100,133 Comments

That’s the number of comments that have been lodged on Yahoo News on the story entitled, Anger grows as disaster reaches Panhandle beaches. That’s a very large amount of anger. Now, I freely confess I can’t read more than a hundred thousand comments (not without considerable monetary incentive), but I believe that there is considerable frustration with the federal government on this issue. And by federal government, I mean the President of the United States who appears increasingly angry but still doesn’t seem interested in taking any action.

You Can Make Money With The Flu! (and not just a little)

“Scientists who drew up the key World Health Organisation guidelines advising governments to stockpile drugs in the event of a flu pandemic had previously been paid by drug companies which stood to profit, according to a report out today.”

This is the first sentence in the Guardian’s article on the trio of experts who wrote the WHO report. The news article authored by Randeep Ramesh, the Social Affairs editor at the Guardian finds all three scientists has ties to drug companies that would profit by the stockpiling recommended by their report.

Britain alone spent more than a billion pounds stockpiling medicines like tamiflu. All together the stockpiling of drugs by the various countries involved wound up costing more than seven billion dollars.

A Small Failure Of Judgment

This is not a matter of ethics just poor judgment.

“Not to mince words, Mr. Epstein, but we don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out; four-piece groups with guitars particularly are finished…The Beatles have no future in show business.”
– Decca Records Executive, 1962

This is from a blog posting by Jarrod Dicker on Minyanville, Your Money and Your Life.

Ethics Round Up – June 4th 2010

Karl Stephan writing on his blog, Engineering Ethics Blog, discusses the flap over facebook and privacy. The article is far more philosophical than you world expect from an engineering blog. He refers to the phrase, digital suicide, which is so mind grabbing and delicious I can barely wait until Monday to try it out on the poor college freshman in Business Law I.

One of the editor’s picks on the web site, Ethical Corporation, is an opinion piece by Mallen Baker discussing BP recent shift to corporate villain.

Timothy Egan writing an opinion piece in the New York Times say that the “millennials” should save us. He might be right. As a 53 year old, I find my generation disappointing.
(I was going to link to an article by The Ethicist, Randy Cohen, but he chose to write about a woman who was 36 but wondered if maybe she should falsify her age on her online dating profile as 34, so you’re getting Timothy Egan.)

I just found a web site called Principled Profit, created by Shel Horowitz. His latest blog entry recommends the Department of Justice get ready for criminal investigation into the British Petroleum catastrophe. One of his subtitles is “award winning blogger.” I can’t claim that one. Maybe someday. (One of the guys who does good work in the Business Ethics field linked to me on his blog just a couple of days ago, so I am moving up in the world!)

Jonathon Tasini writing in his blog, Working Life, has some unkind things to say about Wal-Mart. (He is referring to a New York Times article.)

Loren Steffy of the Houston Chronicle discovers that the federal government’s Minerals Management Service sometimes means no when they say yes.

Chris MacDonald writing on his site, The Business Ethics Blog, has a new post up before I got finished with the last one. (I still have to read the attached paper, An Adversarial Ethic for Business or When Sun-Tzu met the Stakeholder, which he tells me is amazing so you better click on the link.) MacDonald’s new post deals with the issue of alternative medicine and is a “meta blog,” a compendium of the current blog and all previous related blogs. (You watch, one day I will have a meta-blog of my own!)

Jon Talton of the Seattle Times discusses a jobless recovery.

Jay Hancock of the Baltimore Sun discusses underfunded pensions in a video.

Rod Dreher of BeliefNet offers a simple but moving take on the crisis in the gulf.

The Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports that state BP filling stations are starting to feel the discontent.

Sri Sri calls for spiritual values in corporate culture -

See if you can figure out why this is ironic?

“Ethics is an integral part of business as well as life. Strong ethical business practices can determine the success of a business.”
These are the first two sentences of an essay available on SampleEssays.com. jp

Should’ve Taken Business Ethics AWARD Friday 6/4/2010

Some businesses are refusing to consider hiring the unemployed. Under the title, Disturbing Job Ads, Laura Bassett writing in the Huffington Post reports on several businesses that specifically tell the unemployed that they are not interested in seeing their resumes.

I am doing an experiment here with might become a regular feature, an award for poorly thought out ethical decisions. My provisional title is “Shoud’ve Taken Business Ethics AWARD.” If you have a better one, (which probably isn’t that hard considering I have doubts about it) please send me your idea.

Business Stupidity -