Uber Tricking Law Enforcement: An Unethical Corporate Culture Externalized

A company with a culture in which in-fighting andheavy-handed treatment of subordinates are not only tolerated, but also constitute the norm can have good financials. With operations in more than 70 countries and a valuation of close to $70 billion in 2017, Uber could be said to be a tough, but successful company. Yet the psychological boundary-problems that lie behind such an organizational culture can easily be projected externally to infect bilateral relations with stakeholders. In the case of Uber, those stakeholders include municipal law enforcement. Even more than as manifested within the company, the external foray demonstrates just how presumptuous “boundary issues” are. Such presumption can blind even upper-level managers to just how much their company has overstep. In reading this essay on Uber’s program to evade law enforcement, you may be struck by the sheer denial in the company.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.  

Biblically-Based Investment Funds: A Matter of Priorities

Is it biblical to say a Christian can serve both God and money? In the Gospels, Jesus speaks to this point directly; it is not possible. In early 2017, Inspire Investing established two new exchange-traded funds having a “biblically responsible” approach to investing—meaning that they would avoid buying shares in companies that have “any degree of participation in activities that do not align with biblical values.”[1] That such activities include even tolerance for gay employees raises the question of just how practical an evangelical investment strategy is after the U.S. Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all of the 50 republics making up the U.S.

According to the New York Times at the end of February, 2017, 92% “of the Fortune 500 companies include ‘sexual orientation’ in their nondiscrimination policies and 82 percent include ‘gender identity.’”[2] Mark Synder of the Equality Federation pointed out that businesses “have been leading the fight for full equality over the last few years. L.G.B.T. people are part of the fabric of our nation.”[3] In short, the approach of the funds was “squarely at odds with that of nearly all of corporate America.”[4] Finding companies in which to invest in may not be so easy for the employees of the two funds. Put another way, the rate of return achieved may be compromised. Of course, an evangelical Christian would contend that compromise with sin is no virtue—certainly no Christian virtue.

Adding to the difficulties is the fact that not all evangelical Christians believe that discrimination is a biblical value, Snyder asserts. Of course, the very word discrimination is ideologically laden; it implies that the thing prohibited is salubrious rather than sordid in nature. Within evangelical Christianity, the tenet that sin explicitly listed in the Old Testament should not be supported or enabled is nothing short of an article of faith. Yet even here, that Jesus of the New Testament is silent on the matter of homosexuality may give even holders of that article some pause. At the very least, the question of priorities can be raised. Should not the funds avoid investing in companies that enable or contribute toward sins identified by Jesus? To put emphasis on a sin not mentioned by Jesus has the opportunity cost of the benefit foregone from focusing on sins that are important to Jesus in the Gospels.

In fact, that Jesus stood with the outcast might prompt an evangelical Christian to feel uncomfortable in taking on a marginalized group in society—especially the transsexuals. Yet Jesus tells the prostitute to sin no more, and gays today are not apt to view homosexuality as a sin and agree to abstain from sex. Gays would be on firmer ground in pointing out that Jesus preached love foremost—a sort of love not delimited to friends and family. Hence Jesus hangs out with the sinners, loving even the “unclean” rather than going after them or those who help them.

Hence the question: what would a biblical-oriented fund based on Jesus’s concept of love (i.e., agape) have as a metric? Companies in which people fight and insult each other, such as Uber, would presumably be off the list. So too would military contractors. But just as the traditional “sin” stocks involving tobacco, gambling, and alcohol would not necessarily be excluded, so too would the matter of a company’s HR policy on gays be of small import. In short, matching Jesus’s priorities in the Gospels would arguably be a sounder basis for a biblical-based Christian investment fund. In the end, the question is whether Christians truly understand Christ’s brand of love. I suspect that it is not as ideologically comfortable as the current practice indicates. I suspect that a truly Christian investment fund would not line up on one side of a general ideological division in society, for religion transcends ideology—otherwise faith reduces to self-idolatry.

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[1] Liz Moyer, “Alongside Faith in Investing, Funds Offer Investment Rooted in Faith,” The New York Times, February 28, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

The Golden Age of Innovation Refuted

“By all appearances, we’re in a golden age of innovation. Every month sees new advances in artificial intelligence, gene therapy, robotics, and software apps. Research and development as a share of gross domestic product [of the U.S.] is near an all-time high. There are more scientists and engineers in the U.S. than ever before. None of this has translated into meaningful advances in Americans’ standard of living.”[1] The question I address here is why.

