Business Ethics, 2023 Version

Once upon a time, we used to make stuff. Manufacturing employed engineers and machine operators and truck drivers and office clerks and accountants. It was a Gibraltar-sized chunk of American middle-class stability.

But then we got smart. Really smart.

We sent our manufacturing infrastructure to Asia and outsourced the distribution. That freed-up a great many employees, who were unceremoniously terminated. As stock prices soared, we looked for still more things to divest ourselves of.

It wasn't long before we were little more than a post office box on the Isle of Man, a leased boardroom in a Manhattan skyscraper and plants scattered throughout Asia. We were Forbes magazine's business of the future.

A model of ruthless efficiency.

Business could now milk a cow and receive an urn full of cream in return.

But as profits and their margins spiral upwards in an unbroken trajectory, who is paying for this? Who's going to get the bill?

Someone must be, surely.

As employer's profit margins explode, businesses are enjoying the succulent fruit that comes from being let off the leash of regulation and oversight. The Citizen's United decision remains the high-water mark of this cancerous trend.

(Unless we're counting Donald Trump's three-billion-dollar bribe to the nation's billionaires and their companies, of course.)

This is the environment in which Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel, after having created one of three vaccines that successfully resisted COVID, decided to increase the cost per dose from the $26.36 the U.S. government was paying to $130.

Fair enough, right? His people did the work and spent the time to figure this thing out. They should rightfully profit for their work.

Shouldn't they?

Yes, Bancel's employees did a good bit of heavy lifting. But let's not forget they received an enormous amount of money from people completely unrelated to Moderna.

Depending on your level of cynicism, you may already know where this is going. For the rest of you, I'll lay it bare here: You paid for the COVID vaccine's research and development. One point seven billion dollars of American taxpayer money was handed over to Moderna (and Pifzer) to devise such a thing.

That's right. It was on your dime.

But those nineteen-billion-dollars in profit? Oh, yeah. About that. Um, that's not for you. That's for us because we “made” it. You just paid for it.

Public expense for private profit. I wonder what will our next great idea will be.

This is how far off the rails we are. This is a new low in exploitation and ghoulishness. And let me guess—these firms feel they should get a tax-break on those profits for their unwavering commitment to the American people, too.

Anyone have an air-sickness bag?

But with a conservative Supreme Court and a Republican majority in the House, feeling this monstrosity develop and take shape is quite easily done. Even while Republicans seek to gut Social Security and Medicare (that's right Marjorie Taylor-Greene!) as excessive entitlements, the American public can, in essence, be put to work for a behemoth like Moderna without so much as a cent in compensation.

Failing that, is expecting Moderna to return the funds that subsidized their research hoping for too much?

Given one party's affinity for labeling the policies of another as “creeping socialism”, I wonder how we can possibly compare something like social security or MediCare to a nineteen-billion-dollar private slush fund.

They don't fit in the same universe much less a shared government building.

Use the term 'business ethics' in a conversation and you're as likely to encounter a blank expression as one weary with disappointment and resignation. Can you choose which person is better informed?

I can.

 

Truth Decay

I only wish the most detestable thing I ever had to do for a job was get a shot. Or share my vaccination status. Or get tested for COVID twice a week.

Apparently it is for Chicago police officers and many of the city's municipal employees. Even with their lavish pensions and hearty salaries, they are outraged by Mayor Lightfoot's COVID vaccine mandate and have filed suit against the city.

Gulp.

I had to take all manner of shit while employed as a cashier for Home Depot during the Great Recession. While the lowest-paid employees in the store, the position also featured its most-demanding metrics. They were a circular firing squad of contradictory and mutually-exclusive demands.

For instance, the 'Security' metric required me to root through a contractor's flatbed cart to search for saw blades and silver solder hidden between bags of cement mix and boxes of shingles while simultaneously delighting them with radiant customer service.

Oh, and this needed to be done very quickly. Because beyond meeting the 'Friendly and courteous' metric I needed to fulfill the 'Speed of checkout' one, too. Since they were already put-off by the assumption of theft we certainly didn't want them hanging around any longer than necessary, did we?

“Thank you for shopping at Home Depot and have a great day!”

One example of the surly gentlemen who frequented our store were the pair who commented “Wish I could stand around with my hands in my pockets all day” as they passed my register.

First off, my hands weren't in my pockets. And secondly, store policy required me to stand at the head of the aisle when I wasn't actively processing a customer and could theoretically flag down anyone ready to check-out.

As an inveterate customer service professional and an endlessly helpful soul, I couldn't let this customer's wish go unfulfilled. Which is why I responded “You can! At Home Depot dot com slash jobs!”

My insouciance wasn't taken in the spirit in which it was offered and the toxic twins leveled a complaint about me to persons unknown. Not only did I hear from my department manager but the store manager as well.

After listening to their spiels about the importance of our customers, I told them I didn't care who the complainants were—I wasn't going to be a punching bag for our customers merely because I had a Home Depot apron on.

