Here is the Syllabus and Schedule [pdf] for my Business and Economic Ethics course this Fall 2010 semester. The syllabus and schedule, along with a supplemental reading booklet, are also posted in the Courses section of this site.
And here are some of my publications and posts that are relevant to this semester’s material:
My review of Kevin Gibson’s Ethics and Business: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2007) is now out in the current issue of Teaching Philosophy. The review is behind the subscriber wall but will be publicly available eventually.
From my introductory section:
“Gibson’s approach is middle-of-the-road in the content of his beliefs about business and ethics, so this is a mainstream publication. As such Ethics and Business embodies the strengths of the mainstream—and a few of its weaknesses. So from the perspective of someone outside the mainstream, let me indicate what I take those weaknesses to be in the context of reviewing a textbook written for students. …”
Posted 2 weeks, 3 days ago at 9:11 am. Add a comment
Here is a nice solution to a problem. City governments are usually responsible for street signs. But they can be expensive–and this is an era of supposed budget cuts, it’s hard to impose new taxes, and so on. So why not get area businesses to sponsor the signs? Businesses will pay happily to get some marketing presence, the city gets new signs at less cost to them, and everyone benefits.
But I showed the pictures briefly to a colleague, who frowned and said Más dominación por corporaciones, which I translate loosely as More goddamn big businesses asserting their control over our lives by polluting our public places with their insidious messages. And foreign corporations to boot. Or something like that.
My colleague’s reaction was automatic, but built into it is the idea that a better solution would be to force everyone to pay for the signs through taxes. That would eliminate the advertising, and the businesses would receive no benefit from their imposed tax costs. That is to say, my colleague believes implicitly that a compulsory win/lose solution is preferable to a voluntary win/win solution.
All of which makes me wonder how some people become so invested in adversarial ideologies that they so automatically reject any suggestion of the mutually beneficial.
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago at 9:34 am. Add a comment
Here is a fascinating short article in the British Journal of Medicine by Robert N. Proctor, professor of the history of medicine at Penn State University:
The campaign was mounted despite the arguments that (1) taxes on tobacco were a significant source of income for the German government and (2) the tobacco industry provided thousands of jobs. Political principles were at stake.
The chief anti-smoking activist, one Adolf Hitler, stated that “Nazism might never have triumphed in Germany had he not given up smoking.”
I gave the Nazi anti-smoking campaigns a passing mention in Nietzsche and the Nazis, in the context of discussing the Nazis’ socialization of the body politic, and Proctor has developed the anti-smoking theme in much greater detail.
Israel Kirzner will be in residence at Beloit College, just up the road from Rockford College, this coming semester in October. He will be there as part of Beloit’s Upton Scholars Series.
Greater Buenos Aires has a population of around 13 million. How do they all get to work, school, and visiting grandmother in the old neighborhood? Many drive, but here’s an an interesting tidbit about its unique mix of private and public transportation:
“There are over 150 city bus lines called Colectivos, each one managed by an individual company. These compete with each other, and attract exceptionally high use with virtually no public financial support. Their frequency makes them equal to the underground systems of other cities, but buses cover a far wider area than the underground system. Colectivos in Buenos Aires do not have a fixed timetable, but run from 4 to several per hour, depending on the bus line and time of the day. With very cheap tickets and extensive routes, usually no further than four blocks from commuters’ residences, the colectivo is the most popular mode of transport around the city” (Wikipedia).
By contrast, many U.S. city governments continue to experiment with top-down, politically-enforced, and economically wasteful public transportation systems. Here is John Catoe, the general manager of the Washington, D.C., Metro system:
“One thing that it is important to understand though is that the fares only pay a portion of the operating budget. This year, about 53%. If you add the money we earn from advertising and other sources, we cover about 60% of the cost. In fact no transit agency in the country makes a profit or breaks even. The rest comes from the local governments that partner with Metro.” [Emphasis added.]
Here also is a copy of the brochure for the book [pdf], which includes the Table of Contents and more information about availability of the book and documentary.
Here is the Syllabus and Schedule [pdf] for my Business and Economic Ethics course this Fall 2010 semester. The syllabus and schedule, along with a supplemental reading booklet, are also posted in the Courses section of this site. 
My review of Kevin Gibson’s Ethics and Business: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2007) is now out in 
Stephen Hicks discusses the type of literature used in postmodern education. This is from Part 14 of his 