Ethics Stories & News

What if... We focused on the problems we actually have?

Periodically, my wife will give me homework assignments.  Not the “honey do” jobs around the house that most partners get—she knows I create more problems than I ever fix—but reading or writing chores, just like I give my students.  Her most recent dictate was to read a 30-year-old article from the Harvard Business Review, “What’s the Matter with Business Ethics?” by Andrew Stark.  Because business ethics is my home field, I decided to comply.  My study of business ethics began in the mid-1990s, not long after the article was originally published, so it also served as a way for me to review

What If... Capitalism Did Not Involve Exploitation

Recently, I have been reading about race relations in the USA.  Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee approach the topic from different angles, but both point out the fact that African Americans have suffered, in large part, as a result of our economic system.  History, indeed, provides an egregious example of how US society has treated certain groups of people; but it is still seen in the putative mistreatment of workers in today’s economy, through the concepts of Striketober and The Great Resignation.

What If…We Could Promote Epiphanies?

SCAMMER OF A CENTURY AGO PIONEERED TACTICS USED TODAY

George Graham Rice? Never heard of him. Who is he? A century ago, though, he was a famous flamboyant scammer, a pied-piper of stock manipulation.

While incarcerated for the third or fourth time, he wrote a series of periodical articles that eventually coalesced into a book. As with other scammers, Rice was brazen, even boastful about his felonious escapades. He wryly entitled his book My Adventures with Your Money.