Mystifyingly, I neglected to thank them for their support.

The memory smolders, still.

You'll excuse me if I can't quite recall the details of my pension and other benefits because there weren't any. I did mention I earned $8.40 an hour, right? And that my hours were strictly limited to spare Home Depot the ruinous financials presented by full-time employees?

Yeah.

But at least I wasn't required to get a shot.

So yes, my heart bleeds for Chicago's cops and the scores of municipal employees being made to bear the outrage of having to inoculate oneself during a pandemic. It's like being made to exit a burning building, is it not?

Lead Fraternal Order of Police troll John Catanzara, whose sole talent in life is intransigence, is threatening a massive call-in by Chicago's finest should Mayor Lightfoot follow through on the expectations outlined in her mandate.

Catanzara's mental acuity is on display when, after his predecessor's death from COVID last week, he refused to acknowledge the existence of the virus or the threat it presents to the members of his union.

(It is interesting to note that despite his public anti-vaxxer stance, Catanzara is vaccinated. And exactly what do the chumps who elected him think of that?)

It is again on display when the fact is made public that more cops have died from COVID than from all Black Lives Matter protests combined. (It isn't even close.) But is COVID a threat? Should cops vaccinate? Nope.

I'm reminded of Monty Python's Argument Clinic, wherein Terry Jones attempts to explain to John Cleese that “...an argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition”, to which Cleese answers “Not it isn't.”

Exasperated, Jones goes on to complain that this isn't an argument—it's contradiction. Cleese's response? “No it isn't.”

But in the end this isn't really about masks and vaccines, is it?

Nope. It's the same dynamic playing out between President Biden and Mitch McConnell in Washington DC. It's about control. Republicans created this power-at-all-costs dynamic and it's about nothing more than resisting Democrats.

Slit your throat. Or the public's. We don't care. But don't ever accede to a Democrat!

With things like the greater good and public health thrown under the bus for a prolonged sibling rivalry more appropriate for the sandbox than our halls of government, it's tempting to feel the looming global warming cataclysm couldn't have come at a better time.

Sorry for the misanthropic streak, but there you go.

I Can Break the Vaccine Logjam!

 After hearing Trump's phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger plainly seeking to badger/guilt/manipulate Raffensperger into cooking the books of the 2020 election in Trump's favor, I have had it.

I ask you: has there ever been a more heinous, more corrupt jackal in public office? And is it asking too much that he is soon to receive the Benito Mussolini treatment not too long after leaving office, if not before?

Sadly, it seems my New Year's Eve wish has one exception: Donald J. Trump. But I'm forgiving his zombies—for the most part. Read on...

Amazing, isn't it? But yeah, I can. Here's the deal: if you voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, you go to the end of the line.

By casting your vote for Crazy Don, you have endorsed this medical cataclysm which has placed tens of millions of lives at risk, and I see no reason whatsoever why you should benefit alongside those who sought order over chaos; leadership over sedition and fraud.

It is you who swallowed President Petulant's every word and obeyed his every wish. It is you who denied the existence of COVID-19 and belittled those who believed differently. It is you who stridently protested common-sense public health measures meant to minimize the spread of COVID-19 and fought tooth and nail to have them overturned.

(In addition to ignoring them.)

It is you who, like your president, whined and cried without end. It is you who raised the game of victimhood to new heights, claiming that wearing a cloth mask over your nose and mouth amounted to tyranny.

It is you who, like your president, enabled the spread of COVID-19 via your teenaged sense of immortality and now want to partake in a cure.

To which I politely respond “Fuck you.”

It is entirely unsurprising that we fell short of the twenty million vaccinations promised by Vice-President Pence. It is entirely unsurprising that the distribution lags far behind what was promised.

We have only to look at the captain of the ship.

To paraphrase your local stock broker, this is a case where past performance is indicative of future results. Unless it benefited the one-percent and their businesses, is there anything Donald J. Trump didn't fuck up?

Like the trolls you are, you need to follow your leader. This isn't the time to discover your sense of free will and think for yourself. There is no virus, remember? Hence no need for inoculation.

I'd like you to show us snowflakes one more time how indomitable you are. I'd like you to show us your fiery defiance in the face of, well, everything. You can't talk the talk if you won't walk the walk.

C'mon—just one more show. Isn't it better to risk sickness and even death as a true blue Trumper than to live in shame as a RINO?

I thought so.

Just Sayin'

What is it with Donald Trump and Hydroxychloroquine? It's been dismissed as a potential antidote for COVID19, yet Trump works it into the conversation nearly every chance he gets.

I'm guessing Donald bit on it as a potential cure for the Coronavirus and owns a controlling interest. Desperate to make his money back, he's pitching it as a general cure-all that fixes whatever is wrong and enhances that which is not.

Feel free to add your Snake Oil salesman joke here: