your interests.
Psychological egoism is not true. The idea that we have no choice but to pursue our own welfare
before anything else is demonstrated to be false millions of times every day; it’s wrong every time
someone makes an anonymous contribution to a cause or goes out of their way to help another without
expecting anything in return.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Egoism defines ethically good as any act that raises the actor’s overall happiness (or decreases
unhappiness) without counting anyone else’s increased or diminished happiness.
Egoism does not mean ignoring the existence and welfare of others, though they are not necessarily
advocated either.
Though egoists act in the name of their own happiness, others may benefit.
Egoism intersects with the business world in various ways.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. What’s the difference between egoism and selfishness?
2. In what situation would an egoist decide that a lie is morally wrong?
3. In the real world, is there any way to distinguish an enlightened egoist from a cause egoist?
4. What are some reasons someone may become a rational egoist?
5. What is the invisible hand?
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6. If you were starting a small business, would you prefer that your partner is a utilitarian, an altruist, or an
egoist? Why?
[1] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Strahan and Cadell,
1776), bk. 4, chap. 2.
[2] Can Tran, “Celebrities Raising Funds for Africa End Up Making Things ‘Worse,’” Ground Report, May 14, 2008,
accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.groundreport.com/World/Celebrities-Raising-Funds-For-Africa-End-Up-
Making/2861070.
[3] Eric Lipton, “Ex-Leaders of Countrywide Profit from Bad Loans,” New York Times, March 3, 2009, accessed May
15, 2011,http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04penny.html.
3.5 Case Studies
Cheaters
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KDCP is Karen Dillard’s company specialized in preparing students to ace the Scholastic Aptitude Test. At
least some of the paying students received a solid testing-day advantage: besides teaching the typical tips
and pointers, KDCP acquired stolen SAT tests and used them in their training sessions. It’s unclear how
many of the questions that students practiced on subsequently turned up on the SATs they took, but some
certainly did. The company that produces the SAT, the College Board, cried foul and took KDCP to court.
The lawsuit fell into the category of copyright infringement, but the real meat of the claim was that KDCP
helped kids cheat, they got caught, and now they should pay.
The College Board’s case was very strong. After KDCP accepted the cold reality that they were going to get
hammered, they agreed to a settlement offer from the College Board that included this provision: KDCP
would provide $400,000 worth of free SAT prep classes to high schoolers who couldn’t afford to pay the
bill themselves.
[1]
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Can you form a quick list of people who’d benefit because of this decision and others who’d end up on the
losing side? Then, considering the situation globally and from a utilitarian perspective, what would need to
be true for the settlement offer to be ethically recommendable?
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2. As for those receiving the course for free—it’s probably safe to assume that their happiness
increases. Something for nothing is good. But what about the students who still have to pay for
the course? Some may be gladdened to hear that more students get the opportunity, but others
will see things differently; they’ll focus on the fact that their parents are working and saving
money to pay for the course, while others get it for nothing. Some of those who paid probably
actually earned the money themselves at some disagreeable, minimum wage McJob. Maybe they
served popcorn in the movie theater to one of those others who later on applied and got a
hardship exemption.
o Starting from this frustration and unhappiness on the part of those who pay full price, can you
form a utilitarian case against the settlement’s free classes?
o From a utilitarian perspective, could the College Board have improved the settlement by adding
the stipulation that the settlement’s terms (and therefore the free classes) not be publicly
disclosed?
o Once word got out, could a utilitarian recommend that the College Board lie or that it release a
statement saying, “No free classes were part of the settlement”?
3. There was talk about canceling the scores of those students who took the SAT after benefitting from the
KDCP classes that offered access to the stolen exam booklets. The students and their parents protested
vigorously, pointing out that they’d simply signed up for test prep, just like students all across the nation.
They knew nothing about the theft and they presumably didn’t know they were practicing on questions
that might actually appear on their exam day. From the perspective of rule utilitarianism, what’s the case
for canceling their scores? From the perspective of act utilitarianism, what’s the case for reinstating the
scores?
4. The College Board CEO makes around $830,000 a year.
o What is a utilitarian case for radically lowering his salary?
o If you were a utilitarian and you had the chance—and you were sure you wouldn’t get caught—
would you steal the money from the guy’s bank account? Why or why not?
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5. It could be that part of what the College Board hoped to gain through this settlement requiring
free classes for the underprivileged was some positive publicity, some burnishing of their image as
the good guys, the socially responsible company, the ones who do the right thing.
o Outline the case for this being an act of an altruistic company.
o Outline the case for this being an act of an egoistic company.
UFC
Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) got off to a crushing start. In one of the earliest matches, Tank
Abbott, a six-footer weighing 280 pounds, faced John Matua, who was two inches taller and weighed a
whopping four hundred pounds. Their combat styles were as different as their sizes. Abbott called himself
a pit fighter. Matua was an expert in more refined techniques: he’d honed the skills of wrestling and
applying pressure holds. His skill—which was also a noble and ancient Hawaiian tradition—was the
martial art called Kuialua.
The evening went poorly for the artist. Abbott nailed him with two roundhouses before applying a skull-
cracking head butt. The match was only seconds old and Matua was down and so knocked out that his
eyes weren’t even closed, just glazed and staring absently at the ceiling. The rest of his body was
convulsing. The referee charged toward the defenseless fighter, but Abbott was closer and slammed an
elbow down on Matua’s pale face. Abbott tried to stand up and ram another, but the referee was now close
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enough to pull him away. As blood spurted everywhere and medics rushed to save the loser, Abbott stood
above Matua and ridiculed him for being fat.
[2]
The tape of Abbott’s brutal skills and pitiless attitude shot through the Internet. He became—briefly—
famous and omnipresent, even getting a guest appearance on the goofy, family-friendly sitcom Friends.
A US senator also saw the tape but reacted differently. Calling it barbaric and a human form of
cockfighting, he initiated a crusade to get the UFC banned. Media executives were pressured to not beam
the matches onto public TVs, and doctors were drafted to report that UFC fighters (like professional
boxers) would likely suffer long-term brain damage. In the heat of the offensive, even diehard advocates
agreed the sport might be a bit raw, and the UFC’s original motto—“There are no rules!”—got slightly
modified. Head butting, eye-gouging, and fish-hooking (sticking your finger into an opponent’s orifice and
ripping it open) were banned.
No matter what anyone thinks of UFC, it convincingly demonstrates that blood resembles sex. Both sell
and people like to watch. The proof is that today UFC events are among the most viewed in the world,
among the most profitable, and—this is the one part that hasn’t changed since the gritty beginning—
among the most brutal.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Two of the common arguments against ultimate fighting—and the two main reasons the US
senator argued to get the events banned—are the following:
o They’re brutal; UFC celebrates violence and hatred and injury, and therefore, it’s immoral.
o Besides the bumps, bruises, and broken bones—which usually heal up—the fighters also suffer
long-term and incurable brain damage. Therefore, the sport is immoral even though it might be
true that in their prime, the fighters make enough money to compensate the physical suffering
endured in the octagon.
How could a utilitarian defend the UFC against these two criticisms?
2. How could the concept of the utilitarian sacrifice apply to John Matua?
3. How would a hedonistic utilitarian’s reaction to UFC differ from an idealistic utilitarian’s reaction? Is there
anything at all in UFC that might convince an idealistic utilitarian to promote the sport as ethically
positive?
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4. How could a proponent of monetized utilitarianism begin portioning up the experiences of Abbott, Matua,
the UFC sponsors, and the spectators in order to construct a mathematical formula (like Ford did with the
Pinto) to decide whether UFC should be banned?
5. Think of UFC as a business, one compared to a biotech company that pioneers cutting-edge, life-saving
drugs. Now, how would a utilitarian decide which one of these two companies was the more ethically
respectable?
6. Why might an altruist sign up to be a UFC fighter? Why might an egoist sign up to be a UFC fighter?
Lottery
In her blog Majikthise, Lindsay Beyerstein writes, “State lotteries are often justified on the grounds that
they raise money for social programs, especially those that target the neediest members of society.
However, the poorest members of society tend to spend (and, by design lose) the most on lottery tickets.
Some state lottery proceeds fund programs that benefit everyone, not just the poor. Often state lottery
money is being systematically redistributed upward—from lotto players to suburban schools, for
example.”
[3]
Q U E S T I O N S
1. How is the lottery an example of the utilitarian monster?
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2. How can you set yourself up to argue in favor of or against the ethical existence of the lottery in terms of
monetized utilitarianism?
3. Lotteries are about money and about fun—that is, even for the losers, there’s a benefit in the thrill of
watching the numbers turn up. Could the case be made that, from a hedonistic utilitarian standpoint, the
lottery is ethically recommendable because it serves the welfare not only of the winner but also of the
millions of losers?
4. One of Lindsay Beyerstein’s concerns is that the lottery tends to redistribute money from the poor
toward the rich.
o Does a utilitarian necessarily consider this redistribution unethical?
o What kinds of things would a utilitarian have to look into to decide whether the inverse Robin
Hooding is necessarily a bad thing?
5. The lotteries under discussion here are run by states, and Lindsay Beyerstein is not a big fan. She calls
these lotteries “a tax on idiocy” meaning, presumably, that people are just throwing their money away
every time they buy a ticket. Now, one of the arguments in favor of egoism as an ethical stance is that no
one knows what makes each of us happy better than each of us. So, it follows, we should all just try to get
what we want and leave other people alone. How can this view of egoism be fashioned to respond to the
idea that the lottery is a tax on idiocy?
Honest Tea
Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea in 1998. He calls himself the Tea EO (as opposed to CEO) and his
original product was a bottled tea drink with no additives beyond a bit of sugar. Crisp and natural—that
was the product’s main selling point. It wasn’t the only selling point, though. The others aren’t in the
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bottle; they’re in the company making it. Honest Tea is a small enterprise composed of good people. As
the company website relates, “A commitment to social responsibility is central to Honest Tea’s identity
and purpose. The company strives for authenticity, integrity and purity, in our products and in the way we
do business…Honest Tea seeks to create honest relationships with our employees, suppliers, customers
and with the communities in which we do business.”
[4]
Buy Honest Tea, the message is, because the people behind it are trustworthy; they are the kind of
entrepreneurs you want to support.
The mission statement also relates that when Honest Tea gives business to suppliers, “we will attempt to
choose the option that better addresses the needs of economically disadvantaged communities.”
[5]
They’ll
give the business, for example, to the company in a poverty-stricken area because, they figure, those
people really need the jobs. Also, and to round out this socially concerned image, the company promotes
ecological (“sustainability”) concerns and fair trade practices: “Honest Tea is committed to the well-being
of the folks along the value chain who help bring our products to market. We seek out suppliers that
practice sustainable farming and demonstrate respect for individual workers and their families.”
[6]
Summing up, Honest Tea provides a natural product, helps the poor, treats people with respect, and saves
the planet. It’s a pretty striking corporate profile.
It’s also a profile that sells. It does because when you hand over your money for one of their bottles, you’re
confident that you’re not fattening the coffers of some money grubbing executive in a New York penthouse
who’d lace drinks with chemicals or anything else that served to raise profits. For many consumers, that’s
good to know.
Honest Tea started selling in Whole Foods and then spread all over, even to the White House fridges
because it’s a presidential favorite. Revenues are zooming up through the dozens of millions. In 2008, the
Coca-Cola Company bought a 40 percent share of Honest Tea for $43 million. It’s a rampantly successful
company.
Featured as part of a series in the Washington Post in 2009, the company’s founder, Seth Goldman, was
asked about his enterprise and his perspective on corporate philanthropy, meaning cash donations to
good causes. Goldman said, “Of course there’s nothing wrong with charity, but the best way for companies
to become good citizens is through the way they operate their business.” Here are two of his examples:
[7]
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Switching from Styrofoam to postconsumer waste might help a packaging company make a more
meaningful contribution to sustainability than a token donation to an environmental nonprofit.
Investing in a local production facility or even a community bank could help support a local economy
more effectively than a donation to a nearby jobs program.
Organizations in the economic world, Goldman believes, can do the most good by doing good themselves
as opposed to doing well (making money) and then outsourcing their generosity and social responsibility
by donating part of their profits to charities. That may be true, or it may not be, but it’s certain that
Goldman is quite good at making the case. He’s had a lot of practice since he’s outlined his ideas not just
in the Post but in as many papers and magazines as he can find. Honest Tea’s drinks are always featured
prominently in these flattering articles, which are especially complimentary when you consider that
Honest Tea doesn’t have to pay a penny for them.
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Make the case that Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea as an expression of his utilitarian ethics.
o What kinds of people are affected by the Honest Tea organization? Which groups might benefit
from Honest Tea and how? Which groups might not benefit?
o Would this be a hedonistic or idealistic utilitarianism? Why?
o Would it be possible to construe Honest Tea within a framework of monetized utilitarianism?
o Would this be a soft or hard utilitarianism?
2. Make the case that Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea as an expression of his ethical altruism.
o Altruists serve the welfare of others. How does Honest Tea serve people’s welfare?
o What would have to be true about Goldman in terms of his particular abilities and skills for this
enterprise to fall under the heading of altruism?
o Does Goldman sound more like a personal or an impersonal altruist?
3. Make the case that Seth Goldman founded Honest Tea as an expression of his ethical egoism.
o What are some of the benefits Goldman could derive from Honest Tea?
o Before running Honest Tea, Goldman was a big-time mutual fund manager. What kind of benefits
could Honest Tea have offered that he couldn’t find in the world of finance?
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o Does Goldman sound more like a personal or an impersonal egoist?
o In the real world, does it make any difference whether Goldman does enlightened egoism or
cause egoism?
4. In this case study, two kinds of drink manufacturers are contrasted: Honest Tea and the hypothetical drink
company run by some mercenary businessman lacing drinks with bad chemicals to maximize profits.
Looking at this contrast, how could a defender of egoism claim that the best way for healthy drinks to
make their way into the general public’s hands (in the medium and long term, anyway) is for
Goldman and the mercenary businessman and everyone else to all be egoists?
5. Assume that Seth Goldman is a cause egoist, someone faking concern for the general welfare in order to
provide for his own happiness and pleasure. How could the concept of the invisible hand be introduced to
make the claim that Goldman is actually doing more good for the general welfare than he would if he were
a utilitarian or even an altruist?
Your Business
Think about something you do with passion or expertise—a dish you like to cook and eat, a sport you play,
any unique skill or ability you’ve developed—and figure out a way to turn it into a small business. For
example, you like baking cookies, so you open a bake shop, or you like hockey and could imagine an
improved stick to invent and market.
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Q U E S T I O N S
1. If your business is like most others, you’re going to need some money to get it up and going, more money
than you’ve got right now. That means you’ll need to find a partner for your venture, someone to help you
get the cash together and then run things afterward. Would you prefer a utilitarian, an altruist, or an
egoist for your partner? Why?
2. Do you think the invisible hand would be in effect for your business? Just by trying to make money, do you
imagine you’d end up improving people’s lives? If this business works, is it even possible that you’d help
others more than you would by volunteering time for a charity organization? Elaborate.
3. Assume that doing well in society and not just doing well (making money) is important to you.
Within the business you have in mind, with which of these three options do you suspect you’d
accomplish more general good?
o Just making money and trusting the invisible hand to take care of the rest
o Making money and donating part of it to charity—that is, to people specialized in serving the
general welfare
o Attempting to do good within your business by, for example, buying recycled materials or by
paying wages slightly above what people could get for the same work at other companies
4. Is there a potential cause egoism angle to your business? Could you set it up to make it seem like
the reason you’re running your enterprise is to help others when really you’re just trying to make money?
For a consequentialist, is there anything wrong with that?
[1] missypie, April 29, 2008 (2:22 p.m.), “CB-Karen Dillard case settled-no cancelled scores,” College Confidential,
accessed May 15, 2011,http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/501843-cb-karen-dillard-case-settled-
no-cancelled-scores.html.
[2] David Plotz, “Fight Clubbed,” Slate, November 17, 1999, accessed May 15,
2011,http://www.slate.com/id/46344.
[3] Lindsay Beyerstein, “Lotteries as Regressive Taxes,” Majikthise (blog), January 23, 2006, accessed May 15,
2011,http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2006/01/lotteries_as_re.html.
[4] “Our Mission,” Honest, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.honesttea.com/mission/about/overview.
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[5] “Our Mission,” Honest, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.honesttea.com/mission/about/overview.
[6] “Our Mission,” Honest, accessed May 15, 2011,http://www.honesttea.com/mission/about/overview.
[7] “On Leadership: Seth Goldman,” Washington Post, accessed May 15,
2011,http://views.washingtonpost.com/leadership/panelists/2009/11/the-biggest-dollars.html.
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Chapter 4
Theories Responding to the Challenge of
Cultural
Relativism
Chapter Overview
Chapter 4 “Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism” examines some theories guiding
ethical decisions in business. It considers reactions to the possibility that there are no universal
definitions of right and wrong, only different customs that change from one society to
another.
4.1 What Is Cultural Relativism?
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
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1. Define cultural relativism.
2. Show how cultural relativism defies traditional ethics.
Nietzsche and the End of Traditional Ethics
“God is dead,” the declaration attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche, stands along with “I think, therefore I
am” (René Descartes, 1641) as philosophy’s most popularized—and parodied—phrases. The t-shirt
proclaiming “Nietzsche is dead, signed, God” is funny, but it doesn’t quite answer what Nietzsche was
saying in the late 1800s. What Nietzsche meant to launch was not only an assault on a certain religion but
also a suspicion of the idea that there’s one source of final justice for all reality. Nietzsche proposed that
different cultures and people each produce their own moral recommendations and prohibitions,
and
there’s no way to indisputably prove that one set is simply and universally preferable to another. The
suspicion that there’s no final appeal—and therefore the values and morality practiced by a community
can’t be dismissed as wrong or inferior to those practiced elsewhere—is called
cultural relativism.
Example: For most of us, the killing of a newborn would be among the most heinous of immoral acts; a
perpetrator would need to be purely evil or completely mad. The Inuit Eskimos, however, regularly
practiced female infanticide during their prehistory, and it was neither evil nor insane. Their brutal living
conditions required a population imbalance tipped toward hunters (males). Without that gender
selecting, the plain fact was the entire group faced starvation. At another place and time, Bernal
Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain recounts the Spanish invasion of the Americas and includes multiple
reports of newborns sacrificed in bloody ceremonies that made perfect sense to the locals, but left
Spaniards astonished and appalled. The ethics of infanticide, the point is, differ from one culture and time
to another. Further, these differences seem irreconcilable: it’s extremely difficult to see how we could
convince the Inuit of the past to adopt our morality or how they could convince us to adopt theirs. And if
that’s right, then maybe it no longer makes sense to talk about right and wrong in general terms as though
there’s a set of rules applying to everyone; instead, there are only rights and wrongs as defined within a
specific society.
Finally, if you accept the cultural relativist premise, then you’re rejecting the foundation of traditional
ethics. You’re rejecting the idea that if we think carefully and expertly enough, we’ll be able to formulate
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rules for action that everyone—people in all times, places, and communities—must obey if they want to
consider themselves ethically responsible.
Cultural Relativism in Business Ethics
In the world of international business, Entrepreneur magazine introduces the pitfalls of ethical variation
across cultures with this statement from Steve Veltkamp, president of Biz$hop, an American import-
export business: “Bribery is a common way of doing business in a lot of foreign places.”
[1]
If that’s true, then US businesses trying to expand into markets abroad—and competing with local
businesses already established there—are probably going to consider doing what everyone else is doing,
which means getting in on the bribery action. As the Entrepreneur article points out, however, this leads
to a problem: “While bribes are expected in many countries, the United States’ 1977 Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act prohibits payments made with the aim of gaining or maintaining business.”
So American hands are tied. If a construction company is bidding on the contract to build an airport in a
foreign nation, one where the local politicians will be expecting to get their palms greased, they’re at a
distinct disadvantage since they’re not allowed to play by the local rules. Still there is (as there almost
always is) a loophole: “Not all payments are prohibited by the act. Some payments are acceptable if they
don’t violate local laws. Gifts, for instance, to officers working for foreign corporations are legal.”
There’s no bribing, but gifting, apparently, gets a green light. There’s a problem here, too, however: “It can
be difficult to determine the difference between a gift and a bribe in a given situation. ‘If you give a gift to
someone and it leads to a business deal, is that a bribe or a gift?’ asks Veltkamp. ‘In some cultures, gift-
giving is an entrenched part of doing business. If you look at it in a certain sense, maybe it’s a bribe, since
they won’t talk to you until you’ve made that gesture.’”
Now what? Over there, cash changes hands and it’s called an acceptable gift, while those watching from
back here see an illegal bribe.
There are two ways of looking at this dilemma. One is to say, well, this has to be one or the other, either a
gift or a bribe; it has to be either moral or immoral. Given that, we need to take out our traditional tools—
our basic duties, the utilitarian doctrine that we should act to serve the greater good, and so on—and
figure out which it is. Nietzsche went the other way, though. He said that situations like this don’t show
that we need to use ethics to figure out which side is right; instead, the situation shows what moral
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rules really are: just a set of opinions that a group of people share and nothing more. In the United States
we believe it’s wrong to grease palms, and so it is. In some other places they believe it’s honorable to hand
money under the table, and so it is.
If that’s true, then specific convictions of right and wrong in business ethics will never be anything but
cultural fashions, beliefs some community somewhere decides to hold up for a while until they decide to
believe something else. Anything, the reasoning goes, may be morally good or bad in the economic world;
it just depends on where you happen to be, at what time, and who else is around.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Cultural relativism is the suspicion that values and morality are culture specific—they’re just what the
community believes and not the result of universal reason.
For cultural relativists, because all moral guidelines originate within specific cultures, there’s no way to
dismiss one set of rules as wrong or inferior to those developed in another culture.
R E V I E W
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Why do you imagine the term cultural relativism was chosen to mean what it does?
2. Do you believe cultures are irreconcilably different? Or is it that deep down people are people and we’re
really all the same? How does this distinction relate to the difference between cultural relativism and
traditional theories of ethics?
[1] Moira Allen, “Here Comes the Bribe,” Entrepreneur, October 2000, accessed May 12,
2011, http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2000/october/32636.html.
4.2 Nietzsche’s Eternal Return of the Same
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
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1. Define Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same.
2. Show how the idea of the eternal return provides guidance for professional life.
3. Consider the advantages and a drawback of the eternal return.
Responding to Cultural Relativism by Leaving Common Morality Behind
If, along with cultural relativists, you accept that rules distinguishing right from wrong shift around from
place to place and time to time, it becomes difficult to keep faith in morality. It’s difficult because verdicts
seem flimsy and impermanent, and because this hard question seems inescapable: Why should I go out of
my way to do the right thing today if what counts as the right thing might change tomorrow?
One response to the question is to give up on morality, disrespect the whole idea by labeling all
the
customary regulations—don’t lie, don’t steal, strive for the greatest good for the greatest number—a giant
sham. Then you can live without the inhibiting limits of moral codes. You can go beyond any idea of good
and evil and lead an unconstrained life exuberantly celebrating everything you want to do and be.
Wallace Souza: TV Reporter, Politician, and Dealer
Some careers are more vivid and alive than others. TV crime reporting is intense work, especially the
action-type shows where the reporter races to the scene, interviews witnesses, and tracks down shady
characters. Politics is another throbbing life; the adrenalin of crime chasing isn’t there, but you get the
brimming confidence and energy that comes with power, with deciding what others can and can’t do.
Drug dealing excites too, in its way, with thrilling danger and the pleasures of fast money. People, finally,
who want to live exuberantly, who prefer risk to caution and find it easy to say things like “you only go
around once” are probably going to find something attractive in these lines of work and may opt for one or
another.
Then there’s Wallace Souza. He opted for all three. At the same time. The most visible of his roles—TV
reporter—also yielded the most visible success. His program aired from the Brazilian state of Amazonas, a
jungley place far from cosmopolitan São Paulo and touristy Rio de Janeiro. Known as a haven for cocaine
cartels, and as a training ground for revolutionary militants charging into neighboring Columbia and
Venezuela, it’s a natural spot to bring cameras and look for dramatic action. A number of reporters were
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stationed in the region, but none seemed so uncannily skilled at reaching scenes first and getting video
over the airwaves than Mr. Souza. In fact, on occasion, he even reached scenes before the police.
