Group items tagged

This article is about the ethics of lobbying and if done right is ethical.

article about Eliot L. Spitzer who has reshaping the financial services industry, forcing out players he considers bad apples and extracting billions of dollars in fines from mutual fund companies, stock analysts and others in the industry.

And so I think religions make people better able to act on the moral sense. Where do you see the role science can play in understanding how religion develops a moral sense?

Big profits were made from insider trading!

the "functional beverage" industry ... interesting category

Here's an insightful story revealing some of the connections between the US government and financial industry.

Good article from Tim O'Reilly (a major innovator in the publishing industry) on Steve Jobs' remark about passion vs. profit: "My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products," Jobs told Isaacson. "[T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."

This is a feel good story, and actually goes along with one of the main industries in SoDak, hunting. The state of Wisconsin is promoting ethics by giving out awards to the most ethical hunters.

In order of our whole economic system to get bank on track, we must be able to trust each other.

Public trust issue towards banks.

This article fits nicely with our discussion this week. It talks about adding a capital buffer. Some law makers say that without this, the banking industry could sink the economy again.

An example of big business turning a blind eye to not only an ethical dilemma, but also a legal one. The countries that buy tobacco have laws in place banning child labor as does the supplying country. The word "help" is used instead of work to cover up the use of small children in dangerous situations.

This article is addressing the fact that pharmaceutical industries will do whatever necessary (including fraud, criminal activity, lying to public, etc.) to gain profit.

Big drug companies are finding creative ways around "fraud" and other deceitful ways in order to make big money.

I thought considering last week's reading, this blog post was good to look at. It coincides with Maitland's argument for sweatshops. The part I found most interesting was this: "The most important aspect relating to the morality of sweatshop labor is that it is voluntary. That is, sweatshop laborers get up in the morning and choose to work in a sweatshop instead of doing anyother possible thing on any given day. Why would they do that? It's simple, by working at a sweatshop a laborer is able to earn more for himself and his family than he would otherwise be able to were he not employed at that sweatshop. The laborer has the choice to either perform some other task for money, produce his own goods and services, or go work for the sweatshop. He has made the decision that what he gains by working at the sweatshop is more valuable than what he would gain doing anything else." It begs the question of who gets to decide what these workers do in their lives to support their families and how they should feel about those choices.

Another good reflection on this issue, jdybing. One of the issues with this type of argument is that it's rather theoretical. It simply isn't true of all people that "The laborer has the choice to either perform some other task for money, produce his own goods and services, or go work for the sweatshop." Even if this is true, the next question is whether we should just accept a type of work and working conditions that demoralize people and trivialize the value of their lives. What Maitland says of sweatshops is just as true of the practice of child labor early in the industrial era of the US, where children were not only doing dehumanizing work but doing so under extremely dangerous conditions. It's hard to see how anyone would actually "choose" this type of life given viable options for doing something else.

Advertisers and their agencies are frequently confronted with having to make ethical choices, which are often difficult, because they are not black or white. This presentation presents some of these challenging situations from a philosophical perspective. In addition, it covers: industry regulation; is advertising manipulative or misleading?; should potentially harmful products be advertised?

Great resource, Marcus. These are some classic examples for thinking through ethical issues in advertising. One of out talks for this week will be from Ogilvy & Mather's Vice Chairman, Rory Sutherland.

McDonald's currently spends more money on advertising in general than any other brand in all industries combined, helping it replace Coca-Cola as the world's most famous brand, according to "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser.