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In business you are rarely forced to murder or whore yourself out. You are, however, constantly faced with changing your direction, compromising your vision or
by davidu 16y ago
In business you are rarely forced to murder or whore yourself out. You are, however, constantly faced with changing your direction, compromising your vision or similar, all for some potential upside and downside. That's the nature of business, and trying to tie it to moral questions doesn't do justice to the line of reasoning one should employ.
Of course you should be moral, but most business questions aren't a question of morality, but of direction and the most appropriate path to achieve your objectives.
- axod 16y agoSurely the analogy for some of us would be "Would you sell your startup to microsoft for X". Logically and from a business perspective it may make sense to do so, but it's a hard pill to swallow for many I'd bet.
- davidu 16y agoBut if Jerry Yang had sold Yahoo in 2008 then shareholders wouldn't be left holding a company today that is worth less than half what MSFT offered, would we? But that was an emotional decision, and he made the wrong one. Still not a moral question, imho.
- axod 16y agoIt's only wrong for certain criteria of 'wrong'. Who can say what would be left of Yahoo if MSFT sprinkled their unique webfail all over it? I'd expect that they would have destroyed most of it.
- Confusion 16y agoI'm sure the managers at BP that choose to forego certain safety measures completely recognize themselves in this line of reasoning. Which immediately illustrates how dangerously false it is. Companies are amoral (not to be confused with immoral) entities that will not necessarily act in the people's best behavior. If companies act in a morally acceptable way, it is because of the individual employees that together make morally acceptable choices. Every business question is a question of morality, because you can always choose to commit fraud, cheat someone or act in an otherwise immoral fashion. Sometimes you won't do that for fear of customer or supplier retribution. Often you won't do that for fear of the law. But sometimes, you just shouldn't do it, because it has possible consequences you should never risk. No one at BP is individually responsible for the current calamity. The more responsibility is spread over multiple layers of decision making, the less responsible individuals feel and the less moral their behavior will be. Not because they are immoral, but because the pressure to act as is best for the company is strong enough to suppress moral qualms. No 'evil' individual made the immoral decision that lead to the accident. It was a large number of people that each made slightly immoral decisions, the cumulative result of which is now the largest ecological disaster in US history. This is the essence of the problem of libertarianism and complete free market capitalism. This is why we need a government to regulate capitalism.
- earnubs 16y agoIn general I agree, but I struggle with a moral/immoral distinction being so black and white. BP weren't drilling for kicks, there /were/ safety measures in place, there's a balance between safety and cost - no rig in the world is 100% safe and nor could it be without the cost of oil going up. The effect of oil prices going up is people losing their jobs and even lives. Accidents happen, maybe because we veered too far towards profit, maybe because we encountered a black swan, but we learn from them and do our best to mitigate them, then we go back to treading the fine line of cost and safety. That being said, the US Gov should have learned from disasters like Piper Alpha and separated it's own safety and cost structures in respect of the oil industry long ago. Not having done so before now is, to me, inexcusable.
- by 16y agoI think it is unlikely it is the "largest ecological disaster in US history". We could compare it to the Dust Bowl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl , or the logging of old growth forest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_growth_forest#Logging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_growth_forest#Logging or the draining of the Everglades http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draining_and_development_of_the_Everglades http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draining_and_development_of_the... and it might not be as large. Consider also the introduction of invasive species such as Chestnut blight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chestnut_blight or red fire ants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Ecological_impact http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant#Ecologica... to put it into perspective. It seems too convenient, a collective self-deception, to point at a non-US company and say they have caused the worst ecological destruction in the US.
- count 16y agoNone of those happened within the last 2 years, so they don't count.
- Tycho 16y agoOn the other hand: Chernobyl
- ahoyhere 16y agoActually, whoring in terms of violating your "core values" is extremely common in business. Not talking making canned dolphin meat here, but if you have a core value about providing excellent customer service, but your biz partners don't like the expense... death by a thousand cuts you go. Consulting is especially like this, if you want to build the best damn thing you can, consulting is usually at odds with that core value. Consulting is as much about placating the client's ego as anything else. Violating your core values for money will lead to a death-spin of post hoc justification and misery, so it's rarely worth it. That said, I don't think sleeping with someone for money is a moral question, and the example is indeed misogynistic.