For one thing, a lag follows big ideas before which they translate into increases in productivity related to labor and capital. Breakthroughs in electricity, aviation, and antibiotics did not reach their maximum impact until the 1950s, when “total factor productivity” stood at 3.4% a year.[2] In contrast, the figure for the first half of the 2010s was a paltry 0.5% a year. “Outside of personal technology, improvements in everyday life” were “incremental, not revolutionary,” during this period.[3] Houses, appliances, and cars looked much the same as they did twenty years earlier. Airplanes flew no faster than in the 1960s. This “innovation slump” is, according to the Wall Street Journal, “a key reason the American standards of living have stagnated since 2000.”[4] What had been revolutionary breakthroughs in the last century were still carrying the day into the next by means of incremental change based on product improvements. It could take a few decades before the fruitful research in AI, gene therapy, robotics, and software apps reach marketability and thus can impact productivity and radically alter daily life.

To be sure, the computer-tech revolution had altered daily life even by 2010—the smart-phone is a case in point. Yet personal computers go back to the 1970s so even in this respect the marketable innovations by Steve Jobs and Bill Gates can be viewed as incremental rather than revolutionary in nature. Software apps are themselves responsible for incremental changes based on the smartphone, which in turn is based on the personal computer. Even amid all the high-tech glitter, the developed world in 2016 stood as if a surfer waiting between two giant waves for the next one to hit.

Artificial intelligence, gene therapy, robotics, and software apps were poised to give rise to the next wave—first one of revolutionary change and then, after a lag, another wave—one of raised living standards. Unfortunately, revolutionary innovation “comes through trial and error, but society has grown less tolerant of risk.”[5] Furthermore, regulations “have raised the bar for commercializing new ideas.”[6] Lastly, “a trend toward industry concentration may have made it harder for upstart innovators to gain a toehold.”[7] In other words, the concentration of private capital may forestall the switch from continued incrementalism to revolutionary change. Breaking up oligopolies as a matter of public policy thus has more to it than merely preventing monopoly.

To be sure, companies and entrepreneurs in 2016 were “making high-risk bets on cars, space travel, and drones.”[8] Add in advances in AI and medical research—which could make death no longer inevitable for human beings—and some serious changes in daily life and productivity can be predicted. Yet, as potentially momentous as these efforts at innovation are, decades could separate the inventions and impacts on daily life and productivity. I suspect the world in 2016 was truly between two waves—the first of electricity, the telephone, sound recording, the automobile, the computer, and the airplane—and the second of space/astronomy, medical research, and AI/computer technology. Colonizing Mars, rendering death not inevitable, and combining AI, robotics, and software apps could result in wave that would dwarf the one of the previous century. The advent of smartphones, having all the glitter of a revolutionary product yet being an adaptation of the personal computer, whets appetites to look for the “big one” coming up on the horizon. Indeed, we have little time to waste; that wave could bring with it technology capable of arresting and even reversing the accumulations of CO2 and methane in the Earth’s atmosphere. The interesting dynamic of being able to save this planet just as we are able to colonize another is like the related one of making death something less than inevitable—due to stem-cell research on organ replacement, genetic therapy, and advances on curing diseases—just as we make the Earth habitable for our species for the indefinite future. Meanwhile, we are like children who have outgrown their clothes, still playing with adaptations of twentieth-century toys.

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[1] Greg Ip, “Economic Drag: Few Big Ideas,” The Wall Street Journal, December 7, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

Societal Norms Understating Unethical Corporate Cultures: The Case of Wells Fargo

The case of Wells Fargo suggests that even when a massive scandal is revealed to the general public, the moral depravity of a company’s culture is skirted rather than fully perceived. Wells Fargo was fined a total of $185 million by regulatory agencies including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had accused the bank of creating as many as 1.5 million deposit accounts and 565,000 credit-card accounts that for which consumers never asked. The bank fired 5,300 employees over the course of about five years after it was revealed those employees had opened the accounts and credit cards. Wells Fargo's CEO at the time, John Stumpf, "opted" for a cushy early retirement after an abysmal performance before a U.S. Senate committee; he walked away from the bank with around $130 million, and none of the other members of senior management were fired, or "retired," obliterating any hope societally that any of the senior managers would be held accountable. This result is particularly troubling, given the true extent to which that management had turned the bank into an ethically compromised organization.

The full essay is in Cases of Unethical Business, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.com.  

