Ethics and Values: November 2004 Archives

I have been spending more and more of my blogging time cleaning up SPAM attacks. Even with improved software it keeps coming. Pornography, Viagra, Texas hold 'em, more pornography...the unwanted posts and trackbacks just keeps coming and coming. Why? Can there possibly be enough people out there who want access to such material to make it worth all of the trouble the spammers go through to get access to sites like this one? Clearly it must pay, as seen in this posting from Fresh Inc.

"...Virginia recently led the way in the nation's first prosecution of a spammer, a North Carolina man named Jeremy Jaynes. Bail for Jaynes was set at $1 million dollars. Why? Apparently, Jaynes' spamming business was quite lucrative. Prosecutors suspect he's been "squirreling away" parts of his $24 million fortune in foreign bank accounts, and is too great a flight risk, according to a November 9 AP story. Though Jaynes' faces up to nine years in prison, I wonder if this type of prison time will deter others. The lure of making millions by peddling junk products, pornography, and other dubious materials is probably worth the risk to many unscrupulous characters."

It is a sad reflection on the state of American culture that pornography so dominates the Internet. In a 1996 interview in Religion and Liberty, Kay Coles James liked the decline of our culture to a disease.

"America at its core has an identity, a culture that represents who we are as a nation. I see that culture as sick and dying. That is true because those institutions in our culture that historically provided a shield for us against the pathologies of our communities are breaking down. These pathologies-violence, pornography, child abuse, chemical addiction-have existed in world culture since the very beginning of time. But what has allowed us as a nation to fight off those particular pathologies is that we had a very strong immune system-things like strong families, strong faith, strong institutions, a moral base, a strong sense of virtue. As a result of our immune system now being broken down, we are susceptible to these viruses. So the way we need to address this problem is to build up those institutions that have made us be able to resist the pathologies."

Maybe the moral overtone of our recent election was a small step toward inoculating America from the pathologies that are attacking its culture. We can only hope.

Several entrepreneurs are finding success in giving many families what they want: entertainment with positive messages. StartupJournal highlights several companies that offer either positive contributions to pop culture or filters to clean up content that is less than family rated.

"'The market was telling us that if parents could buy products and be 100% guaranteed that they weren't going to be surprised with the content, they'd be very interested,' says Rich Siporin, vice president of sales and marketing of Langhorne, Pa.-based eGames."

For someone who lives in an entertainment town, this comes as good news, indeed. But, the common wisdom is that such G-rated content will not sell. So what is eGames experience in this market niche?

"In fiscal 2004, ended June 30, eGames' sales rose 11% to $8 million, and profit increased 9%, to $1.7 million, from a year earlier."

I got into an interesting discussion yesterday with a friend of mine about whether outsourcing and globalization were good or bad. He wasn't sure which side of the political debate about this he stood on, but seemed to be sure that at some point he would need to pick a side. The truth is that this should not be viewed as a simple debate of the morality of outsourcing and globalization, as they are both morally neutral economic tools. The morality comes from how they are used and toward what ends.

For example, assume we are looking at a small manufacturing business that has been making a profit acceptable for the owner for several years. He has been proud of the jobs he provides and has been an active member of his community. The prospects look good for the future of his business. However, a consultant comes in and as part of his recommendations points out that if the entrepreneur were to outsource the manufacturing of his business to Mexico, he could easily triple his profitability. I would argue that in this case such an outsourcing decision, while within his rights in a free market, would be ethically questionable. He had defined his own success as much more than his profits, which met his personal goals, and outsourcing would ignore the employees and community who helped him reach his success in the first place.

Harbus Online (from the Harvard Business School) offers an example of and ethically good application of outsourcing. They tell the story of Digital Divide Data, which operates a digitization business in Cambodia.

"To outsourcing experts and globalization critics, DDD is simply one more company looking to take advantage of cost arbitrage between the world's haves and have-nots. But...DDD represents a new breed of international social enterprise that melds the merits of the private sector with the morality of non-profits."

What makes DDD different?

"'Profits generated from data entry services are funneled into scholarships, healthcare and continued training,' Tim notes. 'The problem with most non-profit organizations is that they require annual grant funding. At DDD we aim for a double bottom line - the first is to be operationally self-sustainable, which funds the second, the direct, tangible improvement of disadvantaged people's lives and the communities they live in.'"

To those who try to define outsourcing as being inherently evil, DDD would be just another company taking away jobs. How sad that a company that is pursuing good ends using good means would be cast within such a net.

Does this mean that we should pass legislation to define "good" or "bad" outsourcing as many are demanding these days. I would argue that we should not. However, does this mean that business should then blindly engage in outsourcing and globalization without considering the moral consequences? Of course not. In fact, if business behaves this way, with total disregard of the moral and ethical consequences of such decisions, they are just asking for government to eventually step in.

The choice is not simply one of free markets or government controls. There is a third dimension made up of moral and ethical criteria that should be shaped by our culture. Sadly, we seem to keep trying to insulate our culture from the moral virtues which should be at its core. In business, just as in government, we have moved to defining ethics in a purely legalistic manner. That is a sure ticket to more government involvement in the day-to-day aspects of our economic lives. The challenge is to integrate our shared moral traditions into our business decision making rather than simply default to government bureaucrats and lawyers.

Thanks to Paul Chenoweth for passing along the Harvard article.

I recently wrote about the importance of self-assessment and self-reflection. One of the important outcomes of this process is to keep all of the important things in your life and your goals all in balance. This article from StartupJournal offers four practical tips to help keep your business from becoming all consuming.

1. Define what is important in life.

4. Delegate, then delegate some more.