Can capitalism be moral?

"One can make a decent profit and still respect people," you may say. How about corporations? Is dumping toxic trash to underdeveloped countries moral? Some say Sodom and Gomorrah are here on earth. Was not BP's oil spill in the Golf of Mexico preventable? 

Which brings us to the next question: Should corporations treat the environment as persons? Obviously, they should. Why? Because the environment is our milieu: it's bigger and encompassing, the total of earth, vegetation and animals and thus, it directly includes us. In fact one can say that the environment is much more than a means to an end because it was here before us! So, corporations have responsibilities towards the environment, which is exactly Kant's idea of reversibility now between business ---> life. If profit is gained by deceit, manipulation, or by pollution, that's wrong (you wouldn't like anyone dumping trash on your backyard).

Some say that capitalism is just a tool to use, and that's independent from morality. You do your business and that's it. The problem is that capitalism today is everywhere! We live in a global society, corporations have an amazing power (think of Wal Mart). For example, recently the Supreme Court has redefined that when it comes to political contributions, a corporation counts as much as a single person! In addition to economic influence, corporations now are legally entitled to buy political influence!

Wasn't Ayn Rand the one that exulted the virtues of Homo Economicus? There needs to be a balance. Remember the prudent egoist? I'd assume that's the kind of egoist that Rand defends. But what if everybody is running for easy profits and you feel pushed by the system? Imagine a man that walks in an office with his wife. He has saved 30,000 for years for a down-payment. You are a mortgage representative, and you need to sell a mortgage and your boss is a borderline sociopath. This is your chance! The problem is that you have to lie and that is going to cost this man his 30,000 savings. Would you sell this man this toxic mortgage just to reap a profit? Why not approach the issue from the view point of Homo Reciprocans?

Thus this chapter reading of E. F. Schumacher's Buddhist Economics. Schumacher makes three important points, 1- work needs to be creative: 

(...) there are two types of mechanization which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man’s skill and power and one that turns the work of man over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave.

2- real needs are not fake needs:

(...) since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption. Thus, if the purpose of clothing is a certain amount of temperature comfort and an attractive appearance, the task is to attain this purpose with the smallest possible effort, that is, with the smallest annual destruction of cloth and with the help of designs that involve the smallest possible input of toil.

and 3- local instead of global.

From the point of view of Buddhist economics, therefore, production from local resources for local needs is the most rational way of economic life, while dependence on imports from afar and the consequent need to produce for export to unknown and distant peoples is highly uneconomic and justifiable only in exceptional cases and on a small scale. Just as the modern economist would admit that a high rate of consumption of transport services between a man’s home and his place of work signifies a misfortune and not a high standard of life, so the Buddhist would hold that to satisfy human wants from faraway sources rather than from sources nearby signifies failure rather than success.

So, do you think we can use capitalism and still be moral?

I'll close this post next Wednesday  Sep. 28 at 11pm.

How to spot a "bad" co-worker

5 signs that you're pushing your co-workers over the limit:

What is sexting?

The potential risks of sexting in the New York Times: 

One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend. An interesting Both were in eighth grade. They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it. “Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.” In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools in this racially and economically diverse suburb of the state capital, Olympia. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received her photo and forwarded it.

Sexting has an entry in Wikipedia!

Justice is fairness

Remember what we were talking about last class?  As of 2007, in the USA, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). Is that fair?

PHI 2604 TOPICS FOR QUIZ #1

Chapter 1
1. Moral vs. non-moral standards standards: Human behavior of fundamental consequence for human welfare.
2. Morality and etiquette (codes of polite behavior in society).
3. Morality and Law (not everything that is legal is moral (slavery was legal and is not moral).
4. Are there moral standards? Where do they come from? Click here for more information,
5. Ethical relativism, Cultural Relativism. Relativism is the view that the rightness (or wrongness) of an action is relative to the individual, culture, perspective, etc. Regarding cultural relativism, there's a difference between "deep" (moral behavior) and "superficial" (fashion, etiquette, etc) cultural values. Actually, most cultures share similar fundamental values (such as killing your own, stealing from the group, adultery, respecting the elders, incest, etc).
7. Critiques: (a) Ethical relativism is logically contradictory (a view cannot be right and wrong at the same time), (b) Ethical relativism makes moral disagreements impossible
8. Defensible Moral Judgments. MJ = Moral norms + facts (what this means is that we'd like our moral judgements to be defensible. We want to be able to give reasons for why we believe what we believe.

