I just went and joined a gym this morning. I’ve been resisting it because I really love the challenge of running on the road, and it’s particularly fun when it’s really cold and there’s snow around (really!). However with the winter coming it’s becoming harder to work around my schedule, limited daylight and weather. Having made such good progress in the last month I don’t want an excuse to lose the fitness I’ve gained. So I’ve signed up on just a month by month basis.
It is currently snowing in Lake Zurich!
Hard on the heels of my comments recently about a report claiming US graduate business students think cheating is accepted practice in business comes some disturbing news about one of NZ’s largest companies.
The NZ Herald reports that forest products company, Carter Holt Harvey has been found guilty of knowingly selling timber that did not meet the grading standards it claimed. This went on for 3-4 years, from 2000-2003, resulting in incorrectly graded timber being used in the construction of 20,000 new homes. According to the Herald, “internal documents revealed the company had a view that to not act as it did would be “‘financial suicide’”.
So what is the outcome? The company has been fined $900,000 (about US$600,000). This is for a company that in 1994 (the latest numbers I could find) had revenues of $2.57 billion, and earnings of $312.5 million.
So instead of financial suicide they get a fine of less than 0.3% of their annual profit. I guess dishonesty does pay.
Here’s a great quote from Martin Luther that James MacDonald used in his message this past weekend (no, I didn’t go to Harvest; I just listened to the message on the internet) -
“Martin Luther, the reformer, who boldly confronted the errors in the Catholic Church, said this about his own life and ministry – ‘I simply taught and wrote and preached God’s word. Otherwise I did nothing,’ Luther said. ‘And while I slept, the word of God so weakened the papacy that no prince or emporor ever inflicted such losses upon it.’ Luther said ‘I did nothing. The word did it all.’”
Excellent stuff. But wait! Always a good idea to check sources on this kind of stuff. Sure enough a little googling turned up the quote here, but with just a little elaboration…
“I simply taught, preached, and wrote God’s Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.” [emphasis added], Luthers Works, Vol. 51 p77.
Now why didn’t James quote the guy in full?!! Evidentally he and Luther have the same view of scripture, but not the same view of alcoholic beverages 
Here’s a little more sanity in the discussion about poverty that I alluded to earlier. The NZ Herald reports that a group of 100 economist from the US, Europe, Australia and the Russia have called for rich countries to cut agricultural tarrifs and subsidies that condemn poor countries to a cycle of poverty. They write -
“Further delay condemns many to a continuing cycle of poverty, denying them the opportunities for further development and economic growth. Countries have immense responsibilities for the external effects of their domestic policies.”
If you are looking for a moral issue connected to poverty, it is right here.
From today’s Scuttlebutt -
Robert Reich is a former US Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration and a well known political liberal. He has a regular brief opinion segment on National Public Radio and also publishes this on his blog. This week his commentary was entitled “Democrats Should Talk About Inequality.”
He asserts that inequality in the US is greater today than at any time since the 20′s and by some measures since the 1890′s. I don’t have any information to either contradict or confirm this claim. However what I find interesting is that he automatically associates inequality with injustice and tax policy -
The American economy has been growing nicely. Corporate profits are up. Top executives are raking in eight-digit compensation packages. But the paychecks of most people haven’t budged. Median household earnings are actually below what they were in 1999. Meanwhile, the costs of energy, health insurance, and college tuitions are skyrocketing.
So don’t be surprised if you hear lots of Democratic candidates and maybe even a few Republicans talk about restoring fairness to the economy. That means at a minimum: rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, raising the minimum wage, lifting the ceiling on earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes, and cutting taxes on the middle class. The new political motto: It’s fairness, stupid. [emphasis added]
I think that constructive public debate on this subject deserves more than this kind of (apprently) philosophically biased perspective. Precisely where morality and justice intersect with economic inequality is a question that needs some careful thought, not just unexamined assumptions.
I’m not convinced that inequality per se is fundamentally a moral problem, though it certainly may reflect a moral problem. Poverty, on the other hand, is plainly a moral problem when it results from factors outside an individual’s control and others have an ability to alleviate it. But I am not convinced that a progressive tax system is necessarily the most effective way to overcome poverty. I need to write more on this sometime, but it’s a bigger subject that I’m going to do justice to right now. Suffice to say for now that I believe that the responsibility of the wealthy to show compassion to the poor extends well beyond charity to include a responsibility for investing in businesses that create jobs.
I have submitted some comments to Reich’sblog entry, which I hope will show up in due course once he has read them.
This is a few weeks old, but I didn’t have time to mention it at the time – on September 21 the NZ Herald ran a Reuters article on a US study that found that 56% of graduate business students “admitted to cheating in the past year, with many saying they cheated because they believed it was an accepted practice in business.”
The numbers weren’t much better for other disciplines including engineers who came in at 54%. The article goes on to say
…business school students described cheating as a necessary measure and the sort of practice they’d likely need to succeed in the professional world.
“The typical comment is that what’s important is getting the job done. How you get it done is less important,”
“You’ll have business students saying all I’m doing is emulating the behaviour I’ll need when I get out in the real world.”
This is very sad and also very worrying, when you consider that these are the people who are going to be leading US businesses, and to a large degree US society in years to come.
The NZ Herald carried an interesting article a few days ago about a study by NZ psychologist Jane Millichamp into the effect of smacking on child development. A few quotes -
Continue reading →
The NZ Herald carried a story a few days ago about the last Iraqi refugee detailed by Australia on Nauru. A small extract -
Sagar is stuck in legal limbo – although judged to be a genuine refugee by Australian immigration authorities, the country’s intelligence agencies have ruled that he is “a risk to national security”.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has given no reason for its negative assessment and declined to answer questions on the case.
…
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has tried for two years to find a third country willing to accept Sagar, so far without success.
Keeping refugees on Nauru achieves the same thing as the US detainment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay – it sheilds people from the standards of the domestic justice system, denying them a right to a trial.
I presume that what this implies is that the Australian government does not believe that standards of justice that apply to people within Australia reflect fundamental or universal human rights. If this is the case, one has to wonder what they consider to be the philosophical basis for the judicial rights enjoyed by Australians within Australia and, in the absence of a clear answer to this question, whether there could be circumstances in which those rights might also be nullified.