The dogged TV reporting, along with Souza’s editorializing complaints about the region’s jaded criminals,
made him a popular hero and sealed his bid for a seat in the local congress. He didn’t allow his state
capital work to interfere with his TV role, however. Actually, the two jobs fit together well: one day he was
reporting on the deplorable free-for-all in the jungle and the next he was in the capital meeting with high-
ranking police officers, reviewing their strategies and proposing laws to fix things.
The perfect image began to crack, though, when it was revealed that the reason Souza so frequently
reached the best crime scenes first is that he was paying hit men to assassinate local drug dealers. He
wasn’t, it turned out, just the first to know about the crimes, he knew even before they happened. In an
especially brazen move, during one of his last TV programs, he put up pictures of several notorious
criminals and asked his viewers to phone in and votes on which one they’d like to see killed.
At this point, Souza seemed like an overzealous crusader: he was drawing vivid attention to the crime
plague and doing something about it with his hit men. You could doubt his methods, but his dedication to
his community’s welfare seemed noble—until it was revealed that he was actually also a major drug
dealer. And the criminals getting killed and shown on his program weren’t just random outlaws; they were
Souza’s drug-trade competitors.
[1]
What Is the Eternal Return of the Same?
One report on Souza’s exploits included the suggestion that his willingness to cross every moral line—to
lie, traffic drugs, order killings, whatever—fit him for the title of the Antichrist.
[2]
That title, as it turns out, was one Nietzsche enjoyed assigning to himself. It’s definitely also a fit for Souza
in the sense that he seemed to live without shame, fear, or regard for good and evil. What’s notable about
Souza’s business ventures is that they pay no heed to the very idea of morals. It’s not that they skirt some
rules or follow some guidelines while disobeying others; it’s not like he’s trying to get away with
something—it’s much more like morality doesn’t exist. Now, bringing this back to Nietzsche, who shared
the sentiments, the question Nietzsche asked himself was, if morality really is canceled, then what? How
should we live? The answer was a thought experiment called the eternal return of the same.
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Imagine, Nietzsche proposed, that every decision you make and everything you feel, say, and do will have
to be repeated forever—that is, at the end of your life, you die and are immediately reborn right back in
the same year and place where everything started the time before, and you do it all again in exactly the
same way. Existence becomes an infinite loop. With that disturbing idea established, Nietzsche converted
it into a proposal for life: we should always act as though the eternal return were real. Do, Nietzsche says,
what you would if you had to live with the choice over and over again
forever.
The eternal return, finally,
gives us a reason to do one thing and not another: it guides us in a world without morals.
How Does the Eternal Return Work?
Start with the eternal return as it could be applied to an altruist, to someone dedicating life to helping
others. One way to do altruism would be by working for a nonprofit international organization that goes
to poverty-wrecked places like Amazonas and helps coca farmers (the coca leaf is the base for cocaine)
shift their farms to less socially damaging crops. This would be difficult work. You might figure on doing it
though, getting through it, and feeling like you’ve done some good in the world. But would you do it
infinitely? Would you be willing to suffer through that existence once and again forever? Remember, the
world would never get better; every time you’d just go back to being born on earth just the way it was
before. Obviously, people can make their own decisions, but it seems fairly likely that under the condition
of the eternal return there’d be fewer people dedicating themselves—and sacrificing their own comfort
and interests—to social well-being.
What about some other lines of work? Would there be fewer snowplow operators, long-haul pilots,
teachers willing to work in troubled schools? What kind of professional lives, Nietzsche forces us to ask,
would be too hellish, bothersome, or exhausting to be repeated forever? Those lives, whatever they are,
get filtered by the eternal return; they get removed from consideration.
If certain careers and aspirations are out, then what’s in? What kind of existence in the economic world
does the eternal return recommend? One possibility is Wallace Souza. The question is, why
would his career trajectory fit the eternal return?
The job of a reporter is fast and dramatic, the kind of thing many imagine themselves doing if they weren’t
tied down by other commitments. People with children frequently feel an obligation to get into a safe and
conservative line of work, one producing a steady paycheck. Others feel a responsibility toward their aged
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parents and a corresponding obligation to not stray too far just in case something goes wrong. So trekking
off into the Brazilian jungle in search of drug operations may well be exciting—most of us would probably
concede that—but it’d be irreconcilable with many family responsibilities. One thing the eternal return
does, however, is seriously increase the burden of those responsibilities. When you sacrifice something
you want to do because of a sense of obligation, you may be able to swallow the loss once, but Nietzsche is
demanding that you take it down over and over again. Family responsibilities may count, but at what
point do you say “enough”? Can anyone oblige you to sacrifice doing what you really want
forever?
Taking the next step into Souza’s amoral but dramatic career, assuming you do decide to become a crime
reporter, and you’re inside the eternal return where everything will recur infinitely, then aren’t you going
to go about making your reporting work as exciting and successful as possible? Probably, yes. So why not
hire some hit men to fire things up a bit? Normally, of course, our moral compass tells us that killing
others to get ahead isn’t really an option. But with all morality canceled, it becomes an option, one just
like any other. Be a banker, be a reporter, be a killer, there’s no real difference. Just choose the one you’d
most like to do repeatedly without end.
Souza also chose to be a drug dealer. Again, this is one of those jobs many would find exciting and
satisfying. Thrills and easy money are attractive; that’s part of the reason Hollywood produces so
many
films about traffickers and their lives. Most of us wouldn’t actually do something like that, though, at least
partially because dealing drugs feels morally wrong. But inside the eternal return, that shame factor falls
away; when it does, the number of people entering this field of work might well increase.
It’s critical to note that Nietzsche’s eternal return is not the idea that you should go off and be a crime-
reporting, hit man–hiring drug dealer. Instead, Souza’s life just exemplifies one thing that could happen
in the world of your career if you accept Nietzsche’s proposal of living beyond any traditional moral limit.
Regardless, what the eternal return definitely does do is force you to make decisions about your
professional life in very different terms than those presented by traditional ethical theories. There’s no
consideration of sweeping duties; there’s just you and a simple decision: the life you choose now will be
repeated forever, so which will yours be?
What’s the Reward of Morality?
One of the strengths of Nietzsche’s idea is that it forces a very important question: Why should I want to
be morally responsible? Why should a salesman be honest when lying could win her a healthy
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commission? Why should a factory owner worry about pollution spewing from his plant when he lives in a
city five hundred miles away? Now, a full elaboration of this question would be handled in an airy
philosophy class, not an applied course in business ethics. Nietzsche, however, allows a taste
of the
discussion by puncturing one of the basic motivations many feel for being virtuous: the conviction
that there’ll be a reward later for doing the right thing today.
The certainty of this reward is a critical element of many religious beliefs: when you die, there’ll be a final
judgment and you’ll enjoy heaven or suffer punishment at the other extreme, depending on how you
behaved on earth. A similar logic underwrites Hinduism’s concept of reincarnation: the life you are born
into next will be determined by the way you live now. This discussion could be drawn out in more
directions, but no matter what, Nietzsche spoils the idea that you take the moral high road because you’ll
be repaid for it later. Within the eternal return, there is no later; all that ever happens is exactly
the same
thing again.
Advantages and a Drawback of the Eternal Return
One advantage of the eternal return is that it adds gravity to life. Forcing you to accept every decision you
make as one you’ll repeat forever is compelling you to take those decisions seriously, to think them
through. Another connected advantage of the eternal return is that it forces you to make your own
decisions. By getting rid of all guidelines proposed by ethics, and by making your reality the one that will
repeat forever, Nietzsche forces you to be whom you are.
The disadvantage of the eternal return is Wallace Souza. If everyone is just out there being themselves,
how are we going to live together? How can we make peaceful and harmonious societies when all anyone
ever thinks about is what’s best for themselves forever?
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
The eternal return is a thought experiment in which you imagine that the life you choose will repeat
forever.
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According to the eternal return, when faced with a dilemma in the business world—what career should I
choose, should I kill (or maybe just lie or cheat) to get ahead?—you should imagine living the decision over
and over again forever.
The eternal return maximizes individuality but does little to help individuals live together in a community.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. In your own words, what is the eternal return?
2. Why might the eternal return be considered a reasonable response to cultural relativism?
3. Write down some factors leading to a significant decision you’ve made. It could be about choosing a field
of study or a career path. Now, can you walk through each of the factors within the eternal return? Are
there any decisions you made that you’d take back and change?
4. If you knew the eternal return was true, could you still make the reasonable decision to choose an
altruistic profession? Why or
why not?
[1] Dom Phillips, “Brazil Crime Show Host ‘Used Murder to Boost Ratings,’” Times, August 13, 2009, accessed May
12, 2011,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6793072.ece.
[2] Danny Gallagher, “Brazilian Crime Show Host Kills for Ratings?,” TV Squad, August 14, 2009, accessed May 12,
2011, http://www.tvsquad.com/2009/08/14/brazilian-crime-show-host-kills-for-ratings.
4.3 Cultural Ethics
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
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1. Define cultural ethics.
2. Consider how cultural ethics works in the business world.
3. Examine the truth of cultural ethics.
4. Consider advantages and drawbacks of a culturist’s ethics.
What Is Cultural Ethics?
Culturists embrace the idea that moral doctrines are just the rules a community believes, and they accept
that there’s no way to prove one society’s values better than another. Culturists don’t, however, follow
Nietzsche in taking that as a reason to turn away from all traditional moral regulation; instead, it’s a
reason to accept and endorse whichever guidelines are currently in effect wherever you happen to be. The
old adage, “when in Rome, do as the Romans do,” isn’t too far from where we’re at here.
Gift or Bribe or Both?
The Entrepreneur magazine article posed a problem for Americans going overseas to do business. In
some places, passing money under the table is necessary to spark negotiations and win contracts.
However, bribery is illegal in the United States, and US law makes it illegal for Americans to do that kind
of thing abroad. Gifts, on the other hand, are allowed. But, according to the Entrepreneur article, it can be
difficult to determine the difference between a gift and a bribe. In some cultures, a gesture may be seen as
a gift, and in others it looks like a bribe.
Looking at this uncertainty, what a culturist sees is not ambiguity about whether handing the money over
to a potential client is a legal gift or an illegal bribe. That’s not it at all. A culturist sees it as both a gift and
a bribe. In one culture—a nation overseas where the payment is occurring and where similar payments
always occur when business is getting done—there are no moral qualms. It’s right to give a cash gift
because that’s the rule of the country; it’s the way things are commonly and properly done there. By
contrast, from the perspective of American business culture, the conclusion that’s drawn with equal force
is that it’s an immoral bribe because that’s what US customs and normal practices tell us.
Cultural Ethics and International Bribery
Culturists see moral rules as fixed onto specific societies, but that doesn’t help anyone know what to do
when confronted with an unfamiliar set of beliefs. How, the really important question is, does a
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culturist act when forced to make decisions in a place and among people whose beliefs are different and
unfamiliar? The Entrepreneur interview with Steve Veltkamp provides one answer.
What can you do if your overseas associate demands a bribe? Veltkamp doesn’t recommend
asking embassies or consulates for assistance, as “they have to stick to the official line.” Instead,
he believes “the best resource in almost every country of the world is the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, where you can find Americans who live in the country and understand how things
are done.”
[1]
Immediately you can see how different the culturist approach is to moral dilemmas. The message is: get in
touch with the locals and try to do as they would in the same
situation.
Most traditional ethical theories go in exactly the opposite direction. They say that it doesn’t necessarily
matter what people are actually doing. Stronger, the entire point of studying ethics has normally been
to escape conventional wisdom and ingrained habits; the idea of doing what we ought to do requires a
step away from those things and a cold, rational look at the situation. So, a morality based on duties sets
up guidelines including don’t lie, don’t steal and appeals to men and women in business to follow
them.
Acting in an ethically responsible way in the world means obeying the dictates and refusing to be swayed
by what the guy in the next cubicle is up to. Handing someone money under the table, consequently, while
publicly insisting that everything’s on the up and up can’t be condoned no matter what anyone else does;
it can’t be right because it entails at least implicit lying.