Chapter 2
1. Consequentialist and non-Consequentialist Theories. Consequentialism is the theory that the moral rightness of an action is in function of its results. Is the consequences are good, the action is good. Non-consequentialists look at the form of the action, i.e, killing is wrong independently of the results.
2. Egoism is a consequentialist moral theory. It equates morality with self-interest.  Misconceptions about Egoism (that an egoist cannot be a moral person); Psychological Egoism;
2a. Problems with Egoism (3 arguments). Psychological egoism is not a sound theory. Ethical egoism is not really a moral theory at all because it can ignore blatant wrongs.
3. Utilitarianism; (Six points about Utilitarianism). Utilitarianism is the view that an action is right if it brings the greatest happiness for the greatest majority of people.
4. Critical Inquiries of Utilitarianism (3 arguments). p. 65, 66.
5. Kantian Ethics: Good Will, The Categorical Imperative; An action is right if it is universal and reversible.
Kant's second Formulation: Treat people as ends never as means to an end.
6. Critical Inquiries of Kant’s Ethics (2 arguments): The theory doesn't allow for exceptions and it avoids sentiments.
7. W.D. Ross’s Prima Facie Duties (you must know all and in the said hierarchy): An action is right if if falls under the highest ranked duty in a given situation. Remember the different duties studied in class: justice, fidelity, reparation, gratitude, beneficence, non-maleficence, self-improvement.
8. Rule Utilitarianism: The view that what makes an action right is that it falls under a rule, which if followed would bring the greatest happiness for the greatest amount of people.

Chapter 3
Comparative table of justice, equality and rights (positive and negative), and how each fairs in the possible distribution arrangements studied in class (Communism, Liberalism and Libertarianism).

You must bring the 48 TSM scantron to the exam. It is for sale at the bookstore. 

Human Trafficking and moral imperatives

A recent article in the NYTimes shows how human trafficking has become a problem of global problem.
If 200 years ago slavery showed a ruthless side of humanity, it seems that today the problem returns, only now, the trade is not in the open, but hidden, fed by drugs, deception, even kidnapping. How could anyone deceive a young girl knowing she will end up in a brothel in a European capital with no passport, beaten, drugged & exploited?

Today, millions of people move away from home to work for little or no money, often under abusive conditions. Since 1994, has been working against the practice. Confronting issues like illegal mining in South America and the forced prostitution of women from the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union and North Africa, the the International Organization for Migration has conceived awareness campaigns tailored to particular countries and cultures. Here are just three examples amongst many:

Vietnam: Many Vietnamese women and girls are trafficked through Dong Tham, An Giang, and Kien Giang to Cambodia for sexual exploitation. In 2004, Cambodian police estimated that more than 50,000 girls were in brothels through Cambodia, many of whom were Vietnamese.

Philippines: Philippine men, women, and girls were trafficked for labor  and sexual exploitation to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Africa, North America, and Europe. The government and NGO estimates on the number of women trafficked range from 300,000 to 400,000 and the number of children trafficked range from 60,000 to 100,000.

China: Chinese women and children are trafficked for sexual and labor exploitation in Malaysia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Europe, Canada, Japan, Italy, Burma, Singapore, South Africa, and Taiwan. Many Chinese are recruited by false promises of employment and are later coerced into prostitution or forced labor. Children are sometimes recruited by traffickers who promise their parents that their children can send remittances back home.

The common denominator of human trafficking is that people are lured into this trap by the promise of a better future. 

The issue has ramifications for our own backyard. This article in the New Times exposes how a 15 year old girl is abducted to work as a prostitute in Miami (check out the list of 9 individuals arrested which were involved in the ring). Take this is a bizarre story, a former Miami Beach police officer and his friend arrested for drugging women and then filming them in sex acts. Here is another story.

In light of the theories we've studied in Chapter 2, which is in your opinion the best moral theories that can deal with this problem? Egoism, Utilitarianism or Kant's Categorical Imperative?

I'll close this post next week, Thursday, @ 11pm.