Topics for the Final Exam (Chapters 6, 10 & 11)

Find the topics for the final exam here

Here is the link for your textbook. 

If you have any questions you can post them here. 

Facebook is watching (via Meisel)

how you can take steps to avoid being spied on.

What Isn't for Sale? A debate

A  great article by philosopher Michael Sandel.

I'd like to present a debate between Sandel and two of his readers. Edward Stevenson takes a different position:

Argument completely without foundation. The author confuses market/price transparency with market existence. much of what is referenced is not an expansion of a market, but either 1) increased awareness of the prices due to better communication of obscure transactions (cost of immigration), 2) or increased liquidity of existing transactions (we used to give kids candy for reading a book, then fake bucks, now they get dollars). There is not need for a public debate. if a market exists it means that two people somewhere agree that a market should exist and thus it does. to limit the existence of markets is to limit the existence of human interaction plane and simple. two people sitting in a coffee shop exchanging ideas is a market transaction both agree that the ideas being expressed and listened to are worth the value of their time, cumulative costs (the parking meter, and the coffee etc), and the opportunity cost. Thus even me reading and commenting on this article is a form of a market transaction, one that I am glad can exist without the gaze of scrutiny but those involved in a public debate of the proneness and morality of my discretion of time and worthiness of my comments.

 A Sue Bond has it in a different way:

 I disagree that there is such a stark dichotomy: markets or government. And I disagree that the markets are more about freedom than money. A poor woman 'choosing' to sell her ova or rent out her uterus so her family can have somewhere to live or her children get an education is not a 'choice'. Rich women don't make these 'choices', because they don't have to. Poor people may feel compelled to sell their kidneys to give their families things that we take for granted. This is not freedom, this is making excuses for not doing anything about social inequality and for not caring about others.

So, here you have it, pro and con, what's your view? Do you agree with Sandel that, 

Some say the moral failing at the heart of market triumphalism was greed, which led to irresponsible risk-taking. The solution, according to this view, is to rein in greed, insist on greater integrity and responsibility among bankers and Wall Street executives, and enact sensible regulations to prevent a similar crisis from happening again.This is, at best, a partial diagnosis. While it is certainly true that greed played a role in the financial crisis, something bigger was and is at stake. The most fateful change that unfolded during the past three decades was not an increase in greed. It was the reach of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life traditionally governed by nonmarket norms. To contend with this condition, we need to do more than inveigh against greed; we need to have a public debate about where markets belong—and where they don’t.

 Go ahead!

I'm closing this post next Wednesday at 11pm.

what not to tell your boss

Watch out what you tell your boss. It may backfire.

Topics for review, Chapters 8 & 9 for Quiz #2

Chapter 8

Screening: job description, job specification,  ADA,
Testing, test validity and reliability. Interviewing.
Tension between promotion and seniority.
Inbreeding.
Nepotism.
Discipline and discharge: Just cause and due process.
Wages
History of the Union Movement.
Direct strikes and sympathetic strikes. 

Chapter 9

Assumption of risk and to refuse dangerous work, p. 486 
Legitimate and Illegitimate influence, p. 476, 477
Drug testing, (4-point issues),  p. 484
Hawthorne effect, p. 494
Informed consent, p. 479
Job satisfaction
Management styles, p. 489
Maternity leave, p. 481
OSHA, p. 4
off-the-job-conduct,
Personality tests, p. 482
Polygraph Tests (assumptions), 3 point evaluation for taking them, p. 480, 481

Link for power point presentations for both chapters here.
If you have any questions post them here.

Chapter 9 Homework

Chapter 9

Assumption of risk and to refuse dangerous work, p. 486 
Legitimate and Illegitimate influence, p. 476, 477
Drug testing, (4-point issues),  p. 484
Hawthorne effect, p. 494
Informed consent, p. 479
Job satisfaction
Management styles, p. 489
Maternity leave, p. 481
OSHA, p. 4
off-the-job-conduct,
Personality tests, p. 482
Polygraph Tests (assumptions), 3 point evaluation for taking them, p. 480, 481

CEO's crimes are not really crimes. We call them "accidents"

An interesting development: According to Joe Nocera, from the New York Times, it seems that MF Global is getting "a free pass." He writes:

By now, it has been well established that Corzine’s former firm, MF Global, committed the sin of sins for a broker-dealer. In late October, during the final, desperate days before it entered bankruptcy proceedings, its executives took money from segregated customer accounts — money that belonged not to MF Global but to the farmers and commodities traders that were its clients — and used it to prop up its rapidly collapsing business. Nor was this petty cash: of the $6.9 billion in customer assets that MF Global held, a stunning $1.6 billion is missing. There is virtually no chance that the full amount will ever be recovered.
(...) These executives committed a crime. Virtually every knowing violation of the Commodities Exchange Act is a crime, but taking money from segregated customer accounts is at the top of the list. And for good reason. Customer money is supposed to be sacrosanct. If a broker-dealer goes bankrupt, the segregated accounts are supposed to remain safe, a little like the way bank deposits remain protected if a bank goes under. Indeed, customers need to be able to trust the fact that their money is segregated and protected at all times. Otherwise, the markets can’t function. 

It turns that prosecutors are having trouble putting together a criminal case against anyone at MF Global. Now, federal prosecutors have expressed doubts that MF Global “intentionally misused customer money.” So, how do you miss $1.6 billion? An chaotic accident during the final days which caused the firm’s executives to tap into customer funds without realizing it.

Are you kidding???

This is a post for comment. It closes next Monday at 11pm.

PHI 2604 Homework: Chapter 8

1. Why do companies screen applicants? What's “job description” and “job specification”?
2. What’s the purpose of “tests” when applying for a job at a company?
3. Define: “Aptitude test,” “personality test,” “skill test.”
4. In measuring a test make a distinction between “validity” and “reliability.”
5. How should an interviewer conduct an interview?
6. In promotions one has to make a judgment between qualifications and seniority. What’s the best way to proceed?
7. Define “inbreeding” and “nepotism.”
8. Define “due process” and “just cause” within the context of discipline and discharge.
9. Distinguish between the following terms: Firing, termination, layoff and position elimination.
10. Go over the seven guidelines on wages established on pp. 289, 290.
11. Briefly summarize the history of the Union Movement.
12. What’s a “direct strike”? Go over Gonsalves’ 3-point criteria.
13. Analyze the difference between sympathetic strikes, boycotts and corporate campaigns.

Who is accountable?

In the Huffington Post Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman discusses corporate & individual accountability.

(Fact: keep in mind that no major bank executives have yet to face prison over their role in the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression).

The narrative of Wall Street is that no crimes were committed, which brings us to Krugman's argument:

It’s hard for me to believe there were no crimes. Given the scale of this, given how many corners were being cut, some people must have violated laws. I think people should be in jail partly because I’m sure crimes were committed and partly because the lack of accountability is a serious problem. Something terrible happened and nobody has been held accountable. 

All this may change now that regulators are preparing a lawsuit against some of the country's largest banks in order to probe their role in the acceleration of the financial crisis.The Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to formally warn a number of banks that sold mortgage backed securities  in the years leading to the financial melt-down of 2008.

Did banks know (at the time) that the mortgages backing their securities were of poor quality and yet presented a picture of the loans that was misleadingly reassuring?

This possible suit comes at a moment when banks are already being called to account for their handling of another result of the collapsing housing market: the foreclosure crisis. On Thursday, the government announced that it had reached a $25 billion settlement with some of the country's largest financial firms -- among them Citigroup, Ally and BofA, all said to be targets of the SEC investigation -- over charges that the banks engaged in systematic and widespread mortgage fraud.

No wonder JP Morgan Chase's CEO Jamie Dimon cries that all this anti-banking sentiment is a form of discrimination?

So, banking, the industry responsible for the world crisis (the same industry which gets bailed out with taxpayers money) now resents being found accountable?

What are your thoughts?

I'm closing this post next Monday @ 11pm.   

Students Assistants

Leon Pierre
Yakov Mogilevskiy
Meisel Vera
Geraldine Flores
Silvia Barahona

UPDATE: Look at the texbook's Glossary and Power Point presentations for Chapters 1-5

UPDATE: Yesterday, I realized that glossary and Power Point presentations of our textbook are really good. So, go for it.

 
 For topics to chapters 1-3 go here. Use this link from our textbook to review as well. Remember you should bring your scantron sheets #48/TSM and a pencil #2. If you have any questions, I'm opening just a post for comments.



Chapter 4
1. Quick background of the historic phases of capitalism.
2. Key features of capitalism (explain each one).
3. Arguments in favor of Capitalism: a) The Natural Right to Property, (b) Adam Smith's Invisible Hand
4. Criticism to Capitalism: a) Inequality, b) Human nature and capitalism (economic creatures vs. moral creatures), c) Capitalism breeds oligopolies, d) Competition is not a good.
e) Marx's "exploitation" and "alienation."
5. Some of today's economic challenges for capitalism.

Chapter 5
1. Limited Liability Company.
2.Corporate moral agency, CID.
3. Narrow View of Corporate Responsibility.
4. Broader View of Corporate Responsibility.
5. Let-Government-Do-It Argument, (b) The Business-Can't-Handle-It-Argument.
6. 4-point Institutionalizing Ethics (p. 242).
4-point Corporate Moral Codes (p. 244).

Fannie and Fredie spending $104 million on ex-executives (& we pay for it)

From Huffington Post: 

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government regulator for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac must do a better job limiting legal expenses paid by the two mortgage giants to their former executives facing lawsuits, a new watchdog report says. A report issued Wednesday by the inspector general for the Federal Housing Finance Agency says Fannie and Freddie together have paid more than $109 million in legal expenses for former executives since 2004, with Fannie covering more than $99 million for just three top officials. Taxpayers are footing the bill: The bailouts of the two companies have so far cost about $150 billion and that figure continues to grow.

Abusive labor practices in China

File under "corporations": labor practices in China (via Meisel Vera).

Who's responsible for the BP gulf spill?

The case combines more than 500 lawsuits in one proceeding designed to determine who's responsible for what went wrong.

Confess the most unethical thing you ever did in business

Confess!

Homework: Chapter 5

1- Define "Corporate Moral Agency."
2- Can corporations make moral decisions. Explain "CID."
3- What's the difference between "narrow" and "broad" views corporate responsibility?
4- Debating corporate responsibility define the following: a) the invisible hand argument, b) the let-government-do-it argument, c) the business-can't-handle-argument.
5- Go over the 4 points on p. 242 on corporate responsibility expansion.
6- What's a corporate moral code?
7- What's corporate culture?

Is same sex marriage moral? unconstitutional?

Same sex marriage is in the news again!

A federal appeals court panel ruled on Tuesday that a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in California violated the Constitution, all but ensuring that the case will proceed to the United States Supreme Court.

What's the ruling? Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote:

Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different people differently.

There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted. All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same sex-couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage,'the judge wrote, adding: "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California."

Let's take a closer look:

1. By majority vote, Prop 8 restricts marriage to the union of a man and a woman. 
2. But an individual has the right to marry the person of his or her choice.

So, there is a clash between peoples' rights and individual rights here.

Who wins? Well, inalienable rights seem to have priority (over majority rights) and should not be removed by any agency or government (including majority vote). Mind you, this is a libertarian view point (what I mean, closer to the right than you may think). Unless you're a moral conservative and think that the rights of the people in this case overturn the rights of the individual.

Philosophically speaking this is a fight between Locke on one side and Rousseau (and Burke) on the other. But same sex marriage is more contentious because of its religious connotation.     

The truth is that the majority of Americans seem to view homosexuality as morally wrong.  A recent study of 25 years of the General Social Survey indicates shifting attitudes about the perceived immorality of homosexuality, with growing negativity in the early 1990s and increasing liberalism more recently. Despite this liberalization in attitudes about some civil rights, only one third of the American public feel gay marriages should be recognized by law. Thus, we are at an unique moment of public ambivalence about attitudes toward the rights of gay men and lesbians to marry.

Yet, same-sex couples enjoy legal recognition in many countries outside the United States. They can marry in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and South Africa. They can register as partners in at least fourteen other countries, achieving many, most, or all of the benefits and obligations accorded married couples. Among Western countries, the United States stands largely alone in maintaining an inflexible line between married couples and everyone else. 

Some sociologists suggest a growing ambivalence in attitudes, with Americans demonstrating relatively high hostility, negativity, and disapproval about gay marriage, but more positive attitudes toward other gay civil liberties, arises from some basic conflicts over core values. People are conflicted over their core values surrounding the perceived sanctity of family and marriage and their own rising individualism and efforts to tailor their life experiences to their personal choice.

Those who feel more threatened by the perceived "cultural weakening of heterosexual marriage" are more likely to oppose gay marriage. Those who have a greater personal stake in the institution of marriage perhaps feel a greater need to "protect" marriage from "the threat" of gay marriage.

What are your thought on the subject?

I am closing this post next Tuesday & 11pm.

PHI 2604 Chapter 4: Homework

1. Provide a quick background of the historic phases of capitalism.
2. What are the key features of capitalism? Explain each one.
3. Addressing moral justifications for capitalism, defend:
a) The Natural Right to Property
b) Adam Smith's "invisible hand"
4. Addressing criticisms of under capitalism, articulate:
a) Inequality
b) Human nature and capitalism (economic creatures vs. moral creatures)
c) Capitalism breeds oligopolies
d) Competition is not a good.
e) Marx's "exploitation" and "alienation."
5. What are some ot today's economic challenges for capitalism?
6. Read Case 4.2, Hucksters in the Classroom and Case 4.5, One nation under Walmart and answer the questions.
_______
If we don't have time to do them all, we'll have leftovers.

TOPICS FOR QUIZ #1 PHI 2604

Chapter 1

Moral vs. non-moral standards
Morality and etiquette
Morality and Law
Where do moral standards come from?
Religion and Morality (differences between the two)
Ethical relativism, Cultural Relativism. Critiques: (a) Moral dissent, (b) artificial vs. deep values in the culture, (c) Logical contradictions
Defensible Moral Judgments; Requirements for Moral Judgments

Chapter 2

Consequentialist and non-Consequentialist Theories
Egoism; Misconceptions about Egoism; Psychological Egoism; Problems with Egoism (3 arguments)
Utilitarianism; (Six points about Utilitarianism)
Critical Inquiries of Utilitarianism (3 arguments)
Kantian Ethics: Good Will, The Categorical Imperative: Universalizability & reversibility; Second Formulation (humanity as an end)
Critical Inquiries of Kant’s Ethics (the problem of exceptions to the rule)
W.D. Ross’s Prima Facie Duties (you must know all and in the said hierarchy: justice, fidelity, reparation, gratitude, beneficence, non-maleficence, self-improvement
The difference between Positive and Negative Rights



Chapter 3 

Define justice, equality, freedom, and rights. 
Explain the utilitarian criteria of social distribution.
Libertarianism's idea of social justice.
JH. Rawls' "difference principle" (see flash cards)   
R. Nozick's "entitlement theory" (see flash cards)
J. Rawl's "original position (see flash cards)
J. S. Mill's "worker's participation"  (see flash cards)
You must remember my comparative table between Socialism, Communism, Liberalism and Libertarianism. 

Here is a link to our textbook's website. Take a look per chapter and do quizzes, flash cards, etc. 

You're supposed to being your own scantron #48/TSM to the test (scantrons are available at the book store).

Homework, Chapter 3

1. What is justice?
2. It seems that rival principles of distribution are based on equality, need, effort, social contribution and merit. Does it make sense to you?
3. What's the utilitarian view of social distribution? Comment the idea of "worker participation" and "greater equality of income."
4. What's the libertarian approach to social distribution?
5. Comment Rawls' theory of justice. Comment on "original position," "veil of ignorance" and "choosing principles."
6. What are Rawls so called "two principles"?