More specifically for the culturist, Entrepreneur advises overseas business people to avoid seeking
guidance from embassies or consulates because those people have to stick to “the official line.” What’s the
official line? Presumably, it’s the set of practices delineated and approved by the State Department back in
Washington, DC. The strength of these practices is that they’re formed to be universal, to work at every
embassy everywhere in the world. A culturist, however, looks at that and says it’s silly. There are no
practices that work everywhere in the world. The advice government bureaucrats give is worthless; it’s
less than worthless because it departs from the error of conceiving ethics as a set of rules fitting a
transnational reality. What people in business should actually do is get in contact with people who really
know something about ethics, and that requires turning to the locals, including the chamber of commerce,
because they’re on the scene.
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Conclusion. The culturist deals with the question about whether a bribe is ethically respectable by
ignoring all dictates received from other places and obeying the customs and standard practices of those
who live and work where the decision is being made.
Cultural Ethics and the News Reporting of Wallace Souza
Another example of how culturist ethics works comes from the flamboyant TV reporter Wallace Souza.
Like many action crime reporters the world over, he raced to violent scenes hoping to get the first and best
video. What counts, however, as good video in Brazil is different from what typically gets shown in the
United States. Here’s a description of what Souza sent over the airwaves: “In one of Mr. Souza’s shows on
his Canal Livre programme, a reporter approached a still-smoldering body in a forest. ‘It smells like a
barbecue,’ he says. ‘It is a man. It has the smell of burning meat. The impression is that it was in the early
hours…it was an execution.’”
[2]
This is not the kind of report we see in the US media, and one of the differences is the ethics. Typically in
the United States, a certain respect is accorded to the deceased, even if they’re criminals. It’s considered
an exploitation to directly show dead bodies, especially smoldering ones. There’s quite a bit of
cultural
analysis that would go into this prohibition, but simplifying, it’s not just that reporters hold an ethical
responsibility to others to not exploit their deaths graphically; they also have a responsibility to viewers to
not show images that may be (or probably would be) disturbing. By contrast, and as the Souza report
shows, in Brazil the rules are different and this kind of visual makes it over the airwaves without raising
eyebrows or triggering moral objections.
More generally, the question about what you’re allowed to show on TV to boost the ratings and so make
more money is an extremely rich area of examples for cultural ethics. How graphic is the violence allowed
to be on CSI Miami? How far is the wardrobe malfunction allowed to go on the Real Housewives of
Orange County? These kinds of basic questions about decency and ratings (which means advertising
revenue) seem tailor made for those who believe the answers don’t depend on anything more than what
people in a certain culture will accept. They seem cut out for those believing that the value we call decency
is nothing more (or less) than the line drawn between the number of people who will watch and the
number who turn the TV off in disgust.
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Is Culturalist Ethics True?
If it’s true that there’s no ethics but the kind a culturalist proposes, then this book loses a good deal of its
usefulness. It’s lost because the main object is to help readers form and justify rules to guide their
professional lives. Conceding that the culturalists are right, however, is also admitting that there’s no
reason to carefully analyze problems: you’re far better served just checking around to see what most other
people are doing in similar situations. Ethics isn’t a test of your ability to think reasonably and
independently; it’s more a responsibility to follow the crowd.
Culturalism isn’t true, however, at least not necessarily. You can see that in the reasoning underneath the
cultural approach. The reasoning starts with an observation:
In certain societies, handing money under the table is commonly considered an appropriate,
ethically respectable part of business activity, and in others it’s considered both illegal and
unethical.
And moves quickly to a conclusion:
Right and wrong in the business world is nothing more than what’s commonly considered right
and wrong in a specific community.
On the surface, this argument looks all right, but thinking it through carefully leads to the conclusion that
it’s not valid. A valid argument is one where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. For
example, if you start from the definition that all unmarried men are bachelors, and then you observe that
your friend John is an unmarried man, you can, in fact, conclude that he’s a bachelor. You must conclude
that. But that’s not the situation with the culturalist argument because the conclusion doesn’t necessarily
follow from the premise. Just because no broad international agreement has been reached about what
counts as bribery doesn’t mean no agreement will ever be reached. Or making the same point more
generally, just because no trans-cultural theory based on universal reason has yet to conquer all local
beliefs and habits everywhere on the globe doesn’t mean no such theory will ever accomplish that goal.
Taking the same situation in the less ambiguous world of the physical sciences, there was a time when
some believed the earth centered the sun and planets, while others believed the sun was at the center, but
that didn’t mean the dispute would linger forever. Eventually, tools were found to convince everyone that
one side was right. So too in business ethics: one day an enterprising ethicist may find a way to
indisputably prove on the grounds of a universal and reasonable argument that greasing palms is a bribe
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and not a gift, and it’s immoral, not moral. We don’t know if that will happen, but it might. Consequently,
the fact that we’re unsure now as to whether any single ethics can deal with the whole world doesn’t
require shooting to the other extreme and saying there’ll never be anything but what people
in specific
nations believe and that’s it. The culturalist argument, in other words, isn’t necessarily persuasive.
It is worrisome, though. And until someone can find a way to do for ethics what scientists did for the
question about the earth’s relation to the planets, there will always be individuals who suspect that no
such proof will ever come. Count Nietzsche among them. In the field of contemporary philosophy and
ethics, those who share the suspicion—those who doubt that no matter how hard we try we’ll never be able
to get beyond our basic cultural perspectives and disagreements—belong to a movement
named postmodernism.
What Are Some Advantages and Drawbacks of Culturalist Ethics?
One general advantage of a culturalist ethics is that it allows people to be respectful of others and their
culture. A deep component of any society’s existence, uniqueness, and dignity in the world is its signature
moral beliefs, what the people find right and wrong. A culturalist takes that identity seriously and
makes
no attempt to change or interfere. More, a culturalist explicitly acknowledges that there’s no way to
compare one culture against another as better and worse. Though you can describe differences, you can’t
say one set of moral truths is better than another because all moral truths are nothing more than what a
society chooses to believe.
A more specific advantage of a culturalist ethics in the economic and business world is that it adapts well
to contemporary reality. Over the last decades we’ve seen an explosion of international commerce, of large
corporations tearing loose from specific nations and functioning globally. This economic surge has
outpaced the corresponding understanding surge: we have no trouble switching dollars for euros or for
yen, and we can buy Heineken beer from Germany and ride in a Honda made in Japan, but few of us
speak English, German, and Japanese. In that kind of situation, one where some dilemmas in business
ethics end up involving people we can’t really talk to, culturalism provides a reasonable way to manage
uncertainties. When we’re in the United States, we follow American customs. If we’re sent on an overseas
trade venture to Germany or Japan, we pretty much do as they normally do there. Just in practical terms,
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that may well be the easiest way to work and succeed in the world, and a culturalist ethics allows a
coherent justification for the strategy.
The Disadvantages
The major disadvantage of a culturalist ethics is that it doesn’t leave any clear path to making things
better. If a community’s recommended ethical compass is just their customs and normal practices, then
it’s difficult to see how certain ingrained habits—say business bribery—can be picked up, examined, and
then rejected as unethical. In fact, there’s no reason why bribery should be examined at all. Since
moral
right and wrong is just what the locals do, it makes no sense to try to change anything.
This view stands in stark contrast with what we usually believe—or at least would like to believe—about
ethics: there can be progress; we can become better. In science, we know progress occurs all the time. Our
collective knowledge about the sun’s position relative to the planets went from wrong to right with time
and effort, and we’d like the same to happen for moral uncertainties. That’s why it’s so easy to imagine
that bribery is a dirty, third-world practice, and part of our responsibility as a wealthy and developed
nation is to lead the way in cleaning it up. We clean the moral world of bad business ethics just like our
scientists rid the physical world of misperceptions. More, that’s a central aim of America’s anti-bribery
legislation as it applies to overseas acts: it’s to cure other cultures of their bad habits. If you’re a
culturalist, however, then the bad habit isn’t bribery; it’s one nation trying to impose a morality on
another.
However you may come down on the question about whether nations should be trying to improve ethical
customs in other places, what’s inescapable is that if you’re a culturalist, you don’t have any ground to
stand on when it comes to criticizing the moral practices of businessmen and women in foreign countries.
You don’t because what’s going on elsewhere is an independent and legitimate ethical system and can’t be
judged inferior to our own.
Another problem with a culturalist ethics is that it provides few routes to resolving conflicts within a
society. For example, should I be allowed to go into business for myself on the land I bought in the middle
of a residential neighborhood by opening a motorcycle bar? In Houston, the answer’s yes. There’s a
community consensus there that owning a piece of land allows you to do (almost) whatever you want with
it. In legal terms, that translates into Houston being the only major American city without zoning
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regulations. Up the road in Dallas, however, there’s a similar community consensus that the rights of
landownership are curtailed by the rights of nearby landowners. The result is strict zoning laws likely
prohibiting Harley conventions in the middle of family neighborhoods. At this point, a culturalist has no
problem; people in Houston have their codes of right and wrong and people in Dallas have theirs.
What
happens, though, in Austin, Texas, which is about midway between Houston and Dallas? What if about
half the population believes in landowner rights at all costs and the other half goes for a more community-
oriented approach? A cultural ethics provides few tools for resolving the dispute beyond sitting and
waiting for one side or the other to take control of the town. This means ethics isn’t helping us solve
disagreements; it only arrives when, really, it’s no longer needed.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Proponents of cultural ethics embrace the idea that moral doctrines are just the rules, beliefs, and
customs of specific communities.
Doing the right thing within a culturalist framework relies less on traditional ethical reasoning and more on
detecting local habits.
The culturalist view of ethics is neither true nor false. It’s a reaction to the world as it is: a place with vastly
divergent sets of moral codes.
A culturalist ethics respects other societies and their practices but loses solid hope for ethical progress.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. If you’re doing business overseas as a cultural ethicist, why would it make sense to consult the local
chamber of commerce? Who else might you consult for moral guidance? Why?
2. You go abroad to win a contract and discover that a cash gift is necessary, so you hand it over and win the
business. On returning to the United States, you put the $200 gift on your expense report. The boss is
infuriated, calls your act an “unethical, wrongheaded bribe” and says she won’t reimburse you the $200.
What arguments could you use to convince her that you did the right thing and should be reimbursed?
3. Souza’s bloody TV program is popular in Brazil, especially the parts where he shows video of horridly dead
bodies. How could a culturalist argue that the episodes should not be shown on American TV?
4. A cultural ethics is neither true nor false. Explain.
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[1] Moira Allen, “Here Comes the Bribe,” Entrepreneur, October 2000, accessed May 12,
2011, http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2000/october/32636.html.
[2] Dom Phillips, “Brazil Crime Show Host ‘Used Murder to Boost Ratings,’” Times, August 13, 2009, accessed May
12, 2011,http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6793072.ece.
4.4 Virtue Theory
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
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1. Define virtue ethics.
2. Elaborate basic virtues and show how they work in business.
3. Indicate how virtue is acquired.
4. Note an advantage and drawback of the theory.
What Is Virtue Ethics?
Contemporary virtue ethics is an updated version of a theory first proposed in ancient Greece. Today’s
proponents acknowledge that it’s very difficult to set up a list of moral rules that are going to solve ethical
dilemmas across cultural lines. Typically, they don’t go quite so far as the culturalists; they don’t believe
that basic regulations of right and wrong are completely independent from one community to another. In
practical terms, however, there’s agreement that the world is too diverse and changing to be controlled by
lists of recommendations and prohibitions. So proponents of virtue suggest that we change the focus of
our moral investigations. Instead of trying to form specific rules for everyone to follow—don’t bribe, don’t
exploit the deceased on TV—they propose that we build virtuous character. The idea is that
people
who are good will do the good and right thing, regardless of the circumstances: whether they’re at home
or abroad, whether they’re trying to win new clients or making a decision about what kind of images are
appropriate for public TV.
In a vague sense, we all know what it means to have a virtuous character; we all know people who can be
counted upon to do the right thing. Think of a business situation where true character shines through. A
local TV station has seen advertising revenue plummet and layoffs have to be made. Who should go?
Should Jim get to stay because his wife just had their first child? Should Jane get to stay because she’s
fifty-seven and probably won’t be able to find another job? Should John—who’s a tireless worker and the
station’s best film editor—be laid off because he was hired only two months ago? It’s a hard choice and
there’s no way to know for sure what’s right. It is certain, however, that there are better and worse ways of
handling the situation.
One strategy is to not think too much about it, to just know that two employees have to go, so you take the
names that happen to come to mind, you send them an e-mail, and you instruct security to make sure
they’re escorted from the building. Then you go hide in the bathroom until they’re gone. In other words,
you weasel out. In the same situation, another person will draw up criteria for making the decision and
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will stand up and inform those who are being let go why the decision was made. The thoughts
(complaints, regrets, excuses) of those being released will be honored and heard attentively, but the
decision will stand. From the person in charge of deciding, there’ll be honesty, respect, and firmness. This
is virtue. You can’t read it in a book, you can’t memorize principles, and you can’t just follow some
precooked decision-making process. You have to have certain qualities as a person to do the right thing in
a hard situation.
Virtue ethics is the idea that we can and should instill those qualities in people and then let them go out
into the complex business world confident that they’ll face dilemmas well. What decisions will they make?
What will they do when faced with questions about who should be laid off or, in another case, whether to
hand over a bribe in a place where everyone is bribing? We don’t know. But we rely on their good
character to be confident they’ll do right.
Under this conception, these are the primary tasks of ethics:
Delineate what the virtues are.
Provide experience using the virtues.
The experience is especially important because virtue isn’t so much a natural characteristic like height or
hair color; it’s more of an acquired skill: something you need to work at, practice, and hone. Also, like
many acquired skills, doing it—once a certain level of mastery has been reached—is rewarding or
satisfying. Typically, a person driven by virtue has nurtured a moral instinct for acting in consonance with
the virtues. Doing right feels right. Conversely, not acting in consonance with the virtues is discomforting;
it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. At the risk of trivializing the subject, there’s a very limited comparison
that can be made between learning virtue and learning more rudimentary activities like golf or dancing.
When someone has acquired the skill, hitting a good shot or taking the right steps in perfect time feels
good. Conversely, missing a putt or stepping on your partner’s foot leaves you consternated.
What Are the Virtues and Vices?
Every advocate of virtue ethics will present a constellation of virtues that they believe captures the essence
of what needs to be acquired to be virtuous. Typically, there’ll also be a set of anti-virtues or vices to be
avoided to fill out the picture. Here’s a set of virtues overlapping with what most proponents will offer:
Wisdom (both theoretical and practical)
Fairness
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Courage
Temperance
Prudence
Sincerity
Civility
On the outer edges, here’s a common pair of vices to be avoided. Notice that what counts as a vice here
isn’t synonymous with the common use of the word, which implies a weakness of the physical body
manifested as the inability to resist drunkenness, drugs, and similar:
Cowardice
Insensibility
How Do the Virtues and Vices Work in a Business Environment?
Wisdom as a virtue is frequently divided into theoretical and practical variations. Theoretical wisdom is
what you get reading books and hearing college lectures. It’s the acquired ability to concentrate and
understand sentences like the one you’re reading now, even though it’s not very exciting and allows
almost no cheap thrills—words like sex and drugs don’t come up much. Those possessing theoretical
wisdom know the scholarly rules of the world in the abstract but not necessarily in practice. In the world
of business, for example, someone may be able to explain the fine points of Immanuel Kant’s complicated
and dense ethical ideas, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to apply the lessons when sitting in
someone’s office in a foreign country.
Practical wisdom (sometimes called prudence) is the learned ability to take a deep breath and respond to
situations thoughtfully. For example, everyone feels like exploding sometimes, especially at work after
you’ve had too much coffee and you didn’t get the raise you wanted. After that, some guy in a meeting
takes a cheap shot and jokes about how you didn’t win an overseas account because you didn’t bribe the
right person. What do you do? Scream the guy’s head off? Talk about it quietly after the meeting? Let it
pass like nothing happened? Practical wisdom doesn’t give an answer, but in the heat of the moment, it’s
the virtue of making the decision coolly, of doing something you won’t regret later. Frequently, an
association is set between practical wisdom and finding a spot between extremes. In this case, perhaps it
would be excessive to go off right there in the meeting room (because the outburst would tend to confirm
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that you’re not real smart), but it might also be excessive to let the jab go as though nothing had happened
(because the same guy may feel emboldened to keep poking at you). So practical wisdom would be the
ability to navigate a middle, prudent, route—perhaps one leading to the decision to discuss the matter
quietly but sternly after the meeting.
Fairness is the virtue of judging people’s acts dispassionately, evenhandedly, and from all points of view.
When forming judgments about a potential client who seems to be asking for a bribe, the verdict is going
to partially depend on where the client is. If he’s in the United States, that’s one thing; if he’s in a country
where clients customarily get cash under the table, that’s another. No one is saying the first is wrong and
the second right, but the different contexts need to be considered, and fairness is the ability to consider
them, to make evenhanded judgments even in very different
situations.
Courage is the virtue of moderate boldness. If you’re an action crime reporter, you won’t hide in a bush
while pushing your cameraman out into the open to try to get some exciting footage. You won’t, in other
words, be a coward. At the same time, you won’t be rash either, you’ll know that sometimes you need to
take a risk to get a good story, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to stand up and film from the middle of a
gunfight.
Temperance is the virtue of self-control with respect to pleasure, especially the pleasures of the body and
the senses. Curiously, Wallace Souza stands as an embodiment of this skill. As a major league drug dealer,
he no doubt had constant access to good, cheap, feel-good substances. Even so, he managed to control his
intake, not letting it interfere with his day job as a TV reporter, and his other day job as a legislator.
More generally in the workplace, temperance mixes well with the learned ability to delay gratification. For
example, doing good work is frequently rewarded with a better job, but it’s hard to find someone who feels
as though they get everything they deserve every time. Temperance enters here as the ability to bear down
and keep trying. It’s also, on the other side, the ability to know when a larger change (perhaps looking for
work at another company) may be necessary to get ahead.
Sincerity is the ability to reveal yourself to others with confidence that you’ll be respected. It fits
between
the extremes of frigidity and emoting. Souza or any TV reporter has to do more than just give cold facts;
some human, emotional component must be added to the mix. On the other hand, no one’s going to watch
a reporter who arrives at a crime scene, reports that he feels sad, and breaks down in tears. Similarly in
international business negotiations, to establish good contact across cultures, there has to be some
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sharing of humanity. You need to reveal what kind of food you like or something similar to the people on
the other side. You don’t want to go too far, though, and talk about how Japanese food reminds you of a
childhood vomiting episode (especially when doing business in Tokyo).
Civility is the virtue of showing consideration for others without humiliating yourself. As a virtue it
doesn’t mean eating with the right fork or remembering to say “thank you” to clients. Instead, it’s the
disposition to show others that you take them seriously while also respecting yourself. This means
establishing ground rules for behavior that are independent and neutral. In essence, the idea is, when
having lunch with your boss, you don’t eat like you’re sitting in front of the TV in your family room; you
respect her, and you expect the same from her. Civility is the virtue of habitually being and expressing
yourself in a way that establishes your presence solidly without threatening or impinging on others.
Vices
On the outside of the virtues, there are vices. Just as the accomplishment of a virtue—acting in harmony
with it—yields a sense of satisfaction and confidence that you’re living well, living a good life, so too the
vices produce a sensation of unease. It’s not exactly a sting of conscience (like a child feels when caught
stealing); it’s more a sense of weakness, deflation, and failure. Cowardice, for example, is a vice. It may
save your job if you mess up and don’t confess to the problem being your fault; but for the person trained
in virtue, the job will have lost its dignity. Insensibility is another vice. Had Souza understood that, he
may have thought twice about those people’s dead bodies he rolled out for television. He may have
thought of their living parents, their children. And even if he hadn’t, after he’d presented the images he
would’ve felt that he’d lapsed, that he hadn’t done as well as he could.
How Do I Become Virtuous?
Virtues aren’t a list of actions you can write on the back of your hand and refer to; they’re ways of living,
and the only route to becoming virtuous is to actually live those ways. Every society will have its own
institutions for instilling virtue, and within societies different institutions will seem more apt for some
than for others. In the United States, the kinds of groups that are sought out as instillers of virtue include
the family, churches, schools, sports teams, Boy and Girl Scouts, volunteer and community organizations,
the armed forces, AmeriCorps, and similar.
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Companies play a role, too. The virtuous organization will be led by individuals who are virtuous, and it
will reward workers—at least partially—based on their progress toward being good people. This kind of
organization won’t rely on employee handbooks and compliance rules to dictate behavior; instead, it will
devise strategies for nurturing the skills of a good life. They may include mentor programs, carefully
calibrated increases in responsibility and independence for employees, and job performance assessments
that not only measure numerical results but also try to gauge an individual’s moral contributions
to the
organization’s undertaking.
Finally, when confronted with moral questions—“What kind of images should I broadcast on my TV
report?” or “Should I hand money under the table?”—the answer won’t be yes or no. It’s never a yes or no;
it’s always to do what my good character dictates.
An Advantage and Drawback of Virtue Ethics
The principal advantage of virtue ethics is its flexibility, the confidence that those who are virtuous will be
equipped to manage unforeseeable moral dilemmas in unfamiliar circumstances. The principal drawback
is the lack of specificity: the theory doesn’t allow clear, yes-or-no responses to specific problems like
whether I should offer a bribe.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Virtue ethics concentrates on forming good character and then trusting people to do the right thing. At the
heart of ethics, the formation of good character replaces the defining of specific guidelines for action.
A society’s institutions play a key role in instilling virtue.
The basic virtues tend to stress moderation, the ability to avoid taking extreme action in the face of
dilemmas.
Virtue ethics grants flexibility insofar as those who are virtuous should manage any situation well.
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R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. Would you call Souza’s colorful professional life a profile of the virtue of courage? Why or why not?
2. How might the virtue of civility come forward in the case of international bribery, in the case that you’ve
gone abroad in pursuit of a contract and the prospective client demands some cash under the table?
3. What are some societal institutions you’ve come in contact with that could be understood as teaching
virtue? What virtue(s) do they instill, and how?
4.5 Discourse Ethics
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Define discourse ethics.
2. Show how discourse ethics can function in a business context.
3. Note an advantage and drawbacks to the theory.
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What Is Discourse Ethics?
Proponents of discourse ethics reverse the order in which we normally address ethical uncertainties.
Instead of starting with one theory or another and then taking it out into the world to solve problems, they
start with a problem and try to create a moral structure to solve it. Ethical solutions become ad hoc,
custom generated to resolve specific conflicts. It doesn’t matter so much, therefore, that people come to an
issue like bribery from divergent moral terrains because that difference is erased by the key element of
discourse ethics: a foundational decision to cut away from old ideas and make new ones.
How Does Discourse Ethics Work?
When a dilemma is faced, those involved gather and try to talk it out. The discussion is constrained by
two
basic limits: conversation must be reasonable and civil, and the goal is a peaceful and
consensual
resolution. As long as these ideals control what we say, we can call the result ethically respectable.
Take the dilemma of international bribery: you’ve left your home office in New Jersey and gone to
Somalia seeking to win construction business on a new airport. As the recent Transparency
International Corruption Perception Index shows,
[1]
you’re going to discover that its customary to pass
some cash to a prospective client before he’ll be willing to do serious business. Company policy, however,
prohibits bribes.
What do you do? If you’re playing by hometown, American rules, your responsibility to company policy
and to broad honesty and fairness requires you to walk away. But if you’re playing Somali rules where
greasing a palm seems fair and acceptable, your obligation to win contracts for the company that’s paying
your salary requires you to pass some cash. Discourse ethics comes in here with this: instead of trying to
impose one side’s convictions on the other, the effort will be to overcome the divide by constructing a new
and encompassing moral framework through common agreement. American rules and Somali rules are
both thrown out, and new ones get sought. Here are steps on the way:
1. Define the immediate stakeholders—that is, those who’re most affected by the dilemma and may be
gathered to resolve it. In this case, they include you and your client. Since your responsibilities to the
company are reported through your supervisor, she too could be included.
2. Establish a language for discussion. In the international world this is actually a real problem. Sensibilities
must be respected, and if you’re in Somalia, just assuming that everyone will speak English might be a
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step backward. On the other hand, you probably don’t speak Somali. This step then becomes a rehearsal
for the larger problem—just as you’re separated by moral codes, so too you’re separated by languages—
and you’re going to have to find a solution. You may choose a third language, you may hire an interpreter,
or maybe your client will be able to speak English. In any case, an agreement must be reached.
3. Establish the goal, which in discourse ethics is always the peaceful and consensual resolution to the
dilemma.
4. Define the problem. Here, it’s that when cash passes from you to the client, you feel like you’re handing
over an illegitimate bribe, but he feels like he’s receiving a typical and acceptable gift. This stage of the
process would require fairly lengthy elaborations by all those involved of exactly what they understand
their obligations and interests to be. Your supervisor would need to explain the company policy, why it
exists and how she’s responsible for upholding it. Your client might point out that his salary is quite low,
and the reason for that is simple: everyone accepts that his income will be supplemented by gifts. (Here,
he might sound something like a waitress in New York City explaining to a foreign diner that her salary is
absurdly small, but everyone expects there’ll be some tipping, and it’ll be more than two shiny quarters.)
You, finally, explain how you’re being stretched between two obligations: the one to respect company
policy and the other to do the job of winning contracts.
5. Propose solutions. Discourse ethics is open, a kind of ethical brainstorming: those involved offer
solutions, modify each other’s’ proposals, and try to discern whether a common ground can be mapped. In
this case, someone may propose that the prospective client offer substantial evidence that money is
expected and customary for someone in his position in Somalia. If the evidence can be produced, if it
shows that payments are nearly universal, and it shows about how much they normally are, then perhaps
all parties can be satisfied. Your supervisor, seeing that the amount actually forms part of a normal salary
and isn’t some extraordinary payment, may be able to reason that the money isn’t a bribe because it’s not
doing what bribes typically do, which is afford an unfair advantage. In this case, if everyone’s paying, then
no advantage will be had. It’s important to note here that the logic isn’t if everyone does it then it’s all
right, because discourse ethics doesn’t generalize like that. All conversations and solutions are about
getting agreement on this one case. So your supervisor feels like handing cash over isn’t a bribe any more
than tipping a waitress is. Your client, having received the money, will obviously be satisfied. You, finally,
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will be free to fulfill your professional obligation to win the client without sacrificing your obligation to
respect company policy and your obligation to yourself to work in a way that’s honest.
If this—or any—solution is reached, then discourse ethics will have done what it promised: open a way for
concerned parties to reach agreements alleviating conflicts. Whatever the agreement is, it’s an ethically
recommendable solution because the definition of what’s ethically recommendable is just agreements
reached through discussion.
An Advantage and Drawbacks to Discourse Ethics
The main advantage of discourse ethics is that the search for solutions opens the door all the way.
Everything’s on the table. That gives those involved just about the best hope possible for a resolution
benefitting everyone joined in the discussion.
There are two main drawbacks to discourse ethics. The first is that everything’s on the table. If what’s
morally acceptable can be as broad as anything a group agrees to, there’s the potential for ugly solutions.
On the face of it, the international bribery resolution—hand some money over because it’s not really a
bribe and it’s more like tipping a waiter—seems pretty harmless. But it doesn’t take much to see a
slippery slope developing. If this kind of gifting is OK in Somalia where salaries are low, then why not in
the United States too if it happens that a particular client has a low salary relative to others in that line of
work? Or why not every client because, really, pay in that line of work is substandard? This can go on and
on, and before you know it, the entire economy is corrupted. Obviously, that won’t necessarily happen,
but it could, and this is one of the reasons so many insist that any serious attempt to do ethics must begin
with some basic defining of inbounds and out-of-bounds, some dividing of right from wrong.
Discourse
ethics doesn’t do that.
The second drawback to discourse ethics is that for every ethical dilemma faced, you have to start over.
Since the entire idea is to clear the deck and make a new solution, anyone facing a significant number of
ethical dilemmas in their line of work is going to be constantly clearing the deck and beginning anew. Of
course there may be some components of past discussions that could be carried forward—what you
learned on the trip to Somalia may be helpful in Uzbekistan—but that doesn’t change the fact that the
ethical recommendation to start from zero and talk problems out is going to lead to a lot of talking.
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K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
Discourse ethics solves dilemmas by asking those involved to discuss the matter reasonably until they can
find a consensual and peaceful solution.
Discourse ethics allows tremendous latitude in the search for solutions to conflicts, but it risks allowing
solutions that many would consider unethical.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. A five-step process was discussed to chart the advance of discourse ethics. Summarize each of these steps
in your own words.
2. Describe a business situation where discourse ethics might work well. Why might it succeed?
3. Describe a business situation where discourse ethics might not work well. Why might it fail?
[1] “Corruption Perceptions Index 2009,” Transparency International, accessed May 12,
2011,http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2009/cpi_2009_table.
4.6 Ethics of Care
L E A R N I N G O B J E C T I V E S
1. Define the ethics of care.
2. Show how an ethics of care functions in a business context.
3. Note advantages and drawbacks to the theory.
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The Rules of an Ethics of Care
Sometimes advocated under the titles of community ethics or feminist ethics, an ethics of care switches
the focus of moral regulation from the individual to networks of social relationships. The basic question
isn’t about yourself; it’s not “What should I do?” Instead, it’s always about a larger us: “What should be
done to nurture the connections among those of us closest to each other?”
A quick example dilemma: There’s a flaming car wreck involving your sister and a Nobel Prize–winning
medical scientist, and you have the strength to rescue only one of the two. Which should you save? A strict
utilitarian—someone believing we should always act to bring the greatest good to the greatest number—
will go for the scientist. Saving him will likely produce future medical breakthroughs in turn saving many
others, which means the greater good will be served by dragging him out. But how many of us would
actually do that? Wouldn’t you go for your own sister before some scientist you’ve never met? And
wouldn’t most of the rest of us agree that we’d do the same thing? If the answer is yes, an ethics of
care
provides a way of understanding and justifying the impulse, which is, before anything else, to
protect
those bound to us.
There are three critical steps on the way to formalizing care as a coherent ethical orientation. Each is a
shift away from traditional ethics.
1. At the center of attention, independent actors are replaced by a web of interrelated individuals. (Ethics is
not about me and you; it’s about us.)
2. The impartial application of abstract principles is replaced by the maintenance and harmonizing of
human relationships. (Ethics is less about the fair imposition of rules and more about crafting social
integration.)
3. Tensions between the rights of individuals get replaced by conflicts of responsibility to others in
established relationships. (Ethical tensions aren’t my rights versus yours; it’s me being torn between those
I care for.)
In the international bribery example up to now, we’ve treated all those involved as anonymous
individuals: it hasn’t mattered whether or how long they’ve known each other. It’s only important to know
that there’s a supervisor X back at the US company headquarters, and there’s the person Y who’s gone
abroad to win a contract, and there’s the prospective client Z expecting a bribe. That’s it. Maybe the three
have never exchanged more than fifty words in a single conversation, or maybe they’re all cousins who
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meet for family blowouts every two months. We haven’t asked because it hasn’t mattered what their
personal relationships may be. That will have to change, however, within an ethics of care because there
are no anonymous, single individuals: everyone has a place—near or far, integral or accidental—within a
social network. For that reason, all morality resembles the car wreck. It’s charged with human
attachment, and because the ethics of care makes those attachments the center of deliberation, you have
to know how people are related to each other before beginning to know how they should treat each other.
Turning this perspective toward the bribery example, the overseas client, let’s say, is an old and loyal
client of the company, and also one who’s always gotten a little extra from one or another employee.
About the company, it’s not an anonymous multinational but a medium-sized, extended-family concern.
Brothers, uncles, nieces and nephews, and a hodgepodge of others all work there. For years, it can be
added, this overseas contract has been vital to the company’s success. Now all this counts for something
within an ethics of care. As opposed to the traditional idea that the best moral lessons show us how to
coldly, impersonally, and impartially apply abstract rules, here we’re checking to see who’s involved,
because the reason we have morality is to vitalize our human
relationships.
An ethics geared to strengthen bonds isn’t necessarily easy to enact. Take a company like Oil-Dri, about
which Forbes recounts,
Oil-Dri now makes about $240 million a year in revenues. At the company’s 50th anniversary
party, the CEO asked anyone related to anyone else at the organization to stand up. Of the
company’s 700 or so employees, almost 500 rose.
[1]
This is obviously an organization where relationships matter and where management is accounting for
human concerns and networks when hiring people. No doubt there’s a lot of camaraderie in this
workplace, but imagines how difficult it must be to dole out promotions when everyone knows
everyone
else in that personal, almost familial way. Within a more traditional ethics, one of the first steps to making
a promotion decision is to clear away all the personal stuff before evaluating each employee directly and
simply assess his or her professional merits. Within an ethics of care, however, any promotion decision—
more or less any decision at all, for that matter—is going to require the subtle, complex, and difficult
balancing of many individual and highly emotional situations and circumstances.
Something similar happens within typical families. Most parents trot out the idea of treating all their
children identically—they all get their first car at the same age and so on—but if a sibling has special
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problems at one stage of their development, they’ll normally get special treatment in the name of
preserving the family unit. The other brothers and sisters probably complain, but if they’re old enough
they understand that protecting those who are vulnerable is one of the first imperatives of caring for each
other as a group. An ethics of care in essence takes that model from the family and extends it out into the
world of business. Applying it to the promotion question, if there’s a member of Oil-Dri saddled by, let’s
say, a difficulty with alcohol, then that might actually be a positive consideration within care-based
thought. Promoting someone who has had problems and reinforcing their attempt to get past them may
serve the general harmony of the entire group. As a result, someone who’s less qualified in purely
professional terms may get the promotion in the name of caring for the social web.
How Might the Case of International Bribery Be Managed within an
Ethics of
Care?
Traditionally, ethics features questions about the competing rights of individuals. For example, when I
offer a bribe, am I impinging on the right of another to compete on a level playing field for the same
business? Starting from an ethics of care poses a different question: does giving a bribe reinforce or
weaken the bonds of human relationships defining my place in the world? The answer, obviously,
depends. If the company is Oil-Dri where everyone’s deeply connected, and it’s an old client, and a little
gift of cash has always been slid under the table, then the maintenance of that network’s vitality and
human health becomes a powerful argument in favor of continuing the practice.
Keeping the wheels turning isn’t the only solution, however. Discomfort with doing something that seems
underhanded may lead the overseas representative to try a different way of keeping the contract going,
one that’s based less on money under the table and more on aboveboard selling points. Quality of service
as proven by work performed in previous years may offer a way to keep the business and personal link
intact. There may be, in other words, a less controversial route to the same end of maintaining and
enforcing existing relationships.
Alternatively, a different client, one not demanding a bribe, may be sought to purchase the company’s
goods and services. Nothing in an ethics of care requires those participating to preserve every bond.
Sometimes it happens in families that a member becomes so toxic and damaging to the rest that the
connection needs to be severed in the name of maintaining the larger whole. The overseas bribery
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relationship may be one of those cases. It’s hard, of course, to break away, but there are other potential
clients out in the world and going after them may, in the final analysis, do more for the social health of the
core group than clinging to a problem at all costs.
Finally, enrolling in an ethics of care doesn’t mean going blind to what’s going on outside the circle of
care. One fact from the larger world that should be taken account of comes from a recent article in
the Washington Post about foreign business bribes: prosecutions of international bribery by the US
government are picking up.
[2]
Ethical concerns should normally be distinguished from legal
considerations, but there’s no doubt that few events interrupt human relationships like a jail term. Cutting
the bribery relationship, therefore, may be necessary regardless of how important the particular client and
business are for the larger whole.
Conclusion. The activation of an ethics of care may justify continuing to pay money under the table. Or it
may lead toward a less controversial way of maintaining the business relationship. Or it may cause a break
between the company offering services and the overseas client demanding a bribe. There’s no way to know
for sure which path will be the right one, but in every case the choice will be made in the name of
preserving and nurturing the human relationships surrounding the decision.
Advantages and Drawbacks of an Ethics of Care
The advantages of a care-based ethics include the following:
It can cohere with what we actually do and think we ought to do, at least in cases like the car accident
cited at this section’s beginning. In a certain sense, it corresponds with our natural instincts to act in favor
of and protect those under our care and those involved in our lives.
It humanizes ethics by centering thought on real people instead of cold rules. Presumably, everyone
agrees that ethics is ultimately about people: unlike the hard sciences, the end results of morality are
tallied in human lives. To the extent that’s right, an emphasis on care seems well suited to the general
practice of ethics.
It allows us to focus our energy and concern on those who are closest to us. Everyone knows that there’s
injustice in the world, just as we all know we can’t solve every problem. The ethics of care allows us to
focus our energy naturally on the most immediate human needs.
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The main disadvantage of an ethics of care is that it threatens to devolve into tribalism: There’s my group,
and I take care of them. As for all the rest of you, you’re in your groups and in charge of yourselves. This
isn’t every man for himself, but it comes close to every social group for itself.
K E Y T A K E A W A Y S
An ethics of care makes the nurturing of our immediate communities and the protecting of those closest
to us the highest moral obligation.
In business, an ethics of care asks us to review decisions not in terms of hard rules but in terms of how
they will affect the people with whom we share our lives.
An ethics of care humanizes moral decisions, but it threatens tribalism.
R E V I E W Q U E S T I O N S
1. What are the three major steps an ethics of care takes away from most traditional theories? Can you put
each one in your own words?
2. An ethics of care is frequently compared to the morality guiding a family. Can you think of another
comparison that encapsulates how this ethics works?
3. Imagine that you had two parents and a sister working for Oil-Dri in the United States. The overseas client
you’ve been sent to do business with is a half-brother from your father’s first marriage. He demands a
bribe. How could the ethics of care be used to justify accepting or refusing?
[1] Klaus Kneale, “Is Nepotism So Bad?,” Forbes, June 20, 2009, accessed May 12,
2011,http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/19/ceo-executive-hiring-ceonewtork-leadership-nepotism.html.
[2] Carrie Johnson, “U.S. Sends a Message by Stepping Up Crackdown on Foreign Business Bribes,” Washington
Post, February 8, 2010, accessed May 12, 2011,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2010/02/07/AR2010020702506.html.
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4.7 The Cheat Sheet: Rules of Thumb in Applied Ethics
The following tables summarize the theories considered in this textbook. The first includes the
traditional theories and the second encapsulates the contemporary theories built to respond to
cultural relativism.
Table 4.1 The Traditional Theories
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Name
Guidance
for ethical
action
Focus of our
efforts
Typical
questions
asked in
the effort
to
fulfill
obligations
Conception
of the
person
implied by
the theory
Strengths and
weaknesses Type of theory
Duty
Learn the
basic duties
to ourselves
and others,
and obey
them. The duties.
To whom do
I have
obligations?
What are the
obligations?
How do the
obligations
weigh
against each
other?
We are
rational
actors.
Gives clear
guidance in
many
situations but
is inflexible in
the face of
special cases.
Non-
consequentialist
Fairness
Treat
people
identically
unless they
differ in
ways
relevant to
the
situation.
(Treat
equals
equally and
un-equals
unequally.)
Resist
prejudice and
personal
feelings.
Does
everyone
get an
equal
chance? (If
they don’t,
how are
the
differences
justified?)
We are
rational
actors.
Promises
egalitarianism,
but can be
difficult to
implement in
complex
reality.
Non-
consequentialist
Kant
Learn the
basic duties
to ourselves
and others,
and obey
The categorical
imperative in
two
articulations:
actions must
Is the act
I’m
considering
We are
rational
actors.
Gives clear
guidance in
many
situations but
is inflexible,
Non-
consequentialist
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Name
Guidance
for ethical
action
Focus of our
efforts
Typical
questions
asked in
the effort
to fulfill
obligations
Conception
of the
person
implied by
the theory
Strengths and
weaknesses Type of theory
them. be
universalizable
and treat
others as ends
and never as
means.
universaliza
ble?
Am I being
careful not
to treat
others as
means to an
end?
especially in
the face of
special cases.
Rights theory
Maximize
freedom.
Learn the
individual’s
basic rights,
live them, and
respect others’
right to live
them.
Does doing
what I want
impinge on
the basic
freedoms
of others?
We are
distinguished
by the
possession of
dignity.
Allows
individuality,
but does little
to resolve
conflicts
between
individuals.
Non-
consequentialist
Egoism
Increase my
well-being
and
happiness.
Learn about
my desires and
welfare, and
serve them
What
makes me
happy over
the long
term? How
can I get
that?
We are
driven
toward
pleasure and
away from
pain.
Good for me in
the short term,
but might not
help us live
together as a
society. Consequentialist
Altruism
Increase the
well-being
and
happiness
of others.
Learn about
others’ desires
and welfare,
and serve
them.
What
makes
others
happy over
the long
term? How
can I help
We are
driven
toward
pleasure and
away from
pain.
Others benefit,
but it may be
difficult to
justify
devaluing
yourself. Consequentialist
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Name
Guidance
for ethical
action
Focus of our
efforts
Typical
questions
asked in
the effort
to fulfill
obligations
Conception
of the
person
implied by
the theory
Strengths and
weaknesses Type of theory
them get
that?
Utilitarianism
Increase the
well-being
and
happiness
of everyone
collectively.
Learn about
the desires and
welfare of
everyone,
understood as
an aggregate,
and serve
them.
What
brings the
greatest
happiness
and good
to the
greatest
number
over the
long term?
How can I
help us get
that?
We are
driven
toward
pleasure and
away from
pain.
The general
welfare is
served, but
injustices at
the individual
level may
persist. Consequentialist
Table 4.2 The Contemporary Theories Responding to Cultural Relativism
Guidance for
ethical action
Focus of our
efforts
Typical
questions asked
in the effort to
fulfill
obligations
Strengths and
weaknesses
Reaction to
cultural
relativism
Eternal
Be myself.
Think through Would I do this if Maximizes individual Abandons
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Guidance for
ethical action
Focus of our
efforts
Typical
questions asked
in the effort to
fulfill
obligations
Strengths and
weaknesses
Reaction to
cultural
relativism
return of
the same
the eternal
return.
it had to be
repeated in the
same life, which
recurred
forever?
authenticity but
provides no specific
recommendations for
action.
morality
altogether.
Cultural
ethics
Follow local
customs and
practices.
Learn local
customs and
practices.
What do the
locals do?
Helps you fit in but
allows little hope for
ethical improvement.
Accepts the
proposal that
moral rules are
just a particular
community’s
beliefs.
Virtue
ethics
Develop good
moral
character.
Learn and
practice the
virtues.
Am I acting with
integrity and in
accordance with
values learned?
Allows flexibility but
provides little specific
guidance.
Tries to protect
against cultural
relativism by
developing an
adoptable but
consistently
moral character.
Discourse
ethics
Produce
solutions to
moral
dilemmas.
Talk it out: use
rational
conversation to
reach a
peaceful,
consensual
agreement.
What do you
think? How
about this
possibility?
Provides a broad
range of possible
solutions but every
conflict must be
addressed from
scratch.
Replaces a
culture’s moral
rules with the
attempt to
fabricate new
rules to function
in specific
situations.
Ethics of
care
Nurture and
protect
immediate
relationships.
Respond to the
needs of those
nearest us.
Which solution
preserves
healthy and
harmonious
relationships
among those
Humanizes morality
but risks tribalism.
Replaces a
culture’s moral
rules with loyalty
to those whose
lives touch our
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Guidance for
ethical action
Focus of our
efforts
Typical
questions asked
in the effort to
fulfill
obligations
Strengths and
weaknesses
Reaction to
cultural
relativism
involved? own.
4.8 Case Studies
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I Wouldn’t Change a Thing
Tamica Tanksley graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2000. About a decade later she
worked her way into an important role in the office of Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Hughes: she’s
co-director of his community affairs outreach and efforts. Though not a celebrity or mightily important in
politics, what she’s done with her life up to now earned her a brief write-up and a chance to answer a few
interview questions in Temple’s Internet Alumni magazine.
[1]
She describes her job responsibilities as linking the senator with “community leaders, educators, religious
organizations, constituents and various institutions within the public and private sector.” It all comes
naturally to her. As she puts it, “I didn’t choose politics, politics chose me. And if I had to do it all over
again, I wouldn’t change a thing…Working in the government sector where my daily responsibilities
afford me the opportunity to empower and inspire everyday people is a career that ignites my passion for
people.”
It’s not just heavy, public service trudging, though; Tanksley also finds the job “fun” because it allows her
“creative juices to flow into a sea of possibilities,” and in a different part of the interview she calls the
work, in a sense, victorious: “As a citizen and voter, I’ve learned that this game of life is not won by
standing on the sidelines. In order to provoke change and improve the quality of life for everyone, we
must get into the game because victories are won on the field.”
How’d she get the job? The way a lot of people start off in politics, by serving in that same office as a
volunteer worker.
Ima
ge
r
em
ove
d d
ue
to
cop
yrig
ht
issu
es.
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Finally, since it’s a Temple University website, the interviewer tries to get in a plug for the school and
succeeds with this memory Tanksley produces of Dr. Jean Brody’s public relations course and the prof’s
infamous (at least on the Temple campus) red pen: “While I was often saddened by my white paper being
flooded by red pen marks, I quickly learned that Dr. Brody and her red pen refined the best in me. With
each passing assignment, the red marks lessened and my knowledge and experience increased. Moreover,
it was the red that encouraged me to do my best work, which has ultimately contributed to the dedicated
worker I am today.”
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Tanksley reports about her young life up to this point that “if I had to do it all over again, I
wouldn’t change a thing.” Can you use this as a point of departure for
o defining Nietzsche’s eternal return and showing how it works?
o characterizing Tanksley’s professional life as one fit for approval by Nietzsche’s eternal return?
2. The values guiding Wallace Souza’s work as a news reporter in remote Brazil—especially the kinds of
images judged appropriate for TV there—are quite different from those guiding TV reporting in the United
States. Why does Nietzsche believe this kind of cultural clash is a reason to subscribe to the eternal return
and simultaneously abandon traditional ethical theories, which attempt to pertain universally?
3. Tanksley reports about her young life up to this point that “working in the government sector where my
daily responsibilities afford me the opportunity to empower and inspire everyday people is a career that
ignites my passion for people.” How might an advocate of the eternal return respond to this sentiment?
Explain.
4. Whose life seems more in tune with how you imagine yourself living the eternal return, Souza’s or
Tanksley’s? Why?
5. For virtue ethics, knowing what to do with your life—responding to its problems, choosing goals
to reach for—isn’t something you can just figure out no matter how intelligent you may be or how
many ethics classes you’ve taken. To succeed, you also need a good society, one that does two
things:
o Teaches the virtues through its institutions
o Provides a way to practice using the virtues
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How could Dr. Jean Brody be considered a teacher of virtue? What particular virtues did she teach
Tanksley, and how did she provide a way to practice using them?
Mordidas
In Mexico City, police salaries are extremely low. They live decently enough, though, by adding bribes
(mordidas in Spanish) to their wages. During a typical week they pull in bribe money that more or less
equals their monthly salary. All the locals know how it works, especially when it comes to the most avid
collectors, the traffic cops. In the standard procedure, the officer pulls a car over, takes out his codebook,
walks up, and hands it to the driver. Ostensibly, he’s allowing confirmation that the law actually prohibits
whatever was done. This is what actually happens: the driver slips about fifty pesos (a little under five
dollars) into the book, closes it, hands it back, and is free to go.
[2]
The practice is so routine that frequently
the procedure is abbreviated and participants don’t even bother trying to hide the payoff or going through
the codebook pantomime. They may approach the officer’s patrol car and directly drop the money onto
the guy’s lap.
[3]
Or they may stay in their own car and just hand cash out to be directly
pocketed.
[4]
Regardless, the transaction is smooth and efficient.
Despite the bribery’s efficiency and its penetration to society’s core, not everyone in Mexico City is happy
with the constant mordidas. According to a story in the city’s largest circulation daily, a mayor in one of
the suburbs decided to take a lonely stand against the informal police action. Since all the police are in on
Im
age
re
mo
ved
du
e t
o c
op
yri
gh
t is
sue
s.
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it, he couldn’t resort to an Untouchables-styled internal affairs operation. And since all the citizens
considered the payoffs perfectly normal, he couldn’t appeal to them for help either. Really, he was left
with only one choice. To interrupt the habit, he made traffic tickets illegal. His suburb became a free
driving zone where anybody could do whatever they wanted in their car and the police couldn’t respond. A
lot happened after that, but there’s no doubt that the payoffs stopped.
[5]
Q U E S T I O N S
1. About the bribery in Mexico City, not only is it the way things have been done as long as anyone
can remember, but the process actually makes a lot of sense; it’s even very economically efficient
because the middlemen are being cut out. Instead of having to pay an administrative staff to
process traffic tickets, then accept deposits into the city’s account, and then redistribute the
money back out as part of police salaries, here the money goes straight into the officer’s pocket.
o What is cultural relativism, and how does the vision of ethics associated with it diverge from the
traditional ethical theories?
o The Mexico City process of getting and paying off a traffic ticket is different from the US process.
What values and advantages can be associated with the process in Mexico City? How can it be
justified in ethical terms?
o The Mexico City process of getting and paying off a traffic ticket is different from the US process.
What values and advantages can be associated with the process in the United States? How can it
be justified in ethical terms?
o The Mexico City process of getting and paying off a traffic ticket is different from the US process.
How can that difference be converted into an argument in favor of the idea that cultural relativism
is the right way to look at things? Does the argument convince you? Why or why not?
o Your company, FedEx, has sent you to Mexico to open a branch in Mexico City. You’ll be there for
three months, with all expenses paid. Can you make the case with a culturalist ethics that FedEx
should reimburse not only your car rental and gas but also the two mordidas you had to pay even
though you obviously don’t have any receipts?
o After you return from your successful overseas experience, FedEx assigns you to train a set of
recruits to go to Mexico and open more branch offices. When you to talk about the police and
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mordidas, would you counsel a culturalist approach, or would you advise them to go by the book
(as that phrase is understood in the United States)? How would you justify your decision?
o For owners of office buildings in Mexico City, FedEx is a great client. They pay their rent every
month and they’re probably willing to negotiate an amount in dollars, which is extremely
attractive because the Mexican peso is prone to the occasional and steep devaluation. As a result,
if you’re opening up a new FedEx office, you’re going to have building owners lining up, trying to
rent you space. Does a decision to play by local rules and pay mordidas to cops also allow you to
play by local real estate rules, which allow you to take a generous cash gift in exchange for renting
in one building instead of the place across the street? Why or why not?
o You are sent to Mexico City to rent office space. You find two equally good spaces only
distinguished by the fact that one owner offers a larger bribe than the other. No one’s watching,
no one will ever know, you can do whatever you want. What do you do? Why?
2. Think of yourself as a virtue ethicist.
o Very quickly, what are some of the virtues you personally attempt to live by, and what social
institutions played a role in shaping your character?
o If you were sent to Mexico on a work assignment and found yourself in the situation typically
faced by local drivers after being caught driving a bit fast, how would you handle the situation?
Which virtues might come into play?
o Most advocates of virtue ethics believe companies—like other organizations including schools,
churches, and community associations—play a role in instilling virtue. If you were training FedEx
recruits destined to open branch offices in Mexico City and you wanted to prepare them for the
ethical challenges of bribery, what virtues would you seek to instill in them? Can you think of any
life experiences that some recruits may have had that may have formed their character to
respond well to the situation on the Mexican streets?
o The mayor in suburban Mexico City who decided to cancel traffic tickets was, in fact, fighting
against what he saw as corruption. Most advocates of virtue ethics believe government
organizations play a role in instilling virtue in its citizens. Could this action be considered part of
that effort? What virtues might it instill? How would it help people become better practitioners of
those virtues?
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3. The video Mordida in the Booklet (http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/C4.html) shows
a motorcycle officer getting paid off. One curious aspect is how long and intense the discussion
stretches between the officer and the pulled-over driver. What they’re doing is negotiating the
amount. The fifty peso price tag is a good average, but the number can drop or climb depending
on the give and take.
[6]
o What is the five-step process of discourse ethics? How could this bribery negotiation be
understood within it?
o According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Mexico is a place where
people doing business make many informal agreements involving bribery, kickbacks, insider
dealing, and all sorts of similar practices. Except for the fact that those involved are wearing suits,
most of these scenes resemble the one between the motorcycle police officer and the driver:
people talk for a while, come to a mutually satisfying, peaceful conclusion, and some money
changes hands. Do you see this as an indictment of discourse ethics, a justification of the
approach, or something else? Justify.
4. In the newspaper article about the Mexico City suburb where the Mayor decided to ban traffic
tickets, the reporter interviewed a police officer described as “an old transit cop whose juicy
bribes had helped buy his gold necklaces and bracelets.” This was the old cop’s reaction to the
situation (translated from Spanish): “I got my buddies together and I told them, ‘This sucks, now
what’re we going to do for money?’”
An ethics of care shifts the focus of moral thought away from the fair imposition of rules and
toward the maintenance of immediate personal relationships. Ethics isn’t about treating everyone
equally so much as it is about keeping companions together.
o Listening to this officer, who do you suppose exists within his web of social responsibility?
o Assuming this officer practiced the ethics of care, would he treat these two drivers differently
after pulling them over: his nephew and some out-of-towner he’s never seen before? Why might
he (not) treat them differently? Are there circumstances under which he’d actually demand more
money from the nephew? What could those be?
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o According to the newspaper article, in the first two months of ticketless existence in the suburb,
about two hundred people were struck by moving vehicles, and twenty were killed. From the
perspective of the ethics of care, can these numbers be used to form an argument against this
policy and in favor of a return to the previous, corrupted reality?
Money for Nothing
In his blog the z spot, author Z raises two questions about people receiving unemployment paychecks.
Both are laced with suspicion of fraud. First, people who are collecting unemployment checks are required
to show they’re at least trying to get a job, but Z writes that some are “showing up for interviews in jeans
and t-shirts.” Then he asks, “Do these people really want the job, or are they just showing up to say that
they are actively seeking work?”
[7]
He goes from there to a second critical point. “Some people,” Z says, “are collecting unemployment checks
even though they’re actually working.” What they do is turn in their unemployment form listing the days
they worked, and those are deducted from the check they receive. That sounds OK in the abstract, but, he
adds, “The problem is that these people who are ‘on call’ are not taking shifts that are offered to them.
Those shifts don’t get deducted from their unemployment. So, while there are people who are actually
unemployed, struggling and looking to find work, there are Union employees sitting at home deciding
when they do and don’t want to come in. And collecting unemployment.”
From the posting’s response section, here are two contributions:
1. It’s not easy for me to swallow that my taxes are supporting people who could be working.
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es.
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2. I have a question. I live in Wisconsin and I know of somebody who is collecting unemployment but is not
actually going to any job interviews or is even applying for jobs. Is this illegal? If so, how can I report this
without them knowing?
Q U E S T I O N S
1. If you were using the eternal return to chart your way through life, would you have any problem “sitting at
home deciding when you do and don’t want to come in while collecting unemployment”? If you’re all right
with that, how would you respond to the complaint from the response section that someone is paying
taxes to support your lifestyle?
2. Thinking about the people showing up for job interviews in jeans and t-shirts, what might be lacking in
their character according to a virtue ethicist? If the government is one of those institutions proponents of
virtue look to for the instillation of good character, what might the government do in this situation in the
name of encouraging virtue?
3. The second cited response to Z is a question about how an unemployment cheat can be reported
“without them knowing.”
o About this silent reporting, why is this not what a proponent of discourse ethics would
recommend?
o How could the five-step process of discourse ethics be applied to the situation? Would the guy
complaining about paying taxes be included in the discussion? What kind of proposals might be
voiced to rectify the situation?
4. Starting from the ethics of care, is there a situation you could imagine that would justify the actions of
workers who take some shifts but decline others, and collect unemployment for those declined hours?
A Single Parent in the Army
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The post of cook in the mess hall is probably one of the Army’s least dangerous assignments, the closest
you get to actual battle is a food fight, but it’s still a military job where you go and do what your orders
command. For Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a twenty-one-year-old Army cook, that meant catching a
flight to Afghanistan. She missed hers, though, intentionally. She regretted abandoning her unit, but felt
she had no choice. The single mother of a ten-month-old, she says she couldn’t find anyone to care for her
child during the absence; the only potential help, her mother, was already overwhelmed by caring for
three other relatives with health problems. Hutchinson’s fear, according to her lawyer, was that if she
showed up at the airport, the Army “would send her to Afghanistan and put her son with child protective
services.”
For its part, a military spokesman says, “the Army would not deploy a single parent who had nobody to
care for a child.”
The situation is under review, but for the present, just like anyone else who refuses deployment, she’s
under military arrest on her base in Georgia.
[8]
Q U E S T I O N S
1. Virtue ethics
o The military is cited by virtue ethicists as a potential character-building institution, one of the
places a society molds a good citizenry. What are some of the virtues the military could be
expected to instill? How are those reflected in this situation?
Ima
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ove
d d
ue t
o co
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ues
.
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o Families are a cited source of virtue. What values should we expect family life to instill? How are
those virtues reflected in this situation?
o Is there any way to bring the military virtues and the family virtues together for Hutchinson? If so,
what might it be? If not, why not and what should she do?
2. Proponents of discourse ethics walk through a five-step process on the way to reaching a negotiated
settlement to moral conflicts. What might the five steps look like here?
3. One of the objections to discourse ethics is that it can set up a slippery slope—that is, the people involved
can form a solution that bends the rules a little bit, and next someone else wants a little flexibility too, and
then someone wants a little more, and before long, the rules have completely disappeared and everyone’s
doing whatever they want. Could you sketch out how this process could happen here, with the end result
being the Army more or less losing the values at the core of its existence?
4. Ethics of care
o One of the key elements composing an ethics of care and distinguishing it from traditional ethical
theories is this: At the center of attention, independent actors are replaced by a web of
interrelated individuals. Ethics, in other words, isn’t about me and you, it’s about us. In
Hutchinson’s case, she finds herself in the midst of at least two networks of “us,” two
communities of people to whom she owes an allegiance and care. Describe these communities
and the links binding them.
o Another of the key elements composing an ethics of care and distinguishing it from traditional
ethical theories is this: The impartial application of abstract principles is replaced by the
maintenance and harmonizing of human relationships. Ethics, in other words, is less about the fair
imposition of rules and more about crafting social integration. Can you find an example of this
conflict between an ethics of rules on one side, and an ethics of relationships on the other, in
Hutchinson’s situation?
o Another of the key elements composing an ethics of care and distinguishing it from traditional
ethical theories is this: Tensions between the rights of individuals get replaced by conflicts of
responsibility to others in established relationships. Ethical tensions, in other words, aren’t my
rights versus yours, it’s me torn between those I care for. In the case of Hutchinson, how is she
torn?
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o In general, do you believe there’s a place for an ethics of care in the military? If so, where? If not,
why not?
[1] “Tamica Tanksley, SCT ’00,” Temple University, accessed May 12,
2011,http://www.myowlspace.com/s/705/index.aspx?sid=705&gid=1&pgid=1021&cid=1612&ecid=
1612&ciid=3725&crid=0.
[2] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,
2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Mordida%20in%20the% 20booklet.html.
[3] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,
2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/How_to_purchase_a_police_ officer.html.
[4] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,
2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Quick_mordida.html.
[5] Alejandro Almazán, “Fin de la mordida,” El Universal, November 16, 2003, accessed May 12,
2011, http://www2.eluniversal.com.mx/pls/impreso/noticia.html?id_nota= 54910&tabla=ciudad.
[6] Business Ethics Workshop video, accessed May 12,
2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Mordida%20in%20the% 20booklet.html.
[7] Business Ethics Workshop, accessed May 12,
2011,http://businessethicsworkshop.com/Chapter_4/Unemployment_fraud.html.
[8] “Mother Refuses Deployment,” New York Times, November 16, 2009, accessed May 12,
2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/us/17soldier.html.
- Structure Bookmarks
Chapter 4: Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism
Chapter 4: Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism
Chapter 4: Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism
Chapter 4: Theories Responding to the Challenge of Cultural Relativism
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