An Anti-Obesity, Anti-Poverty Philanthropist Joins PepsiCo.’s Board: A Case of Reform from Within

In October 2016, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, became the newest member of PepsiCo’s board of directors. Whereas Walker worked at the time for a more just and equitable society, Pepsi was making the bulk of its money by selling sugary drinks and fatty snacks and there being a well-established link between obesity and economic inequality. Would he be working at cross-purposes? “There’s a risk that he will be viewed as inconsistent,” said Michael Edwards, a former Ford Foundation executive at the time.[1] The company itself could also be viewed as being inconsistent—lobbying against anti-obesity public-health legislation while putting Walker on the board of directors.

To be sure, the Ford Foundation had not funded organizations working to combat obesity or diabetes, so there does not seem to be a direct conflict of interest for Walker.[2] Yet he did acknowledge, “I know that my own credibility and the credibility of the Ford Foundation is tied to this decision. Those of us in philanthropy have to be discerning about the corporate boards we join, and be discriminating to ensure that our service on a board is aligned with our values.”[3]

So rather than there being a conflict of interest, the issue for Walker was whether he could act as a reformer from within. Even though he planned bring the perspective of a social-justice organization and his own perspective “as someone who is deeply concerned about the welfare of people in poor and vulnerable communities,” he would still bear responsibility should PepsiCo’s board go in another direction.[4] He would not, in other words, be chairman of the board. That the company had just pledged to further reduce the amount of sugar, fat, and salt in its products by 2025, however, suggests an appetite for accommodation with Walker’s perspective. Additionally, Walker would not be responsible for the company’s past unethical lobbying against anti-obesity legislation, use of unethical suppliers of palm oil, and deceptive marketing, and the company had since taken steps to remedy these ethical problems.[5]

As in politics, the matter for Walker and the other board-members concerning would be whether together they could wield compromises taking into account both Walker’s vantage-point and the legal and ethical fiduciary duty to act as faithful stewards of the stockholders’ capital. Reform from “the inside,” moreover, can be more productive than merely staying in the philanthropic sphere. In terms of American politics, the analogue would be moving from the Green Party, for instance, to the Democratic Party so as to work toward reform that could actually manifest in legislation. Admittedly, idealism is tested in such a strategy, but consequentialism tells us that even 50% of 10 is more than 0% of 10.

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1. David Gelles, “An Activist for the Poor Joins Pepsi’s Board. Is That Ethical?,” The New York Times, October 28, 2016.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Donates $3 billion to Medical Science: Some Major Implications

Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced in September, 2016, that they would invest more than $3 billion during the next decade to build tools that can facilitate medical research on diseases. The first outlay of funds ($600 million) would create a research lab of engineers and scientists from the area’s major research universities.[1] “This focus on building on tools suggests a road map for how we might go about curing, preventing and managing all diseases this century,” Zuckerberg said at the announcement.[2] Moreover, the couple had previously announced a year before that they would give away 99% of their wealth over their lifetimes through the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative in the areas of education and healthcare. I would like to point out a few implications that may not be readily apparent.

Firstly, such funds going to preventing and curing disease could bring the day nearer when—along with advances in anti-aging and stem-cell research—death is no longer inevitable for a human being. Even before the Zuckerberg-Chan announcements, some scientists were openly predicting that that day might come as early as the 2050s. To be sure, being able to grow replacement organs, apply an anti-aging treatment to the body’s cells, and prevent major diseases (I suspect the common cold will still be around, just to keep us humble) does not guarantee that death will be put off; running into a train or bus, or jumping off a high building could still mean death. Nevertheless, the notion that death can be put off indefinitely dwarfs the combined impact from all the twentieth-century’s technological progress put together.

Considering the costs involved, access to rendering death no longer inevitable would doubtlessly raise ethical issues in terms of the distribution. Moreover, ethical questions would suddenly arise concerning the species’ increasing population and reproduction-rights. Secondary issues such as climate change could become even more pressing. It could be, for example, that a drastically increasing human population outstrips the planet’s food-capacity as well as the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb the species’ waste, including greenhouse gases. It would be highly ironic were the feat in removing the threat of death a major contributor to the extinction of the species. In short, the story could go as follows: we maximize our species’ size—which means success genetically—only for the increased numbers to cause extinction because the climate is no longer hospitable to human habitation or the lack of food causes wars ending in nuclear war. The first alternative would be particularly likely.

Secondly, that the couple could give up 99% of their wealth over their lifetimes may imply that they will have earned too much money, if being able to use it is at all relevant. Put another way, being able to give away almost all of their total earnings may suggest that they (namely Zuckerberg) earned too much. Does it even make sense for someone to get money that is beyond the capacity to be spent even through inheritance?

One implication is the question of whether Zuckerberg’s employees at Facebook should get a significant amount of what Zuckerberg earns, whether in salary or stock. Why such a huge difference in compensation? To be sure, ownership does have its privileges, but is there no limit? The fact that Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet could give vast sums of money to charity raises the question of whether founders and CEOs shouldn’t face some limit in terms of wealth, with a progressive tax system kicking in for multi-billionaires. Were elected representatives to decide how such vast sums should be spent, the legitimacy of the power behind such a decision would be greater.

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1. Deepa Seetharaman, “Zuckerberg Fund to Invest #3 Billion,” The Wall Street Journal, September 22, 2016.

2. Ibid.

Mass Shootings in the U.S.: Why Are Americans So Angry?

Even though the United States account for less than 5% of the world’s population, 31% of the total number of mass killings worldwide between 1966 and 2012 occurred there.[1] I contend that a rise in passive aggression and the related intolerance accounts for much of the difference. In other words, it could be that Americans generally are getting nastier and more angry at each other.

Although not a mass-shooting, Vester Flanagan shot two former co-workers in August 2015. While it is easy to relegate the story by simply concluding that the guy was nuts, a closer examination reveals the situation to be more complicated. The nuances may help us understand what lies behind the mass-killing violence that goes beyond the killers themselves and is disproportionately an American phenomenon. In analyzing the Flanagan case, I want to stress that even if his coworkers had been at fault, the double-murder was completely unjustified. My analysis is oriented to uncovering a hidden trend in American society rather than answering whether the shooting is justified.

In a lawsuit against another network in 2000, Flanagan had claimed that a producer had called him a "monkey" and that he had been "made aware that other black employees ... had been called monkeys by officials affiliated with defendant." He also claimed that a Caucasian "official" had told him that "it busted her butt that blacks did not take advantage of the free money," referring to scholarship funds. Additionally, he insisted that a supervisor at the station had said that "blacks are lazy,” and that that another employee had told a black tape-operator to "stop talking ebonics." WTWC-TV acknowledged that an employee "may have made similar comments to another employee," but denied that such comments are "indicative of unlawful employment practices." The case ended in a non-disclosed settlement.[2] The admission of race-oriented comments to another employee lends some credibility to Flanagan’s assertions.

Even so, Flanagan may have made his own contribution to the workplace tension. The news station denied that his termination was the result of discrimination. It instead cited "poor performance," budgetary reasons and "misbehavior with regards to co-workers."[3] The latter in particular resonates with what he wrote regarding the cameraman (Adam) and reporter (Alison) from his next station. After announcing that he filmed the shooting, he wrote, “Adam went to hr on me after working with me one time!!!”[4] Either Adam had overreacted or Flanagan’s treatment of co-workers was incredibly bad. Flanagan also wrote, “Alison made racist comments” to him, and that he had filed an EEOC report.[5] It could be a case of “white privilege,” or simply that Alison was racist (or that she took sides with Adam).

In any case, the shooting stemmed from anger in the workplace—people not getting along and not having the social skills to work things out rather than make things worse. Adam’s quick trip to the station’s human resources department may indicate a lack of tolerance, as well as a tendency to escalate matters rather than patiently work them out. If Alison made demeaning racial statements to Flanagan, then perhaps her attitude may have been condescending and thus inherently conflictual. Of course, both Adam and Alison may have simply been reacting to extraordinarily bad treatment from Flanagan—his report to the EEOC being an effort to go on the offensive rather than admit that he had treated his coworkers very badly.

I suspect that at least part of the problem is societal—Americans may be been becoming more passive aggressive, and this anger in turn might be kicking the outright aggression up a notch in some people. The lack of tolerance for disagreements shows up in the ideological fragmentation of the American news networks, for example, with Fox News and MSNBC employees on the air brazenly displaying utter disdain for progressives and conservatives, respectively. Dismissiveness toward others, or in other words being “too cool to talk,” stemming from an abject lack of respect for others, may have been increasing at least in the Millennial Generation. As the sordid attitude becomes more socially acceptable as a social more in America, then increasing anger and ensuing aggression can be expected. “Road rage” is a case in point: an extreme hostility toward other people ruffling feathers. Why are so many Americans angry? This may be part of the reason why the U.S. has a disproportionate number of mass killings, and I suspect that the same holds for workplace (and former workplace) violence.

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[1] Stan Ziv, “Study: Mass Shootings ‘Exceptionally American Problem’,” Newsweek, August 23, 2015.

[2] Dana Liebelson and Jessica Schulberg, “Shooting Suspect Sued Another Newsroom for Racism, Claimed He Was Called a Monkey,” The Huffington Post, August 26, 2015.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.